#assault disguised as discipline

[furiousgoldfish]

when done to children it's called 'discipline' when done to adults it's called 'violent assault' and also 'torture'

[dailycharacteroption]

Prestige Class Spotlight 11: Exalted

(art by jocarra on DeviantArt)

 Deities and their worshippers come in all shapes and forms, but truly even among the priests of a deity, only the Exalted can be truly called the true exemplars of a deity’s teachings, though other clerics and oracles try.

The 5th Obedience-focused prestige class we’ve covered, and the 2nd of the traditional Deific Obedience group, today we are looking at the Exalted.

While Evangelists could belong to any class in theory, willing to tie their very ability to their deity and gain many more besides, today we are focusing on a class specifically for divine casters, offering them greater divine powers as they become avatars of their deity, or at the very least, among the most favored of their servants.

Much like other obedience prestige classes, the sheer variety of options means that each exalted is different, even if they must still be divine casters. We’ll see exactly how that is below.

 Like many other prestige classes, this one lets divine casters keep developing their spellcasting as part of their training, but no other such abilities.

Like other obedience prestige classes, this one also requires they perform their daily rituals to keep gaining the benefits of the prestige class, though it isn’t as harsh as evangelist requiring daily obediences for all class abilities.

Literally marked by their deity, these priests sport a perfect replica of their deity’s holy symbol on their skin, always giving them a divine focus to cast with as long as it is openly displayed.

Being part of the upper echelons of the clergy means a somewhat better education, adding a new branch of knowledge to their class skills.

Imbued as they are with divine power, these mystics sport strong vitality, making it easier to fend off assaults on their fortitude and to stabilize when heavily injured.

Much like other prestige classes of this type, these individuals gain divine boons from their obedience feat at an accelerated rate, though obviously they only have access to the exalted path.

Their position also gives them plenty of practice being public speakers.

They also eventually gain a wider control over the divine portfolio that their deity holds sway over, gaining a third domain (or second or first depending on what divine class they previously were), gaining not only it’s ordinary abilities, but also access to a reserve of power for casting the domain spells of this granted domain.

More powerful exalted are actually transformed by their faith, gaining an otherworldly feature that reflects their deity. While this makes it difficult to disguise their true nature, they also gain protection from an alignment that the deity opposes.

They can also learn to sense one of these opposing alignments, making noticing the enemies of their faith all the easier.

The most powerful among these mystics can regularly work minor miracles once a day, either replicating the effects of high-level cleric spells, slightly lower-level spells of any discipline, Undoing harsh magic that would normally require a proper miracle spell to do, and even offering up a sacrifice of wealth to beseech their deity to perform a true miracle. However, like the miracle spell, it must be in line with the desires and philosophy of the deity in question.

As you can see, this prestige class offers not just a fast track into the obedience abilities that share a name with it, but also provide great boons for all parts of their role as priests, ministering to their followers, granting additional divine abilities, and so on. So if you want to go whole-hog into the sort of abilities associated with your deity, you have plenty of opportunity to do so. The sheer customization makes it impossible for me to give advice here, so have fun!

 These priests might be shining paragons of righteousness, or they might be foul mother-of-monsters types, but what truly unifies them is that they have made the choice to become one with their deity’s teachings in an ultimate act of devotion. Of course, since such teachings can vary, there is still plenty of room for variation, and in fact these discussions on the nature of faith can be a lot of how their character is defined, be they interested in hearing different teachings or viewing other interpretations as heresy.

  Unlike true ratfolk, were-rats are by nature vicious and filthy creatures. However, their beastkin brethren, the nightskulks, are not imprisoned by their curse. Indeed, Young Ilfida decided to devote herself completely to the God of Medicine, and is particularly eager to find new answers to illness and disease. Her were-rat relatives are less than enthused, and are prepared to take violent action to either return her to the fold, or destroy her as a heretic.

 The church of the Clock Man is about to unveil their latest wonder, a mighty clockwork goliath to be gifted to the king as a mighty defender of the realm. However, no one realizes that among the priest-smiths working on the machine is an exalted member of the Life-Supplanter, a heretical splinter faith devoted to helping mechanical life replace that of flesh and blood, through violence if necessary.

 They say that the greatest architects of the Sower of Cities become one with their greatest works after death. For most this simply means incorporating a tomb into their most famous building after their death, but for the rare few exalted priests, it can be spiritual as well. Such is the case for Kakras of Lemag, whose famous palace now holds a dim awareness of all that foes on within, all the more pity that it has become a monster-haunted fortress after the city fell.

[stampstamp]

Finished re-reading F*shigi Y*gi part 1 and the first and final arcs still spark joy so I'll keep my collection but volumes 9-11 were so frustrating that I'm gonna roast them a little under the cut (and be a bit critical of other aspects that don't hold up 30 years on)

Major spoilers and references to SA in the series under the cut! (And it's a super long rant!)

The dip in quality from 9 onwards was such a shame! The plot just turns into various enemies trying to rape the 15-year-old protagonist for three volumes! Not to be a pearl clutcher but Watase says the target demographic is middle school - junior high students and there's just a whole arc where:

It's implied that Nakago raped Miaka. It's later revealed he didn't manage to penetrate her and everyone is like 'oh phew! 😄' and her traumatic nightmares about her memories of him stripping her and pinning her down before she fainted just stop. 🤦

Also, in the author note alongside that part Watase comments that things are getting dark but points out that we've just learned that Yui didn't actually get raped by strangers so it's not all bad. Mate, your protagonist is being assaulted?? We can't take much solace in that revelation right now!

Then there's a bit where Amiboshi climbs on top of her while she's sleeping naked and kisses her without her consent (his parents had drugged her).

Meanwhile, Soi disguises herself as Miaka and tries to seduce Tamahome. I know it's a product of it's time but ughh the way Tamahome almost getting raped is handled so differently to scenes where Miaka is assaulted - it's awful. And there's also a 'gag' parody page where it replicates the scene where Tamahome found Miaka after she's been assaulted by Nakago but makes it look like one of the gay characters had raped Tamahome.

After his comrades have failed to take her virginity and stop her from summoning Suzaku, Tomo, who Watase confirms is gay, also tries to rape Miaka. 😑

In the last volume, Watase shares the ideas that there wasn't space for and they were so good 🥲 maybe you could have removed one of the SA scenes or one of the twenty times Miaka or Tamahome breaks it off and runs away to protect the other?

I used to like the author notes but this time they kept rubbing me the wrong way. Watase would say things like 'too bad we HAVE to spank our tiny terrier puppy to discipline it 🫤' or share racist travelogues about trips to China.

But it's kind of funny that in the author notes, Watase hinted at shipping Tamahome and Nakago 😂 never really gushed about how much she loved Tamahome/Miaka as a ship though. I quite like Keisuke/Tamahome as a ship - they got on well.

I was thinking about ranting about how Nuriko is handled but that's hard because 1. 90s 2. Another culture 3. Watase later came out as X gender so the offensive character notes were probably well intentioned and might be regretted now? 4. The translators had to do the usual thing of deciding which pronouns the character that's almost certainly trans would use, while also translating jokes that implied Nuriko is simply crossdressing for funsies and deciphering whatever the hell happened in vol 8 where Nuriko decided to be cis and in love with Miaka for a chapter or two.

I started shipping Tasuki and Nuriko this time and I was delighted to see 20 whole fics on AO3 but almost all of them misgender Nuriko. Maybe the anime subbers used different pronouns or Nuriko's backstory was different in the anime? Watase said someone did a Tasuki/Nuriko doujin and they wanted to read it. Same!

I used to think I wasn't attached to most of the Suzaku warriors beyond Tasuki because I'd re-read the first few volumes way more times than the rest but Watase really didn't give the others much to say or do! 😬 I feel sorry for the fans of Mitsukake(?) Apparently there were lots of Hotohori fans but I always found him creepy; despite his gentle actions, he never seemed to listen to Miaka's wishes. Yandere behaviour. Lucky for me he wasn't in it much (I also feel sorry for his fans lmao)

Forgot how much character death there was towards the end. It's impressive that Watase included characters from the Genbu and Byakko arcs decades before they were written IRL. I don't think I'll read those since FY suggests they ended badly? I wonder if much was retconned.

[katarvitz]

The Maclnir Commonwealth - Military, Industry, and Relations

So, carrying on from last time with the history, now we've got some extra elements. Some of these were concepts I semi-reused and reworked from prior worldbuilding efforts with other projects, but mostly because they fitted so well with the setting here. There's also a lot I threw in to try and add a lot of grey into the mix, to contrast with the apparently more benign history. Much like the original Secular ComStar, I wanted them to have a few morally dubious elements despite an apparent reformation.

Military:

“Strike them, hit them fast, know where to hit them, and make sure you can keep hitting them. Most importantly though, make sure they’re always reeling in confusion at how you’re able to hit them.” - High Marshal König, when asked to give their approach to warfare in layman’s terms.

Primarily shaped by a mixture of Anastasius Focht’s teachings and the strategies of the Capellan Confederation, the Commonwealth Guards are a well trained and highly disciplined force. Heavily favouring combined arms formations over battlemech dominance, their initial structures adhered to the ComStar Level system, but have seen some limited evolution. This is mainly thanks to emphasising speed, durability and weapon range for most mech designs.

The battlemechs of the Guard cover all classes, but have a far more significant number of Heavy designs over other categories. The Black Knight and Flashman are noted favourites in this regard, along with variants of the Highlander and Marauder. Yet even with the backing of their industry, the Guard leans toward designs that are easy to maintain and rugged, and are not reliant upon limited ammunition. This gives them a noted versatility in long-range operations with limited resupply, and even LRM dedicated mechs feature a sizable number of lasers. This leaves their industry able to more actively focus upon the substantial number of vehicles that support their actions; particularly airborne drop units and mechanised assault carriers.

Recon and target information play a heavy role in any battle, and it’s for this reason that groups most commonly work with aerospace fighters in close support. Yet even without this, spies and infiltration efforts play a crucial part in any planned attack, with members seeded months if not years ahead of any war. Besides relaying targetting information, this allows for sabotage or misinformation to undermine any effective response. When these methods cannot be utilised in direct support, efforts instead focus upon damaging morale, weakening trust, spreading paranoia, and raising tempers among old comrades. Representatives of the Stormwatch Institute more often than not emulate ROM’s tactics in this regard, but with a greater emphasis on psychological warfare.

Yet the Commonwealth Guard has done much to hide any underhanded strategies, and actively promotes an image of doing the exact opposite in battle. The Guards’ battlemechs are gaudily decorated and ornate war machines, resplendent in white and red. Their members act as more stereotypical warriors than trained soldiers to match this disguise. Speaking of oaths in war, blaring out faux religious chants through warhorns, and making challenges in open battle, they emulate the most extreme aspects of the Clans and Draconis Combine’s warriors. This serves as little more than an act, typically to disrupt battle plans or put the enemy in the wrong mindset, before engaging them with more effective group tactics.

One of the more unique elements within the Commonwealth Guard’s formations is the Knights Errant. These are groups tasked with hunting down lostech or rumoured SLDF remnants. Acting remotely and with little direct support, they are responsible for finding assets to bolster the Commonwealth’s technological standing. These Knights will either return with their findings, or news so that a more substantial force might assist any salvage effort. Combined with the inordinately large number of recovery vehicles fielded by the Commonwealth, this has led to the common nickname of “Magpies” among foreign powers.

Industry:

Understandably given their extensive infrastructure, the Commonwealth benefits from several powerful industries. The construction of machinery, factory operations, and ore refinement are all significant factors; with most reworked from their previous support of the Fiefdom’s ruling mechwarriors. Although crude, a steady series of technological upgrades have improved the process, giving the Commonwealth’s worlds a critical edge over their neighbours. This has allowed them to form several highly beneficial trade connections, especially planets that have suffered severe technological regression. With their core worlds being rich in heavy metals despite their ecologically devastated nature, this has helped to make them extraordinarily self-reliant and fuel a rapidly expanding trade sphere.

Crops among the Commonwealth’s worlds are challenging to grow at best, and the soil is barren across most planets. Because of this fact, hydroponics farms have become a steadily growing second industry, both to support their populace and grant additional resources. Caffeine and sugar are prominent resources in this push, grown thanks to crops introduced by ComStar following their conquest. Jealously guarded and highly profitable, the Commonwealth has actively sought to retain a monopoly over the plants when it comes to certain trade partners.

Yet beyond even their vast industrial hub, the Commonwealth’s greatest strength stems from its fleet of JumpShips. Between the ships captured from the Fiefdom and those of the ComStar flotilla, the Commonwealth has a sizable navy supporting its actions. While not intended for battle, they have proven perfect for forming trading circuits about surrounding systems, and deploying the freighter DropShips to their intended destinations. More importantly, their dominance has allowed the Commonwealth to offer their fleet as a service to other powers, both in the form of message boats and transportation. Although a pale shadow of ComStar’s previous communications dominance, it is nevertheless an area that has granted them significant prominence and control over nearby powers.

Mercantile groups have made some pushes to use healthcare and education as additional economic hubs, but these have yet to meet any success. Intended purely as public services for Commonwealth citizens, the idea of turning each into a financial venture has been subject to widespread scorn and ridicule. The one Mercantile Coordinator that attempted to reshape both in a series of private deals was famously ripped limb from limb by an angry crowd. Few have mustered the courage to try such bold restructurings since that time.

Yet the Commonwealth’s greatest industrial asset is one that remains hidden from all save the uppermost echelons of the government. Hidden close to Khigan’s sun, armies of engineers are working to coax a damaged YardShip back into life. Recovered by a Knight Errant group several years following ComStar’s arrival, the vessel was found adrift and damaged, lost seemingly thanks to a drive failure. While inoperable and with entire sections requiring replacement components, the Commonwealth hopes to transform it into a shipyard, giving them access to WarShip production. Yet it will be decades at best before this might see fruition if it is ever accomplished at all.

Relations:

Primarily associated with individual planetary powers or minor Deep Periphery groups, the Maclnir Commonwealth spent decades presenting a neutral standing. This was done as much out of an effort to mimic ComStar’s initial methods as it was a push to avoid making enemies while rebuilding settlements. Even after the Commonwealth’s attention was focused outward, there was the need to coerce more widely ignored worlds into trusting them, or at least opening their borders to trade vessels. These actions allowed them to gradually develop a small but dependable trade network, with some even benefiting from an organised messenger boat service.

Although they have seen multiple successes, the Commonwealth’s near-obsessive efforts to reclaim lostech has not gone unnoticed. Because of it, otherwise welcoming trading partners to limit their freedom of movement planetside, typically to pre-established landing sites. This has not prevented Stormwatch agents from being deployed on these worlds, but it has made their activities more difficult to carry out. In place of this, traders have acted both as information gatherers and spreaders of falsehoods about the Commonwealth. Each will cite contradictory tales of their worlds’ state, culture, and even the values systems upon which they operate.

Details are drip-fed, each keeping those who learn of them guessing the behaviour of the Commonwealth’s rulers. Direct questions are deflected or put down to regional shifts. This means that discussions of the Commonwealth’s change from bandit kingdom to crusader state frame it as a violent revolution in some cases. In contrast, others depict it as a series of peaceful reforms under a king. This means of spreading guesswork means that traders are carefully selected, serving as spies as businessmen, each carefully balancing infuriating vagueness with placating acts. Each just enough to avoid creating total distrust or for them to close their doors to Commonwealth traders. 

Although the Commonwealth largely limits itself to deals with minor powers, it holds surprisingly positive relations with the JàrnFòlk. Meetings between the two societies are few and far between, but neither their potential rivalry nor relation with the Clans is held against them. A substantial part of this is thanks to the Commonwealth viewing them as a potentially helpful asset in future ventures, and an in-between when dealing with Clan elements.

Of the Inner Sphere, the Commonwealth holds no interest. Each central Successor State is judged by its citizens as embracing humanity’s worst traits, thanks partially to ComStar’s accounts of them. Although some questioned potential biases in each depiction, news of both the Second Star League’s demise and Republic of the Sphere’s collapse have hardly helped.

Understandably given their origins, interaction with most Clan nations have been neutral or outright hostile. Although the Commonwealth avoids outright confrontations, skirmishes between isolated factions are not unknown. The only exception in their dealings with the Clans has been a non-aggression pact with a Clan Nova Cat garrison on the planet Gwithian. Loss of contact with their holdings in the Draconis Combine has caused the previously isolationist Clanners to become more open, but both sides remain far from friendly.

[metamoonshots]

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[tiesthatbind-tf]

A lad finally gets some of that coveted spotlight!

Benjamin Bane (just Ben or Benji, thanks) may be the youngest of the active Autobot team as their sprightly scout who’s got a chip on his shoulder he wants to hurl into the next Functionist or Decepticon picking on him for his size, and who’s been through quite a bit despite his age, if the burn on his left arm, the slide bite on his right hand  and the multitude of old cigarette burns he’s reluctant to explain are anything to go by.

When not on the field, he’s an avid dancer (with a love for ballet, something he could only pursue in secret until recently, and something which forms the core of his offensive style) and a good enough artist that he, alongside Mirage, are the two assigned to decorate armor for the team.

His smiley, chirpy facade hides quite a couple of issues, including PSTD and self-esteem issues, anxiety attacks, and an urge to please those he trusts even if it comes at his detriment.

More to his story below. (TW for child abuse)

Benjamin Bane (Bumblebee) would be hard-pressed to come up with a single good memory concerning his biological family during his childhood, and not for the lack of trying.

Born to an upper middle-class family in New York comprising a bullish, hot-tempered police sergeant father and a housewife mother, he grew up in the shadow of the son his father, who came from a family of law enforcers, wanted him to be in order to carry on the family legacy.

That he was a gentle, bubbly, sensitive child who loved following his mother around in the kitchen and spending his free time drawing did not bode well for the image his father wished to portray, and it didn’t take long for the discipline intended to mold him into a ‘man’ to become horrifically physical when he was barely five.

His mother, already used to his old man’s temper and quick hand, would often step in to take the punishment meant for him whenever he did something undesirable, though she couldn’t save Ben from the man’s wrath completely, and by the time he was nine, he was never seen without a hoodie in school and had perfected every excuse he’d been told to repeat when asked why he could not take it off or why he would come in on some days with a split lip.

He was small for his size, quiet, and took great pains not to be noticed, which had the opposite effect of making him the target of every other larger child looking to blow off steam, and he became good at running.

Really good.

There was no running from home however, home where the walls were insulated so neighbours wouldn’t hear what was happening within, and while some days would be better than others, there wasn’t a moment that he didn’t break into a cold sweat whenever he heard his father’s footsteps approaching his room.

With his mother unable to bear more children due to an illness, his father furiously continued with the campaign (sometimes the carrot was used  though mostly it was the stick) to mold him into the son the man wanted, so he could make the cut during the streaming process prior to high school where students would be sorted into their future occupational classes.

What support he might have had from his mother in his young years also evaporated, as she pushed him to be the son his father needed him to be to keep the peace, putting the weight of the household’s sanctity on his slight  shoulders.

He was forced into marksmanship lessons (where his first attempt to fire a gun went awry and left him with a deep slide bite wound), multiple self-defence classes to toughen him up (helpful for bullies whenever they didn’t come in packs), and a series of workouts to encourage a growth spurt so he could catch up to other potential cadet  candidates.

The little sliver of hope that he would be good enough to make the junior police  cadets went up in smoke when he was assigned to the manual class instead, owing to his size and his visceral aversion to handling firearms.

Branded as worthless and only good for paying off the ‘debt’ accumulated from the classes his father had earlier forced him into, Ben entered high school with his self-esteem scrapping at topsoil and digging deeper, and had it not been for a chance encounter with another boy who was evading a group of military-classed students intending to instil a lesson about talking back to those higher in the hierarchy, it might have dug itself into a grave.

The boy, who introduced himself as Guillermo ‘Memo’ Gutierrez after Ben dutifully sent the bullies scattering, was also assigned to the manual class and both of them  decided to stick together for safety in numbers.

Ben had ruefully accepted his lot in life after years of being broken and beaten down. Memo, however, had a loving and supportive family; this kept the spark of his defiance to the system alive and he kindled it in Ben’s by giving his friend a safe space to escape to whenever the situation at Ben’s home became too intense.

Among Memo and Memo’s family was the first time where Ben opened up about his interests, could speak freely and found acceptance for what he liked and who he was.

The desire to reclaim the things he loved pushed him to seek out part-time work, which he eventually found after befriending a girl, Charlie Watson, who had helped put an end to the harassment he and Memo endured at school by playing the hierarchy to their favour and wielding her Navy ‘prime-pick’ status.

That she actually wanted nothing to do with the class she was pushed into (Navy) and wished to pursue a career in automotives despite parental objections was something that she and Ben bonded over, and she brought him to the scrapyard her uncle ran where he found work sorting out car parts and helping perform repairs.

He began to pursue art and dance in secret with part of his pay (keeping his sketchbooks and supplies at Memo’s place and taking dance lessons under the guise of after-class study sessions), while saving up the rest and planning for the day he would eventually break free of his father, ‘debt’ or no ‘debt’.

During this time, he subtly packed away important items and was careful not to anger his old man more than his mere presence already did on a good day——something which would become increasingly hard when the Clampdown began.

He would hear his father rant over the dinner table about how ungrateful the protesters who were made up mostly of the Manual Class were, how they weren’t worth the safety net they were demanding for the job they were doing, how they needed to know their place.

He would hear, as time went by, about how his father would beat the ones who were arrested, and more than once, how he would be killed if he, as the man’s son, ever did something as stupid and insolent as that.

He bit his tongue through all this and reluctantly refused Memo’s offer to join a peaceful protest for better wages and workplace compensation.

The protest turned violent after police assaulted those taking part however, and as he watched the news hoping to see if Memo was alright, he saw his friend among those who were tossed into the dreaded black vans to be brought over to stations for interrogation.

His father, fielding a call from a colleague about the batch of protesters being brought in, told them to separate the adults from the teenagers, who would be easier to break, and it was at this point Ben’s spark turned into a bonfire.

As his father got dressed for work, he crept into the man’s study and managed to figure out the combination to the safe where the man’s gun was kept, retrieving it and aiming it at the police sergeant who came in and demanded for him to stand down.

Ben, in turn, demanded for his father to call the station and have Memo released, and when his father laughed at his audacity, mocked the way his hands shook while he was holding the gun and threatened to beat him senseless once this was all over, he shot the man close enough to the head to clip an ear to prove a point, before repeating his demand again.

This time, his father complied and called the station to order for Memo’s release; Ben’s relief however was all the momentary lapse of guard that his father needed to rush in and attempt to wrest the gun back, and in the struggle, he accidentally shot his father in the knee.

Under the hail of threats on how he was going to die once his father got hands on him, Ben flung the gun where the man could not reach, grabbed one of the bags he had secretly packed and ran out of the house to the screams of his mother.

He called Charlie and explained the situation to her, as both of them made their way to the station where his father worked to pick up Memo, who was confused about the state of affairs.

At 18 years, Ben was now a fugitive who could no longer go home; Memo brought him to the manual class district where Ben could hide among allies, and it was here that he spent a few months in hiding, disguised as a manual worker.

However, still fully terrified at the thought of his father eventually hunting him down within the confines of the city, he made plans to leave and head to the West Coast, far away from any chance that he would meet his old man by accident on the streets.

To his surprise,  Charlie and Memo elected to join him in the move, and the three of them left together on a  Greyhound bus; Him to escape his father, Charlie to escape her future with a military complex which her father died for and Memo to protect his family after he was named a person of interest in the protest.

However, they were forced to stop in Texas when police were inspecting passing buses for runaway Cold Constructs. Here, they met Ian Hart (Ironhide), a rancher secretly helping Cold  Constructs escape ownership by crossing over into Mexico to start new lives.

Ian, seeing how they ran from the bus, assumed they were young Cold Constructs and immediately took them in and offered them shelter; when they explained their situation, he kept his offer, letting them stay until they had their plans sorted out and paying them for work done on his ranch in the meantime.

All three of them grew fond of him and spent a month working on his ranch, helping out equally between his longhorn cattle and the Cold Constructs who would come in scared, starving, and seeking refuge from bounty hunters looking to bring them back to the establishments they were assigned to.

Someone however, had gotten wind of Ian’s clandestine operation, and the man was arrested during a midnight raid, though not before he flung Ben, Charlie and Memo into a secret basement with three Cold Constructs who he told them to help cross the border the next day.

They did as they were told, but decided to return to the ranch to figure out how to help Ian, and when they came back there, it was to come face to face with two strangers who were also seeking Ian after seeing him on the news.

These strangers introduced themselves as Omar Parvez (Optimus Prime), Jace Zayden (Jazz) and Preston Wan (Prowl), members of a rebellion that had sprung up in the UK, and upon hearing that they had been with Ian for the past month, requested for their help in tracking the man down to save him from a terrible fate at the hands of government interrogators.

Realising that they were now caught up in something bigger than they ever imagined, Ben nonetheless accepted the request, unwilling to stand back and do nothing while a good man suffered.

Youth, size and a lifetime of abuse would not be an obstacle to him helping someone else, especially with his best friends  by his side.

[binsofchaos]

Toni Morrison | Nobel Lecture December 7, 1993

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

“Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise.” Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures.

“Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise.”

In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.

One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, “Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead.”

She does not answer, and the question is repeated. “Is the bird I am holding living or dead?”

Still she doesn’t answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.

The old woman’s silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.

Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. “I don’t know”, she says. “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”

Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility.

For parading their power and her helplessness, the young visitors are reprimanded, told they are responsible not only for the act of mockery but also for the small bundle of life sacrificed to achieve its aims. The blind woman shifts attention away from assertions of power to the instrument through which that power is exercised.

Speculation on what (other than its own frail body) that bird-in-the-hand might signify has always been attractive to me, but especially so now thinking, as I have been, about the work I do that has brought me to this company. So I choose to read the bird as language and the woman as a practiced writer. She is worried about how the language she dreams in, given to her at birth, is handled, put into service, even withheld from her for certain nefarious purposes. Being a writer she thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one has control, but mostly as agency – as an act with consequences. So the question the children put to her: “Is it living or dead?” is not unreal because she thinks of language as susceptible to death, erasure; certainly imperiled and salvageable only by an effort of the will. She believes that if the bird in the hands of her visitors is dead the custodians are responsible for the corpse. For her a dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences. Official language smitheryed to sanction ignorance and preserve privilege is a suit of armor polished to shocking glitter, a husk from which the knight departed long ago. Yet there it is: dumb, predatory, sentimental. Exciting reverence in schoolchildren, providing shelter for despots, summoning false memories of stability, harmony among the public.

She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love. But she knows tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience.

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

The old woman is keenly aware that no intellectual mercenary, nor insatiable dictator, no paid-for politician or demagogue; no counterfeit journalist would be persuaded by her thoughts. There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like paté-producing geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.

Underneath the eloquence, the glamor, the scholarly associations, however stirring or seductive, the heart of such language is languishing, or perhaps not beating at all – if the bird is already dead.

She has thought about what could have been the intellectual history of any discipline if it had not insisted upon, or been forced into, the waste of time and life that rationalizations for and representations of dominance required – lethal discourses of exclusion blocking access to cognition for both the excluder and the excluded.

The conventional wisdom of the Tower of Babel story is that the collapse was a misfortune. That it was the distraction, or the weight of many languages that precipitated the tower’s failed architecture. That one monolithic language would have expedited the building and heaven would have been reached. Whose heaven, she wonders? And what kind? Perhaps the achievement of Paradise was premature, a little hasty if no one could take the time to understand other languages, other views, other narratives period. Had they, the heaven they imagined might have been found at their feet. Complicated, demanding, yes, but a view of heaven as life; not heaven as post-life.

She would not want to leave her young visitors with the impression that language should be forced to stay alive merely to be. The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. Although its poise is sometimes in displacing experience it is not a substitute for it. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie. When a President of the United States thought about the graveyard his country had become, and said, “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. But it will never forget what they did here,” his simple words are exhilarating in their life-sustaining properties because they refused to encapsulate the reality of 600, 000 dead men in a cataclysmic race war. Refusing to monumentalize, disdaining the “final word”, the precise “summing up”, acknowledging their “poor power to add or detract”, his words signal deference to the uncapturability of the life it mourns. It is the deference that moves her, that recognition that language can never live up to life once and for all. Nor should it. Language can never “pin down” slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable.

Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue?

Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

“Once upon a time, …” visitors ask an old woman a question. Who are they, these children? What did they make of that encounter? What did they hear in those final words: “The bird is in your hands”? A sentence that gestures towards possibility or one that drops a latch? Perhaps what the children heard was “It’s not my problem. I am old, female, black, blind. What wisdom I have now is in knowing I cannot help you. The future of language is yours.”

They stand there. Suppose nothing was in their hands? Suppose the visit was only a ruse, a trick to get to be spoken to, taken seriously as they have not been before? A chance to interrupt, to violate the adult world, its miasma of discourse about them, for them, but never to them? Urgent questions are at stake, including the one they have asked: “Is the bird we hold living or dead?” Perhaps the question meant: “Could someone tell us what is life? What is death?” No trick at all; no silliness. A straightforward question worthy of the attention of a wise one. An old one. And if the old and wise who have lived life and faced death cannot describe either, who can?

But she does not; she keeps her secret; her good opinion of herself; her gnomic pronouncements; her art without commitment. She keeps her distance, enforces it and retreats into the singularity of isolation, in sophisticated, privileged space.

Nothing, no word follows her declaration of transfer. That silence is deep, deeper than the meaning available in the words she has spoken. It shivers, this silence, and the children, annoyed, fill it with language invented on the spot.

“Is there no speech,” they ask her, “no words you can give us that helps us break through your dossier of failures? Through the education you have just given us that is no education at all because we are paying close attention to what you have done as well as to what you have said? To the barrier you have erected between generosity and wisdom?

“We have no bird in our hands, living or dead. We have only you and our important question. Is the nothing in our hands something you could not bear to contemplate, to even guess? Don’t you remember being young when language was magic without meaning? When what you could say, could not mean? When the invisible was what imagination strove to see? When questions and demands for answers burned so brightly you trembled with fury at not knowing?

“Do we have to begin consciousness with a battle heroines and heroes like you have already fought and lost leaving us with nothing in our hands except what you have imagined is there? Your answer is artful, but its artfulness embarrasses us and ought to embarrass you. Your answer is indecent in its self-congratulation. A made-for-television script that makes no sense if there is nothing in our hands.

“Why didn’t you reach out, touch us with your soft fingers, delay the sound bite, the lesson, until you knew who we were? Did you so despise our trick, our modus operandi you could not see that we were baffled about how to get your attention? We are young. Unripe. We have heard all our short lives that we have to be responsible. What could that possibly mean in the catastrophe this world has become; where, as a poet said, “nothing needs to be exposed since it is already barefaced.” Our inheritance is an affront. You want us to have your old, blank eyes and see only cruelty and mediocrity. Do you think we are stupid enough to perjure ourselves again and again with the fiction of nationhood? How dare you talk to us of duty when we stand waist deep in the toxin of your past?

“You trivialize us and trivialize the bird that is not in our hands. Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon’s hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly – once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

“Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.

“Tell us about ships turned away from shorelines at Easter, placenta in a field. Tell us about a wagonload of slaves, how they sang so softly their breath was indistinguishable from the falling snow. How they knew from the hunch of the nearest shoulder that the next stop would be their last. How, with hands prayered in their sex, they thought of heat, then sun. Lifting their faces as though it was there for the taking. Turning as though there for the taking. They stop at an inn. The driver and his mate go in with the lamp leaving them humming in the dark. The horse’s void steams into the snow beneath its hooves and its hiss and melt are the envy of the freezing slaves.

“The inn door opens: a girl and a boy step away from its light. They climb into the wagon bed. The boy will have a gun in three years, but now he carries a lamp and a jug of warm cider. They pass it from mouth to mouth. The girl offers bread, pieces of meat and something more: a glance into the eyes of the one she serves. One helping for each man, two for each woman. And a look. They look back. The next stop will be their last. But not this one. This one is warmed.”

It’s quiet again when the children finish speaking, until the woman breaks into the silence.

“Finally”, she says, “I trust you now. I trust you with the bird that is not in your hands because you have truly caught it. Look. How lovely it is, this thing we have done – together.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/books/best-toni-morrison-books.html

[joyfulenthusiastwitch]

Which Dorm should you Fight?

Most to least Dangerous-

Octavinelle

They are the legal version of mafia what did you expect?

You have to be out of your mind if you want to make them your enemies. Azul is a petty person and believed in payback x 10. Not only that remember what Jade said about betrayal? The twins will not hesitate in cutting any bitch.

Not only the people here can destroy you physically, they can and WILL scar you mentally.

Capable of causing permanent Damage that will haunt you for you entire school life(or your life in general according to what you did)

Result- you get skewered DO NOT FIGHT

Diasomnia

Second in list, The members of this dorm have a strong bond with each other and pissing even one of them off will result in you being haunted by a 2 meter fae, our resident tiny grand pa and their cronies.

While Malleus and Lilia are still pretty mellowed out insulting them can flip their switch as well as Silver and Sebek's.

They are not called the strongest for no reason. You will get pummeled.

Result- Do not Fight

Savanaclaw-

They are third in the ranking because except for Leona and Ruggie, almost all the dorm members rely on brawn so they can only physically hurt you.

Unless you piss off Leona to the point where he moves his lazy ass you might just live through their assault.

But beware! They hunt in packs.

Result- Fight if you have confidence in you Physical prowess. You'll still lose tho.

Pomefiore-

This dorm prefers to not get their pretty hands dirty but get in their way and they will take measures.

Vil is easy to offend, so if he is upset enough you will have a skilled hunter in you back.

Rook will tie you up and serve you in a platter to Vil.

Epel is no angle either because let's not forget he's a rough country boy in disguise and this boy does not hesitate in kicking ass if he must.

Result- it's a 50- 50 chance with them honestly. You may be able to take down Vil and Rook in a fist fight but not Epel. But the other two have magic sooo

Ignihyde-

If it comes to a fist fight or a street fight, then you've already won!

The members of this haven't even see the sun enough because of their antisocial nature, chances are they'll run away just by the sight of you charging at them.

It's when things get Virtual is when you're in deep shit. This dorm is know for excellence in their technology and technical skills. If you piss them off then it's bye bye social life on the internet.

They can destroy you virtually and chances are that you may never see any of your IDs ever working and anything you have related to gadgets.

Result- its you're choice. If you're willing to risk you internet connection then do it. Knock them out hard enough so they won't remember a thing and you should be golden

Heartslabyul-

This dorm is filled with self disciplined guys, in most cases Riddle will take their heads off even before you have the chance to should they ever get in a fight.

They know how to adhere to rules and will avoid it at all costs. So getting in a fight with them is a feat in itself unless! You're talking about our local dumbass duo Ace and Deuce.

They are still fresh bees but Deuce can kick you ass in a fist fight so don't try him.

Fist fighting Riddle is a better option because PE has never been his forte so you'll have luck on your side there.

Result- Try them, You may have a good chance of winning with Cater, Riddle and Ace but beware of Trey and Deuce. At least here you have nothing to loose.

Scarabia-

The dorm of the Richie boys.

Canonically this dorm is last in both PE and studies.

If people end up in a fight they might flee, might say," do you know who my daddy is?!" But either way you can probably knock them out.

Sure they have the money to hire a bodyguard but NRC doesn't allow those so you're safe.

Kalim probably won't even realise you're here to pick a fight with him untill you punch him square in the face but good luck of Jamil is in sight.

As much as he is breakdancing out of sheer joy in his head because of Kalim's pain, he is still his entourage in appearance so he will stop you but not reprimand you because he loves you now.

If you pick a fight with Jamil though? Well he can probably kick your ass in seconds but he can't afford to stand out so he might just let you win or atleast won't rough you up that much.

Result- You can win majority of times so do it!

[aion-rsa]

Promising Young Woman and the Limits of Female Rage

https://ift.tt/3uVvRVp

This article contains Promising Young Woman spoilers.

Cinema is full of stories of righteously angry women who have suffered at the hands of wicked men. Invariably, these stories also see those women reclaim power over their own narratives by brutally punishing the men responsible. In Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, The Bride stands triumphant, holding a katana over the mangled bodies of those who have tried to do her harm. Jennifer Cheek makes the boys of Jennifer’s Body pay for their misogynist behavior with their own blood, literally feasting on their souls. Revenge socialite Jen reinvents herself as a gory action hero as she literally hunts down the men who violated her.

There are power poses and triumphant musical chords, all acknowledging that justice has, in fact, been served, and that bad men have been disciplined—that a heroine has claimed her power and set the world to rights again. Usually, there’s also no small amount of death and blood along the way. (See also: All three movies mentioned above.)

Initially, it seems as though this is precisely the sort of film that Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman intends to be. Its marketing strategy leans into the idea that Cassie Thomas is a sort of avenging angel in provocative dress, a candy-colored vision who tempts terrible men to their own well-deserved destruction, all set to the sound of a banging orchestral cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” in the trailer. But then, too often, that’s what audiences want: an easy solution to a complicated problem, wrapped in some brightly packaged Hollywoodized reassurance that there are, in fact, some sort of consequences for those who do harm to women.

But this isn’t that film, and Promising Young Woman doesn’t particularly care if that fact makes viewers uncomfortable. Instead this is a movie that pushes us to directly confront the harsh, deeply uncomfortable reality of such a situation rather than revel in the entertaining but empty catharsis of a blood-soaked fantasy romp. And that’s precisely what makes Promising Young Woman so incredible—and so difficult—to watch.

This is a feminist revenge movie that lives in the world as we know it today. Here, there is no final reckoning, no bloody triumph, no movie poster-ready stance from a woman who can, finally, put down the emotional burden she’s been carrying, and find the justice she’s been seeking. There’s no real sense that anything that Cassie’s done has made much of a difference at all, and though she does eventually manage to punish her best friend’s rapist, this one single clear victory comes at the cost of her own life.

Throughout its runtime, Promising Young Woman revels in bringing a particularly harsh and ugly truth to light: There’s only so much female rage can do in a world that’s not only set-up to constantly make women fail, but which fails them so utterly in turn.

Read more

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Promising Young Woman: Director Emerald Fennell Breaks Down the Ending

By Rosie Fletcher

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How Legally Blonde Created a Feminist Hero Ahead of Her Time

By Delia Harrington

The basics of Cassie’s story should feel pretty familiar to fans of similar female revenge thrillers. A former medical student who dropped out when her best friend killed herself after being raped, Cassie spends her nights wearing an assortment of colorful disguises to local bars and pretending to be falling down drunk. When she lures a seemingly nice guy to her rescue, only to learn that he’s exactly the sort of creep willing to take advantage of a girl who isn’t aware enough to say no, her sly, fourth-wall-breaking smirk clues the audience in on what’s next.

But what actually comes next is likely not what any viewer expected. One of the first surprises of this film—which has many—is that Cassie’s modus operandi isn’t what you’ve been led to believe, and no men are actually harmed on her nightly sojourns. Instead she confronts them directly, using the shock of her sudden sobriety to shame and humiliate these supposedly good guys who think terms like rape, assault, or sexual coercion couldn’t possibly apply to their activities. There’s no explicit punishment, just a few vague threats and the momentarily mortifying exposure of their own hypocrisy.

Yet in truth, that’s all Cassie can do: force these men to experience a tiny piece of the shock and trauma that she, her best friend, and women everywhere have all been through, and hope it’s somehow enough to guilt them into maybe changing their ways next time. Maybe. Or not. There’s every chance these men, convinced of their own nice guy status, will simply write her off as crazy or delusional, an unfortunate mistake that happened while they were really just trying to do the right thing. Promising Young Woman is nothing if not honest about the ways that rape culture works overtime to validate men like this and to reassure them that their actions are always justifiable.

On some level, the truth behind the list of names in Cassie’s little black book feels disappointing. Though, really, it shouldn’t. Far too often in movies like this, female protagonists are asked, even expected, to react to trauma in the same way male ones would: With violence. (Think John Wick, Memento, or even Gladiator.) But in the real world, women rarely resort to such actions, largely because they’re too difficult, and would probably result in injury, death, or imprisonment. (See also: The end of Promising Young Woman.) 

Even the idea that Cassie gets to sail through these shamings unscathed, that none of the men she fools get angry enough for things to turn physical requires more than a little suspension of disbelief. It’s why the achingly long scene of her death feels so realistic and so tragic. Because as much as we don’t want to believe it, female rage can only do so much, and revenge fantasies can only get you so far.

Even as Promising Young Woman allows Cassie to “win” in the end, it’s a pyrrhic victory that comes at the cost of her own life. (And after a lot of preplanning that indicated Cassie herself didn’t expect to survive her visit to see Nina’s rapist.) But the bitter truth is that this film’s ending is much closer to reality than something like Kill Bill or Revenge could ever be. And, as a result, Promising Young Woman is a movie about female rage that acknowledges how inadequate our ways of both discussing and responding to the anger that women feel actually are.

After all, revenge movies, at their core, are really stories about pain. It’s just pain that’s been wrapped up in blood and fury, packaged as something ferocious and terrifying so that no one looks too closely at the broken pieces underneath. But Promising Young Woman isn’t afraid to look at the truth that films like this normally paper over, no matter how brutal and depressing it may be.

It asks us to not only reckon with what we want out of revenge movies, specifically, but the differences in what men can get away with and what women must be willing to die to achieve. Technically, Cassie triumphed in the end here, didn’t she?  So why doesn’t it feel like a victory?

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/32lp9f7

[multiverseforger]

Spider-Woman was born Jessica Miriam Drew, daughter of Jonathan Drew and Merriam Drew, in London, England. At a young age, her family moves to a lab built by her father and Herbert Wyndham near Mount Wundagore in Transia, where she becomes gravely ill from months of uranium exposure. To save her life, her father injects her with an experimental serum based on irradiated spiders' blood. Because the serum requires a month's incubation, Wyndham places her in a genetic accelerator. Shortly after, her mother dies and her father leaves for the United States, leaving Wyndham to care of her.[25] While in the accelerator, she ages at a decelerated rate. When she is finally released, decades later, Drew is only 17 years old.

Drew is ostracized by the other residents of Mount Wundagore, the High Evolutionary's New Men, since she was originally human while they were animals. Because of this, she eventually leaves to seek human civilization. She is captured by a HYDRA reserve unit under Count Otto Vermis's leadership who erases her memories, brainwashes her, and recruits her as a HYDRA agent under the codename Arachne.[25] One of HYDRA's top agents, Jared, is assigned to train her in combat and espionage and to seduce her. Once Jessica has become his lover, he allows himself to be captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. so that she can be goaded into assassinating S.H.I.E.L.D. commander Nick Fury.[26]

While battling Fury, Jessica accidentally kills Jared and learns HYDRA's true nature. She quits HYDRA and assaults the unit's base, sending Count Vermis into a fatal crash, but not before he unlocks memory implants that she was actually an evolved spider and had killed a man before her association with HYDRA.[26] Despondent from these revelations, she wanders the woods where Vermis crashed until being recaptured and hypnotized by HYDRA.[27]

Spider-Woman: OriginEdit

Origin does away with the spider-blood serum and genetic accelerator elements of the character's previous origin story. Instead, Jessica's powers derive from her mother's womb being hit by a laser beam containing the DNA traits of several different species of spiders while she was carrying Jessica (the Drews were trying to splice and harness spiders' environmental adaptive capabilities to graft them into the human genome).[28][29]

After Jessica's parents disappear under mysterious circumstances, Jessica is recruited into HYDRA (under false pretenses), where she is made into a formidable fighter and assassin. She is trained and mentored by Taskmaster, who trains her in many martial disciplines and more than seven different fighting styles out of his own "arsenal".[30]

In this re-telling, Otto Vermis, originally recruiting her into HYDRA, is rather an old, retired HYDRA agent whom Jessica seduces to gain information that will lead her to her mother.[31]

In addition, Origin made the following modifications:

Merriam Drew was now Miriam Drew.[28]

The Drews moved to Wundagore Mountain prior to Jessica's conception, establishing without a doubt that she was born on the European landmark. Afterwards, she was raised by her nanny Bova (human in appearance), as well as her mother.[28]

Jessica's father, Jonathan, never found uranium on their land. Instead, their research was funded by HYDRA, and their direct liaison/financier from the group was General Wyndham. It is not clear what connection, if any, he had with Edgar Wyndham (who, in the original Spider-Woman books, was Jonathan's best friend and research partner), nor with the High Evolutionary.[28]

Jessica's father worked in large part with Miles Warren who later left the project because he felt that there was more potential in experimenting with the cloning of human cells.[28]

Spider-WomanEdit

Going by the "Spider-Woman" name, Jessica Drew is ordered to abduct Alicia Masters vacationing in London. During the resultant conflict with Ben Grimm, she recovers from her brainwashing and joins him in saving Masters.[32] She and Grimm then encounter Modred the Mystic, who removes HYDRA's memory implants and restores her memories.[33]

Jessica moves into an apartment in London, but finds it impossible to get a job due to her complete lack of background and her tendency to inspire dislike and even fear in other people. Following an aborted break-in, she is unmasked by Scotland Yard officer (and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent) Jerry Hunt, who becomes obsessed with her.[25] During this troubled time, she is approached by the mysterious sorcerer Magnus, who offers help. After defending him from Excaliber, who was sent by Morgan Le Fay to recover the Darkhold, he suggests that she relocate with him to Los Angeles.[34] Magnus tutors her in the ways of civilization and informs her that her father was murdered, leading her on a hunt for his killer.[35] She is distracted from this hunt when Morgan Le Fey's ghost again seeks the Darkhold, this time in person. During the battle, Hunt catches up with Jessica and they begin a romantic relationship.[36] With his help, she identifies her father's murderer who dies immediately after confessing.[37]

For the time, Jessica chooses to keep her doings as Spider-Woman a secret. Her relationship with Hunt sours, and following a final battle with the Brothers Grimm, he and Magnus part ways with her.[38] For the next three months, she makes a hand-to-mouth living by working as a receptionist at the Hatros Institute while undergoing group therapy there. Though she ultimately loses the position due to a change in management, during her time there she received medication to suppress her pheromones so that she could exist among other people without producing any unwanted side-effects. Jessica formed a strong friendship with fellow patient and aspiring actress Lindsay McCabe and developed acquaintances with several other superheroes.[39]

The next few months of Jessica's life are not covered by published stories. During this time, she goes public as Spider-Woman, becomes a bounty hunter working in partnership with paraplegic criminologist Scotty McDowell, acquires a full wardrobe of disguises for use in her work, and finds a police liaison in Captain Walsh.[40] This situation lasts for several months. When her working relationship with Scotty fails, Jessica accepts an offer from Lindsay to move into an apartment with her in San Francisco,[41] where she begins a romantic relationship with their landlord David Ishima,[42] and sets up a practice as a licensed private investigator.[43] Her move there allows Lindsay to deduce her secret identity; she is unbothered by the danger involved in being Spider-Woman's friend, and the shared secret deepens the friendship between them.[44]

While working as a P.I., Jessica battles Morgan once again.[45] Not long after that, she gives up her immunity powers to save Giant-Man.[46] Her relationship with David Ishima develops to the point where she reveals her Spider-Woman identity to him, only to have him break up with her because he wants to be with an ordinary woman.[47]

Jessica travels in astral form with Magnus to Sixth Century England to free her friends' souls in a showdown with Morgan le Fey in the 6th century. She manages to vanquish Morgan, but her human body dies while her spirit was gone.[48] At her request, Magnus places a spell over humanity to remove all memory of Jessica's existence. This spell is faulty; when Tigra and the Shroud discover Jessica's dead body, they contact the Avengers and Doctor Strange. The Avengers and Strange travel to the astral plane to battle Morgan Le Fay, who was trying to claim Jessica's body so she could return to the physical realm. Eventually, Doctor Strange and Magnus reunite Jessica's spirit with her human body, though Magnus's life and Jessica's powers are sacrificed to do so. She thus abandons her Spider-Woman identity[49] and continues her life as a private investigator in San Francisco, assisted by Lindsay McCabe and, for a time, by Tigra.[50]

Jessica and Lindsay take a job delivering the Black Blade to Japan, but while passing through Madripoor, she is enchanted by the blade. By this time, her superhuman strength and agility, and ability to cling to walls have returned. She is freed from the blade's power by Lindsay and an underworld figure called Patch,[51] whom she immediately recognizes as the X-Man Wolverine.[52] Following the incident, she and Lindsay set up new business lodgings in Madripoor, with Patch as a frequent ally and information source.[53]

Jessica Drew's life settles down until Charlotte Witter, a villainess going by the Spider-Woman name, steals her powers and leaves her near death.[54] Jessica is taken from the hospital to New York City by Madame Web who directs her and Mattie Franklin (yet another woman who has assumed the Spider-Woman name) to track down Witter. Under Madame Web's guidance, Franklin absorbs from Witter the powers of all four Spider-Women.[55] Afterwards, Jessica remains with Madame Web for a time, helping her to watch over Mattie.[56] Jessica's powers gradually return to her during this time,[57] but are now unreliable, failing her unexpectedly on occasion.[58]

For untold reasons, Jessica moves back to San Francisco, resuming her private investigator practice there.[59] When she hears that Mattie Franklin has gone missing, she goes to New York to find her. With the help of local P.I. Jessica Jones, she rescues Mattie from a drug dealer who had abducted her and was cannibalizing her tissue to make the Mutant Growth Hormone.[60]

Secret InvasionEdit

One day, a HYDRA agent known as Connely offers her powers back if she would rejoin S.H.I.E.L.D. as a double agent.[61] Knowing Connely would kill her if she says no, Jessica Drew contacts Nick Fury who confronts her securely and urges her to accept the offer. He tells Jessica that he will feed her limited info until S.H.I.E.L.D. can analyze the HYDRA cell and then use the info to take it down.[62] The HYDRA cell is in fact a team of Skrulls who made the offer as a trap to abduct Drew, so that their current Queen Veranke could take her place in the New Avengers and assume her role as Fury's spy in preparation for the upcoming invasion.[63]

After the invasion is repulsed, Tony Stark finds a Skrull ship in orbit with all the replaced heroes, including Drew.[64]

Avenger and agent of S.W.O.R.D.Edit

Jessica Drew joins the New Avengers, claiming she has nowhere else to go.[65] She also joins the Lady Liberators along with the Invisible Woman, Storm, Valkyrie, Thundra, Tigra, Black Widow, She-Hulk and Hellcat who are trying to discover the identity of the Red Hulk.[66] Alongside her work with the Avengers, Jessica Drew joins S.W.O.R.D., under an invitation by Abigail Brand. Her membership in the organization takes her on a number of missions eliminating hostile aliens operating on Earth.[67]

Before the Siege of Asgard, Ronin attempts to assassinate Norman Osborn but is captured by the Dark Avengers. Jessica Drew teams up with Ms. Marvel, Mockingbird and Jessica Jones to rescue him. After he is saved, the New Avengers relocate to a safehouse in Brooklyn where they meet up with Steve Rogers.[68]

Jessica is then paired with Spider-Man to do reconnaissance on Avengers Tower, where she reveals to him she is an agent of S.W.O.R.D. The duo are then found by Mandrill and Griffin who proceed to attack them. During the fight Mandrill gets close enough to Jessica and controls her into attacking Spider-Man.[69] Spider-Man appears to be on the losing end of the fight but manages to lure Jessica away from Mandrill and the effects of his control begin to wear off. The duo trick Mandrill and Griffin into thinking Jessica has beaten Spider-Man and when they approach Spider-Woman to give her new commands, Jessica punches Mandrill in the face and shoves her hand in his mouth, firing off a venom blast and knocking him out. Furious, Jessica wants to kill both villains for what they have done but is stopped by Spider-Man. The duo heads back to the safehouse where they head off with the Avengers to help the Asgardians.[70] Upon arriving in Asgard, Jessica and the rest of the heroes engage Iron Patriot's forces and witnesses the insane Sentry's defeat.[71]

Jessica is asked by Steve Rogers himself to join his team of Avengers. During their first meeting, Jessica expresses her doubts to Wolverine about being on the team, feeling she has not earned the role. Wolverine advises her if she feels that way, she will then have to work towards earning it then. Suddenly Kang the Conqueror appears in the middle of the meeting with a dire warning about the future and all of reality, blaming the children of the Avengers.[72] After recruiting the Protector and building a time machine, the time machine is destroyed by a furious Wonder Man. Once the dust has settled, an alternate version of Apocalypse and his Four Horsemen appear.[73] After Apocalypse's defeat, Jessica and a few of her teammates are sent into New York City to protect its citizens from the attacks coming from the timestream.[74] While in Washington Square Park, they come across Killraven and join forces to help the citizens.[75] Once their mission is completed and all the attacks have stopped, Jessica is the first to realize Killraven has not been returned to his proper future.[76]

Later Jessica is present when Red Hulk comes to warn the Avengers that the Hood is seeking to collect the Infinity Gems.[77] She is present along with the rest of the Avengers when they confront the Illuminati in Attilan about their existence and goes with a team of Avengers to the ruins of the Xavier Institute to get to Professor Xavier's Infinity gem.[78]

During the "Fear Itself" storyline, Spider-Woman, Ms. Marvel and Protector arrive in Brazil to help Red She-Hulk fight Hulk, who was transformed into Nul: Breaker of Worlds.[79]

While on a mission for S.W.O.R.D., Jessica is sent to locate an unusual alien energy surge in Wakanda. Upon finding the remains of a Spaceknight, Jessica is ambushed by the Intelligencia who take her as a prisoner. Abigail Brand approaches the Avengers for help and a team is put together to help locate Jessica. Jessica wakes up naked and is interrogated by two members of the Intelligencia. While the Intelligencia study the Spaceknight, the Avengers interrupt their attempts and the body activates, revealing it was containing Ultron's consciousness. The new Ultron escapes and Jessica is reunited with the Avengers.[80]

Jessica Drew becomes a member of the new Secret Avengers.[81]

Spider-Verse and Post-Avenger lifeEdit

During the "Spider-Verse" storyline, Spider-Woman joins Spider-Girl and Spider-Man 2099 in confronting Spider-Man about Spider-Man 2099 witnessing his counterpart being killed by Morlun. She is among the spider-themed superheroes brought to Earth-13 by Spider-UK, Spider-Girl of Earth-982, and Spider-Ham, to form a resistance against Morlun and his family, the Inheritors.[82] When the resistance was visiting Earth-928 and encountered a past version of Superior Spider-Man (Doctor Octopus' mind in Peter Parker's body) with his own army, they attracted the attention of the Inheritors.[83] Spider-Woman followed Silk with Spider-Man Noir to an unknown reality where they were being tracked by the Inheritors Brix and Bora. Spider-Man Noir was wounded and the trio escaped to his home world to allow him to recover from his injuries. After this, she was sent by Spider-Man to the Loomworld, home of the Inheritors to gather more information on the Inheritors.[84] After encountering and replacing her doppelganger from Loomworld, who was Morlun's lover, she was able to gather intelligence in regards to the Master Weaver and his role in the conflict, which helped the Spider Army ultimately win the battle against the Inheritors.[volume & issue needed]

After the battle with the Inheritors, Jessica decided to quit the Avengers in order to start a new life and to focus on helping ordinary civilians.[85] Jessica decides to help common people solve crimes, and enlists Ben Urich and Roger Gocking, the Porcupine.

Secret WarsEdit

[unabashedyouththing]

Apoliteic music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and 'metapolitical autocracy'

In 2000, when I was simply the proofreader of a little distributed melodic magazine, I got a CD entitled Victory or Death by the Swedish band Folkstorm.2 The CD contained ten tracks of brutal Industrial music and the circle was enriched with a Nazi-style Reichsadler on an unfilled oak wreath.3 The back spread was ornamented with runes and recorded the tracks 'Feldgeschrei' (Field Turmoil), 'Cruel Discipline', 'Promulgation', 'We Are the Resistance', 'Social Surgery', to give some examples. The expressions of the tunes were indistinct, because of the exceptionally twisted vocals, yet all that else ambiguously recommended the extreme traditional nature of Folkstorm's 'belief system'. Shockingly, the band guaranteed 'No legislative issues. No religion. No norm', a judicious articulation composed on the plate itself STGMT : neofolk & industrial.

In the event that the band renounces any reference to governmental issues while these signs recommend the inverse, what sort of 'publicity' right? Folkstorm's message has little to do with that of a portion of its comrades like Totenkopf, whose track 'Can't Be Beaten' wholeheartedly declares: 'Give them where you stand and feel no regret, my Aryan sibling, it's the ideal opportunity for race war.'4 Neither is Folkstorm's message an incitement like the late Punk Rocker Sid Vicious' infamous presenting in a shirt with an insignia on it. In the event that the message isn't the White Noise communicated of racial hatred,5 or the 'spit notwithstanding average society', at that point what's going on here? In this article, I contend that there exists a specific sort of extremist conservative music that doesn't advance out and out viciousness, isn't identified with the exercises of political associations or parties, and isn't a methods for enrollment to any political propensity. Consequently, I take Folkstorm's 'No governmental issues' announcement truly, despite the fact that I want to reconceptualize it in a manner that stays away from any useless endeavor to deplete the plainly conservative message of its embodiment. I allude to this music as 'apoliteic' (a term clarified beneath), and this article will examine its inclination and noteworthiness by thinking about two melodic kinds, specifically Neo-Folk and Martial Industrial, that are frequently utilized by groups and craftsmen for scattering an apoliteic message. I want to show that apoliteic music and White Noise are social impressions of the two diverse political methodologies that one party rule had to continue in the 'antagonistic' states of the post-war period.

Before I continue, it must be noticed that neither Neo-Folk nor Martial Industrial can be considered 'fundamentalist melodic kinds'. In contrast to White Noise, which alludes explicitly to philosophically spurred music, these two classes are most importantly typological builds that grasp specific sorts of consolidated sounds. Without a doubt, regardless of whether Neo-Folk or Martial Industrial can be likened with fundamentalist or neo-Nazi purposeful publicity has been fervently bantered since the mid-1990s when various groups playing in these classes began to get—because of their broad utilization of extremist symbolism—consideration from left-wing columnists just as assaults by hostile to extremist gatherings. On a few events, against extremist fights, petitions and pickets were upheld by the specialists who restricted exhibitions of specific Neo-Folk/Martial Industrial groups. In 2004 the significant Austrian Martial Industrial act, Der Blutharsch, needed to drop a presentation in Israel because of fights by, among others, the Israeli bureau part Natan Sharansky, the Knesset part Yossi Sarid, the city hall leader of Tel Aviv Ron Huldai and the Anti-Defamation League. The next year, the most popular Neo-Folk band, Death in June, lost the option to sell its collection Rose Clouds of Holocaust in Germany after an examination directed by the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (BPjM, Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young People).6 Neither of these groups is important for the White Noise scene, however both grasp—as I will contend beneath—unequivocal components of the extremist Weltanschauung.

Significant terms and ideas

There are a few terms that columnists, public authorities and researchers use to allude to specialists or groups that—from the onlookers' perspective—perform music impregnated with fundamentalist or extraordinary traditional thoughts. A portion of these are umbrella terms that incorporate diverse melodic classes, while others allude to explicit ones.

The term 'Repetitive sound' from White Noise Records, a mark that delivered Skrewdriver's single 'White Power' in 1983. Skrewdriver was a British band that transparently advanced progressive ultra-patriotism through their records, and their exhibitions once in a while transformed into mobs of neo-Nazi skinheads. Skrewdriver's late chief Ian Stuart was an individual from the British National Front (NF), while the band itself was firmly connected with both the NF and the British National Party (BNP). Indeed, Skrewdriver may be considered 'the melodic wing' of the NF, as it raised assets for the association and helped enroll new individuals. Also, in 1987, Stuart established the Blood and Honor network that advanced super patriot groups, composed their shows and filled in as a nexus for neo-Nazi skinheads in Europe and the United States.7 Since Skrewdriver played a kind of Punk Rock music known as Street Punk or Oi!,8 the term 'Repetitive sound' alluded to Punk Rock acts that proliferated outrageous traditional ideas.9 Currently, because of the nonexclusive assortment of groups that play at Blood and Honor shows, one can apply this term to any forceful exciting music that is saturated with a straightforwardly extremist or bigoted message.

It is significantly critical to feature two highlights of White Noise. To begin with, this kind of music is described by plain bigotry or progressive ultra-patriotism. Repetitive sound don't shroud their messages and a portion of the groups' names—also the collections and melody titles—represent themselves: Race War, Totenkopf, Final Solution, Jew Slaughter, Legion 88, Konkwista 88, Angry Aryans, Brigada NS, RaHoWa etc.10 Second, White Noise is related with either direct viciousness against an Other or the political reason, anyway minimal, that rouses it. It is regularly the situation that White Noise artists don't disguise their participation in progressive super patriot groupuscules, bigger associations or even discretionary gatherings. As referenced above, Skrewdriver worked close by the NF, while the Romanian band Brigada de Asalt (The Assault Brigade) is an essential aspect of the neo-Nazi association Noua Dreaptă (New Right), probably upheld by the Romanian extremist conservative Partidul Noua Generatie (New Generation Party). Countless White Noise groups show up on the alleged 'schoolyard' CDs ordered and delivered by the extreme conservative Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany) with the expectation of complimentary circulation among German youth.

[love-sapphirerose]

10 Moments That Really Showed That Naruto Is The No. 1 Hyperactive, Knucklehead Ninja

https://www.cbr.com/moments-prove-naruto-is-the-number-one-hyperactive-knucklehead-ninja/

Shonen anime is full to the brim with overenthusiastic and stupid protagonists that somehow become the most relatable characters — something that can be either very sad or great, depending on your viewpoint. Nothing personifies this statement more than our very own Naruto, who can easily be classified as one of the most energetic and knuckleheaded anime protagonists of all time. Yet, somehow, he's also managed to become the shining light of a show that's named after him... and for good reason. 

The tagline of Naruto being The No. 1 Hyperactive, Knucklehead Ninja is something that is completely befitting of his character, and anyone who has seen the anime or read the manga can stand by this statement. To put this into context, here are 10 glaring moments from the show that truly personify Naruto's one-of-a-kind character. 

10. Doing Stupid Things For Attention At A Young Age

Being a Jinchūriki led to Naruto having a pretty rough childhood, with the majority of people in the village vilifying him, if not ignoring him outright. This caused Naruto to act out at a young age in a bid to draw attention.

However, there were times when Naruto went a bit too far in this regard. From defacing the Hokage statues to stealing a valuable scroll with a forbidden Jutsu — which he admittedly learned and mastered — young Naruto was a bit too stupid for our liking.

9. Winning Against Kiba By... Farting

The Chūnin exams are meant to be the biggest show of one's skills, putting everything on the line as students give their all in the ring in a show of strength, discipline, and valor. However, the fight between Naruto and Kiba was anything but that. 

To even think that Naruto could get the upper hand in a fight by farting is simply too much to fathom. However, this is exactly what turned out to be the case, with our knucklehead ninja overpowering Kiba's strong sense of smell with his natural gas and laying waste to him with the Uzumaki Barrage. 

8. Pretending To Be Sasuke To Kiss Sakura

This is where Naruto shows the audience that he's not averse to being a total creep as well. Basically, after trying his hardest to hit on Sakura and failing in the process, Naruto realizes that the only way he'll get some action from his crush is by imitating the person she liked.

So, in a completely misguided turn of events, Naruto decides to disguise himself as Sasuke and almost convinces Sakura to give him a kiss. We have to be thankful that Naruto's bad stomach prevented him from going forward with this notion since it would've led to something truly inexcusable.

7. Throwing Away His Pride In Front Of The Raikage

Naruto always had a soft spot for Sasuke — something that we'll delve into later in this list — which made him perform certain actions that were just completely stupid and moronic, as a result.

The worst example of this came during the Five Kage Summit arc when Naruto decided to humiliate himself in front of the Raikage so that he would spare Sasuke, a foolhardy notion that had the expected outcome of the Raikage completely dismissing his plea and admonishing him for bowing down so trivially.

6. Forgetting That Only Sage Jutsu Works Against The Ten-Tails Jinchūriki Right After Figuring Out The Same

The Fourth Shinobi World War arc was the time when Naruto truly unlocked his full potential and easily became one of the most powerful shinobi of all time. However, no matter how much power he might've had, the fact of the matter is that his boneheaded nature still shone through.

This was on full display when — right after damaging Ten-Tails Jinchūriki Obito with a Sage chakra-enhanced attack — Naruto planned another assault... only for the Second Hokage to point out that he had completely forgotten about the fact that only Sage Jutsu would work against Obito.

5. His Inability To Explain His Divine Healing Powers

Naruto's powerup during the Fourth Shinobi World War arc allowed him to control Six Paths Sage Mode, which gave Naruto a ton of powers —   some of which he couldn't even explain!

When Naruto managed to magically restore Kakashi's eye — something that had been damaged for years — the explanation he gave was completely ridiculous, with our favorite knucklehead ninja unable to string basic sentences.

4. Using The Reverse Harem Jutsu Against A God

But of course, nothing comes close to the absolute ridiculousness that Naruto put on display in the Fourth Shinobi World War arc when he decided to fight Kaguya Ōtsutsuki.

Finding themselves at a disadvantage, Naruto decided to pull out all the stops... by using a flipped version of his Harem Jutsu to display a bevy of scantily clad men to a god! The worst part was that it actually worked as a distraction, which just boggles our minds!

3. Ignoring His Son After Going Through A Lonely Childhood Himself

You'd think that someone like Naruto, who'd faced the trials and turmoils of facing a lonely childhood, would do everything in his power to ensure that his children wouldn't go through the same ordeal.

However, it seems that Naruto seemingly forgot these definitive childhood moments as he completely ignored his family and focused on his duties as Hokage, thereby becoming nothing short of a complete hypocrite.

2. His Stubborn Devotion To Bring Sasuke Back To Konoha

Pretty much everyone can agree with the fact that Sasuke was a complete psychopath who didn't deserve Naruto's friendship. Yet, the latter did everything possible to ensure that Sasuke would learn the error of his ways and come back to the Leaf Village. 

This foolhardy notion culminated in a battle for the ages that is undoubtedly one of the best fights in Naruto by a country mile. However, Naruto's stubbornness is still something stupid that needs to be pointed out regardless. He should've heeded the words of everyone around him and branded Sasuke a traitor like any logical human would in that scenario. 

1. Being Completely Oblivious To Hinata's Feelings

If people think that Sasuke didn't deserve Naruto's friendship, then by that same logic Naruto didn't deserve Hinata's love either. After all, it was painfully clear to everyone around them that Hinata had fallen head-over-heels for Naruto, but the No. 1 Hyperactive, Knucklehead Ninja was completely oblivious to this fact.

It took years of blushing and an entire movie of its own for Naruto to finally develop feelings for Hinata... which just feels like a bit too late to blossom, in our opinion.

[dndeviants]

Corrupt Cronies

Linda rushed forward to Ismark, gripping the wounded man’s shoulders. "Which way did he take her?"

Ismark caught his breath and pointed south of the square, "He took her that way... Linda, this town is bad! So many people saw what was happening, and they did nothing! I was trying to threaten to go to the Burgomaster, but... everyone just.... kind of stared at me..." Ismark’s eyes began to water in frustration, "I'm... not used to that. At least in the village, we try to help each other."

Ruki nudged Vasili’s arm, and spoke, “My lord, I do believe that we must free this town of its corruption- for Lord Strahd's sake...”

"Forget Lord Strahd's sake...” a righteous anger crept into Vasili’s voice, “Let's free the village of its corruption, since the people are too frightened to do it for themselves!"

Everyone advanced forward, townsfolk parting from their way, and hurriedly leaving the Burgomaster and his cronies as the party came forth, filled with anger and purpose... Aric and Jeeves stayed back, and disguised their approach, aiming to be as inconspicuous as possible.

As they got closer to the Burgomaster, the townsfolk had almost completely vanished, much to Vargas Vallakovich’s confusion and ire. The burgomaster of Vallaki puffed himself up to make him appear taller and more authoritative, placing a hand over his breastplate for dignity... In contrast, his thuggish brute of an assistant stood beside him loyally... a demonic arm crackling with hellish embers was his most prominent feature... second, his soulless eyes.

They were both surrounded protectively by a guard wearing special colors, which appeared to be no more than hired mercenaries and thugs.

"Vargas! What is the meaning of all this?" Vasili fumed.

Vargas Vallakovich spun to face Vasili, triumphant. He smirked and strutted to the end of the stage he stood atop of, and held out his arms in a welcoming gesture, that was also quite mocking,  "Well, Vasili!” The Burgomaster laughed, “I was wondering when you'd return, groveling for your master...Despite your rudeness in neglecting my title, I will let you know... All of this-” he waved about to the posters, the banners, and the stage, “-is the step toward liberation! Finding happiness through celebration! Eliminating all the spies for the Devil... Now, you have a chance to cut your ties, and join us! You know it is only a matter of time before the Devil is deposed..."

"Not likely," Vasili spoke quietly, but firmly.

Vargas was stunned at Vasili’s response, but before he had a chance to retort, Ismark rushed up with Linda in tow. He pointed to the man with the demonic arm.

“That’s the one!“ Ismark shouted, “It’s him, he has my sister!“

Vargas looked confusedly over to his assistant, “What is this one on about, Izek?”

Izek looked over to the Burgomaster, “The boy lies...” his voice was harsh and gravelly.

Linda looked at the man and cracked her knuckles. Lowering her voice to a threatening tone, she growled, "Seems like we have a kidnapper. I don't take kindly to that."

Vargas looked over the motley assembly, unimpressed. He turned to Izek, patting him on the shoulder, "Well, you know what to do. I have decorations to make, and my wife is making tea, and my boy...” He shakes his head in disgust, “Well, the lazy sod will probably need to be disciplined for something. Take care of them Izek."

Vargas began to walk away, whistling a bright tune. Izek and the remaining “guard” readied their weapons.

Izek laughed quietly, pulling out his axe, “Ready boys? You heard the burgomaster... let’s take care of these killjoys...”

Linda whipped out her revolver, not waiting for the men to get anywhere near them. She aimed at Izek, and fired two quick shots-

Izek still stood. Smugly.

Her stomach lurched...She did hit him- she was certain of it....

So why was he still standing?

Then she saw his wounds... Horrible, and bleeding now, but he didn’t seem to notice... didn’t seem to feel pain.

What kind of man is this?! she screeched in her own head.

Leaping from the shadows, Jeeves managed to get around the posse surrounding Izek like a shield... One swipe of the shortsword, another swipe... the purple poison glistened as it slid through flesh.

Jeeves stood, waiting for the man to fall. Instead, Izek only staggered and turned to face Jeeves.

“Is that all?“ The man droned, his hollow eyes piercing through Jeeves...

Jeeves froze. Then he saw the glow of the flaming arm...

Instinctively, he dodged out of the way and rolled underneath the stage- and was glad that he did...

Izek roared as his arm glowed with a fiery, demonic fury- his own men scattering as a balls of flame hurled indiscriminately through the square...

Linda ducked behind a crate filled with paper lanterns. She cursed herself as those went up in flames and singed her leather jacket. She pat out the flame and reloaded her revolver, not hurt at all by the attack.

Ruki and Vasili ducked behind a column, but the cover only helped them minimally. Small flames licked at their feet and burned through their shoes.

Ismark had no time to even think before a large ball of flame knocked him off of his feet and slammed him into the ground. He laid there, unmoving.

Izek laughed at the sight. Ruki hopped up onto the stage, filling her staff with her psionic power, and rushing Izek. She slammed him twice, hearing bones break underneath his skin.

But again, Izek stood. Calm. Uncaring. He took his battleaxe from off of his back and made one feral strike against Ruki.

Ruki managed to dodge the devastation of the attack, but still felt her blood rush up as the man slashed her arm. She grit her teeth, and psychically boosted her strength to lessen the damage she had taken.

The guard took advantage of the chaos caused by Izek and rushed the scattered party members... Two went on stage and tried to clobber Ruki with their batons, a guard ran under the stage to corner Jeeves, Three guards ganged up on Linda and begin to try and beat the gun away from her...

A few guards made swipes at Vasili...

Aric looked at the situation and decided his next move... no one had spotted him yet... and it looked like Linda was in need of the most help. He quickly backstabbed one of the guards accosting Linda, killing him... then struck at one of the remaining two, before dodging back to his hiding place...

That should throw them off, he thought.

Vasili unsheathed a longsword and made a cleaving motion in front of him, crimson splashing on the pristine silver of the blade. The guard clutched at his wound, and fell to his knees, screaming in pain. Vasili coldly cut off his scream- and his head- with the return strike.

Linda’s eyes widened as she saw that, but heard a moan on the other side of the field... she looked over and saw that it was coming from Ismark... she felt a bit of relief.

He’s still alive...

Back on the stage, Izek swung his battleaxe at Ruki. “This one is mine!” He barked at the guards.

Ruki pulled her staff up for protection, and grit her teeth as the man began bludgeoning her with the blunt of the axe... she had to focus her psionic power just to keep up...

Linda pulled out her machete and kicked away the guards, swinging her machete to keep them off of her. She felt resistance as the machete met the upper arm of one of them, but fought through it anyway. The guard screamed curses at her, clutching his arm.

Jeeves hid from the guard pursuing him and crept back on stage... Izek was the biggest threat, and it seemed that his injuries were adding up... He may not have been able to feel them... but his body was suffering all the same. He took his short sword and plunged it into his back- making the brute pause in his barrage assault on Ruki.

“Now!“ Jeeves cried out.

Ruki did not need to be told again. In one burst of strength and psychic energy, she struck Izek square in the chest. He twitched for a moment, the light fading from his soulless eyes as he fell first to his knees, then thudding face down on the floor of the stage.

A silent pause fell over those fighting. Izek’s fall seemed to spook most of the remaining guards; some drop their weapons and run. But a few stand and ready themselves for the fight’s end...

Aric took the opportunity first, picking off one of the remaining guards with his rapier, and hiding again. It was a tried and true strategy.

Vasili also spared no time for pity, brutally cutting down the man in front of him... and then elegantly, and quickly passing through the ranks of the guards to get by Ruki’s side...

Ruki’s heart dropped, What are you doing? she fumed in her head. It would do no good for Strahd if the others noticed him using his vampiric powers... She quickly looked over the other members of her party... None of them seemed to notice his approach to her. Good. She brushed aside the observation, resolving to reprimand him later.

Linda shot at the guards in front of her, dropping them. Jeeves struck down a guard, focusing on finding Aric.

Ruki scanned the field... she saw the burgomaster, still casually strolling on, oblivious that his assistant had fallen. Infuriated, she filled her steps with psionic power and advanced down his path, getting close enough to thrust herself into his mind.

Stop. Now. she commanded.

Vargas Vallakovich stopped whistling abruptly, and clutched his head from the sudden intrusion, “Wha- not the voices!” he cried.

“VARGAS!“ Ruki roared, “You are not fit for the title of Burgomaster!“

Vasili was distracted by Ruki’s outburst and didn’t notice the remaining guard swinging a mace at him. The mace made contact with Vasili’s head, and the guard became giddy, thinking he had downed the man. He made a return swing-

Only to be caught by Vasili’s hand, which stops the mace in its tracks. The guard looked at his restrained mace in shocked terror, then up to Vasili, whose eyes were glowing red.

Aric saw Ruki mentally assaulting Vargas, and fidgeted with his ring... He decided to help Ruki keep the Burgomaster in place, and test out the Qysari ring at the same time. He tapped into the ring’s power...

A spectral wall of glimmering blades appeared in the alley, cutting off Vargas’s path, and preventing any escape. Magical energy flooded the streets as these blades of all shapes and sizes whirled threateningly.

Vargas shrieked in fright as these blades appeared before him.

Vasili squeezed down harder on the guard’s arm, savoring his fright, before taking his free hand and punching the man in the face, rendering him unconscious.

Vasili felt the surge of magical energy, and looked to its source... Aric. He quickly strode over, looking at the barrier of blades.

“What on earth is that?” he questioned.

“A powerful magical item,“ Aric pat the ring’s surface, “Part of a set that I wish to get back.“

Vasili raised a brow, “I see... no wonder.” He looked to Vargas and Ruki approaching the cowering Burgomaster.

Ruki showed no sympathy nor remorse, instead regarding the Burgomaster coldly. She pointed to the whirring wall of blades and gloated, “Your path is cut off, Vargas...” she took a moment to savor her pun before lowering her hand, using her natural thaumaturgy to make herself more intimidating, “The only way is through me!”

Vargas fell to his knees with a heavy clunk! “Alright! I surrender!” He cowered before Ruki and Vasili, “What do you want? You killed my men, ruined my festival plans... what do you want from me?!”

Ruki felt a fury boiling in her stomach, “Pathetic,” she spat, “Stand up and fill that over-sized armor like a man!” 

She grabbed a hold of his shoulders and hoisted the Burgomaster to face her,  “Those who do not respect Lord Strahd, and do not have his respect in turn are not worthy of the title of Burgomaster!” 

"Ruki..." Vasili stepped forth and put a hand on her shoulder. His voice quiet, but firm,"You did well. But you forget. We aren't here just to deal with him."

Ruki contemplated shoving this man, for which she had two lifetimes full of contempt, into the bladed barrier... but she let go. Vasili was right.

Strahd was right.

Vasili leveled his eyes at the burgomaster. His voice low and demanding... "The girls. Where are they?"

Vargas looked up to Vasili, perplexed, “Girls? What girls? I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Ruki grit her teeth, and stepped forth, clenching her fists. Vasili held out a hand blocking her from assaulting the man. 

“He speaks the truth, Ruki. He doesn’t know about Arabelle... or Ireena,“ Vasili looked to Ruki.

Ruki calmed herself and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she glared at Vargas and used her psychic senses to affirm the statement...

Much to her disappointment, the Burgomaster did tell the truth.

Damn it! The only one who would know is Izek, and he’s beyond giving answers! she raged in her mind... Unless...

She thought of the spells she had seen Strahd use... A Spell to Speak with the Dead.

Ruki reached out to Strahd telepathically, My Lord, perhaps conversing with his dead companion will provide answers... She jerked her head to indicate where Izek lay.

Strahd hesitated. He was in his Vasili disguise... using such an overtly necromantic spell would raise suspicion... But service to a vampire would justify at least some knowledge of necromantic art... 

I suppose so... Strahd conceded. It is our only lead.

“Vasili“ walked over to Izek’s corpse.

Aric and Jeeves regrouped and tended to each other, watching Vasili’s odd behavior. Linda scanned the fallen, and saw where Ismark lay... a pit of dread formed in her stomach as she rushed over to him. She knelt by him and checked his pulse and breathing... 

Alive.

She pulled his hair from his face and tapped his sooty cheek, “Ismark...? Hey, wake up, buddy...”

Ismark groaned coughed, his eyes fluttering open, “I got my ass handed to me... again."

He slowly rose with Linda’s help. Linda chuckled quietly, and pat him on the back, “That you did, but we were here to back you up.”

Linda threw his arm over her shoulder, helping him walk over to where everyone else was gathered.

Ruki folded her arms and looked to Vargas, “I will keep watch over him.”

Vasili knelt next to the corpse of Izek, and turned him over to face upright. He reached into his spell component pouch and brought out a cone of incense, holding it in his hand. He hesitated and looked over to Aric and Jeeves, who were regarding him curiously... and then to Linda and Ismark, who had just made their way over.

“I apologize for what I am about to do, in advance...“ Vasili sighed, and began his grim work.

He muttered something low in a language no one present could understand, waving his free hand over the incense he held. A small ember ignited the incense, filling the air with a musky, sweet scent, gray-blue smoke trailing low over the corpse of Izek... it caressed the face of the Burgomaster’s henchman and seeped into his eyes, nose and mouth... 

The incense burnt out. A moment passed... then two...

Izek’s corpse suddenly shuddered, as if a spider were skittering over hot stone... He gasped and writhed, struggling to fill his lungs with air... a pale blue light radiated from his eyes... incense smoke dripped from his mouth.

Everyone was too shocked for speech.  Everyone except Ruki, and Vasili, who regarded the corpse with no emotion.

Vasili studied Izek for a few moments. “Where is Ireena?” he asked, “The girl with the copper hair, who came into town this very day?”

The corpse laughed, its speech filled with whispery echoes, “She is safe... In fine company...”

Vasili processed the information, before moving on,  "Where is Arabelle? The Vistani girl who went missing... Who was going to be used in the festival?"

“With the wolf hunters... in the town, still... at least until tomorrow.”

Vasili nodded, and rose to address the party, "I'm done asking my questions. Anyone else who wants to may ask three more. I think we should search the Burgomaster's mansion. Tie him up, and take him with us."

Vasili began to walk southward.

Linda blinked and felt the hair on the back of her neck settle... Three more questions? She looked at the corpse...

“Fuck that...“ she whispered.

Aric, Jeeves, and Ismark nodded in silent agreement.

Ruki tied Vargas securely, and whispered a vow in her native Vistani tongue, Patterna:

“If anything happens to my sister, I will end your miserable life...”

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

A brief recounting of the events of Elder Scrolls Legends, and of the Forgotten Heroes that saved the Empire when no one else could.

The Argonian, The Myth, The Legend...

SWIMS-AT-NIGHT!

SMUGGLER, WAR HERO... AND THE MOST LOYAL OF FRIENDS.

Self-Proclaimed "Greatest Smuggler in Tamriel," Swims-At-Night was just a simple smuggler during the Great War, stealing his cargoes from the Thalmor controlled Cyrodill, traversing the treacherous seas to later sell it off to either the resistance in Hammerfell or the Thalmor themselves, to them at 5 times the original value and at half the quality, not really out of any patriotic duty as much as for the cold and shiny siren call of gold. A daring, dangerous life, that made him make contacts with all sorts of people, that however ill fitted his true calling.

For you see, for while he was indeed without equal in his smuggling and his ability with poisoned blades was without match... Swims-At-Night was a lore nerd at heart. Especially if he could turn a tidy profit from said lore nerding.

But let's keep things in order.

Everything in Swims-At-Night's life changed one fateful night, during that same Great War he was profiting from... When he met two figures.

One, was Tyr.

This Beefcake of a Nord was one of the few remaining blades, captured by the second in command of the Thalmor Warlord and Daedric Follower Lord Narafiin, and left to Rot and fight for his life in one of his dungeons/daedric lair/underground arenas, only to one day escape with the help of another... mysterious figure.

THE FORGOTTEN HERO! WAR CRIMINAL! BACKSTABBER! MASTER OF DISGUISE! GENERALLY GREEDY ASSHOLE! THE WORST OF FRIENDS! DID I MENTION BACKSTABBER, LIKE, SERIOUSLY, THIS FUCKER BACKSTABS A LOT.

Basically TESL Robbie Rotten. At least he hates Nazi elves tho.

Anyway, back to that one faithful night. Tyr and the Forgotten Hero, from here on TFH, had recently escaped their captivity, and were searching for a lift to reach Skyrim, so to warn the emperor, who had retreated there after the fall of the imperial city, of Narafiin’s Daedric Dealings, and also so they could scoop up a friend of Tyr along the way, so that she could shine a Light upon this mess.

So, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a Port patrolled by Thalmor Justiciars searching for both them and the Argonian’s stolen Cargo, Tyr and TFH decide to steal Swims-At-Night’s boat...

RIGHT. FROM. UNDER. HIS. GILLS.

Needless to say, it was friendship at first sight.

After discovering the 2 vagrants trying to steal his shit and a quick sword fight with the Forgotten Hero, the Trio is found by one of the aforementioned Thalmor Patrols, and therefore, seeing how they too were being hunted down by the Nazi Elves, he goes “what the hell, the enemy of my nazi enemy is my new best friend, let’s go guys, this trip is on me!”, scoops them up on his ship, and departs from the port toward northern shores.

They later shipwreck. Because dude might be the “Greatest Smuggler in Tamriel,” but I challenge you to steer a ship during one perfect storm with one bloodthirsty Breton pirate ship trying their best to board them and sink his ship at the same time. Not even (spoilers) Sails-Trough-Storms herself could do it, I say.

Anyway, they shipwreck, have some zany adventures in High Rock with some mudcrabs and some spriggans, find a wolf cub TFH might or might have not abandoned to his fate rather than take in and nurture as his new pet LIKE THE ASSHOLE HE IS, and finally, in the middle of a ancient ruin, surrounded by angry goblins who had just come in and killed the cultists that were trying to kill her...

She appears, in all her majestic might...

LAANETH! MISTRESS OF MAGIC! SCHOLAR AND RESEARCHER AMONG THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS COLLEGES AND MAGES GUILDS IN ALL OF TAMRIEL, AND EXPERT IN DAEDRIC ARTIFACTS AND LORE!

Anyway, they save Laaneth from a Goblin assault straight out of Goblin Slayer, and she informs them that her latest research was around a semi obscure prophecy called The Culling (II), a cautionary tale about how people shouldn’t standardize and destroy their Battle Royal Games for greed and get rich schemes, and about how, during a particular cosmological event, the veil between worlds will be weakened, and will be easily breached by anyone committing a sacrifice big enough (Like, for example, the entirety of the Imperial City Population) to reawaken the now forgotten Oblivion Gates, so that the maws of Oblivion will be able to be opened one last time, to unleash hell upon Nirn, so to hasten the deterioration of reality and the breaking of the world, thus destroying creation and possibly but most definitely not allowing the Thalmor to ascend to godhood in the ensuing chaos.

You know, standard Nazi Elves plans.

This is even more concerning of Lord Naarafiin simply having Dremoras and other Daedras in his armies, especially after it is revealed that some major entity, perhaps even a Prince, must be edging their bets on this thing happening, so they decide to quickly reach the Emperor’s Camp all together to give him the grave news, and see what to do next.

(If i may take a moment, I would like to point out how Swims-At-Night, his ship destroyed and his cargo now in the seas, without a single prospect of coin in sight, is still there, ready to fight and die for his newfound companions and freedom, because he might be a scoundrel and a Smuggler, but he is a Honest Smuggler goddammit, mass genocide and daedric outbreaks are a big no no for him.

He also probably already knitted some new best friends sweaters already for him and his bros and is already probably preparing one for his new nerd elven friend, and probably didn’t want them to go to waste, so there’s that).

Anyway, our heroes got to Skyrim. Some more shenanigans ensue, a bar fight, some imperial deserters, a High Elf Merchant that was trapped by giant spider and had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE THALMOR TFH might have just been plain old racist too and left for dead rather than help, the ghost of another merchant asking for revenge against some other, human bandits that killed him and his family for their gold, and all that...

Anyway, they reach the Emperor’s Camp, where we meet the last members of this ragtag bunch of misfits...

GENERAL CASSIA! SECOND IN COMMAND DURING THE GREAT WAR UNDER EMPEROR TITUS MEDE II, AND MOSTLY THE ONE WHO HAD TO DO THE DIRTY WORK FOR HIM IN THE FORM OF DISCIPLINING DESERTERS AND ALL THAT NASTY SHIT.

Anyway, a plan is formed. Our Heroes must return to the Imperial City, disguised as Gladiators, and will use a secret passage near the Arena, the SAME passage the Hero of Kvatch used all those many years before to escape the imperial prison, courtesy of Swims-At-Night, the History Nerd him, to reach into White Gold Tower, and steal the greatest treasure of all.

THE ORB OF VAERMINA!

For you see, Lord Naarafiin indeed had the help of Daedric Princes, ready to spring up at the occasion of the walls of reality getting thinner, and Vaermina was among them. The Warlord was using the Orb to spy on the Imperial Troops movements and plans, easily outwitting them and laying waste along the country, committing one atrocity after the next, reading the field play for the final sacrifice, and our heroes needed to get the sphere away from him, so to better prepare a effective attack plan against the city before it was too late.

So, our heroes reach the Imperial Capital, passing as gladiators, and go into the secret passage, now swarming with perilous undead after many years from the 3rd era...

And with a mysterious altar, appeared out of nowhere, whose burning light, as bright as dawn breaking upon the fields, shone against the undead hordes, aiding our heroes in their time of need as it scorched them to a crisp.

For it seemed, not all Princes were in favor of Naraafiin’s plan of destroying the world.

Or maybe Meridia just wanted to scorch some Mummies, who knows with her.

Anyway, our heroes reach the highest floor of the Tower, where the Orb is left unprotected...

And where they are promptly ambushed by Naarafiin second in comand!

REIVE! THE BLADE MASTER! THE PAIN-SINGER! THE LORD OF THE ARENA!

He was him who had captured Tyr and TFH back at the start, and with a swift move, he has now taken Tyr Hostage, the gleaming point of his blade ready to slash the man’s manly and muscled chest at a wrong move.

BUT THAT’S NO ORDINARY BLADE I SAY!

(Yeah, only found this image for the card art, sorry)

THAT’S GOLDBRAND! THE SWORD OF BOETHIA, DAEDRIC PRINCE OF PLOTS! FATHER OF MYSTERIES! MOTHER OF SHADOWS! AND A BUNCH OF OTHER VARIOUS TITLES WITH OTHER VARIOUS GENDERS! AND THE REAL DAEDRIC PRINCE BEHIND THIS MESS!

For what better plot, than to plot to destroy the world, after all?

TFH has however been also fast, and has already nicked the Orb for himself, the kleptomaniac little shit. He is now presented with a choice. Keep the Orb, and watch his friend and companion die... or Give Reive the Orb, and get his friend back... “unscathed.”

And TFH, the absolute bastard and backstabber... chooses to keep the Orb.

(I mean, yes, technically, you can decide to spare Tyr... Except dude still dies during the ensuring fight as he shows his massive balls of nordic steel and SMASHES A DAEDRIC ARTIFACT TO PIECES RIGHT IN FRONT OF A ANGRY HIGHER DREMORA, and it is canon that TFH used the orb at least 10 times in his life if we go by Achievements, which he couldn't really do if he let Tyr smash it, soooo...)

Anyway, Tyr dies, Reive is Angry (And so are Laaneth and partially Cassia, like, dude was Laaneth’s friend more than he was anyone else, they had HISTORY, she is understandably angry with TFH, and he was working in close quarters with Cassia due to their ranks in the imperial army and shit...), and a battle ensues. TFH manages to overpower Reive and kill him, thus gaining the favor of Goldbrand and perhaps Boethia’s Themselves given their great betrayal and show of strength, since that’s how Boethia Rolls...

Anyway, They daringly escape the Imperial City, everyone a bit more somber after the whole ordeal, even despite the victory, and reach the Emperor’s camp nearby, reading for the next day siege, right in time for the Culling... BUT OH NOES! A Thalmor assassination deep cover team (which is composed entirely by Bosmer for some reasons... what, are Kahjiits not stealthy enough for your deep cover assassinations?) has attacked the Emperor in the night!

The assassins have been repelled, and Titus Mede II is safe, but the Emperor is now no longer fit to ride the next day. This will surely be a deep blow to the morale of the army, even now that has been bolstered by new and fresh recruits from Skyrim, and Cassia isn’t sure anymore they are going to pull it through...

And it’s here, that our “hero” truly unleashes his inner Robbie Rotten, as a dastardly plan is formed, I’m 99% sure after Swims-At-Night’s Counsel.

The emperor will remain in his tent, in the middle of the camp, unseen and unheard as he rests, as TFH wears his armor, and rides into battle on the front lines with his army, disguised as the emperor, keeping the Morale High as he valiantly fights of the Nazi Elven Scum, his Golden Blade in one hand, his mystical sphere of dreams in the other, as he conquers more and more ground, his friends leading 3 other different fronts in a 4 way attack on the imperial city, crashing trough to stop the massacre from happening...

And yet.

It’s too late.

Naaraafiin has already killed the entire population of the Imperial City, and the Gates of Oblivion are opened. He meets what he thinks is the emperor, his personal guard at his side, as all manners of Atronachs and Dremora are unleashed upon the city, and soon the world, as the Oblivion Gates open once more and the walls of reality are weakened.

TFH has to think fast, and so, attacks the Warlord, who easily counters TFH with his magic, now overpowered by the think layers between realms and his own, general overpowered Final Boss Magic, blasting shit left and right at a frankly insanely low magicka cost...

And yet, perhaps, this overpowered magic will be Naaraafiin’s Downfall, for the Orb of Vaermina cannot just enter the dreams of your enemies to spy on their plans, but can steal mirages of powers and creatures from your opponent mind, and use them against them.

And so, witnessing his prowess with the sword, and finally recognizing Goldbrand as Goldbrand, and the “Emperor” as the one who had killed Reive, as he steals one of his massive blast right from under Naarafiin’s mind, and uses it against its own master...

Naaraafiin falls. Pushed by his own arcane magick, perhaps still alive, perhaps not, inside one of the holes in reality his culling had created, the link between him and the fracture of reality severing, as the Dremoras and Daedras vanish into Oblivion, and the gates close.

The battle is won. The Imperial City is taken back, if destroyed and with little to no population left.

And the Thalmor are retreating.

TFH and his friend go back to the emperor, who congratulates with them about the victory, for the man really knows when the delegate, and gifts TFH his armor, as the 4 companions depart, each for their own road, perhaps to never meet again...

And so the story ends, with a empire saved from the brink of destruction, yet irreparably damaged, a friendship betrayed, and terrible memories people will never forget.

But when the story ends...

Another begins.

For to paraphrase Marvel:

SWIMS-AT-NIGHT WILL RETURN...

In Elder Scrolls Legends III: Return to Clockwork City!

(Tho there’s the Fall of the Dark Brotherhood first, probably going to do that first, gotta show you just how much of a Asshole TFH can be).

[kathrynmaslow]

Love Lies (1/15)

Summary: 

Ever since Emma was 13, she knew she had the ability to destroy people if she wanted to, and some days, she really wanted to. After being forced to go the the Greenwood Academy following a traumatizing event in her childhood that brought to the surface her ability to manipulate fire, she never thought she would be free of the place. So for nearly 10 years, she lived a solitary existence with the exception of her best friends, but that was all about to change. 

Killian Jones had just been sentenced to attend the university campus at Greenwood Academy after an accident at sea caused him to be dishonorably discharged from Her Majesty's royal Navy and lose his hand. He doesn't know what to think about these newfound powers and what they spell for the rest of his now not-so-normal life. But a chance encounter one day has the ability to change all of that. 

A story about love and redemption between two people that shows, if you have the right person beside you, you can find a light in the darkness. 

Rating: M

Content Warnings: Mentions of Violence/Death, Brief mention of Childhood Abuse/Sexual Assault, Mild Sexual Content

Notes: Oh My Goodness! It's Finally Here! This is my first completed work (ever) and my first story for the CSBB! This AU has been a baby of mine for a while, and this project finally gave me the push to finally get it down onto paper and out of my head. I couldn't do it on my own though, I have a HUGE thank you to give to my beta @daveyjacobsthepotterhead. Without her guidance, this work wouldn't be nearly as good and composed as it is now. Thank you again for finding all of my plot gaps and inconsistencies and dealing with my, at times, horrible grammar. You have been my cheerleader since we were paired together and I couldn't have asked for a better experience. Thanks to @princesse-swan as my artist as well! I can't wait for all you lovely readers to see the wonderful art that she has put together for this story, I am blown away by it! Thanks again to the Mods for the BB, you ran a great project this year and kept me moving the entire time, even when it seemed like I was not going to be able to finish. Thanks to all the wonderful ladies on the discord chat, I will remember those late night, incoherent sprints always.

Without further ado, here is my Captain Swan Big Bang! Enjoy!

Read of FF: Link

Emma just made it into the doors of Mary Margaret’s dorm before the skies opened up and rain began to pour down from the heavens. She knew that it was supposed to rain that day, but in typical college student fashion, she decided against bringing her umbrella with her and just risk it.

Shaking her hair out from under her hat, she started to make her way up the back stairwell towards the fourth floor. David and Mary Margaret, she knew, were already waiting for her in Mary Margaret’s room for their planned study session for Ethics 104. She hated that class.

To be honest, she hated a lot of the whole, college charade that the school was putting up. That’s what this entire school was, a charade, it was a cleverly disguised prison. Schools like Greenwood were where they sent anyone who was deemed to be “different”, which was complete bullshit in her opinion. Anyone who manifested any type of power or gift, be it completely harmless to something deadly like her own powers, was sent here, or one of the dozens of other schools around the world like it.

But what made Greenwood Academy different was that it was one of seven schools in the country that had a college as part of the locked campus. Which was why Emma and her friends were currently suffering through Ethics 104 with the world's most boring professor.

Pushing past a group of students coming down the stairs, she rounded the final corner and made her way up the final flight of stairs towards the door to the fourth floor. Bright neon pages decorated the inside of the stairwell on the floor. Join KickBoxing Club, Friday nights in Fourtner Hall; Rock Climbing adventures, Starting the second weekend into Fall Semester. All of them meant to draw in the attention of the students visiting the hall, but all of them came with their own starred caveats at the bottom, “Super Strength not allowed, Students with physical powers not allowed, Must not have a power activated by physical contact to attend, NO HIGH RISK STUDENTS.” Emma sighed every time she saw them, since she was never able to go. Emma did her best to ignore the brightly colored advertisements as she walked down the hall. While they held interest as something she could possibly do besides just hanging out with her friends or in her room, she wasn’t able to participate as a high risk student.

Making a right turn down the hall, Emma arrived outside of Mary Margaret’s door and gave a quick knock. After hearing her chipper “Come in!” through the door, Emma turned the knob and dropped her bag next to the door.

“Looks like you made it here just in time Emma, it’s really coming down out there.” David commented from the middle of the notebooks and laptops scattered about the floor.

Mary Margaret was sprawled out on her bed amongst her textbooks, highlighting the middle of a paragraph in bright pink highlighter, adding to the already colourful carnage on the page.

“Definitely, considering I left my umbrella in my room this morning.” Emma commented back, shrugging out of her leather jacket and hanging it on the back of the computer desk chair that was to her left.  

Emma grabbed her notes and textbook and moved across the room to spread her stuff out on the desk next to David. Right after she got settled the door swung open again, revealing to the three of them a soaking wet Ruby Daniels.

“Looks like you weren’t the only one to have left their umbrella behind.” Mary Margaret commented dryly.

Ruby paused in the middle of the room as three sets of eyes turned to look at her, and with a small smirk as their only warning, shook out her red and brown locks like a disgruntled wet dog.

David picked up his text book off the ground and began to brush the water from the pages, “Geez Ruby, was that really necessary?”

Ruby continued to look around the room with a wolfish grin on her face, knowing that she had succeeded in getting a rise out of her friends. “True, I didn’t have to, but isn’t it more entertaining when I do?” She asked, quirking an eyebrow as she shrugged out of her coat and hung it in her closet.

While Emma and Mary Margaret had roomed next to each other Mary Margaret’s first year at Greenwood, Ruby had stumbled upon their friend group by chance. There was one night freshman year when Mary Margaret and David had gone out and gotten trashed after a particularly hard exam week, and David had gotten lost in the woods.

Ruby just happened to be partying in the same area and overheard the distressed phone call that Mary Margaret had made to Emma back on campus, not being able to find her boyfriend. Ruby, in her wolf form, was single-handedly able to track David down in the middle of the night.

David and Mary Margaret introduced Emma the next morning, after their hangovers had lessened, and they had all quickly become fast friends. So much so that when Mary Margaret’s roommate Regina got clearance to live outside the academy, Ruby moved in the next term as her roommate.

“So does anyone understand what Professor Rodham was trying to get across on study guide question number seven?”

Emma jolted, not realizing that she had zoned out staring at her textbook.

“Nope, I am SO lost in that class in general so I have no idea.” Ruby offered from her place at her desk.

Mary Margaret slumped down into the pile of papers on her bed and sighed, “What even is this class? I don’t even know why they require us to take an ethics class.”

“Because it prepares you for ‘normal life’” Emma quipped, not looking up from the textbook that she had started leafing through.

“Yeah, but we are not normal, that’s why we came here! Why do we have to do normal people stuff anyway?!” Ruby whined.

Ruby did have a point. Since Greenwood Academy was one of a select few schools that had a college style campus on the same grounds, many people from around the country transferred into the school if they weren’t given clearance to leave and assimilate into regular society at the end of high school.

“Because you can likely graduate from here and move onto a normal job, Ruby, you weren’t forced to continue college at one of these schools,” Emma commented.

Ruby gave her a withering look. “I know that, but it doesn’t mean that we have to be forced into doing classes that have nothing to do with our major.”

“Regular colleges actually have you do that as well,” David said, deciding to join the group effort of ignoring their ethics assignment.

“You didn’t go to a regular college either, how do you know that?” Mary Margaret asked him.

“My twin is perfectly normal, so he went to a normal college. My mom wrote me once and told me all about it.” David explained. “Apparently they have these things called ‘General Education Requirements’ where you have to take a certain number of courses in other disciplines to graduate with a specific degree.”

“That blows,” Ruby commented, dismissing the explanation with a wave of her hand. “Does anyone want to order pizza?”

“So that is a no to the answer to question seven then, right?” David asked, shuffling the papers around in front of him.

“David, I say this with affection, but none of us care about this class.” Mary Margaret said from the bed, still sprawled out on top of her papers and textbooks.

“No! Emma still has my back, she cares about that class, right?” He said, giving her a look that begged her to agree.

“Sorry David, I have absolutely no concern about a course that I am not going to use for the rest of my life.” Emma said, pulling one of her favorite books out of her bag.

David sighed in defeat, turning to work on his assignment alone.

Ruby spied the book in her hands and let out a noise of exasperation. “Honestly, Emma! Are you ever going to return that book!”

Emma carefully gathered her copy of ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends and Every Thing On It’ by Shel Silverstein to her chest. The binding was slowly falling apart, and a page or two may have been haphazardly shoved back in after they fell out, but the weathered library barcode label was still affixed to the front cover, even though no plastic covering remained.

It was one of her favorite books when she was growing up, her brother read her poems from it every night before bed. And once she was off restriction after first arriving and had finally been fitted with her suppressor bracelets, they allowed her into the library the first time. She had scanned the shelves for hours, looking for something that she hadn’t already read before that she could sit down with and read for a little bit (they were still weary about letting her bring books outside of the library, even though she hadn’t shown any tendency at the time to possibly flare up  and accidentally burn a book) and had stumbled upon the copy on the end of a shelf. The size of the book didn’t fit in with any of the other shorter books and it was leaning to hold the other books in place. Pulling it off the shelf and to her chest, she began crying, missing her home and her brother with a ferocity that hurt.

One of the librarians had happened upon her not long after, curled into a ball clutching the already worn book to her chest. The woman looked down upon her kindly and comforted her to the best of her abilities, and asked her if she would like to keep the book. She had nodded, wiping the tears from her face. The woman walked her up to the front counter, wrote down some information about the book and took down Emma’s name and current room location (since Emma didn’t know her case number off the top of her head at the time) and promised her that she wouldn’t have to worry about anything.

And in almost 10 years of having the book, no one had ever come to her requesting the book back.

“Maybe one day,” Emma murmured, “I’m a bit sentimental.” She looked up at Ruby as she set the book into her lap, hoping to change the conversation, “Didn’t you say something about pizza?”

“That’s right!” Ruby exclaimed, leaning back in her desk chair. “Mary Margaret, where did we put the brochure for the on campus pizza place?”

Mary Margaret, who had been ignoring the conversation and reading for a different class, started. The book she was holding above her head fell onto her face and the papers surrounding her on the bed jolted, many cascading to the floor with her ethics textbook.

David instantly moved to start gathering the papers, while Mary Margaret just sighed in defeat from under the book. “Ummm, I think it is in the top right drawer of my desk, but it could also be on the refrigerator.”

Later, after demolishing three pizzas between the 4 of them and completely abandoning the studying for their ethics exam, they were lounging on the futon and floor watching The Bachelorette.

“You know, I still don’t understand why people sign themselves up for these things,” Ruby commented, “I mean, it’s pretty pathetic looking.”

“Well, not all of us are blessed with having a good-looking, future doctor as our boyfriend.” Emma commented from her place on the floor.

“Very true,” Ruby stated, “So, when are you going to start looking for a boyfriend Emma?”

Emma choked on her popcorn for a second. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah. Emma, I have known you for three years, there has to be someone that you have an interest in.” Mary Margaret chimed in. Emma looked pleadingly up at David to try and rescue her from this conversation.

David and Emma had known each other the longest out of any of the friends gathered. While her and Mary Margaret had roomed next to each other for a bit before getting to know one another, David and Emma had literally run into each other while they were heading across campus. Emma was running late for one of her intro science classes and had slammed right into David as he was exiting the science hall. They were fast friends after that. Especially because David, upon sitting down with her for a bit and getting to know her on one of her hard days, began to just step into the role of her older brother.

Emma would forever be grateful that he did that for her.

But he didn’t come through for her now.

“Emma, while I don’t necessarily condone the meddling of my girlfriend and her best friend, they do have a point.”

She sighed, closing her eyes and trying to think. Emma was lucky that she even had this many friends outside of the one or two other high risk students that she had had a conversation with during her years at the academy. Once it became public knowledge that someone was a known high risk student, many people began to avoid them.

“There have been a couple of guys…”

“AND…?” Ruby interrupted.

“They take one look at these,” Emma shook the suppressor bracelet on her left wrist under her friend’s nose, “And the attention tends to turn elsewhere.”

If someone came to the academy with what was already known to be a high risk ability, or had seriously injured or killed someone, they were immediately outfitted with custom suppression gear that nulled their powers while they were on. This prevented the students from posing a risk to themselves or anyone else on the campus.

Ruby’s nose wrinkled, “Have those always smelt like that?”

“Like what?” Emma commented. She’d gotten this pair of suppressors two years ago, after the last set died on her.

“Like death.”

“Well, they didn’t design them to be pleasant,” Emma quipped back.

“Well, not everyone-”

“Yeah, they do,” Emma said, interrupting whatever ‘hope and love speech’ Mary Margaret was about to give her, “And honestly I’m not really looking for anyone anyways. I’m going to head back to my dorm.”

“Emma, you really don’t have to go just yet,” Mary Margaret commented, seeming to try and salvage the situation. Emma just shook her head as she shoved the rest of her books and papers back into her bag, moving ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ to another pocket to prevent it from getting further destroyed.

“No, it is really time for me to be heading back,” Emma said, looking at the setting sun peeking out from behind the dispersing rain clouds as she tugged her rain boots back on.  

She caught David laying a placating hand on Mary Margaret’s thigh, preventing any further protest from the woman. “Thanks for the company Emma.” David said, giving her a quick wave with his other hand.

Emma reciprocated with a small quirk of her lips as she slung her bag over her shoulder and backed out the door to the room.

Taking the back stairs down the four flights to head back to her dorm on the other side of campus, Emma thought back on the end of the conversation. Sure, Emma really hadn’t invested any time in guys or relationships. But honestly, she thought, why would she? It wasn’t likely that she would ever leave the academy and the communities after she graduated, so why should she invest any kind of time in a relationship with someone who would eventually just leave her? And, considering what happened with her stepfather that caused her to come to the academy in the first place, she really didn’t feel like an actual relationship would ever be in the cards for her.

Emma passed a few students leaving the academic buildings late heading for the dorms on the other side of campus or to their cars. She enjoyed the solitude of a quiet walk across campus at the end of the day.

Feeling a bit like a little kid, she looked down at her booted feet and the puddles scattered about the sidewalk. Letting go, she just started jumping from puddle to puddle on the walk across campus. A small giggle escaped her for a moment just as she slammed into a solid chest, sending them both crashing down onto the damp sidewalk.

Emma closed her eyes and cringed, her head hitting the sidewalk.

“You know, with the way you were laughing there lass, I think you meant to run into me just then.” A distinctly British-sounding voice came from just to her right.

Emma opened her eyes just as a pair of eyes the color of the midday summer sky came into view. One hand grabbed hers, the other arm slipping into her armpit to leaver her up.

“Up we go love,” he said, steadying her a bit as he set her on her feet.

She looked down to see papers strewn about the pavement, many of them now soaking wet. “I am so sorry about that, I wasn’t watching where I was going,” she commented, immediately kneeling down to start picking the papers up, feeling all too clearly his gaze on her. She tucked her hair a bit awkwardly behind her right ear under her hat.

“No need to fret about it love, I have it all on a digital drive anyway,” the stranger commented.

She really should get his name, Emma thought to herself.

“I still feel bad, I got your clothes all wet,” she said.

Her back was a bit damp now that she thought about it, along with the knees of her jeans.

Looking over at him, she noticed he was gathering papers next to her, but not necessarily with the intent of trying to salvage the damp paper. He used his left arm, which she just noticed ended at his wrist, to try and push the paper against the pavement towards his right hand.

“Well, you can make it up to me by giving me your name Love, sound like a fair trade?” He asked, flashing a grin that was all white teeth in her direction.

“Sorry, I don’t give my name to strangers,” she commented back, handing him a stack of sopping wet papers, standing as she did so.

He stood up alongside her, pushing the mass of paper into the crook of his left elbow, extending his right, gloved hand towards her.

“The name’s Killian Jones, at your service.”

Emma extended her right hand to meet his.

“Emma Swan.”

She would be lying if she said her heart didn’t skip a beat when he took her hand and smiled at her.

[diskwrite-ffxiv]

FFXIV Write 2018: #10 - Coward

Time: 1548 Place: Gridania

“Your stance is wrong,” the woman snapped. “Fix it.”

A tight breath chuffed through Ojene’s nose, and she spared a quick glance down. And she tugged her left foot forward, rolling her knee even with the poise of her front hand. She settled in, poised with legs only partway bent, frozen still as she awaited pronouncement on her best attempt.

Around her, the older Elezen circled, cutting a wide berth between them as she circumferenced the training room floor. Maelys Brouvame was a formidable Wildwood by anyone’s decree, with pale reddish skin spattered with the freckled wear of sunlight. Her dark brown hair cinched tight behind her head, its color yet unmarked by her fifty some-odd years- and her hazel eyes shone scrutiny behind her hawkish nose.

But instead of belting a correction, she lifted her angular chin. “Thrust.”

Forward, Ojene surged. Oiled ash slipped like silk through the curled fingers of her leather gauntlets, the dulled iron tip of the practice weapon spiking like a viper’s tooth into the practice dummy’s taut linen gut.

“Back,” the woman barked. “Now again. Thrust.”

Their work was the only sound that filled the Lancer’s Guild’s training circle, the moment a rare treat of solitude grasped in these late evening hours. And of the lack of judgmental eyes, the young Duskwight took full advantage. She struck to the sharp retort of Maelys’s voice, over and over and over again, filleting the once pristine beige linen with a staggering array of holes.

A drop of sweat rivuleted off her forehead, spattering against the dark wooden floor. And despite the dull ache that crept into the core of her muscles, she didn’t dare pause or relent or ask for a repose. It wouldn’t be granted- that she already knew.

“Good,” at last Maelys proclaimed. “Your grip is getting more consistent. Now away.”

As Ojene retreated from the dummy, her trainer crossed to the side of the room where a brace of spears sat propped in a massive rack. She stole the opportunity to wipe an arm over her forehead, dashing the glistening moisture away.

Maelys returned, darting the spear from one gauntlet to the other with handily ease. In her grip it slid like an old friend, like another arm, nothing more than an extension of her reach. And her stance too was fluid as she took her post in an open stretch of floor, quirking a hand to beckon Ojene closer.

She complied. And as she slid into her stance, Maelys rocked steady on her heels.

“The usual terms,” Maelys said. “Are you ready?” But it was less a question than it was a statement- she barely waited for Ojene to nod before she snapped her spear into place. “Set- and go!”

They lashed forward, cutting a dance as their spears clacked together in the center of the spar. Ojene tried to circle, to bounce away, to use the momentum in her favor but every time she made to counter her instructor flowed in turn. And the dull point of Maelys’s spear struck in again and again, quivering but half an ilm from Ojene’s padded armor.

“Stop,” Maelys barked, and their dance seized to a halt. “You’re trying to strike too soon. The first step is what?”

“Control the center,” Ojene swallowed a sigh.

“Yes. Skip that part and you’re going to die. Now again! I want to see you guard it first.”

Her muscles screamed with a keening ache but still she didn’t dare say a word. Every scrap of strength she poured to this, every onze of endurance she had to bear. Fighting and struggling and now and again succeeding- at least for the split second before Maelys once more turned her blade away.

But as they set to make the dance again and their spears met each other with a solid clack and twirled low, Maelys made a move Ojene didn’t expect- the spear bounced up to slip its point but a few hairs away from Ojene’s face.

She flinched.

“What was that?” Maelys barked, and before Ojene could react the butt of her opponent’s spear thwacked against the side of her ribs.

With an oof, Ojene stumbled back, the blow sound enough to leave an ache even through her padding. “It-” she stammered as she caught her breath, “it took me by surprise-”

“Does a lancer ever flinch?” Maelys slammed the end of her spear into the floor. “Are you a craven in disguise? The lancer never once shies from the specter of death! We take the lot of it on in turn. Unyielding should have been our given name, for that’s a title we snatch from the jaws of life!”

“I’m- I’m sorry.” All the tighter, Ojene clutched her spear. “It won’t happen again.”

“Discipline,” a single gauntleted finger stabbed towards Ojene’s face. “That’s the biggest thing you lack. And it doesn’t matter how much potential you may or may not have, if you can’t hold the line you might as well walk out that door and go. Training. I want to see you in here every morning at the crack of dawn. And you won’t stop until the sun begins to set. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes.” Ojene snapped her feet together, her back held ramrod straight. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” And something of the hard lines in Maelys’s face relaxed, and the spear dangled looser in her grasp. “Dismissed.”

The second time caught her by surprise but two moons later, an involuntary jerk in a practice demonstration in anticipation of a sudden burst of pain.

“No!” Maelys barked, and this time the butt of her spear crashed into the side of Ojene’s head.

As the Duskwight staggered back, forcibly clenching her hands at her sides instead of clutching at the stinging throb, Maelys shook a finger toward her face. “You must not be working hard enough! A hundred laps around the building! And I don’t want to hear hide nor hair of you until you’re done!”

And as she ran, shaking the lingering smarts from her skull, after a short time she felt their eyes. Her fellow trainees, sniggering from the stairs. A bristle shivered down her back, but no matter how many snatches of whispers her keen hearing snatched she refused to move an ilm. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction- like hells she’d let it show. She belonged here, no matter what anyone said. She belonged.

“Instructor Brouvame,” she called from across the road as that evening the lancers filtered back to their homes.

Maelys turned, and the sunset cast her brown hair in a reddish halo as she paused just long enough for Ojene to pull to her side. No matter how tenaciously the Duskwight fought to keep her pace even, there was no hiding the lilt her exhausted muscles threw into her gait.

A small pack of rookies filtered past them, and Ojene turned her back to their sneering eyes.

Maelys too didn’t spare the others a glance. “What is it, Suinuet?”

“I- I simply-” Ojene snapped to stand fully upright. “I won’t let you down again!”

“Mm.” Maelys tipped her head back as if to peer down her nose- but with the good fulm of height Ojene had over her there was something lost in the effect. “See that you don’t. The break of dawn tomorrow.”

If only it had never happened again. The third and fourth struck her like the first, a sudden reaction she couldn’t seem to control. And every time, she threw herself back into work. She would yank this craven Duskwight thread out. She would stand tall. She would be the unyielding. She would.

Five years later she stood not in the Shroud but on the top of a verdant La Noscean knoll. The grass swayed around her in pace with her breath. And as she gazed across the path worn into the dirt by the frequent pass of feet just beyond the Aleport town proper, she regarded the Sea Wolf who faced her with a nonplussed stare.

Not that the towering wall of muscle seemed to care. Half-turned to face the gaggle of drunkards she could only assume were his friends, the man who’d only introduced himself as Solksunn tipped his body at an angle as he curled his arms in an ostentatious flex.

Their boisterous ovations filled the air, and one of them shoved into his hands a massive curved axe. He rolled it in his hands as he stepped forward, his pale green face cut by a swarthy grin.

“Listen up, yeh knife-eared sot! Hold fer a second or two an’ I’ll be nice ter yeh after.”

“Bet she’d make a decent saltwife!” jeered one of his copatriots.

“Aye, mebbe she’d just! Yeh want to be meh saltwife, lass?”

“Did you come out here to actually fight,” Ojene’s gaze snapped from one to the next, “or did you just want to swing your empty traps?”

“Oooooh,” Solksunn crooned, “‘s got a bit o’ fire in her, too! Well-” he dropped his stance, hulking forward over his axe, “let’s see if yer reputation’s actually all that!”

Forward he shot, like a spring unleashed, and as he whirled his axe outward it caught the glint of the partly clouded sun. In his path Ojene stood, but her neutral stare budged not an ilm. Like a boulder unleashed he barreled forward, his broad feet kicking up loam. Fast- but not fast enough. Just as he was but a half-second from closing the gap, she sprang into motion. He swung high- she darted low.

The sharp rip of cloth filled the air, and Solksunn stumbled back. “Cor,” he muttered, the bravado blown from his sails as he slapped a hand to the slice through his shirt.

Ojene circled to the side, her spear quirked at an angle. “If this was a real fight,” she drolled, “you’d be dead. Look-” she flipped a hand toward his side.

“Pah!” he spat, and he seized up the handle of his axe. “A little scratch means nothing!” Blood dribbled into his newly ragged shirt. “Take guard!” And once more, he charged.

It took three more tries, of him spilling back freshly bruised only to launch another assault- but at last with a sharp jab of her spearbutt to his jaw, Solksunn lost his footing and toppled headfirst to the dirt.

“Fuckin’ menace yeh are,” he groaned from the dirt. “But I’ll have yeh… yet.” And his gesturing hand slumped to his side.

“You won’t.” For good measure, she kicked the heft of his axe way out of reach. “And if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to what I was actually doing.”

Though it was a touch risky, she turned her back to leave. But the sharpness of her ears only caught the rushing of Solksunn’s companions to his crumbled sides. And as she retreated, their laughter filled the air.

“She really got yeh good, didn’t she?”

“Shut up!”

“Did yeh see her when yeh ran at ‘er? She didn’t move an ilm. Looked like she didn’t ruttin’ care- an’ then yeh were on the dirt!”

“Yeh both can fuckin’ stuff it-”

“Navigator’s tits, she’s my hero.”

Down the knoll, Ojene swept out of sight.