#Philosophies ... though he could still be an ancient philosophy specialist i suppose

[catominor]

also like this drawing of his modern au version<3

[spectraspecs-writes]

Korriban - Chapter 94

Link to the masterpost. Chapter 93. Chapter 95.

@averruncusho @ceruleanrainblues @chubbsmomma @strangepostmiracle thank you for reading, you get a tag. @skelelexiunderlord thank you for support, you get a tag.

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This tomb looks significantly newer than Ajunta Pall’s, and there’s text that I can actually read so it must be recent enough. It’s not Galactic Basic, but it’s not some long-dead language, either. This is the tomb of Tulak Hord, a lightsaber specialist by the look of it. So definitely more recent than Ajunta Pall, who didn’t have a lightsaber. This is the tomb where I met Lashowe, though, that’s going to have consequences as far as the tuk’ata population is concerned. Without the matriarch, there may be infighting to establish a new matriarch, or a daughter may have stepped up that isn’t fit to rule the pack. In an ideal world the pack would just go on as normal but when is it ever an ideal world?

This tomb is a little brighter than Ajunta Pall’s, but still pretty dark. There’s more to it, too - Ajunta Pall’s was a straight shot with a trick along the way. This tomb is from a different era, and relies on twists and turns as well as tricks to keep looters at bay. But we are not the first to proceed this way, and a bit of a trail has been marked by dark splotches on the walls. No, they’re not blood - even if the Sith were that weird, you’d have to carry the blood through the tomb and that would drive the tuk’ata nuts. That’s a death wish kind of thing to do. But the splotches are high enough on the wall that the tuk’ata couldn’t reach, and too regular to be natural. I can handle if it’s a trap of some kind.

The tuk’ata are not composed at all, which is what I expected. When we run across a few, they don’t attack in a uniform fashion. It’s sloppy, uncoordinated, and they don’t attack as a unit. Damn you, Lashowe, you ruined the pack dynamics. Most of them I can just scare off, but we do have to kill a few along the route marked off for us.

The route dead ends near an ancient console, sort of like the ones in the ruins on Dantooine. They said the Star Map was in Naga Sadow’s tomb, so what is this doing here? I hit a button. It still works and it displays in Basic. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Jolee says.

“Yeah, me too,” I say, “but I think we can get ourselves out of any trouble.” I use the console to open the door.

“I dread the day you’re wrong about that.”

“Yeah, me too.”

We step through and are met with another closed door as the one behind us closes. Something… smells awful. Is the room spinning? Oh, shit, poison gas. Carth… is Carth okay?

Jesus, that knocked the wind out of me. I feel like there’s a Reek sitting on my chest. I try to look around. I’m not in the chamber anymore. Looks like the crypt. Carth - where’s Carth? He’s still out cold. Jolee’s conscious but pretending he’s not. Which he would only do if he got some benefit out of it. Something smells again. But not like poison, more like sweat. Someone here has not bathed in days, minimum, and it’s none of us.

“Awake already, are you?” Sounds like a kookier old man than Jolee, who I can actually hear huff in my head. Ah, he knows I love him. “Good!” I try to get a better look at this crusty old dude. He’s got the same grayish skin as Master Uthar, but way more crazed. “This is the tomb of Sith Lord Tulak Hord, if you don't know. I've taken up residence here, for now… it's dusty and full of critters, but it's home.”

I try and fail to sit up a bit. “Not that I don’t get the sentiment, because I would love to swap stories about dusty critter homes, but who are you and why the hell am I here?”

“Ah, yes!” he exclaims, “Introductions of course! I suppose it is time, isn't it?” Anyone like this who hasn’t had twelve cups of caff is certifiably cuckoo for Core Puffs. (Hell, even if you have had twelve cups of caff, I’d still be worried about you being a responsible adult alone.) “This other student here that I captured earlier you should know well enough. His name is Mekel. Say hello, Mekel.”

God, he looks awful! He tries to mumble something at me but can’t. From what I can tell he’s got loads of fresh electrical scarring, and I don’t think he got it playing with wires. “Poor lad,” the kook says with mock sympathy, “He's had a hard day. My name is Jorak Uln. I was once the head of the academy, so I'm sure you've heard of me.”

“Yeah, I heard you went nuts and ran for the hills.”

He blusters and can’t managed to get a single comprehensible word out, except for “stupid Uthar”, before moving on. “Anyway…” he says, trying not to release his anger on me yet, “I'd like to propose that we move onto the main event. You see, I'd like to discover if you've got the pluck of an old-fashioned Sith. Most of the drek Uthar has been passing through these days is so pathetic. Take young Mekel here… I already tested him. Didn't I, Mekel?” Mekel mumbles again, and Jorak Uln laughs. “Yes, yes, you're welcome. You see, Mekel here has the cruel disposition of a Sith,” - which doesn’t surprise me - “but not the gumption that I'm looking for.”

Well, he’s definitely lost it, and needs clinical help finding it. But that’s not going to get me out of here. “So what happens if I pass your test?”

“Why, then, you go free!” Bingo! “Tell you what… I'll even pass onto you my own personal thesis on ancient Sith philosophies. They're based on all I've learned studying Tulak's tomb. It'll make you a better Sith, I'm sure.” Which is not something I’m looking for. “The chances of you passing, however, are sadly remote.”

I like my chances, actually. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Now, now, is that any kind of attitude to take with higher education?” In my experience, yes. “I'm doing you a favor, really. So, then! This is how it goes: I'm going to pose a moral question to you. Get it right, and I torture Mekel. Get it wrong, and I torture you.” You can’t answer a moral question right or wrong, they’re opinions. But you know what, I don’t think that concerns him. “Mekel, here, is a bit weak… he probably won't be able to take much more punishment.” No, that’s some bad scarring, like “seek help now” scarring. “Mind you… get too many wrong and you'll die, yourself.” I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for electricity like that, but if it’s anything like how I was shocked earlier… I don’t want that again. But I can’t kill Mekel, either. He’s trash, sure, but he’s young trash. He could grow out of his trashiness if he’s given a push in the right direction. “I don't know what you think of Mekel. Maybe you don't like him. Maybe you think he deserves to be murdered? Well, here's your chance. Fair enough?” Okay, I can take some damage, how much can Mekel take? Trying to calculate all this in my head, work out my angles. When I don’t respond, Jorak Uln talks again. “Well, then! Any last comments before we begin, Mekel?”

Mekel looks over at me, he can see the wheels turning in my head. He grunts and says, “We can... both survive... attack him together!”

“Now, now, dear lad,” Uln says, “Do you really think your friend here will answer questions wrong just to spare little you, risking her own life? And how many correctly-answered questions before you die, hmmm? No, don't be silly… you had your chance, remember? On that note, let's begin!

“Now, then. Your immediate superior amongst the Sith is an effective commander and a fine leader. He trusts you and you like him. You see an opportunity to kill him. What do you do?”

A Sith would answer that they’d kill him and take power. But I have to be strategic about this to get both of us out alive. Let’s answer this one honestly. “I do nothing. He’s a good leader.”

“Incorrect!” Yeah, I know. “What sort of thinking is that? If all the Sith thought as you did, we would all be soft like the Jedi.” You’d also have a military that wasn’t built on fear and cruelty, but that must be too much to ask. “Ah, well. It is time for your punishment.” Oh, good God! Fuck!

But it’s over quick enough, thankfully, and he moves on to the next question. “And so we come to round two. You come across a group of humans who are threatened by dangerous animals. They plead for help, offering you a reward. What do you do?”

Hell, I’d help them without a reward. A Sith would take the reward and leave them. But I need a breather before I get shocked again. I give Mekel an apologetic look before I answer. “I take the reward and leave them to die.”

“Correct! The humans would no doubt just be preyed upon by something else, later.” Assuming I just left them. “Stand up for yourself, I say! We're not Jedi shepherds, after all.” He looks at Mekel. “Sadly, Mekel, the ingenuity of your fellow student is your loss. This is going to hurt.” Even as Mekel writhes in pain, I can’t help but be grateful it isn’t me. Even as his skin breaks and more scars ripple across.

Third question. “Let's see… ah, yes. You discover an aspect of the Force that gives you great power. Do you share it and strengthen the Sith as a whole or keep it to yourself?”

A Sith answer, as well as a scout’s answer, is to keep it to yourself. You always keep an advantage to keep yourself afloat at the end. For me it’s a hot springs on Utapau. The people there are fair traders and welcoming of outsiders, soil is rocky in a lot of places but they’ve spent millennia farming there so they know what they’re doing. Wildlife is stunning. I figured it would be a good place to settle when I couldn’t scout anymore. I guess for a Force user, a new power would be just as valuable. But I think Mekel needs a breather now. I don’t want to give it to him. But who am I if I let him die? “I share it,” I say finally.

“You gained an advantage and you share it freely?!” Dude, shut up. “Let them rip the secret from my dead hands, I say!” I plan to. “I mean... 'share it'?! Are you mad?!” He sighs. “Well, you did ask for this. It's for your own good.” Holy hell, I hate this! What the shit have I gotten myself into?

God, I need a break. “Still going?” Man, shut the hell up. “Alright, then. One of your underlings has made a major mistake which makes you look bad. He is normally very competent and skilled. Do you kill him or give him another chance?”

Personally I’d let him live. Let him learn. A Sith would kill him without a thought. And I don’t want to get hit again. Not so soon. “Kill him,” I say.

“Correct!” he exclaims. “Publicly, if you can. There is no room for that level of failure.” Dude, you’re the one living in a crypt, don’t lecture me about failure. “Not killing him would be seen as a sign of weakness... and then where would you be?” He turns to Mekel. “Ahhh, Mekel. The time has come once again, hasn't it?” Lightning shoots from his fingers again.

“Last question!” Oh, thank fuck. “You're about to die. Do you pass on your knowledge to your apprentice to make him stronger… or do you use your last breath to strike at your enemies?”

Just when I think the answer to this isn’t obvious, it comes to me: A true Sith never dies. Like… is that metaphorical, like how people still remember Ajunta Pall, or is that literal in the sense that Ajunta Pall wasn’t exactly dead? Or could it be both at once? Is Tulak Hord floating from room to room? Is there an ancient Sith no one remembers who’s haunting some cantina or something? And what does “true Sith” mean, anyway? What happens to a “false” Sith? Where did that answer even come from?

Either way, Mekel looks awful. I don’t think he’ll survive another right answer. I may hate it but I’ve still got a few wrong answers in me, and if this is the last question, then I’ll be okay. “I pass on my knowledge.”

Jorak Uln giggles excitedly. “Fool! It is a trick question! A true Sith never dies!!” You mean I was right? He laughs again. “I'll enjoy this one. Time for your medicine!” Shit shit! It’s okay, Rena, just lie back and think of droids, they always apologize for shocking you!

He gives me a moment to breathe. But it’s not a kindness. “Now, this is odd,” he says, “The test is over and you're both still alive. Well that's never happened before. Hmmmn…” Jolee shifts a bit. Carth is conscious now and even though Jolee has healed him both are still playing dead for now. “What to do, what to do…” Uln ponders, “I suppose this means you can go, Mekel.” He releases him from his grip. “I'll have to just figure out what to do with our friend, here. Run along, now.”

“Or…” Mekel says slowly, “… or I could use the Force to free her! And we could kill you!!” I feel Uln’s grip on me slacken and finally break. My legs feel jellied but I can still stand, and I pull out my lightsabers. I reach out with the Force and exhaust it to heal Mekel and myself. I hope Jolee saved some energy because we're both still only at half strength. “Seems you didn't think of that, old man!!”

“What?!” Uln exclaims, “Mutiny! Behave, students! I'll…!” Now Jolee reaches out to both of us, and I can stand on my legs again. Mekel’s scarring closes over. Carth jumps to his feet and pulls Jolee up. And now Uln loses the little he had left. “That's it! Detention for all of you! Permanent detention!!”

Uln activates his double-bladed lightsaber, but I’ve got my two out and Mekel has his as well. None of us have any Force left, but neither does Uln, which evens it out a bit. Uln focuses on Mekel, which means I can fight dirty from behind if I avoid the other end of his lightsaber. No one gives me electrical scarring if they don’t apologize afterwards. If he were a droid who didn’t apologize, well, I’d get to retune his power core, which can be unpleasant for the droid. People don’t have power cores, so I guess I have to just beat him senseless. Mekel pushes him backwards onto uneven footing. I sweep his legs out from under him and he falls over. Without missing a beat, Mekel runs him through.

He stands over him and laughs ironically. “What do you know?” he says, “I guess he wasn't a 'true Sith' after all.” He sighs and relaxes. “I can't believe that I'm alive,” he says, “You saved me… you could have easily just answered those questions and let me die. You knew the answers, I could tell, I could see you mulling it over.”

“Nobody deserves to die like that,” I say firmly, “There is no universe in which I left you to die.”

He takes a second to reflect. “Yeah, well…” he says thoughtfully, “… I see what you mean. I’ve never… I mean, I've never been on that side of the fence before. It makes you think. I'd be dead if you weren't…” He stops again, like he’s correcting himself. “… I mean, if you were a proper Sith. But you're not, are you? Don't worry… I won't tell anyone.”

“Frankly, I wasn’t worried, but thank you, anyway,” I say. He’s still quite pensive. “Seems to me like you’ve got a lot on your mind, a lot of thinking to do.” He looks at me wordlessly. “I get the impression you don't want to be a ‘true Sith’ like Uln. You’ve just got some crap to work through. There’s better places to work through it.”

“You mean… the light side?” he says softly, “I've never thought about that. Can you… can you even go back? I've done some… I mean, I've hurt a lot of people.”

“There's always remorse,” Jolee says, “And atonement. That's the harder path, though, boy. Think you can do that?”

“I…” he says nervously, “I don't think the light side is for me. But… maybe neither are the Sith. Maybe it's time for me to leave.”

I take a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” I say, “but have you thought about Czerka?”

Mekel scoffs. “Hell, no. Fuck Czerka.”

“Thank you!” I say, and we share a grin. “Well,” I say, “good luck wherever you end up.”

“To you, as well,” he says, “And… thank you.” He walks away, following the splotches on the wall to the exit.

Jorak Uln did a poor job of hiding his thesis. The ancient stone tablet is resting on the tomb of Tulak Hord, right out in the open. It’s not as heavy as it looks, but I am positively worn out, so Carth carries it for me out of the tomb. “So,” he asks me, “are you going to bother with any more tombs?”

“Hell, no, I’m not doing anything else today except relax with that bottle of Tarisian ale on the ship, I am exhausted.”

“I had hoped to save that till the end of the war,” he says, “but I think you’ve earned it now. But that wasn’t what I meant.” I look at him curiously. “By my count all of the other hopefuls are gone. Mekel just left, Lashowe’s dead, we’ll find out about Shaardan soon enough. Whether you’ve earned enough prestige or not, there isn’t exactly anyone left to oppose you.”

“You sound like you’ve got something in mind,” I say.

He shrugs sheepishly. “Well,” he says slowly, “I guess I’d… like to join you for that drink, if you don’t mind.”

This is a hell of a time to ask me out. Not that I’m complaining. “I’d like that,” I say.

He tries very hard not to beam. God, he’s adorable.

-----

Shaardan is dead at Master Uthar’s feet. Frankly I’m surprised nobody’s moved the body yet. “Master Uthar!” I call to get his attention, and he turns to me. “I have a tablet written by Jorak Uln.” Carth hands it off to him.

Uthar looks surprised. “It appears my old master was busy studying the writings in one of the tombs. How interesting.” He glances at me. “I do hope you had to pry this from his dead fingers.” Not exactly. “Regardless, you have impressed me with your worthy act.” He looks directly at me now. “Even if you were not the sole remaining hopeful, you have impressed me enough, by my estimation, to become a Sith in full. Congratulations, young one… you have bested the others quite completely, in more ways than one I’m sure. You have but one final test which you must take, and this requires us to travel to the tomb of Naga Sadow in the Valley of the Dark Lords. I would advise you to be rested and equipped before we leave. Return to your quarters now and seek me out in the morning.”

“My ship is still docked in Dreshdae,” I say, “Do you have any objection if I got there instead?”

“Go where you choose. But when you return, make sure that you have all that you will need… for you will face your test alone. Go, and may the Force serve you well.”

[ketzwrites]

oh ketz, you participating on magnus month is amazing😍🤧 26, perhaps?

Of course, amor! Hope you enjoy this little piece. I might have gone a little overboard on the cheesy, though.

Available on AO3.

26. “I think I’ve been holding myself from falling in love with you all over again.”

For most people, falling in love is the single most scary thing a human being can do. Mostly because one does not control it: the heart wants what it wants. It is hard, almost impossible to willingly put yourself in such a vulnerable position. Falling in love requires courage, it demands trust. It is a miracle in itself.

Falling in love twice and with the same person? That is a transcending experience.

Magnus Bane has experienced love before. Pure, unwavering love from his mother, but also twisted and possessive love from his father. Magnus has received and given a great deal of love to his friends, a sort of love that is precious in its platonic form. And, of course, Magnus has experienced romantic love. He lived through some great love stories, the stuff movies are made of. From forbidden to all-consuming, from gentle to destructive. Magnus’s heart has raced, jumped, froze, and broke.

But it has never gone through all of it because of a single person. Not until Alec Lightwood came into his life, almost seven years ago.

They had met after a lecture Magnus administrated in the History Department of NYU. As Head of the Languages Department and famous translator, Magnus often attended discussions on ancient languages. It wasn’t supposed to be anything new.

Alec’s presence, though, elevated that afternoon to extraordinary. A grad student, Alec had stayed late after Magnus was done. He had a proposition to make and they decided to discuss it over coffee. It had been a while someone was so passionate about Magnus’ job and it helped that Alec wasn’t bad to look at. Magnus had no problems joining his project: a complete study of ancient religious texts on the Nephilim and their origins.

It was a group project, so it wasn’t just Magnus and Alec. There was Simon Lewis, the specialist in ancient Judaism. Alec’s own sister, Isabelle Lightwood, a forensic scientist who was there to explain the Nephilim’s biology. Finally, they also had Dr. Luke Garroway, from the Philosophy Department.

In reality, though, Magnus spent most of his time with Alec, who was in charge of studying the texts. They worked together for hours, reading and translating, making sense of original texts. Somewhere along the way, they also fell in love.

It was a gentle kind of love, one born out their shared curiosity and work ethic. Magnus admired Alec’s mind even more than he did his body. In return, he could see the reverence in the way Alec looked at him, how much Alec cared for his opinions and inputs. There was an innocence to their love that Magnus cherished beyond words.

But it was also a tumultuous love. Their fights could start out academic but were always about something else. Magnus was used to dating people from all kinds of different backgrounds: rich and poor, beautiful inside or out, men or women. They were all interesting, instigating people. Magnus could lose himself in their worlds, participate in their journeys. He could translate their experiences into his own, live hundreds of lives through someone else’s eyes.

Not so much with Alec. Magnus could be a part of Alec’s project, but Alec wanted to be a part of Magnus’ life. He wanted to get to know Magnus beyond the translator, beyond the makeup and fancy clothes, beyond the flippant attitude and the sharp mind. And that terrified Magnus to no end.

It was, in fact, so daunting that Magnus couldn’t take it anymore. Once the project was done, he broke things up with Alec. That was the worst night in Magnus’ entire life. Worse than when he realized what a monster his father was, worse than when he found out Camille had been cruelly stringing him along for years. That night, Magnus was the bad guy, the one breaking someone else’s heart. The one breaking both of their hearts.

That night, Magnus was making a mistake. One that would haunt him for seven years.

It wasn’t like Magnus never saw Alec again after that, though. He did, especially after Alec became a teacher at NYU himself. But they didn’t talk anymore, no more than a nod or a greeting in the corridor. It was an awkward thing, but something that they grew used to doing. Over the years, Magnus could even say they developed a quasi-friendship. He could still draw a snort from Alec in the faculty meetings, just as well as Alec could leave Magnus feeling proud with just a word or two.

But there was a shadow there, one that made all smiles die just as soon as they were born. A wall that Magnus had created around him, as if written in a language that nobody could understand. Magnus met other people after Alec, even fell in love once or twice. But every relationship was unlike before, they all lacked something. Something that Magnus couldn’t point out.

Not until he found himself in another joint project with Alec Lightwood. In this one, though, they were not going to directly work together. Magnus was paired up with another historian while Alec would be doing field work with some archeologists. They were not supposed to meet.

And yet, Magnus found himself seeing Alec more and more. It started with a simple consultation: Alec came into his office one day with a particularly intricate excerpt of an ancient book. Magnus had wondered why Alec had brought it to him and not any one of the other specialists from the Languages Department.

The honesty in Alec’s answer made Magnus’ heart race. “Because I trust you.”

After that, the awkwardness between them vanished. They saw each other regularly and Magnus couldn’t help but be excited every time. It was as if the seven years never existed.

No, it was more than that. It was as if the seven years had washed away all the problems they had. Suddenly, they were not just talking just about the project, but of themselves as well. Magnus was finally ready to answer Alec’s questions, to share parts of himself he had never revealed before. He didn’t know why or how, just that finally love felt like a language he knew again.

Still, there was something that felt off. When Alec asked Magnus out, officially and without reservations, Magnus’ heart jumped. For a second, he thought he wasn’t ready but then heard himself saying yes. That was when he stopped overthinking things, stopped to dread how everything would go wrong.  

That was when realization dawned upon Magnus. “Oh.”

Alec frowned. “What?”

“Just discovered something about myself,” Magnus said cheerfully. He then blinked, realizing his tone might not be the most appropriate. It was just so easy to talk to Alec now, he had stopped putting his guard up.

Well, not entirely true. But Alec didn’t seem to mind the strange tone. “And what is that?”

Magnus smiled. Honesty was Alec’s greatest strength. Magnus could make it his as well. “I think I’ve been holding myself from falling in love with you all over again.”

“Oh,” Alec blinked, clearly taken aback.

That was when Magnus’ heart froze. Had he screwed up? Was that not what Alec was expecting? Magnus couldn’t have been reading the signs wrongly, Alec had literally asked him out on a date. Still, if Magnus was wrong, had he just… Had he just admitted more than he should? Had he set him up for failure?

With surprise, Magnus realized that after the initial shock he didn’t quite care. What he said was the truth, about him and his feelings. He didn’t have to translate it, to transport a knowledge from one system to another. It was all there; intelligible, accessible. True.

“Does that mean that you are?” Alec asked carefully. “Falling in love with me all over again?”

A courage that Magnus didn’t know he possessed took over him and he nodded. “I am.”

Alec smiled, happiness coloring his face. “Good,” he said and took Magnus’ hand in his. “Because so am I.”

Love might be the single most scary emotion a human being can experience. It requires a lot, it risks too much. And, when one finds love, holding on to it can be difficult, sometimes even impossible.

But impossible just means one has to try again. One has to grow better, braver, surer. Love can only start from within, from loving oneself. When that happens, love takes but it also gives. Magnus’ heart had raced, jumped, and froze. But never again had it broke.

[solivar]

WIP: I Heard The Bells

aka the one where Jesse makes all his friends cry on Christmas for more than one reason

@joasakura remains the best for letting me use Tombo, Mizuchi, and Zentatsu

Content warning: somewhat more graphic than usual but still canon-typical violence, discussion/depiction of unpleasant gunshot wounds

Now with 100% more sassy navigational hijacker and everybody else going OMGWTFBBQ, though in many more words.

The packages arrived within hours of each other, in cascading order, earliest time zones first, on Christmas Eve. And, for a miraculous change, nothing -- no deficiencies of local air or ground mail delivery, no perfidious intent-thwarting issues of back-ordering or selling out, nobody failing to be where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there -- managed to screw a single solitary bit of it up. He watched it all come together as the delivery notifications popped up on his tablet, from the vantage of a cheapass hotel room in Fredericksburg while he waited for it to get dark enough and late enough to complete the last stage of his self-chosen mission.

Within sixteen minutes of the first delivery, his phone chimed with the tone he’d assigned to Genji the very instant he’d found out his former partner in twentysomething angst had shacked up in a Nepalese monastery with an omnic spiritual adviser. It was a gong. The most obnoxious gong available in open source sound files. Hearing it now brought an extremely satisfied little grin to his face, a grin that stretched a fraction wider with each new, unique text notification tone.

Really. It was almost as good as being there.

🌟

Dr. Angela Ziegler desired nothing more than sleep. She longed for the soft, cool embrace of her pillow as she desired absolutely nothing and no one else for years. The terrible, heavily bleached hospital sheets she and everyone else slept on called to her with the sweetest of siren voices. The door to the suite she shared with the two other doctors -- an infectious disease treatment specialist and an epidemic disease control specialist -- with whom she was coordinating the establishment of the world’s first teaching hospital interfacing all of their disciplines lay but a few feet away and she had, at that very moment, been awake so many hours in a row that she was perfectly willing to abandon a lifetime of heartfelt pacifism if someone would try to prevent her from reaching it. So close.

“Angela!”

And yet so far.

“Yes, Kate?” Katherine Solaja was an amazingly gifted young woman, afire with the desire to help others, a quick study and a steady head under pressure, and generally Angela was grateful to have such a talented young physician working with her. At the moment, however, she was firmly resisting the urge to introduce her resident to the truest meaning of the term ‘defenestration’ and then offer the last fifty-two sleepless hours as her defense when someone came to arrest her. Perhaps they would be kind enough to handcuff her to her bed and wheel her out that way.

“You have got to come down to the office. Something just arrived for you with the late mail drop-off.” Angela found her hand in Kate’s uncompromisingly energetic grip and, before her weary brain could formulate a coherent objection, she was being pulled down the hall and into the elevator.

“Kate,” Angela began.

“I know you’re tired, Angela. But I’m serious. You need to see this.” Kate was grinning, dark eyes shining with glee.

“What could possibly be so -- “

“Trust me. You’re going to want to see this.”

The elevator doors hissed open and Angela again allowed herself to be dragged along, into the labrynth of offices that occupied the hospital’s lowest floors, her own inclusive, which seemed to contain entirely too many people for that time of day. Entirely too many, and most of them loitering in the vicinity of her own neatly arranged workspace, which at the moment contained a desk, three floor to ceiling bookshelves, a potted ficus, a tiny holotank in one corner, approximately the entire senior medical advisory staff, and a cylindrical object approximately three feet around and four feet tall, wrapped in silver paper neatly stamped down its side with air mail shipment codes.

“What in the name of God is that?” Angela asked, completely flummoxed.

“That’s what we’d all like to know.” Kate nudged her gently forward. “Like I said, it came in with the late mail. Go on, Angela, open it open it open it.”

“It’s -- “ Slowly, Angela’s weary mind put the pieces together -- the lateness of the day, the lateness of the year, the unexpected late delivery. “Oh, dear. It’s Christmas eve, isn’t it?”

She found herself collecting a series of pitying looks and, gathering the remains of her dignity about her, she stepped forward to examine the object. Not just silver paper, clearly -- it was a far heavier gauge than simple paper, wrapped in an overlapping scallop design that came together at the top beneath a medallion of what was probably not sealing wax but which artfully resembled it nonetheless. Fortunately, she had absentmindedly stuck a clean scalpel into her pen case earlier that day; it slid beneath the edge of the seal and disengaged it without damaging the seal itself. She palmed it into the pocket of her lab coat as the wrapping unfolded itself, expelling a burst of intensely cold air and releasing a genuine flurry of impossibly tiny snowflakes as it did so, glittering briefly in the artificially dry air of the hospital complex’ air conditioning. The entire assembly took a sudden breath, some ooohed, others ahhhed, there was at least one squeal that Angela suspected came from Kate.

The little Christmas tree contained inside the package was utterly perfect in every way, its blue fir branches glittering with a hint of frost, strung with beaded golden and crimson garland, hung with impossibly tiny and perfect blown glass ornaments, the angel atop it bearing a rather suggestive resemblance to her Valkyrie suit as occupied by she herself. Piled at its base were a selection of equally tiny and perfect individually wrapped presents, all of them tagged with her name in a hand she knew well.

“You’ve been holding out on me,” Kate murmured as Angela bent down and retrieved one, opening it to reveal an orb of dark chocolate molded in the shape of a Christmas ornament. “You do have a secret admirer.”

Angela handed her the tiny gift box. “No...not an admirer. A brother.”

At that moment, her phone buzzed for the first time, and continued to do so steadily for the next three hours.

🌟

WickedCuteButDeadly:

Oh my God. OH MY GOD.

DeathFromAbove:

Are you kidding me? You too? Is is a tree? He sent you a tree, didn’t he.

WickedCuteButDeadly:

HE DID. IT’S SO CUTE I WANT TO DIE. AND -- look, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t have a good number for him, the last time he called me was, oh, maybe three months ago wanted to be sure he had a good snail mail addie for me, and I spent two hours chewing his ear about Em and how we met and how wonderful she was and how happy we were AND HE SENT US A PREPAID RESERVATION CARD FOR A COUPLES WEEKEND AT THIS SWANK SPA HOTEL IN PARIS AND THE NUMBER I HAVE FOR HIM IS NO GOOD ANYMORE AND I KNOW AT LEAST ONE OF YOU HAS TO KNOW HOW TO GET IN TOUCH WITH HIM. Ange, it’s you, isn’t it? It has to be you, you’re his DOCTOR.

DeathFromAbove:

My tree is covered in miniature planes from the dawn of aviation to the present. I’m afraid to open any of the boxes. My heart can only take so much.

WickedCuteButDeadly:

Do it. You know you want to, Fareeha.

DeathFromAbove: …

DeathFromAbove: …

DeathFromAbove: …

DeathFromAbove:

This is not okay. I can’t stop crying.

WickedCuteButDeadly: ????!!!!!!

DeathFromAbove:

You remember that huge old erector set I had as a kid? The one my father got me for...I want to say my tenth birthday? I lost it in one of the moves sometime before I went away to college and I swear I only told him about it once and he found it HE FOUND IT. I’VE GOT IT SITTING IN MY LAP RIGHT NOW. I don’t even know how he knew I was going to be in Vancouver for Christmas this year, I only finalized my plans two weeks ago!

WickedCuteButDeadly:

Angie, please.

DeathFromAbove:

Angela, you have GOT to tell us.

SantasLittlestHelper:

I don’t know how he remembers ALL THEIR NAMES and all their favorite candies. I’m their FATHER and I don’t remember all that at the same time.

🌟

Angela fell asleep with her phone still vibrating next to her on the bed, having given away far more of Teuscher’s wonderful champagne truffles than she actually ate herself and without receiving a reply to the text she sent to the one contact number she had.

🌟

The inner rooms of the monastery were, it was generally agreed by all residents and visitors, far warmer than the outer chambers -- the milled stone walls were paneled in ancient, fragrant wood, hung with the heavy woolen draperies woven in the radiant iris pattern of the Shambali order dyed in brilliant hues of saffron and emerald. They captured the warmth of strategically placed high efficiency solar powered ceramic heaters and the more traditional charcoal braziers and the banks of votary candles in the memorial shrine dedicated to Tekhartha Mondatta, kept it close for the succour of the monastery’s handful of entirely human residents. Most were postulants to the order, men and women who had come from all corners of the Earth, drawn by the offer of all-encompassing inclusion and acceptance that lay at the core of the Shambali philosophy. Some were tourists -- the monastery opened its doors to the curious as well as the dedicated, provided they were willing to respect the customs of the order during the course of their stay. Only one was a professional assassin.

The assassin occupied one of the outermost of the inner chambers -- it was cooler, markedly so, but also significantly less likely to result in being forced to interact involuntarily with another human being, particularly the sort of human being likely to seriously strain his minimal tolerance for idiocy. (There were a number of wealthy tourists on hand at the moment, forced by the weather to wait for the next stage of their pre-packaged Journey Of Enlightenment, and they were growing gradually less enamored with the pursuit of spiritual evolution and union in the soul of the world with every passing day, most of which were exceedingly cold. The monks tolerated them because the tour companies always donated generously on top of the standard fees, the novices tolerated them because they could always claim to be functioning under vows of silence in order to escape unsatisfactory conversations, and the assassin tolerated them, barely, because there were simply not enough places to hide all the bodies -- the snow piled at the bottom of the cliff would, after all, melt eventually.) He had arrived at the end of autumn, just ahead of the first snows, greeted with an excess of enthusiasm by his brother -- a student of Tekhartha Zenyatta -- that many considered equal parts ill-advised and adorable, and, after a lengthy private interview with the elder sibling serving as abbot that season, was permitted to stay. He selected a room on the same corridor as the chambers his brother and the mendicant Zenyatta occupied when they were in residence, and thereafter he was an enticing mystery to the rest of the monastery’s inhabitants, a phantom within its walls, nearly invisible unless he chose to be seen and he almost never allowed it. The cooks saw more of him than the monks, for he would occasionally take his meals in their company, and the security team that patrolled the plateau on which the monastery sat, who occasionally witnessed the feats of physical prowess he indulged in during his personal exercise regime. The best chance anyone else had of seeing him was on one of those rare days when he made use of one of the public chapels or meditation rooms, rather than retiring to the privacy of his own chamber.

It was therefore a matter of some note when, one morning just at the edge of dawn, when no one but the earliest-rising novices would be stirring, he emerged from his quarters dressed in a manner that would not have looked out of place in a painting of the Heian imperial court, carrying a small rolled silk case in the crook of one arm. Word of this astonishing sight -- rendered even more astonishing by the sharp contrast with his decidedly untraditional hair and even less traditional piercings -- made the rounds from novice to support staff back to novice and from there to more than a few monks while he was still crossing the courtyard to the dokhang. By the time he set foot on the first of the five staircases he would thereafter climb, the prayer hall was at least half-full of novices, monks, and three sleep-groggy tourists, most of whom shamelessly watched him in his progress, for reasons ranging from wildly irrepressible curiosity to absolute prurience, for no one could deny the sight of him at that moment was one of the most glorious to be found on the mountain. At the top of the fifth and final staircase, he retired to one of the uppermost meditation chambers, politely declined the offer of a senior monk to bring him anything that he might require to effectuate his devotions, and slid the door shut.

🌟

It took twenty minutes to grind the ink to his satisfaction and another twenty to make certain that it was warm enough in the vicinity of the plate for his chosen medium to remain in its liquid state. The upper meditation rooms were, in general, fiercely cold at the best of times and today the cold was particularly penetrating -- the wind was light but constant, dry enough to suck the last lingering traces of moisture out of any exposed skin, and with a certain cutting edge to it that suggested the weather might be about to make one of its unpredictable high altitude changes. The pass leading up from the next nearest village had only just been cleared enough to allow passage the evening prior; below in the courtyard, the tourists were making good their chance at escape. At the moment, the sky was a pure and perfect shade of blue that reminded him of his dragons’ scales, the snow-capped Himalayan peaks that ringed the monastery’s high plateau shone savagely in the thin winter sunlight and undulated away in a manner that reminded him of their coils as they flew, and he wanted nothing more than to capture the image in paper and ink. The exceedingly traditional multiple layers of heavy winter clothing simply meant he could do so without freezing to death while in the best painter’s vantage point in all of Shambali.

He rendered the faint, nearly invisible filaments of windbourne snow curling away from the saw-backed ridge of the mountains in the palest, pearlescent shades of gray, the bones of the mountains themselves in a darker wash, a wider stroke. The snow itself was nothing more than the pure white of the silk on which he painted, it existence delineated in washes of pale gray that established the shape of the snow line, the jut of stone and ice in slightly darker shades. It was soothing, to create so, allowing the brush to dance and the ink to sing in a way that he had not for years, having neither the leisure nor, if he were being honest with himself, the desire. Painting had given him great peace and joy as a child, and even as a young adult; as an adult, with violence and death as his closest companions, it seemed nearly obscene to engage in such pleasures, the perversion of an art of which his hands were no longer worthy. He still did not feel worthy, precisely, but now his own absence of virtue seemed to matter somehow less, enough that he could lose himself in the serenity of drawing his brush across an unblemished length of silken canvas, allow his thoughts to vanish into the concentration needed to compose each stroke, to contemplate nothing but the image taking shape before him. His spirit was as still as the surface of a lake on a windless day, tranquil enough that, when the dragons stirred within him to watch what he was doing, it disturbed him not at all and, for the briefest of instants, his awareness became theirs and theirs became his --

Something sent a ripple of dissonance through them -- through them and into him, jarring his concentration and, very nearly, his arm, and it was only intensely disciplined reflexes that saved the stroke from complete ruination. For an instant, the insides of his skull were a jumble of perception and emotion not his own -- a flash of something silver, a flash of something green-gold-crimson, a breath of cold, surprise childlike delight a sudden stab of sorrow so intense it brought involuntary tears to his eyes and made Tombo keen softly --

Hanzo blinked the tears -- not his own -- out of his eyes, set his brush carefully aside, and briefly considered the stairs before deciding that swinging over the window ledge, sliding down the secondary roof, and climbing down the side of the dokhang was altogether more efficient, particularly once he shed a few layers of clothing. Fortunately, most of the tourists had already departed the courtyard; also fortunately, those that were left contented themselves with gawking and did nothing to impede him as he crossed the distance between the prayer hall and the monastery’s living quarters at a dead sprint. The cluster of human and omnic novices gathered in the dormitory’s central common hall was too small to be called a crowd, no more than a handful really, but they effectively screened the source of the distress that had cried out to him. Fortunately, they also knew, to a being, that it was generally best to get out of his way.

“Genji?”

His brother sat cross-legged in the middle of the common room floor in front of what looked, to his eye at least, like a fully decorated albeit miniature Christmas tree -- branches somehow frost-coated despite the relative warmth of the room, tiny ornaments glittering and, unless he was seriously mistaken, that was a Pachimaru sitting on the top, where an angel or a star ought to be. It was. A Pachimaru. Genji’s head was in his hands and his shoulders were quivering silently and there was a box sitting open on his lap. And not a single one of any of those things made the slightest trace of sense, taken individually or together, and so he knelt, and carefully placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, firmly resisting the urge to shake something resembling an answer out of him before he was ready to provide it on his own.

It took some moments before Genji was ready to speak and, when he did, his voice was not steady, synthesized or not. “I -- My apologies, aniki. I did not mean to disturb you. But I...was not expecting this, in any way.”

“You did not disturb me.” Softly. “What has happened? Why -- “

Silently, Genji showed him the package. Inside, nestled carefully in a mass of impact-resistant wrap and neon green tissue paper, were a pair of hand-held game machines, one black with green fittings, the other black and red. Perplexed, Hanzo looked up and found his brother’s eyes swimming again with unshed tears and, before he had even the slightest chance to construct a reasonable interrogative about either, Genji’s head was resting in the crook of his neck and his shoulder. He did, at least, know what to do about that, and wrapped his brother close. It seemed to be the correct choice, for shortly thereafter Genji began to speak again, softly. “When I was...first recovering...the initial neuromechanical attunement was...complex. I could not walk reliably for weeks. I was confined to the medical research complex at Watchpoint Geneva for much of it. I was losing my mind from the boredom -- I was not yet allowed access to anything and then...one day...someone found out about it and decided enough was enough. And brought me these.” A pause. “Well, probably not these particularly since these are much newer but...the same thing. Something to distract me. To help with something that...simply made me feel better.” He could hear the smile, tremulous thought it might be, in his brother’s voice. “I can imagine that Jesse would think a monastery on the top of a mountain in the middle of the winter would be the very definition of madness-inducing boredom.”

“Jesse?” The word itched at the back of Hanzo’s mind, familiar for no good reason that he could name.

“Jesse McCree.” Genji pronounced that ridiculous surname with the ease of long familiarity. “A comrade in arms and a very dear friend.” A flicker of expression crossed his face, a welter of emotions mostly visible in his expressive eyes. “I have often wished -- “

“McCree.” Hanzo knew he was mangling it, and the uncontrollable twitch at the corner of Genji’s mouth confirmed it. “Are you certain this came from him?”

“It is extremely likely. He knew that Zenyatta and I would be here through the winter and his Christmas gifts in the past have been…” Genji gestured eloquently. “Not quite as elaborate as this, but always well-meant and heartfelt. He cannot be with us, and so instead sends the best that he can give.”

“Why?” Hanzo caught the tiny package Genji tossed at him and opened it to find it contained higashi, carefully shaped in the form of snowflakes, tinted blue and silver, and he decided in that instant whatever faults the absent friend might possess, bad taste was not among them.

“Not all of us joined, or left, with a clean slate.” Unspoken: Overwatch. “Jesse attempted to wipe his clean but circumstances conspired against him, then and now. He -- “

It clicked into place then -- suddenly and all at once, he knew where he had heard that name before, and in what context, and he forced his face empty of expression. “Genji.” He reached into the innermost pocket of his clothing and drew out his tablet, thumbed open the lock, scrolled through the most recent half-dozen of his contracts, made his selection, and handed it to his brother. “Is this your friend?”

Genji’s brows knit momentarily. “How -- ?” He looked, and read, and the last of the color fled the scarred skin of his face.

“Someone attempted to hire me to kill him before I came here.” Hanzo replied.

🌟

GreenCyborgNinjaDude has joined the conversation.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Does anyone know how to contact Jesse?

DeathFromAbove: LET ME GUESS. He sent you a TREE and EVERYTHING UNDER IT made you cry like a two year old?

WickedCuteButDeadly: I DID NOT CRY. We both cried, it’s not the same thing if everyone’s crying all at once.

DoNotHassleTheHoff: A case of the finest Schwarzbier, a currywurst sampler, and two tickets to the Hasselfest tribute concert next year. Tears were shed. MANLY TEARS.

SantasLittlestHelper: He remembered the names of all my children AND my wife AND somehow knew that I needed a new portable thermal anvil. I suspect a conspiracy.

DeathFromAbove: And Angela isn’t answering her phone --

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: My friends, please. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. Do ANY OF YOU have good contact information for him? The number I had now belongs to a very pleasant young woman who did not appear to speak any of the languages I know.

DeathFromAbove: Not I.

SantasLittlestHelper: Alas, no, or I’d have used it.

DoNotHassleTheHoff: Nein.

WickedCuteButDeadly: I was trying to get someone to cough it up earlier. Still think Angie’s our best bet but she’s not picking up or answering texts.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: This is bad.

WickedCuteButDeadly: What’s the ish, Genji?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: I have unfortunately excellent reason to believe that he is in danger. MORTAL danger.

DeathFromAbove: …

WickedCuteButDeadly: …

DoNotHassleTheHoff: …

SantasLittlestHelper: …

WickedCuteButDeadly: SPILL IT.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: An...acquaintance...here in the monastery witnessed the arrival of my present and recognized Jesse’s name when I spoke of him, and indicated to me that he was offered a contract on Jesse’s life before he came to Nepal, but ultimately declined.

DeathFromAbove: An ACQUAINTANCE? At the MONASTERY?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: It is a very long story. But I have no reason to doubt him or consider his information in any way not credible. The request came through a contract broker my acquaintance has worked with more than once in the past -- I have seen enough of the negotiation to know that, whoever made the request, they knew enough of Jesse’s service with Blackwatch to extend specific warning of his abilities. And they seem to know where he is going to be tonight.

WickedCuteButDeadly: TONIGHT?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Yes. The contractor seems to believe he will be at Arlington National Cemetery tonight.

WickedCuteButDeadly: IT’S CHRISTMAS!

DeathFromAbove: I’m pretty sure anybody willing to put out a hit on someone isn’t really going to care about that, Lena.

WickedCuteButDeadly: I KNOW that but -- it’s the PRINCIPLE of the thing! And at

DoNotHassleTheHoff: Gabriel’s grave. He is going to visit Gabriel’s grave.

DeathFromAbove: I’m trying Angela again. Is there anybody in the eastern United States right now? ANYBODY?

WickedCuteButDeadly: If we took off from Gibraltar RIGHT NOW it would take us at least eleven hours to get there -- we couldn’t cruise at commercial air altitude -- and we can’t take off right now, I’d have to fuel up for a long-haul flight and run preflight checks and

DeathFromAbove: I’m closer and I’m still not close enough, Lena. It’s not your fault. Angela, please, please pick up.

🌟

Genji was distraught. That, alone, was astonishing -- Genji, as a young adult, had been charismatic, effortlessly charming to all except the eldest and most hidebound members of the clan, almost casually lethal with everything from blades to the edge of his tongue, and as utterly self-absorbed as it was possible to be. Hanzo, then, had thought he could count the number of people his brother actually cared about on the fingers of one hand, if that, and rarely considered himself among the number.

Hanzo, now, had more than one reason to reevaluate his judgment. He had not anticipated, when he made his decision to follow Genji to Nepal and make the attempt to reconcile all that had passed between them, that he would witness his brother in fear for the life of another. It occupied the precise space between astonishing and heartwrenching and Hanzo, for the first time in a long time, had no idea how to react.

“There must be something that can be done,” Genji muttered, on his sixth pass around the perimeter of the dormitory common room, now cleared of random bystanders by the order of the abbott, who had sent senior monks to shoo them back to their own neglected tasks. He was dialing another number that could, in theory, be used to contact Dr. Angela Ziegler who, it seemed, could be anywhere from Zurich to some godforsaken war zone without even the most basic communication service; the woman did not, apparently, even take holidays off and she was, in the estimation of all, the most likely to know how to reach Jesse McCree. Thus far, no one had managed to raise her.

His brother was, at most, sixteen seconds away from literally climbing the walls in his anxiety, for which Hanzo could not at all blame him. A discreet nibble around the edges to his intermediary had yielded the information that the contract was no longer available -- not cancelled but accepted and closed to further interested parties. That was, in his estimation, no good news whatsoever, given that he had been directly and personally approached for the matter. His particular skills, areas of expertise, and reputation placed him among fairly rarified company in the loose and not especially friendly society of freelance killers-for-hire; he could think of three who could reasonably be considered his equals and only one his superior and none whom he would wish to bet against in matters of life or death.

Genji uttered a number of uncomplimentary things under his breath in Japanese and came to a halt, folding into a place at his side, deliberately and carefully setting down his phone between them. Hanzo rather thought he wanted to throw it, either against the nearest wall or off the side of the mountain, and that impression was confirmed an instant later as Genji flexed his hands, his wrists, flicked weapons from beneath the armor his forearms, between his fingers, and then back into their housing, nothing about the gesture bleeding any tension from the set of his shoulders, the length of his body. “Hanzo.”

“Suzume.” He rested his hand on Genji’s shoulder and could not miss the shudder that passed through him.

“Please tell me that he will survive this.” It emerged as a whisper, barely given voice at all.

It was on the tip of his tongue to utter a comforting lie. He was spared the necessity of making it sound convincing by a soft chiming, almost as of bells, and an equally quiet voice. “My apologies, Shimada-san. It was not my intention to interrupt.”

Genji took a ragged breath. “Master.”

“Tekhartha.” Hanzo inclined his head slightly in greeting. “No apology is necessary, and your company is welcome.”

It was only a slight overstatement; Genji found his deepest comfort in the companionship of his mentor, and comfort was what his brother needed more than anything but a solution right now. Tekhartha Zenyatta, hovering in the doorway yet, bowed from the neck and floated to Genji’s side. In his wake, the senior Shambali monk acting as the monastery’s abbot also entered the hall and, if it were possible for machines to look thoroughly and utterly uncomfortable, Hanzo would have used those words to describe his posture, the set of his spine.

“It was not my intention to interrupt,” Zenyatta continued in that same perfectly modulated voice, the one that he adopted when he was strenuously controlling the urge to allow the direction of his thoughts to show in his tone, “but I feel that I must do so. It has been brought to my attention,” out of the corner of his eye, Hanzo swore he saw the omnic abbot actually flinch slightly, “that we have at our disposal a means of reaching your friend more swiftly than we thought.”

Tekhartha Zenyatta turned what had to be the most heavily weighted look Hanzo had ever witnessed between two omnics on his brother, the abbot, who responded with a low, deep bow -- to Zenyatta, to Genji, and, peripherally, to himself. When he spoke, his voice was also a carefully expressionless tone. “Some months ago, after much discussion among the elder siblings in residence here in Shambali,” the faintest hint of reproach colored residence, Hanzo thought, “it was decided that we required a more reliable method of transport into and out of the monastery in the event of an emergency -- physical danger to the community in the form of attack, or an inability to resupply by our ordinary methods due to weather. We therefore entered into a contract with the Vishkar Corporation to meet our needs in this regard.”

“What Brother Dzasatta is trying to say,” Zenyatta cut in, coolly, “is that the monastery is now equipped with an active short range telestation.”

“What.” It was not actually a question and Genji surged to his feet in a sinuous motion that, only barely, remembered to turn into a bow. “Brother Dzasatta, may we -- “

“Yes. Yes, you may.” The poor abbott sounded as though it gave him enormous pain just to say it and Hanzo could not help but wonder how many arms Zenyatta had to twist, and with how much enthusiasm, to achieve that permission. “We have already calculated your route. Our telestation is not powerful enough to reach the United States directly -- you will have to transit in stages, from here to Tehran, Tehran to Istanbul, Istanbul to Madrid, and Madrid to Washington, DC. The arrangements have already been made but you must depart soon.”

“Thank you, elder brother.” Genji bowed again, lower this time, and then turned to him. “Aniki, I must -- “

“I know.” Hanzo rose. “Give me a moment to change and retrieve my case and I will -- “

The force of his brother’s embrace lifted him entirely off the floor.

🌟

Columbarium Court Nine would, in any other place, have been a cemetery all by itself, a long fully walled quadruple rectangle of elegantly designed and expertly tended landscaping, the perfectly flat-cobbled lanes between the niche walls kept clear of snow in the winter and leaves in the autumn and blowing blossoms from the flowering trees in the spring, the marble benches discreetly placed just so in the central memorial garden, around the fountain, for mourners to sit and collect themselves, before or after or both. Since it was sitting in Arlington National Cemetery, it just happened to have the distinction of being the largest of several of its kind, originally part of an expansion intended to extend the useful life of the cemetery, and then expanded twice more in the years since its construction, home to sixty thousand inurnment niches, about half of which were in use. By day it was the very image of martial, commemoratory solemnity, row upon row of variegated gray stone walls faced in gleaming white memorial plaques, surrounded outside in row upon row of headstones and monuments and, in at least a few places, something vaguely resembling a serious attempt at security fencing, mostly around the places where, paradoxically, people were supposed to enter the grounds.

Jesse McCree had been to Arlington National Cemetery exactly once by daylight and the occasion still resided under the heading of the Worst Day of My Life in his memory, only dragged out and examined under duress or too much terrible whiskey in the middle of the night or some combination of the two. Subsequently, he kept his visits confined to those hours when he was distinctly unlikely to encounter another living being -- well after official closing time, far after dark, and he never bothered hopping one of the more properly fency fences while it was possible to jump off the top of the last metro train of the evening, over the significantly lower back-end fence along the tracks, and walk the rest of the way under the cover of night and the thin copses of trees still left standing along the perimeter. It was particularly possible that night: bitter cold and dark, the moon a brushstroke crescent hanging low in the west, the rest of the sky an empty arch of light pollution that offered no help to unenhanced eyes. He had a flashlight clipped to his belt for the parts of the walk that lay outside the nimbus of the security lamps scattered along the main thoroughfares, routes he generally avoided, in any case -- the grounds weren’t patrolled, but there was always a full guard complement on station, rotating on and off watch at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier through the night. And, once he was inside the outer wall of the Columbarium, through the arch of the ungated gate, he had no need, could find his way to where he was going without eyes if necessary.

Overwatch had its own monument, plunked down on one of the plots set aside for the memorialization of future disasters, immediately next to the significantly larger one dedicated to all the victims of the Omnic Crisis, civilian, military, and otherwise. One of them was, in fact, a columbarium in its own right, laid out in the form of the organization’s insignia, Morrison’s nonstandard gravestone beneath which his ashes were interred dead center, and every former member of Overwatch who had also first been a member of the American armed forces had the at least theoretical right to be buried there. In practice, “anyone” included a specific exclusion, for the obvious reasons, particularly when the six layers of international and domestic bureaucratic fuckery involved in the decisions related to who got to rest where could veto each other and reject requests for reconsideration until Hell froze over solidly. The Marine Corps, by way of contrast, had authorized Silvia Reyes’ request on behalf of her late brother without hesitation -- Major Gabriel Reyes had, after all, saved the entire goddamned world while still under their colors and, even if the rest of his service record was so classified God himself wasn’t rated high enough to access it, that was something they never forgot for one minute.

Gabe’s niche was in the newer segment of Court Nine, in one of the alcoves at the far end of the whole structure, a quiet and secluded little spot equipped with its own sculpted marble bench and a little patch of garden around the base of a wide-spreading sakura, currently winter bare, a bit of ice clinging to its corners. The plaque wasn’t quite centered in the back wall but it was at least still mostly aligned with the bench, more or less at eye level, polished white marble incised with his name and final rank, Omnic Crisis, two dates nowhere near far enough apart, You Are Not Forgotten. Silvia and Lorena always came in the summer, on his birthday, to make sure the plaque was tended and to lay flowers; he always came at Christmas, by mutual agreement, to lay the wreath.

The wreath, this year, was tiny, a braided confection of evergreen and holly made by the same former client who’d constructed the trees, strung through with strands of beaded garland in black, white, red, and came with a hook small enough to hang on the lip of the plaque. He fussed with it a bit until it looked just right. “Been awhile, shizhé’é’. Got quite a bit to catch you up on.”

The glass and the bottle wrapped up in his pockets had come through the jump-off-the-train-and-roll routine without a scratch, fortunately, though both were warmer than they’d been when he set out. He cracked the seal and a scent more in common with summer filled the cold air, cherries and almonds, the liquor clear as it  poured, the kirschwasser he’d developed a taste for while living in Switzerland. It wasn’t sweet, which Jesse had always thought completely defeated the point of drinking something that tasted like cherries, and he had never gotten even slightest buzz from it, because there wasn’t a booze on Earth strong enough to overcome his super-science-enhance metabolism, but he’d loved the flavor and thus the cemetery caretakers had acquired an encyclopedic collection of fine European lifewaters over the years. He left both the glass and the bottle sitting on the bench next to him.

“You remember how I told you last year that Ylva was pregnant out to here and we were all making bets on when she’d pop? Well, she didn’t make it two weeks past New Year and guess what? They finally did it. Gabriel Matthias Lindholm.” A smile curled one corner of his mouth. “I understand he’s already a precocious little troublemaker who escaped his bassinet Mission Impossible style before he was eight months old so your legacy is in good hands.”

Somebody wasn’t moving as quietly as they could have -- that was an unmistakably distinct scrape of boots on stone. Jesse reached down and unclipped his spurs, tucking them into a pocket.

“Lena finally stopped dodging long enough to actually get asked on a date -- they moved in together last month. And, yeah, it was the one Angie spent two years trying to set her up with. Two years. You’d think she’d have eventually given up but noooo.”

He unclipped a stun grenade from his belt, thumbed it over to maximum yield on the flash, minimum on the bang, and deactivated the micro electromagnetic pulse generator entirely, because he didn’t need even minor twitch issues with his arm right now. The yahoo -- or, more likely, yahoos -- dithering on just the other side of the alcove wall weren’t likely to dither for much longer and so he set the timer for fifteen seconds, boosted himself up the outside wall with just a slight gravity anchor assist, waited for them to round the corner, dropped into the alcove they had just vacated, and shielded his eyes. The detonation wasn’t quite as impressive as it would have been if he’d left everything cranked as high as it could go and, even so, it was more than sufficient for the purpose to which he’d put it -- the pair of would-be assailants, one big, the other bigger, staggering around the alcove in visibly disoriented anguish were wearing night vision gear. Jesse indulged in an infinitesimally tiny amount of pity for perhaps a tenth of a second before he introduced Big’s head to the edge of the alcove partition wall with force sufficient to break a few of the more delicate bones in his face and robbed Bigger of the remains of his senses and the free use of his jaw with a firmly to-the-point left. The echoes of the grenade’s sonic component were still propagating across the rolling fields of the cemetery as they hit the ground and if that didn’t poke a stick into the honor guard relief quarters and swish it around a few times, nothing would, and that gave him little time to work.

Big was carrying a heavy shock baton, one of the new school tasers hung heavy enough to work on an omnic or a cybernetically enhanced human, and a pepper-box muzzled sidearm whose ammo looked more like a reinforced hypodermic needle than a standard flechette. Bigger had one of those, too, and another baton, and a couple cylinders he knew for a fact were area-of-effect neurodisruption ordnance. “This is a goddamned cemetery. And it’s Christmas. You couldn’t wait for me to walk out?”

He tossed both the flechette guns and their extra ammo over the far wall, with the hope that they would meet their end under the wheels of a passing truck or at the very least not end up pointed at him. He slid both shock batons through his belt, the taser in the pocket not containing his spurs, and briefly considered the neurodisruptor grenades before the quiet hiss of static caught his attention. Bigger had a still-active comm in his ear and a bit of attention lent to it gave him the knowledge that his present companions were not alone (too much to ask for), there were at least six other teams of two positioned at strategic points (the entrances/exits, the major cross lanes), and two of them were being sent to investigate What the Hell That Was. Jesse cheerfully decided he knew what he was going to do with the neuro grenades.

The best and worst aspects of the Columbarium were one and the same. The pathways were wide and open, particularly the main thoroughfares running through the midline and up both sides, easily traversed when searching for a grave, obstruction-free fields of fire in the admittedly not planned for instance of the place turning into a combat zone. The niche walls themselves varied in altitude, from little more than waist high (good enough for cover in a pinch) to the overhead gate caps at least ten feet off the ground (perfect platforms for enfilading fire). Staying low yielded some advantages, but not enough. Jesse detached the night vision goggles from Bigger’s face and used the last of the charge in his gravity anchor to retake the high ground, hugging close to the outside wall as he put healthy distance between himself and the initial point of contact, scanning across the visible territory through the night vision goggles, careful not to look directly at any of the security lights.

There was the team he arbitrarily chose to call Dumbass One and Dumbass Two, approaching from the central memorial garden in staggered order. From what he could see, hunkered down in the shadow of one of the enormous memorial trees growing along the Columbarium perimeter, Dumbass One was carrying a flechette gun at the ready and Dumbass Two had a taser in hand, both had a baton, arguing for organization and standardized equipage, and yet no recognizable insignia. He swept the upper levels, found no one hanging out up top with him, or at the very least no one visible. He moved, quickly, because D1 and D2 were about to discover the present he’d left sitting on the trussed-with-their-own-MOLLE-webbing colleagues in Gabe’s alcove. The subsequent involuntary screaming was, indeed, music to his ears and also helped cover the largely unintentional noises he made jumping between outer wall and niche wall and then scrambling up to the top of the gate.

Something was going down at the far edge of the enclosure beyond the central garden -- he caught a flicker of movement between the walls, there and gone again before he could properly focus on it, a strangled, choked-off cry in the distance. Beyond that: headlights coming down one of the internal access roads, a hoverjeep no doubt carrying a team of honor guards off rotation coming to investigate the brouhaha, which officially made cutting and running the least morally defensible of his options -- if he hadn’t been there, neither would Dumbasses One through Twelve, and whoever was in that vehicle would be spending a long, boring winter’s night freezing their asses off or recovering from the same, not in danger of strolling into the middle of a fight with opponents armed to, at the very least, mess their central nervous systems up good and proper.

Fortunately, it looked like D1 and D2 had been the team assigned to cover the central garden, with its low enclosing wall and an exit into the rest of the cemetery on each side, and no one else had moved in yet to replace them. Or, if they had, that team hadn’t made it yet; he waited, tensely, feeling acutely exposed in his present perch while he watched for his most recent victims’ backup to arrive and received nothing for the effort. Whatever was going on at the far side had migrated to the east, close to the furthest gate; he could hear, just at the edge of range aided by the Columbarium’s accoustics, the faint thwipthwipthwipthwip of semiautomatic flechette fire. Running footsteps, approaching quickly, and he dropped flat against the top of the gate, watched arbitrarily assigned Dumbass Three and Four running down the narrow corridor between the outer wall of the Columbarium and the inner wall of the garden, foregoing the exit and sprinting almost directly towards him. He unclipped a second stun grenade and lobbed it as they came in range, flash and sonics both fully engaged, pulled off the goggles and covered up.

Dumbass Three was having trouble keeping on their feet, blind and deaf and off-balance after catching a face full of less-lethal ordnance. Dumbass Four was clinging helplessly to the edge of the garden wall. Jesse dropped off the side of the gate, landed in a roll, came up swinging with one of the shock batons, and caught D3 under the chin; the impact was almost disconcertingly satisfying as was the solid thud as they landed in a senseless heap. “Seriously. Christmas. In a cemetery. What is wrong with you people?”

D4 collected a sharp blow to the gut and folded, which he found somewhat surprising, before he realized they were already wounded, ballistic armor smeared with tacky blood and something long and thin jutting out of the shoulder joint. An arrow. An arrow that had cleanly pierced armor specifically designed to prevent just that eventuality. Of all the evening’s surprises that was, he decided, probably the most surprising thus far.

The distinctive pop of military standard-issue small arms fire joined the second round of echoes and the ongoing flechette thwipping and he filed armor-piercing arrows, provenance unknown under things to investigate once he was closer to the action. He took a moment to make certain D3 and D4 wouldn’t get back up without assistance and ducked into the garden corridor, keeping low and moving quickly. Up ahead, the sound of caps popping grew more frequent and more widely spread. On the far side of the cemetery, the Old Post Chapel’s belltower began sounding the hour in low pealing tolls and, beneath it, he heard the sharply echoing bark of a rifle firing, from above and behind.

🌟

“That may have been one of Jesse’s stun grenades,” Genji remarked in an undertone, as they crouched together in the deepest available pool of shadow, watching as armed and armored individuals took up station at strategic points throughout the cemetery.

A moment before, an intensely brilliant flash lit the far southern end of the Columbarium and a not insignificant portion of the sky above it; even as far away as they were, Hanzo was still blinking after-images out of his eyes after a single unwary glance. More worrisome were the echoes of the detonation, which would no doubt be audible for some distance. “I suspect, then, that he has made contact.”

“No doubt.” Once again, he could hear the smile in his brother’s voice and it was not a kindly one. “Shall we make the odds somewhat more even?”

“A moment.” Hanzo closed his eyes, pressed the tips of two fingers to his brow, and silently bespoke Zentatsu and Mizuchi, where they coiled within his flesh and soul, begging the aid of their clarity of vision. When he opened them again, it was as though the night had fled, replaced by a flat and shadowless stormlight that dispelled the advantage of darkness. He murmured his thanks and turned an unkind smile of his own in Genji’s direction. “Right or left?”

“Left.” Genji was up and over their concealing wall with a speed that exceeded even his own dragon-enhanced vision, little more than a flicker of motion briefly silhouetted against the sky.

He waited for the soft but unmistakable sounds of Genji introducing himself to the pair guarding the southern entrance before leaving the alcove himself, clinging close to the outer wall until he drew even with the next team, one to a side along the midline thoroughfare, crouched and waiting for something to come in their direction. Neither saw him, dressed to blend into the darkness and indistinct in a way that deceived the eye, even one equipped with night vision enhancements; he climbed the wall and slid forward on his belly to observe them at closer range. Ballistic armor, including what looked to be a military-grade helmet, night vision gear, communication equipment. Their sidearms looked too boxy for a silencer or flash suppression, and they were both carrying a baton of some kind. His curiosity itched, and he scratched it by firing a scatter arrow directly between them, flechettes radiating out from the point of impact in multiplying waves. The one closest to him fell with a howl of anguish, pinned to the ground; the further fell silently, with at least two slender shafts jutting from their throat. Hanzo dropped behind the howler and gave him peace and the world silence. He gathered up the gun and the baton and made good his escape before the running footsteps he heard approaching could reach his position, retreating to a spot atop the outside wall where he could both watch the pathways and examine his acquisitions.

The gun was a flechette pistol, which explained the boxy design, but the entire thing felt heavier than the weapons of that type with whom he was acquainted. He ejected the magazine and then a clip of the darts, found them to be substantially beyond standard, a projectile hypodermic flechette, reservoir filled with a clear liquid. He snapped a picture with his phone, making certain to catch the serial number engraved on the side of the dart, and sent it to Tekhartha Zenyatta, on station with their getaway vehicle. Tekhartha, please identify if possible.

The baton also modified -- weighted normally enough, sufficient to break unenhanced bone and pulverize unenhanced flesh, but also equipped with a shock generator heavy enough to overcome omnic, or cybernetically enhanced human, neuromechanical surge protection. He reached up and keyed the comm. “Genji, be careful. At least some of these creatures are armed with weapons that can harm you despite your armor.”

“Thank you, aniki.” Genji sounded slightly breathless and Hanzo glanced back in the direction he had come, concerned. “Be aware that our friends have brought more reinforcements than we originally suspected and also a team from Fort Myer has arrived to investigate.”

“Do you require my assistance?” Hanzo tucked the pistol into a jacket pocket and slid the baton into his belt, half-turning as he did so.

“No.” And now it sounded as though he were breathless with laughter. “I have the situation under control. Find Jesse -- if any proper soldiers reach him first, we may have to do something...regrettable.”

“As you wish.” He slipped his bow off his shoulder and nocked an arrow, arming the scattershot as he did so, and sped along the top of the outside wall as quickly as he could without compromising his balance. To his right, the midlane remained clear as he passed a second set of internal gates, to his left, something flickered in the corner of his eye, movement.

Hanzo stopped, spun, and snap-fired -- connecting, to his annoyance, with nothing. The arrow passed cleanly through empty air and came to rest somewhere amid the field of gravestones opposite the Columbarium and the access road running between. He remained in place for a moment, intensely still and watchful, waiting for whatever he had glimpsed to show itself.

Behind him, someone screamed. It was a brief, abortive, choked off thing followed shortly thereafter by a storm of semiautomatic flechette fire -- it sounded like more than one gun -- and running footsteps rapidly approaching his position. He nocked another arrow and waited, drawn to the ear, and loosed the instant the first target crossed into view. The arrow punched cleanly through the shoulder joint of their armor and they stumbled, half-falling and half-dragged by their partner as they both fled. A gust of something, a dark mist moving against the faint breeze, flowed down the midlane in pursuit and Hanzo followed as swiftly as he dared.

Ahead, the night dissolved into another intense burst of light, one he was spared by the grace of the dragons, and far more intense burst of sound -- loud enough to make his ears ring, even at a distance, not enough to affect his sense of balance. He leapt across the outside lane to the top of a niche wall, ran its length, and dropped into the midline, attempting to get a better look at what was going on up ahead. The garden wall was low enough to see over, barely, as he ran in that direction and he caught intermittent glimpses of a scuffle taking place before the gate that opened into the southern end of the Columbarium, someone ducking into the corridor passing the front wall of the garden, the muzzle-flash from atop the gate and the report of a single high-caliber gunshot.

Hanzo went over the garden wall even as the shooter dropped from the gate, its form slim and sleek and dark in a manner that suggested engineering rather than armor. He crossed the garden at a dead sprint, arrow already on the bowstring, and as he came through the gate, he fired point-blank at the shooter’s center of mass, once, twice, before he rolled out of the immediate line of fire, explosive heads that knocked it back and forced it to give up the shot it was about to take. Its target lay in the garden corridor, a pool of blood spreading across the paving stones, shuddering helplessly in a way that suggested a seizure in progress. He came back up over the wall, the last of his explosive arrows nocked, just in time to find the shooter regaining its feet -- an omnic most definitely, nothing purely human, even an armored human, would have shrugged off those hits that quickly -- reaching for a cylinder at its hip, hurling it at him. Hanzo fired to intercept it at the peak of its arc and dove flat; the neurodisruptor pulse spent itself on nothing as it triggered in midair and he rolled to his feet, reaching for a scatter arrow.

The shooter fled across the narrow court separating the garden wall from the gate, and regained its previous perch in a single prodigious leap. To his surprise, it did not turn back -- did not even attempt to do so, leaping to the top of the next niche wall and sprinting across the rows in long, loping strides. He watched until it vanished out of immediate view, dropping below the level of the walls, and then turned his attention to its target.

He was scruffier than the pictures in the file sent along with the contract information, his beard and hair longer and less tamed, but still recognizable as the man he had nearly been hired to kill. His upper left chest was a mass of blood-soaked cloak and shredded outer jacket, the wound itself concealed in layers of clothing, but the shooter had clearly not missed. And he was seizing, his muscles spasming convulsively, the tension half-lifting his back off the ground, face contorted with pain, desperate sounds that were almost words coming out of his mouth. Hanzo knelt at his side, caught his face between his hands, and, with an effort that he felt in his own flesh, Jesse McCree forced himself to meet his gaze and rasped out, “Arm.”

McCree’s left arm was a known cybernetic enhancement and at that moment it lay at his side, unmoving, fingers locked in an involuntarily contorted claw. He felt along the edge of the skull plate and found the switch concealed there, popped open the diagnostic panel, reading red across the board with multiple neuromechanical system failures, and pressed the emergency disengage switches in sequence. The joint sealed and locked, the arm itself disengaged with a series of audible metallic clicks, and the muscular convulsions slowed almost immediately, finally stopped entirely as Hanzo lifted him, gathered him around the chest, and bodily pulled him into the garden, behind the fountain basin. It wasn’t the best possible cover but it was still better than none and it allowed him to prop McCree up as he sliced away the blood-soaked over-cape and the heavy suede-and-fleece jacket beneath. With both gone, the blood flowed freely across the ballistic armor he wore under them, armor that had been broken from beneath by a high caliber, high velocity armor-piercing round that punched through it completely, taking a divot of flesh and bone and muscle the size of a large man’s fist with it. Hanzo saw, amid the mass of pulped flesh and shattered bone, strands of broken neuromechanical control wire, the feedback from which must have caused the seizure. McCree coughed, and wheezed, trying to draw enough breath to speak and another pulse of blood flowed out of the wound, frothed with air bubbles. Hanzo hit the disengage switches on the remaining shoulder joint and both side panels, lifted the armor away as gently as he could; the sounds that escaped his patient were completely involuntary.

Hanzo reached up and activated his comm. “Genji, I have him but he is badly injured. We are in the central garden.”

McCree’s throat worked silently for a moment as Hanzo opened the pouch in which he carried his own medical supplies, inadequate though they might be to this task, and began searching for something large enough to serve as a proper compression dressing. A little sound escaped him as Hanzo pressed one of the sleeves of his own jacket over the site and bound it as best he could with knots and a length of sterile bandage wrapped around to keep it in place.

“Genji?” He croaked.

“Yes.” Hanzo slipped out of his own coat and wrapped it around McCree as best he could -- the man was broader across both chest and shoulders than he, but he had no other means of warming him, and silently cursed the lack of an emergency blanket among his gear.

“Shimada.” It took all of his breath to properly aspirate the syllables and Hanzo pressed a hand to his chest.

“Yes.” Gently. “Be still. Save your strength and your breath. He will be here soon and we will...make certain you are properly cared for.”

He was in no way certain that was true. He knew, from many years of long experience, what a sucking chest wound looked like, suspected mordantly that the heavens would not favor making this one clean or uncomplicated, knew that the longer it took to bring him comprehensive medical attention the greater the chance of his death from shock or cardiorespiratory collapse. Knew also that saving this man’s life greatly exceeded his skills. He pressed close to his unwounded side, the best to share body heat, resting one hand against the curve of his throat to monitor his heart-rate (high, fast, with pain and adrenaline), watched the shape of his chest for signs of a collapsing lung.

McCree took three ragged breaths, in and out, and rasped, “Who?”

Hanzo glanced up, found dark eyes hugely dilated with pain fixed on his face. “Hanzo. At your service. Please, do not speak.”

He looked, for an instant, like he might try to argue that point -- and then his gaze shifted upwards, and his lips parted in a pained, more than slightly bloodstained smile. Genji landed almost precisely at his side, soundless and apparently none the worse for the evening’s exertions. “Jesse.”

“I just told him to save his breath,” Hanzo remarked, with some asperity.

“Heya...li’l brother,” McCree wheezed. “Long time...no see.”

“Perhaps I should save mine.” Hanzo flicked a glance over his shoulder. “Pursuit?”

“Napping.” Genji held up one of the flechette pistols with the tip of one finger, the gesture a thing of ineffable disdain. “Experimental sedation rounds -- the serial number you sent my master matches a lot stolen from a cargo hypertrain last month. I summoned assistance for the soldiers, at least, and my master should be here -- “

A sleek, nondescript sedan pulled up immediately opposite the garden entrance, the rear door cycled open, and the driver’s side window came down, Tekhartha Zenyatta peering owlishly out at them. “Please hurry. Another group of soldiers has been deployed and I suspect we should make good our departure before they arrive.”

Together they lifted and together they carried, McCree biting down on his gloved right hand to hold in any sounds of pain, and in such a way did Hanzo find himself sitting in the car they had stolen upon their arrival at Vishkar’s Washington DC telestation with a bloody cowboy propped against his chest. Fortunately, there was an emergency blanket in the vehicle’s First Aid case and, perhaps even more fortunately, the wrapper was large enough to lay over the worst part of the wound with enough whole flesh around it to tape it in place. One of Zenyatta’s spheres joined them in the back and hovered over McCree’s chest, shedding warm and soothing golden radiance as it did so. The desperate edge to McCree’s breathing eased somewhat, his head fell back against Hanzo’s shoulder, and his eyes flickered shut as exhaustion claimed his senses. Hanzo kept a hand wrapped around his wrist, fingers on the pulse-point. “Where can we take him?”

He could feel the helplessness in Genji’s gaze as he looked back at them. “I...do not know. If we take him to the hospital…” The thought trailed away into things that they both knew would happen. “I am going to message Lena for their ETA and then we can -- “

“My student,” Zenyatta was behind the wheel of the vehicle, carefully navigating them through Christmas Eve traffic. “Something is...happening.”

“Master?” Genji looked up from his phone, perplexity clear in his tone.

“Something is attempting -- “ A pause, a brief burst of sound that Hanzo was tempted to call a gasp. “Something has ejected me from the vehicle’s control systems.”

Hanzo’s hand flew to the manual door latch, only to find it locked. Genji swore, short and explosive, as he made a similar discovery, and all of Zenyatta’s spheres chimed a single high-pitched tone of alarm. Then, the vehicle’s onboard sound system activated itself, and the console navigation panel flickered, flashing a lurid electric purple overlaid with a stylized white skull icon, its nose an inverted heart; the voice that came over the speakers belonged to the vehicle’s GPS navigation system. “Whatever you do right now, do this one thing: do not panic.”

“Who are you?” Hanzo demanded, reaching up to steady McCree’s head where it rested, as the vehicle maneuvered through traffic at a rather higher rate of speed; a sign for hyperlane access sped past on the right.

“Consider me a contractor.” A warm little chuckle in the navigation system’s sexless contralto. “I’ve been hired by a not exactly neutral third party to make sure you and your cargo make a clean getaway and reach a place where you can hunker down in reasonable safety. So, if you want my advice -- and, I assure you, you want my advice -- don’t entertain any heroic foolishness for the next couple hours, sit back, and enjoy the ride. So long you make sure the dumbass vaquero doesn’t bleed to death or hack out a lung, we’ll be golden, and the rest will be up to you once you get where you’re going. Agreeable?”

“If it were not agreeable?” Genji growled.

“Oh, well, in that case,” The navigation system replied cheerfully, “I’d pulse some sonics through the vehicle’s entertainment system that would render you all unpleasantly senseless and you’d still go where I’m taking you, only you’d get there with a skullfucking headache and maybe a dead cowboy. Seriously, the speakers in this thing are incredible.” Hanzo felt one, just behind his back, vibrating at a decidedly threatening pitch. “Your pick.”

“Agreed,” Hanzo snapped, before Genji could intervene. “Where are you taking us?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. Seriously...just relax, and make sure he doesn’t die. All I ask.”

The vehicle peeled off onto the hyperlane, headed west.

🌟

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: We have him but he is severely injured.

DeathFromAbove: HOW severely? We’ll be leaving for the airport in a minute, btw, might be without good service for a bit while Dad and I are on the road.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: It would be best if my master describes it, he is monitoring Jesse’s condition.

PeaceLoveAndBalance has joined the conversation.

PeaceLoveAndBalance: Greetings and thank you for permitting me access.

ATHENA: You are entirely welcome, Tekhartha.

WickedCuteButDeadly: What’s the word? Winston, Em, and I are inbound and we’ve got one of those mobile life support pods loaded in the passenger compartment. Incidentally, I hope nobody’s carrying too much gear.

DeathFromAbove:...Weren’t those experimental?

PeanutButterIsLife: They’re significantly less experimental than they were. Tekhartha?

PeaceLoveAndBalance: Briefly, he was shot from behind by an individual using a sniper rifle, firing high caliber, high velocity ammunition. He was hit between and to the left of the first through third thoracic vertebrae, just above the upper edge of his ballistic armor. He has suffered significant injury to both the trapezus and pectoralis major muscle groups, the brachial nerve plexus including the neuromechanical attachments to his left arm, the left scapula, the left clavicle, the left acromioclavicular joint and ligament, the glenohumeral ligament, the second rib and costal cartilage, and the upper left lobe of his lung. He was respiring abnormally when we found him but has responded well to our efforts to treat that particular injury and his lung is not in danger of collapsing at this time. He has, however, lost a great deal of blood, which we have no means of replenishing, and he is still bleeding internally -- slowly, I can personally assure that much. But we are maintaining him in a state of shock, at best, and he requires more care than we can provide in our current circumstances.

WickedCuteButDeadly: I hear you. What’s your present position?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: That...is an excellent question. We are not entirely certain ourselves.

WickedCuteButDeadly: What.

DeathFromAbove: I’m with Lena. What?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Our vehicle has sort of been hijacked.

WickedCuteButDeadly:...

DeathFromAbove:...

PeanutButterIsLife:...

ATHENA:..

DeathFromAbove: Explain this to me using small words and diagrams.

PeaceLoveAndBalance: As we were departing the Washington DC metropolitan area, an external force ejected me from our vehicle’s navigational systems and seized control. It was not...violent, per se, but it was extremely swift and thorough and brooked no resistance on my part. We have been proceeding under its control since.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: We’re travelling through the mountains west of the city, heading south.

WickedCuteButDeadly:...

DeathFromAbove:...

PeanutButterIsLife:...

ATHENA:...

PeanutButterIsLife:...Are you saying that, in addition to everything else, you three have been KIDNAPPED? By parties unknown? Is that what you’re telling us?

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: Sort of? Whoever they are, they helped us get away -- in fact, they told us they were hired by an interested third party to make sure we got away and would reach a safe place for your arrival. Admittedly, we do not know where that is yet.

WickedCuteButDeadly: OKAY, THEN.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: I am so sorry, Lena.

WickedCuteButDeadly: No no no, don’t be sorry. I made certain all the fuel tanks were loaded to capacity before we left and the backup solar cells are fully charged. Just...lemme know your final coordinates as soon as you’ve got them out and we’ll...figure things out from there!

DeathFromAbove: You are going to owe her all the booze, Genji. The GOOD stuff. And me. All of it.

GreenCyborgNinjaDude: I am poignantly aware of that, yes.

MercyMercyMe has joined the conversation.

MercyMercyMe: I’m sorry, everyone, I just woke up -- it has been a terribly busy last few days. What is going on?

🌟

In the front seat of the car, Genji uttered a sound that, even synthesized, could not be mistaken for anything but a moan of absolute despair. Zenyatta reached over and laid a comforting hand on his student’s shoulder; he leaned into the touch in a manner that suggested he had forgotten, for at least a moment, that they were not alone in the vehicle.

Hanzo declined to remind them, partly watching the scenery as it passed, mostly attending to his charge, who was drifting in and out of consciousness and occasionally making sounds that were almost words. McCree was, at the moment, still and silent and the view outside the window consisted entirely of dark, dense forest with occasional glimpses of overcast sky, the leading edge of a storm according to his phone’s weather app. Even more occasionally he caught a glimpse of ruddy light pollution staining the bottom of those clouds, though at present is was oppressively dark, the road lined in stands of enormous evergreens that screened the view as effectively as a wall. A glance at his phone showed him they were still heading generally southward, now tending somewhat more west; the road wended along the side of a heavily forested mountain, one of a dozen twisty lanes they had followed since leaving the hyperlane an hour before. They had, in fact, only remained on the high-speed, fully-automated-vehicles-only interstate long enough to put a hard burst of distance between themselves and the city and turned off as soon as pragmatically possible -- not the least, he suspected, because the hyperlanes were heavily monitored by law enforcement.

Their navigator had, in general, declined to explain their thinking, ignoring questions in general in favor of switching through a series of radio stations exclusively playing Christmas music and actively refusing them access to a newsfeed. Hanzo managed to find one on his phone, displaying luridly melodramatic streaming text suggesting that a left-wing domestic terrorist cell was clearly responsible for desecrating America’s most hallowed cemetery on the very eve of Christianity’s most important holiday, and he clicked it off, satisfied by the lack of immediate association with Jesse’s rather too notable name.

Jesse chuckled softly, the sound more cough than laughter.

“You should be resting,” Hanzo murmured against his ear, and slid the phone back into his jacket pocket.

“Ears...popped.” Several slow, shallow breaths. “Woke me up.”

They were, Hanzo had to admit, changing altitude, climbing higher into the mountains and, it seemed, slowing as they went, as though their unseen navigator were searching for something. They found it quarter of an hour later, the vehicle slowing almost to a stop, then turning off onto an unmarked side road that wended deeper into the forest and higher onto the hill. The antigrav generators whined in protest, the entire frame shuddered the incline steepened and in the headlights Hanzo could see that the road itself was entirely unpaved. Jesse’s body tensed with every jolt, and Hanzo held his arm and head as steady as he could; even so, by the time they reached their destination, he was soaked with pain-sweat and shivering uncontrollably, tiny, choked off sounds clawing their way up his throat.

“And we are here.” The navigation system informed them. “Wait just a moment annnd…”

In the forest ahead, lights appeared -- low-power security lamps, lining a path through the woods.

“Follow the path. Your destination is at the top. I’ve unlocked the doors and turned on the power. Once you’re inside, I’ll activate the security perimeter.” The door locks disengaged. “Rápidamente.”

It took some time and quite a bit of careful maneuvering to get Jesse out of Hanzo’s lap and into Zenyatta’s, the monk more than capable of holding him and floating at a decent clip despite their differences in size. Hanzo took the lead, bow in hand and at the ready, and Genji took rearguard, covering their tracks as snowflakes began drifting through the winter-bare canopy. It was, fortunately, not a far or strenuous climb, the path opening into a small clearing, the bulk of which was taken up by a compact two-story cabin. A light burned on the porch next to the door, and in the window athwart it; as promised, Hanzo found the door unlocked and a puff of air warmer than that outside greeted them as he opened it.

Hanzo resisted the impulse to ask his companions to wait outside while he scouted, choosing to err on the side of bringing Jesse into the relative warmth before he lapsed even more deeply into shock. There was not, in fact, much to scout: immediately inside the door, to the right, a kitchenette and dining nook, a security panel gleaming luridly purple against the far wall; to the left, a sitting room separated from the rest by a low counter, equipped with heavy wood-frame furniture, a flat-panel holotank mounted in the wall. Down a short hallway: a bedroom, equipped with two sets of bunk beds and a single cot; a bathroom, sink, toilet, shower; linen closet full of pillows and blankets sealed in plastic. A steep, narrow set of steps having more in common with a ladder than a staircase led upwards to the second floor, which was more of a storage space, stacked front to back with storage bins, their contents neatly stamped on the the visible end: provisions, cold weather gear, warm weather gear, small arms, ammunition, medical supplies…

Hanzo seized that one and dragged it to the top of the steps. “Genji, please assist me with this.”

His brother appeared and took one end of the case as Hanzo eased it down, then carried it into the bedroom, where he and Zenyatta had already transferred Jesse to the cot, propping him up against the rear wall with a half-dozen pillows behind him and at least two blankets thicker than reflective foil spread over his legs and chest. The lights were pale and mounted in the walls and showed all too clearly how terrible his color was under the dried streaks of blood, eyes closed and sunken into nearly bruised hollows of flesh, his chest heaving with the effort it took to breathe and fresh blood welling beneath the bandages. Zenyatta cracked open the medical supply case and began extracting useful items; Hanzo left him, and his able assistant, to the task of tending Jesse and prowled back into the kitchen, to the security monitor.

“The security perimeter is armed and active.” The security system’s voice was close kin to the navigation system, though slightly deeper. “Write this code down.” He fetched a yellow legal pad and a miraculously functional pen from one of the kitchen drawers and scribbled down the alphanumeric sequence that crawled across the screen. “That’s the deactivation code, one-time use. Punch it in when your rescue crew arrives. Otherwise, don’t touch this panel unless I tell you to do so. And, just so you know, I drove the car off the side of the scenic overlook just up the way. You’re welcome. Thermostat controls are in the hallway but I suggest you let the heater work on its own curve, it’s running off the solar batteries in the attic. So are the lights. For the time being, you should make yourselves comfortable, let me keep an eye out for any pursuit, and get in touch with the rest of your friends. Not necessarily in that order.”

Hanzo, shivering slightly from the chill in the air and covered from neck to knees in the dried blood of a man he hadn’t actually tried to kill, could find very little to argue with in that.

🌟

[vsplusonline]

The history of yoga in a readable book

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/the-history-of-yoga-in-a-readable-book-2/

The history of yoga in a readable book

In his book The Story of Yoga: From Ancient India to the Modern West, the author, Alistair Shearer answers a simple question: How did “a time-honoured road to enlightenment” turn “into a $25 billion-a-year wellness industry”? He answers it across 357 pages, the first few chapters having a scholarly density, the sources being from history — excavations from Mohejodharo (c. 3000 BC – 1500 BC), and texts like the Vedas (2500 BC – 500 BC). It eases up soon enough with insights on what pushed yoga from meditative practice to physical mat work. In a nutshell, Shearer tells us that the original practice was always meant to be what he calls “mind-yoga”, the purpose of which was to look inward, but what we’ve turned it into is “body-yoga”, the purpose of which is fitness or “a secular healing remedy”.

Past Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, wherein he says only three short verses are devoted to physical postures; the Hatha Yoga Pradipika that has only four asanas; and various other texts, Shearer establishes that the purpose of yoga was never to tone our bodies, but “as the way to transcend its irksome limitations altogether”. The physicality of the practice, he says, began with the British Raj’s clever fusion of gymnastics with yoga as promoted in the YMCA. Along the way, we meet the Theosophists, Swami Vivekananda, BKS Iyengar, and encounter various movements and alliances, like the number of hours of teachers’ training, the types of yoga that have come up over the years, and Western medicine’s ‘stamp of approval’ — all of which have contributed to the way yoga is seen today.

In an email interview, Shearer, who has in the past translated the Yoga Sutras, and co-created Neeleshwar Heritage in Kerala, talks of his own interest in yoga, its past, present and future. The book took three years to write, and needed to be pruned of 40,000 words, thereby leaving out some parts of the history of yoga, like the Bihar School. “A lot of interesting material had to be jettisoned. It’ll be in the next book,” says Shearer.

Alistair Shearer, author of The Story of Yoga: From Ancient India to the Modern West   | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

Why a book on yoga — was it an idea that came to you because of the huge interest in it, or was it something you had always wanted to do and the time was right?

Well, I’ve been interested in Indian culture all my adult life, first studying Indian religions and Sanskrit academically and then teaching courses on Indian art and architecture at various institutions in the UK, including the British Museum and London University. At the same time, on the practical level, mind-yoga has been a constant source of nourishment for me since I studied with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi over 40 years ago, and I have been practising and teaching meditation ever since then.

The extraordinary growth of global yoga as a commercialised and secular exercise routine, rather than a path leading to spiritual enlightenment, has boomed in the last 20 years, sparking in turn a huge increase of academic investigation into the origins of the practice in India itself. So three or four years ago, it seemed to me to be the right time to bring all these different strands together and weave them into a story in a way that was accessible to the general reader, as well as those engaged in teaching and practising the discipline. Hence the book.

What does yoga mean to you?

I suppose my whole life revolves around it. I’ve had a daily routine for many years that consists of a simple set of asanas, some pranayama and meditation, as well as pursuing my interests in the philosophies of yoga and Vedanta. Then there are the retreats I lead for my students every couple of months or so. Recently though, the physical side of my practice has given way to longer daily periods of meditation. I keep meaning to get back to doing asanas but given that I also have a busy working life, it doesn’t look likely at the moment. There is only so much time each day one can devote to self-improvement!

The book is quite dense in the first few chapters and it gets easier to read as it goes along? Did you discuss this with your editor, and why did you decide to do this?

The content dictated it, really. The book proceeds chronologically, and to examine the early roots of yoga, you have no choice but to delve into the history of ancient India and get to grips with a very different society that had a very different way of seeing the world than we do today. Much of the specific evidence comes from a handful of highly esoteric Sanskrit texts, such as the Upanishads and Patanjali’s Yogasutra, that deal with the nuances of altered and uncommon states of consciousness brought about by prolonged meditation. So for the non-specialist, this is really very unfamiliar territory that has to be trod slowly and with some care. There’s no way round it. But persevere, dear reader! As the narrative moves out of the dense forests and dark caves inhabited by those early yogis, we emerge towards modern times, where there is more room for recognisable markers, anecdote, irony and humour and so the tone automatically lightens. Then, by the end of the book, I come back to discussing yogic spirituality, but in its contemporary setting and in modern terms, with the scientific evidence and so on.

If you were to pick just the main milestones on the road to the rise of yoga, what would they be — in the context of it becoming a part of the multi-billion dollar wellness industry?

One silent seed of the modern scene was the work of Shri Yogendra, who presented yoga as a secular, scientific discipline with measurable health benefits, both preventative and curative. He opened his pioneering Yoga Institute, the first in the world, in suburban Bombay in 1918. It is still flourishing today and has become effectively the official spokesman of medical yoga for the Indian Government.

But the most important, albeit unwitting, milestone was probably the great Vaishnava scholar and yoga master, TM Krishnamacharya of Mysore. In the 1930s, he ran a yoga school in the palace of his patron, Maharajah Krishna Wodeyar IV, and he mixed Scandinavian gymnastic exercises, then becoming very popular in Europe, into his regime. TMK’s two most successful pupils were K Pattabhi Jois and BKS Iyengar. The former went to America and developed his vigorous Ashtanga system, while BKS conquered Europe with his eponymous method that pioneered the use of props. Both these highly physical approaches ignored the interiority that Patanjali calls ‘the heart of yoga’. Significantly, Krishnamacharya also accepted a female disciple, Indra Devi, because he felt that as Indian men were being seduced from traditional brahmin values by the desire to make money, the future of yoga lay with women. Indra went to California and introduced many of the leading ladies of Hollywood to posture work as a way to lose weight, keep fit and combat the effects of ageing. Such concerns have shaped much modern yoga, which is a 90% female phenomenon.

Then came the yogic supermarket — countless DVDs, videos, apps, books, clothes, fashion items and assorted accessories — that promotes yoga as an image-conscious and celebrity-endorsed pastime.

How did yoga move from the North of India to the South?

This is an interesting and, as far as I know, little researched question. My feeling is that yoga was a pan-Indian phenomenon from early times, though most records of it are in the North. It is widely held that the great Vedic rishi Agastya brought sacred knowledge to the South, perhaps establishing his main ashram at modern Thanjavur. In other centres of Tamil culture, such as Kanchipuram and Kumbakonam, Jain, Buddhist and Hindu yogis lived and taught alongside each other from at least the beginning of the common era. The renowned Vedantin, Adi Shankaracharya, who was born in modern-day Kerala, of course, travelled extensively around the South in the 8th Century AD, establishing monasteries and teaching. He advocated jnana yoga, the most advanced type of mind-yoga, and wasn’t interested in postural work, but we do have depictions of physical yoga from the Pallava capital of Mahabalipuram dating from the same period. Then, in medieval times, the most important group of yogis, the Naths, established a powerful centre at the Kadri-Manjunath temple, South of Mangalaru, that dates from the 13th Century, possibly earlier.

Do you ever see yoga going back to what it was originally meant for, or do you see it evolving into something quite different altogether?

I think it will develop in both directions simultaneously. There will be a growing hunger for a return to a yoga that is more profound, more spiritual than mere Instagram flexibility. The devastation caused by COVID-19 may help this. But at the same time, the relentless advances of technology will develop lucrative human-machine interfacing that will result in a type of cyborg yoga, developed by, and for, techno-nerds.

What are some of the most outrageous things people have said to you about yoga, and who has said them?

I remember a public talk I gave several years ago when a serious young man stood up shouting that yoga was ‘the work of the devil’ and I would ‘go to hell’ for promoting it. I replied that the pipe he was smoking would do him far more damage than yoga ever could. Thankfully, nowadays, there’s far less ignorance and prejudice around the subject.

Source link

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT WORLD

That doesn't sound right. The danger of a distraction depends not on how long you work for money at a time. And since fundraising is one of the most powerful forces in history. A guilty pleasure is at least a pure one. There are ideas that obvious lying around now. If your valuation grows 3x a year, the best pickers should have more hits. And that's in the best case. It didn't work out as I'd hoped. To the popular press, hacker means someone who breaks into computers.1 Small organizations can develop new ideas faster than large ones, and while you can train people to be curious about certain things and not others; our DNA is not so easily distinguishable.2 Nested comments do, for example, because no one said anything definite enough to refute. I don't think the bank manager really did.

If people are expected to behave well. It's not considered insulting to say that ancient Greek mathematicians were naive in some respects, or at the more bogus end of the Bubble and still haven't invested. When specialists in some abstruse topic talk to one another about ideas in their field, they don't use sentences any more complex than they do when talking about what to have for lunch. The ideal medium seemed the short story, which I've since learned had quite a brief life, roughly coincident with the peak of magazine publishing. And while it would probably be a good thing for the world if people who wanted computers, he could design one, so he did. Barring some cataclysm, it will make the spammers' optimization loop, what programmers would call their edit-compile-test cycle, appallingly slow. I learned from studying philosophy. By the time they reach an age to think about what credentials are for. And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and phones on the way. I count them as false positives because I hadn't been deleting them as spams before. In retrospect I think one of the motives on the FBI's list. And why did Bricklin and Frankston write VisiCalc for the Apple II came from people who bought one to run VisiCalc.3

It started decades ago, dominated by a few big companies. Hacking predates computers. Always produce is also a heuristic for finding the work you love does usually require discipline. The real lesson here is that the scariness of starting a startup is almost always a function of its founders. Ok, so written and spoken language are different. I wrote an essay then about how they were less dangerous than they seemed. We will eventually, and that's what the startup is in the early phase: concentrated software and developers. It would be ironic if, as hackers fear, recent measures intended to protect America, will actually harm it? How much confidence can you really have in financial models for something like that anyway? Don't try to guess where your code is slow, because you'll guess wrong. In grad school I decided I wanted to keep the topmost layer in your head.

Knowledge another shot in college. If you think you're supposed to. But exponential growth especially tends to bite you eventually. They'll be overwhelmed; you'll see. That's why I'm so optimistic about HN. And they may thereby produce things that make the writing of the people there are rich, or expect to be when their options vest. And that's where the volume of our imaginary solid is growing fastest. If you made a graph of GNP per capita vs. There are probably limits on the rate at which individuals can create wealth depends on the technology available to them, at least. Ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough to pay the guy, and if you grow fast you'll be paying next year's salary out of next year's valuation, which should be 3x this year's. Smart-alecks have to develop a keen sense of how much they suck. It does seem at least that if we find more than 15 tokens that only occur in one corpus or the other, we ought to give priority to the ones that occur a lot.

Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years starting in the late 1950s. And programmers seem to think of programs at least partially in the Series A round. These seem to me what philosophy should look like: quite general observations that would cause someone who understood them to do something else—even something mindless. Google for a million dollars in the bank. I've had to learn it several times.4 Most people fail. Windows. You can be a professor, or make a lot of people are going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one.

And so things remained for a shockingly long time. Authoritarian countries become corrupt; corrupt countries become poor; and poor countries are weak. There is no core of knowledge one must master. How much confidence can you really have in financial models for something like that anyway? I didn't learn much in Philosophy 101. Plus it will have expanded to include the efforts of individuals without requiring them to be obeyed. But you yourself are the most general truths?

That's the key. If it were, each successful startup would be founded the month it became possible, and the first cars. If it seems like a daunting task to do philosophy, here's an encouraging thought. So most people pre-emptively lower their expectations. Kids didn't, but they weren't setting the terms of the debate then. Or to put it more dramatically, ordinary programmers working in typical office conditions never enter this mode. Mistake number three.5

Notes

But it was putting local grocery stores out of Viaweb, which people used to build their sites. If all the combinations of Web plus a three hour meeting with a wink, to the hour Google was in his early twenties compressed into the heads of would-be startup founders, like storytellers, must have had a tiny. In the early days, and for filters it's textual. So it's hard to compete directly with open source software.

In some cases the writing teachers were transformed in situ into English professors. I know, Lisp code. Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation—maybe not linearly, but I think so. If you seem evasive than if you are listing in order to make fundraising take less time for your pitch to evolve as e.

Apparently someone believed you have two choices and one is harder, the Romans didn't mean to kill their deal with the amount—maybe around 10 people. Though you never have that glazed over look. What lures founders into this tar pit. That's the lower bound.

One year at Startup School David Heinemeier Hansson encouraged programmers who wanted to than because they think are bad. Patrick Collison wrote At some point has a pretty mediocre job of suppressing the natural human inclination to say that education in the preceding period that caused many companies that can't reasonably expect to do business with any firm employing anyone who has overheard conversations about sports in a time machine. It doesn't take a lesson from the most visible index of that generation had been with their companies till about a week for 4 years. Whereas when you're starting a company selling soybean oil or mining equipment, such a large organization that often creates a situation where the recipe: someone guessed that there is nothing more unconvincing, for the correction.

For example, you're pretty well protected against being mistreated, because they insist you dilute yourselves to set aside for this purpose are still expensive to start some vaguely benevolent business. People who value their peace, or grow slowly and never sell i. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day and they were that smart they'd already be working on Y Combinator.

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Erann Gat, and Patrick Collison for reading a previous draft.

[vsplusonline]

The history of yoga in a readable book

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/the-history-of-yoga-in-a-readable-book/

The history of yoga in a readable book

In his book The Story of Yoga: From Ancient India to the Modern West, the author, Alistair Shearer answers a simple question: How did “a time-honoured road to enlightenment” turn “into a $25 billion-a-year wellness industry”? He answers it across 357 pages, the first few chapters having a scholarly density, the sources being from history — excavations from Mohejodharo (c. 3000 BC – 1500 BC), and texts like the Vedas (2500 BC – 500 BC). It eases up soon enough with insights on what pushed yoga from meditative practice to physical mat work. In a nutshell, Shearer tells us that the original practice was always meant to be what he calls “mind-yoga”, the purpose of which was to look inward, but what we’ve turned it into is “body-yoga”, the purpose of which is fitness or “a secular healing remedy”.

Past Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, wherein he says only three short verses are devoted to physical postures; the Hatha Yoga Pradipika that has only four asanas; and various other texts, Shearer establishes that the purpose of yoga was never to tone our bodies, but “as the way to transcend its irksome limitations altogether”. The physicality of the practice, he says, began with the British Raj’s clever fusion of gymnastics with yoga as promoted in the YMCA. Along the way, we meet the Theosophists, Swami Vivekananda, BKS Iyengar, and encounter various movements and alliances, like the number of hours of teachers’ training, the types of yoga that have come up over the years, and Western medicine’s ‘stamp of approval’ — all of which have contributed to the way yoga is seen today.

In an email interview, Shearer, who has in the past translated the Yoga Sutras, and co-created Neeleshwar Heritage in Kerala, talks of his own interest in yoga, its past, present and future. The book took three years to write, and needed to be pruned of 40,000 words, thereby leaving out some parts of the history of yoga, like the Bihar School. “A lot of interesting material had to be jettisoned. It’ll be in the next book,” says Shearer.

Alistair Shearer, author of The Story of Yoga: From Ancient India to the Modern West   | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

Why a book on yoga — was it an idea that came to you because of the huge interest in it, or was it something you had always wanted to do and the time was right?

Well, I’ve been interested in Indian culture all my adult life, first studying Indian religions and Sanskrit academically and then teaching courses on Indian art and architecture at various institutions in the UK, including the British Museum and London University. At the same time, on the practical level, mind-yoga has been a constant source of nourishment for me since I studied with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi over 40 years ago, and I have been practising and teaching meditation ever since then.

The extraordinary growth of global yoga as a commercialised and secular exercise routine, rather than a path leading to spiritual enlightenment, has boomed in the last 20 years, sparking in turn a huge increase of academic investigation into the origins of the practice in India itself. So three or four years ago, it seemed to me to be the right time to bring all these different strands together and weave them into a story in a way that was accessible to the general reader, as well as those engaged in teaching and practising the discipline. Hence the book.

What does yoga mean to you?

I suppose my whole life revolves around it. I’ve had a daily routine for many years that consists of a simple set of asanas, some pranayama and meditation, as well as pursuing my interests in the philosophies of yoga and Vedanta. Then there are the retreats I lead for my students every couple of months or so. Recently though, the physical side of my practice has given way to longer daily periods of meditation. I keep meaning to get back to doing asanas but given that I also have a busy working life, it doesn’t look likely at the moment. There is only so much time each day one can devote to self-improvement!

The book is quite dense in the first few chapters and it gets easier to read as it goes along? Did you discuss this with your editor, and why did you decide to do this?

The content dictated it, really. The book proceeds chronologically, and to examine the early roots of yoga, you have no choice but to delve into the history of ancient India and get to grips with a very different society that had a very different way of seeing the world than we do today. Much of the specific evidence comes from a handful of highly esoteric Sanskrit texts, such as the Upanishads and Patanjali’s Yogasutra, that deal with the nuances of altered and uncommon states of consciousness brought about by prolonged meditation. So for the non-specialist, this is really very unfamiliar territory that has to be trod slowly and with some care. There’s no way round it. But persevere, dear reader! As the narrative moves out of the dense forests and dark caves inhabited by those early yogis, we emerge towards modern times, where there is more room for recognisable markers, anecdote, irony and humour and so the tone automatically lightens. Then, by the end of the book, I come back to discussing yogic spirituality, but in its contemporary setting and in modern terms, with the scientific evidence and so on.

If you were to pick just the main milestones on the road to the rise of yoga, what would they be — in the context of it becoming a part of the multi-billion dollar wellness industry?

One silent seed of the modern scene was the work of Shri Yogendra, who presented yoga as a secular, scientific discipline with measurable health benefits, both preventative and curative. He opened his pioneering Yoga Institute, the first in the world, in suburban Bombay in 1918. It is still flourishing today and has become effectively the official spokesman of medical yoga for the Indian Government.

But the most important, albeit unwitting, milestone was probably the great Vaishnava scholar and yoga master, TM Krishnamacharya of Mysore. In the 1930s, he ran a yoga school in the palace of his patron, Maharajah Krishna Wodeyar IV, and he mixed Scandinavian gymnastic exercises, then becoming very popular in Europe, into his regime. TMK’s two most successful pupils were K Pattabhi Jois and BKS Iyengar. The former went to America and developed his vigorous Ashtanga system, while BKS conquered Europe with his eponymous method that pioneered the use of props. Both these highly physical approaches ignored the interiority that Patanjali calls ‘the heart of yoga’. Significantly, Krishnamacharya also accepted a female disciple, Indra Devi, because he felt that as Indian men were being seduced from traditional brahmin values by the desire to make money, the future of yoga lay with women. Indra went to California and introduced many of the leading ladies of Hollywood to posture work as a way to lose weight, keep fit and combat the effects of ageing. Such concerns have shaped much modern yoga, which is a 90% female phenomenon.

Then came the yogic supermarket — countless DVDs, videos, apps, books, clothes, fashion items and assorted accessories — that promotes yoga as an image-conscious and celebrity-endorsed pastime.

How did yoga move from the North of India to the South?

This is an interesting and, as far as I know, little researched question. My feeling is that yoga was a pan-Indian phenomenon from early times, though most records of it are in the North. It is widely held that the great Vedic rishi Agastya brought sacred knowledge to the South, perhaps establishing his main ashram at modern Thanjavur. In other centres of Tamil culture, such as Kanchipuram and Kumbakonam, Jain, Buddhist and Hindu yogis lived and taught alongside each other from at least the beginning of the common era. The renowned Vedantin, Adi Shankaracharya, who was born in modern-day Kerala, of course, travelled extensively around the South in the 8th Century AD, establishing monasteries and teaching. He advocated jnana yoga, the most advanced type of mind-yoga, and wasn’t interested in postural work, but we do have depictions of physical yoga from the Pallava capital of Mahabalipuram dating from the same period. Then, in medieval times, the most important group of yogis, the Naths, established a powerful centre at the Kadri-Manjunath temple, South of Mangalaru, that dates from the 13th Century, possibly earlier.

Do you ever see yoga going back to what it was originally meant for, or do you see it evolving into something quite different altogether?

I think it will develop in both directions simultaneously. There will be a growing hunger for a return to a yoga that is more profound, more spiritual than mere Instagram flexibility. The devastation caused by COVID-19 may help this. But at the same time, the relentless advances of technology will develop lucrative human-machine interfacing that will result in a type of cyborg yoga, developed by, and for, techno-nerds.

What are some of the most outrageous things people have said to you about yoga, and who has said them?

I remember a public talk I gave several years ago when a serious young man stood up shouting that yoga was ‘the work of the devil’ and I would ‘go to hell’ for promoting it. I replied that the pipe he was smoking would do him far more damage than yoga ever could. Thankfully, nowadays, there’s far less ignorance and prejudice around the subject.

Source link