#and the leader found me out so i had to go before a tribunal or smth

[buckscurls]

pls ignore, dream journal

it's 5:15 am, ive not slept outside of the hour or so the dream took. took meds has usual (at 1 am). had a greasy dinner (spätzliuuflauf)

[libraryofcirclaria]

18 September 1248

Library of Circlaria

Third Level Society: First Version

Story Two: Meon Bell

Moments after I wrote my last journal entry, I received a ticker message from Prefect Aerrin Campbell stating that a leader under Bordon's command had defected and captured a company of avatars from the Green Rock Legion. Apparently, the defector had split from our Legion and burrowed into the Dungeonworld. There, he decided to capture the Green Rock avatars in order to force them to form-fit and generate daemons to amass an army large enough to overtake a large portion of Galacia if not all of it.

In other words, the defector was establishing another Crimson Lion.

What bothered me initially about this message, though, was that the Prefect gave me a choice: either bring the enemy to heel and have us both attend to a sort of tribunal with a Prefect to preside and decide our settlement of gold and wealth gained from this quest, or decide the settlement separately between us and our allies but have this subject to a sort of "audit" by the Prefects to be initiated if the losing side files a complaint. I pursued the second choice with the notion that my allies and I would make our case to the aggressive nature of our defector in order to prevent any sort of "audit-settlement" from compromising our gains. After all, we would be making these gains by merit in any case.

So I met with Peter Creon and decided that we would employ our Legion of Camroc forces to partake in this. We had our lead avatars partner with the avatar-leaders with the Green Rock Legion in order to build up joint forces, to which we all agreed to reach out to my old friend, Erica Clemens, for assistance from Finbow's Legion. And so we formed a temporary pact and set out to defeat the defector.

The defector in question was an avatar named "Captain Marthdon." When we confronted his forces initially in the Dungeonworld battlefield, we were unprepared. The site was in an underground cavern, so we were forced to rely on infantry rather than airships. Marthdon had apparently mustered quite an infantry during his time underground, so he had the advantage.

However, I realized that this battlefield was close to the entrance to the Netherworld of Galacia in the Antecosmos, where lived the semi-deity avatar, Antiphone, cast by another old friend of mine, Ensara Webler.

Ensara Webler was one of the first Members of the Third Level Society whom I met when I first joined around this time last year. She is around the same age as Ivella Ogden and was one of the Members present at the Society's founding five years ago. So needless to say, she is a seasoned veteran and therefore proved a good mentor to me. She was not a deity-equivalent at the time but has gained power since.

I met with Ensara two days ago and explained our predicament. We spent two hours at the Slack over a cup of coffee and came up with an ingenious solution, which we implemented that night.

Antiphone sent daemons of her own, powerful underworld demon-like spirits, posing to assist Marthdon's forces in the battle against us. These daemons cast additional daemons who appeared to go to the front line in favor of Marthdon, but fell easily under the gunfire and spellfire discharges. This of course caused strategical mayhem for Marthdon to deal with. Meanwhile, Antiphone's real daemons cast invisibility upon themselves and started picking off Marthdon's forces from behind. When Marthdon realized the trick between me and Antiphone, it was too late. Before he could respond, we led the charges with a flurry of gunfire, spellfire discharges, and bombs, which literally blew holes in the battlefield into the Antecosmos. Though we, ourselves, lost a bunch of avatars which were forced to ressurect themselves at their points of origin, Marthdon's forces sustained heavier losses.

And that was when the real Marthdon arrived, on our side. As it turned out, the enemy we were fighting was actually Captain Maysom from the Legion of Styrn, who had previously been sanctioned by Carla Wright's Prefects to surrender a portion of his airship legion and was looking to regain power. Maysom's agenda to pose as Marthdon was designed to cause confusion among us. But Peter and Carla had a line of communication to the Member behind Marthdon that Maysom had not considered. And thus, the deception was thwarted.

The battle was over, and we had a large meeting through our avatars in the Arturian Realm, aboard the Airship Warloch. Here, we split our gains fairly as pertaining to the needs of each entity fought as well as allocate a bit of wealth as consolation to Captain Maysom.

And so it appeared that the outcome was settled without the need of assistance from the Prefects.

However, a Member had anonymously reported us to the Prefectdom. Very soon, Aerrin Campbell called us to a meeting and re-settled our outcome, splitting the proceeds of our credits and gains "as evenly and equally as possible." That meant splitting the gains evenly among the Legion of Camroc, Finbow's Legion, Green Rock Legion, and the Legion of Styrn. Most infuriatingly, however, the Prefect-avatars decided to take a share of the gains for "having conducted the service of mediation."

Needless to say, not only do I think this is an overreach, I think this is, quite frankly, a form of blatant corruption. And I know that I am not the only one with this sentiment. Other Members involved in the quest feel the same, including Erica Clemens, Zachary Landon, and Sari Frame.

There is one person, however, who has not yet voiced a complaint: Peter Creon. That is unsurprising, though, for I feel that I know where he stands.

<- 15 September 1248 <- || -> 24 September 1248 ->

[aladaylessecondblog]

Nerevarine & Friends (pt. 5)

So this fic is basically a collection of one-shots that serves as a backstory to the Skyrim fanfic. Mostly it's how my nord Nerevarine gets to where he is there. It can be found on my Ao3 page, "Aladayle"

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

"The Ideal Masters"

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

He had gone back to his old name, his nord name, and somehow that was enough to escape the notice of most Dunmer--outside of Morrowind, anyway. Save, perhaps, for Azura's most devoted.

He did not know if she was angry at him--he did not know if she was anything at all, for she had gone silent. Not since telling him he should leave Dagoth Ur to his ruin, and he had denied her, had she spoken to him.

So, he thought then, and now, I am alone once again.

Alone, save for the corpse strapped to his back.

No one would help Voryn if he did not. No one would deliver his body to a family tomb, no one would shed a tear, no one would spare so much as a kind thought.

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

Molag Bal had demanded Vivec's suffering in exchange for the vampirism bestowed upon Voryn's body, and Sigurd had done it.

The man had seemed so infuriatingly calm on seeing him enter the temple, as angry as he was. Had given him that passive stare, and bowed his head as in defeat. Perhaps he imagined it, but he felt he saw something mocking him from those two-colored eyes.

There is nothing you can do to me that Molag Bal did not already do.

But still, he had been charged with this man's suffering, so he delivered it in spades. Vivec did not react to his strikes in time to do much of anything, but Vivec's priests, some brave enough to try and stop him--and then the Ordinators--

--the temple's floor would remained stained red ever after (or at least until Baar Dau fell), and he would leave with Vivec's soul stored in Azura's Star.

The Day of Blood, it would be called by worshippers of the Tribunal. The Day of Vengeance, it would be called by all others.

Nerevar, Moon-and-Star, Hortator and leader of Mer.

Godkiller.

Corpsebearer.

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

Fool.

"You cannot be serious," Sigurd said, half-growling at the hooded figure before him. He looked briefly at the uncovered body of Voryn, laying on an altar between the two of them.

"We wish to return the soul to you, but you must understand--"

"We made a deal. Vivec for Voryn," Sigurd went on. "THAT was the deal."

"--the Sharmat must go somewhere," the hooded figure went on, as if they had not been interrupted. "Surely your soul can bear the weight?"

"We MADE A DEAL!"

"The Sharmat must go somewhere," the figure said again. "A spirit of such malevolence, separated from its source--we cannot tolerate such a thing here."

"You're reneging. Trying to double-cross me--"

He pointed Keening at the figure, who seemed more amused by the gesture than anything.

"Do you want his soul or not?"

"You," Sigurd snarled.

"There is no other way. Either you take this deal or we keep him. Forever. There will be no second deal made."

He had every intention of holding firm, told himself for the next few seconds that he would find another way if this didn't pan out, that--

One you betrayed was three times true!

The words rang in his ears, and there was a pang in his chest as the hooded figure began to turn away.

"Wait," he said quickly, "Wait. I'll take it. There--there will be no other changes?"

"None other, I assure you." they said, "Agree to this change three times, and what you ask for will be given."

"I agree," he said, and there was a feeling in his mind like a ram striking a castle gate.

"I agree," he said again, and the next moment a chill was running down his spine.

Last of all came a whisper--faint, feminine, pleading--don't do it.

He gulped, feeling his mouth to be suddenly dry.

No Moonshadow awaits me, he thought for a moment, And I will never see Sovngarde, either. What am I really losing?

"I agree."

The figure was gone, and in his own mind there was a rush, a flurry of activity, a ceaseless noise of bells--

Ah, Nerevar, we meet again! Bound together first by destiny, and now, by this curious arrangement.

Voryn's body stirred--coughed--struggled for breath--

Untethered by this mortal vessel.

"Nerevar!" Voryn called out, on seeing Sigurd's face. "What--"

"Voryn," Sigurd replied, his voice choked, "Is it--is it really you?"

"Yes, I...how did you--where ARE we--"

Sigurd did not reply. With words, anyway. He took his brother into a tight hug despite the whispering in his mind.

Voryn was home again.

[talldarkandroguesome]

22nd of Hearthfire, Middas

I have never considered the Redoran to be a particular deceptive House. My respect for playing the game when few other Houses considered them capable.

Yet what they have done, even just that small contingent, is beyond mere reproach.

After I joined up with Naryu and Veya and learned more, it came out that Verya was actually Naryu’s apprentice.

I can see why. There is some personality resemblance between Veya and Naryu back in her younger days. I am sure that seeing a younger version of herself she was happy to take on the role of mentor.

All I can say is, I am glad that it is not me. Can you imagine? Me? With an apprentice?

Boethiah’s breasts and bullocks, what a disaster that would be!

All of that aside, it turns out that the group of Velothi I was warned off was not at all Velothi. They were not even Dunmer! More of those Khajiit mercenaries.

Veya explained that her brother was very close to the Velothi that had made their home in the same encampment. Suddenly things were beginning to make sense. 

So Veya’s brother was exiled for killing one of his mer, who was likely threatening the Velothi people. Honestly, he does sound as much of an upstanding mer as everyone says he is. At least someone in prominence is looking out for the Velothi. 

Well... was. I supposed he was somewhere else now.

So we decided to try and investigate, for as Veya explained, this was the Zainab camp and their yurts were still in place, even if the only people we saw were the Warclaw mercenaries.

I asked if Naryu and Veya had a plan and was told that as members of the Morag Tong, they were not allowed to get involved. No writ, no ability to start taking lives otherwise. Veya seemed particularly frustrated by this, so I reassured them that I would be their proxy and I would learn what I could and if lives needed to be taken, I would do so in their stead, still in our Prince’s name.

So they stayed out of sight and I went ahead and snuck into the camp.

It was far easier than expected, I rarely had to use my shadows at all and easily was able to slip between the tents and I was able to easily pluck Redoran orders to the Warclaws and even find one of the wise woman that had been held hostage.

She was able to verify that they were, in fact, Zainab. She also confirmed that Ulran had come to be with them once he was exiled for saving the life of several of the tribesmer.

When I asked what had happened to the rest of the tribe, she said that most of them had been rounded up and thrown into the mine for resisting captivity. One of the mercenaries had the key, but she told me where they kept their backup key in the board of a small table and I promised her by True Tribunal that I would do whatever I could to free her people and to kill those responsible. 

She thanked me and asked me to make sure that the leader in particular was made to pay.

With her blessing, I decided there was no more need to hold back and once I had the key securely in my possession, I slay every soul that lay between myself and the mine, taking special care to see that their leader was brought to justice.

I normally would have attempted to make it a more painful death, to share the suffering that he caused ninefold. Yet I was eager to free the Velothi prisoners and reunite Veya and Ulran. I figured if we were to get to the bottom of the Redoran conspiracy, he would be the key.

As I approached the mine, I overheard two of the mercenaries talking while I crept behind them, blades drawn. They had been given leave to dispose of everyone in the mine by the captain, who I can only assume meant the Redoran captain. I did not even spend the time to kill those two, merely hit them with poisoned needles and rushed on, now with the threat of death far greater, I needed to rescue everyone before the Warclaws succeeded.

As I opened the door to the mine, I could already smell smoke. I wrapped a cloth round my face as I ran, hurrying towards the smell. If I could save anyone at all, I was going to do so. I swore by Azura’s guiding stars that I would lay down as many of my lives as it took, if I could save even one soul.

Yet as I reached the back room of the mine, my heart sank. A cold, sick feeling settled in my throat as I gazed upon my failure.

So many lives. So many innocent lives.

And among the bodies, I could clearly make out the body of Ulran. We were too late.

The room was silent and still. the only sound was my own pulse thrumming in my ears.

Then I heard Veya asking Naryu about the smell, I turned, trying to stop them, even as I heard Naryu, in recognition of the same smell, trying to stop Veya from entering.

It was too late for that too. And she all too easily recognized her brother’s corpse.

Her heart-wrenching cries as she screamed for her brother to wake up were almost more than I could bear. I knew that feeling, too. And I could not help but be brought back to that Daedric ruin, the scent of fresh blood, Avon’s begging for us both to stop, Ervis’ body sliding off of my sword to the ground, eyes still glaring at me, wishing for my death.

I can imagine what it feels like to lose a brother you care so deeply for. To wish you could do something, anything to take it all back.

Naryu pulled me aside and we agreed that it was awful that Veya had to see all of this. And we wondered what it was that we could to help Veya get the answers that she certainly would need more now than ever.

Then I spotted a small object on the ground. It was some sort of small rock, but out of place with the stone of the mine. I picked it up and Naryu came to see what it was. She recognized it instantly as a Nord speaking stone, a sort of memory recording device. I had seen others, though of Dunmeri make, and as soon as she said as much, I realized how foolish I was not to have seen it at once.

Naryu activated it and an image of Ulran began to speak.

Even in his last moments, the one thing he wanted was to give his sister answers. It was exactly as an older brother should do. He explained that one of his soldiers had been harassing a group of Velothi, who rumor had it were being belligerent in town. When Ulran had told the man to stand down, the soldier had slayed one of the Velothi. When Ulran tried to reprimand him, he approached another of the Velothi, sword raised. In order to stop the slaying, he turned to the only option available to him, and killed his own man.

The repercussions of the action were that he was brought before the Council and exiled, even before having a chance to say farewell to Veya. He also said he suspected that he was set up by someone in the House, though he did not know who. The Velothi had taken him in, but then Captain Brivan had shown up with soldiers. He had made the recording just in case things happened. It was sadly prophetic of him to assume it may be his last message.

Veya was enraged. Partially from the grief of her brother being gone and part for the role her own House played in the affair. I agreed with her, as did Naryu, that he did not deserve to die. That he was a good man, upstanding, and followed his convictions to the end.

She cursed that quality if it was what got him killed and swore vengeance. I knew that rage and I knew what it could bring. If the Morag Tong were not allowed to involve themselves without a writ, surely this would be far worse. After all, the reason why myself and others of the Houses’ prominent families are generally barred admission, is because of the conflict of interest it poses. You cannot be impartial if you have loyalties or grudges with various Houses. This was clearly a personal grudge and one that the Morag Tong would not look lightly at.

Naryu cursed Ulran for putting so much pressure on Veya when she was already hurting, though she agreed that it seemed like a set up. I agreed.

We decided we needed to get to the bottom of things. Naryu cursed the fact that it meant going up against House Redoran without a writ to protect them. I said I understood, Redoran was the House my own was most closely connected with and if I was found to be working against them, it could start a House war between our closest ally.

Even still, I agreed to help. I had come this far and since I had failed to protect the majority of the Zainab tribe, the least I could do was to see that they were not blamed for some House scheme. I would protect them as best as I could from within the House political system. If I learned more about the rumors of a Nerevarine in the interim, that would be a bonus. 

We all headed back to the safe house and pondered our next move. Naryu suggested that we make sure that the Councilmer know the truth of his son’s death and we decided that it would be best for it to come written in Veya’s hand so that he would believe us.

Then, so that their safety could be maintained, I agreed to deliver the message to Councilor Eris. Naryu lent me some clothing she had in the Redguard style and I made liberal use of the veil. I padded out undergarments to make myself wider and hunched in my shoulders. I adapted my gait and slowed my movements, then slipped out.

I gave myself a slight limp and when I had finally convinced my way in to meet with the Councilor, I spoke with a slight lisp. I explained that I came with news of his children. It was enough to get his attention. He asked if his daughter had been found and I said the news concerned his son.

He seemed rather surprised, since he was under the impression his son was no longer on Vvardenfell at all. I broke the news gently that his son was killed in a raid by his own captain upon the Zainab camp. He found this hard to believe. So I gave him the letter from Veya and said she had sent me to bring it after she had seen it for herself and that I was to make sure he got the news.

Understandably, he was shaken as he read the contents and knew the handwriting to be Veya’s own.

He asked if I could do him a favor, which I agreed to. It took him a while to come to a decision, but after visibly wrestling with his options, he asked if I could make sure that Veya stayed away until everything settled down. That he would do his best to contain the chaos. He asked me to ensure that she was safe. He even paid me to do so.

I bowed formally and told him I would do my best and then I left. Ashur spotted me, seemed a bit surprised and then made a hand signal for me to meet up three blocks up ahead.  I made sure to go down an alley and turn invisible to make sure that no one was tracking me. I did not want to be followed and lead anyone back to the last remaining safety that Veya and Naryu possessed. Then, I removed my outer garments and tucked them round the stomach before going to meet Ashur just up the road.

After a brief conversation, it turns out that Naryu had a business matter to see to and that he was struggling to help comfort Veya and asked if I might be of assistance. I agreed and we headed back to the safe house. 

When we first arrived, it was clear how upset Veya was. Not just about her brother, but also about not being allowed to go with Naryu. It was worse than Ashur had said.

I sang a song which helped her to fall asleep. I know it will not last long, but when so many things have happened, sometimes even a short rest can be healing. I know she will wake soon and I need to be prepared, a rest will mean she will also have more energy. I just wish there was more that I could do for her. I will just have to try my best.

[extreme-technicality]

On Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt, knight (in absentia) of the Realm of Goodcastle

Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt, knight (in absentia) of the realm of Goodcastle, is peak chaotic good. In this essay I will discuss how his backstory, his choices, the origin of his powers, and the symbolism of a candle combine to create Fitzroy, the hero we didn’t know we needed but very much the one we deserve.

We know from Argo’s investigation into Fitz’s home life that he is the son of a long haul trucker caravaner and a (presumably) stay-at-home mom. His family name is one of the most prestigious elven families on Nua, though he’s functionally a member in name only. One day he got a letter inviting him to become a knight of the realm of Goodcastle for the low low price of 200 gold, several other fees, and a certificate of completion from Clyde Nite’s Night Knight school. His parents didn’t have much, and had to take out a hefty loan to send him to the school (as well as pay for all the fees). He didn’t fit in with the pompous, wealthy elites there, and they let him know it with every obvious snicker and the fact that his classmates actively avoided him outside of class. Griffin explicitly states that he (Fitz) adopted the pompous, proper air he puts on in canon as a direct result of the ridicule and ostracization of his knight school classmates. He finally received something other than mocking disdain from them when he randomly (one might say chaotically) turned his professor into a catfish. He only started to truly feel like shit about the catfishing when he heard they were going to expel him from the school and, by extension, his dream–the notoriety and fear from his peers and professor bothered him far less before there were tangible consequences for his actions, inadvertent though they were. Shortly after this, he was invited to Hieronymous Wiggenstaff’s School for Heroism and Villainy, full-ride–upon graduation, he would be allowed to return to Clyde Nite’s Night Knight School and finish his schooling there, then apparently on to the realm of Goodcastle to serve in the queen’s guard. In summary: Fitzroy Maplecourt is someone of humble background who aspires to Make Something Of Himself and help people along the way; as the catfishing incident displayed, he doesn’t much care how he does that, so long as his actions help people (as well as himself).

He didn’t always lean into that side of himself, however: the catfishing incident ended with Fitz also feeling conflicted about how his power manifested to harm the people around him. At the very beginning of Graduation, he’s constantly worried about controlling his magic and not necessarily using it. A knight, after all, would have little need for magic. This viewpoint changes gradually throughout the episodes as he bonds with Snippers and learns more about the nature of magic, specifically his own. It changes most drastically when he meets the origin of his magic, the entity who goes by Chaos. Immediately after he had that psychic conversation with his magical patron, it’s like he stopped giving a fuck about what is “right” or “proper”. He used his magic with precision and intimidated the centaurs–as well as his Hero classmates–into listening to him and doing whatever he said. It wasn’t the stated object of his assignment with the centaurs, wasn’t what anyone expected him to do, and made Chaos very, very happy. He maintained his chaotic mindset, threw himself into it in fact, once he returned to the school. He attacked Gray when convention would dictate he stood there and let him monologue; he mouthed off to the Unbroken Chain tribunal, and his first action as a full member was to call one of their highest-ranking members to trial on Argo’s behalf; he suggested assassinating Gray instead of fighting a war. None of those actions were dictated to Fitz–in fact, none of those choices were knightly in the slightest. He ripped a man’s hand off and intimidated him and the surrounding centaurs (who outnumbered him and his friends many times over, might I add) into seeing his point of view. If a knight did that, he would be called a bully and said to be abusing his powers. But his motivations were selfishly good–he intimidated the centaur leaders into sitting down and having a conversation to avoid war, while he got to keep the apple Higglemus asked for; he saw an opening to attack the BBEG while he wasn’t expecting it, thereby giving him the edge and a chance to, possibly, end the war before it even began; he defended and stood by his friends in the face of people who cared (in his view) more for their precious order than for the aforementioned BBEG and the brewing war; he saw an opportunity to fulfill Argo’s need for justice and took it, unexpectedly but with due process to the order’s laws; he suggested the underhanded approach to ending the war and fighting Gray because he doesn’t want innocent people to die in a war that isn’t theirs. All of these choices were chaotic, and not all of them made Chaos happy. But they were Fitzroy’s choices, made wholeheartedly and with gusto, and he made them because he wanted to. He doesn’t care what Chaos wants him to do, has specifically said he won’t let Chaos use him to be their instrument on Nua multiple times–and that choice is perhaps the most chaotic of them all. Most everything he did and does, he does because it serves either his purpose or his friends’ purposes–but he doesn’t harm innocent people in the process. Fitzroy is chaotically, selfishly good, despite Chaos.

Chaos specifically is interesting, both as an entity in their own right and as Fitz’s magic glucose guardian. They introduced themself by saying they have many names, but Chaos is the one they like the best. This specific wording makes me personally believe that the entity we know as Chaos isn’t actually chaos, but something often mistaken for chaos. My gut wants to say “discord” or “wanton self-interest”, but I’m interested to see what Travis has planned in that regard. Chaos is also the origin of both Fitzroy and Gray’s power, and the Godscar Chasm is their work and seems to be their base of operation. As much as they claim to want Fitz to let loose with his power and do whatever he wants, Chaos also tells him what they don’t want him to do. They “promised Gray a war”, and for a being called “Chaos” they don’t seem to appreciate Fitzroy’s chaotic actions very much. They’ve said before that they want Fitz to win the war, but that it has to be a spectacle–like a wildfire burning down the countryside, before new growth and chaotic peace can grow. Fitzroy, on the other hand, sees how unnecessarily destructive that would be, and prefers to sidestep that option in favor of something quietly chaotic and peacefully assertive.

If Chaos and Gray’s vision for the war is a wildfire, burning bright and brilliant and fast, then Fitzroy’s is a candle, fitting the symbolism of the most recent episode (25: Burden of Things). Fitz chose the candle key to represent himself because fire is chaotic by nature, leaving both destruction and room for growth in its wake. He also claimed candles are chaos contained and put to a good use, bringing light to the darkness and faint warmth. My own interpretation reads a candle as both instigator and instigated: a candle cannot light itself, nor can it control how it was ignited. Fitz had no choice in either the fact or the manner of his magic awakening, couldn’t control whether or not his metaphorical wick was lit or who got burned in the process. However, a lit candle can be used to light other things–paper, wood, plants, cloth, and so on. Fitzroy as the candle in this metaphor has two available options: he could light a hearth, a welcoming space for his loved ones and a respite from the cold, cruel world, or he could light an all-consuming blaze to destroy the flawed existing system and leave room for a new one–one of Chaos’s design–to grow in its wake.

So, to recap: Fitz is tangentially part of a very prestigious elven family, grew up with relatively little save for a loving family, worked and chanced his way into power, and is currently being groomed into using said power in a certain way. He is also adapting to the situation he’s found himself in, making his own decisions and doing so in the name of his benefactor (ie. chaos) as opposed to the spirit (ie. what Chaos actually wants him to do) such that the outcome benefits himself, his friends, and their goals while minimizing the damage to innocent bystanders. Along the way, his personal image has gone from grandiose knight (in absentia), pompous and proper and EliteTM, to a candle–simple, cheap, ordinary, utilitarian, and more importantly, a light source for people who literally cannot afford anything better. I look at this, and I have to wonder: what was his takeaway from Clyde Nite’s Night Knight School? What did he think of the 1%, of the order and class and propriety they hold so dear? As the son of a caravaner, I wouldn’t think he’d see much fancy shit at home, but he’d definitely see hardship. He’d definitely see needing to compromise, and needing to fight for anything you need, facing a world that isn’t serving you like it should. I would ask if he’s angry, but he literally said it this episode–he’s lost his goddamn patience. Everyone is so caught up in the order of things, in the letters and laws and rules-lawyering and arbitrary measures of “worthiness” that they’ve forgotten to turn the lights on and it’s getting dark. Thats not to say that Fitz doesn’t know when to abide by the laws, or use them to his advantage, as we saw in both the incident with the magma monster and the Unbroken Chain tribunal–but they need light, they need a fire under their asses, and Fitz is just a candle doing his best. But a candle can only do so much.

And it doesn’t take much to put a candle out.

[paulinedorchester]

Mosley, Leonard. Backs to the Wall: London Under Fire, 1939-1954. London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; reprint, as Backs to the Wall: The Heroic Story of the People of London During World War II, New York: Random House, 1971.

Each generation gets the history that it needs — or wants, or demands. That’s what kept going through my head as I read Backs to the Wall, which appeared three years after France’s youth explicitly rejected both Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed leader of the Free French during World War II, and the political ideology that he represented, and amidst ongoing unrest over the Vietnam War. (It’s also worth mentioning that it was published in the same year as Norman Longmate’s How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War and two years after Angus Calder’s The People’s War.) This book gives up a World War II narrative in which Churchill was an improvement on Chamberlain only in that he wasn’t an appeaser, de Gaulle was worse than both of them put together, the Allied leaders all cordially loathed each other, half the British public wanted to sue for peace, and there was across-the-board mutual dislike between London civilians and American troops (and British dismay at the way African-American troops were treated by their white counterparts was far from universal). Do I exaggerate? Only slightly. Backs to the Wall is a sort of distant, city-specific pre-echo of Juliet Gardner’s sour 2004 book Wartime: Britain, 1939-45.

As with Wartime, however, this book does have the virtue of introducing us to a number of very interesting people. I became interested in reading it because it brought Vere Hodgson’s wartime diary to public attention. Mosley quotes or paraphrases Hodgson’s writing from the beginning of the war through its end, and also seems to have interviewed her extensively. His primary villain, meanwhile, is not Chamberlain but Chamberlain’s chief acolyte, Henry “Chips” Channon, from whose diary he quotes widely (and who turns out to have been born and raised in the United States, to my surprise). We hear a great deal from the chemist and novelist C.P. Snow and follow the misadventures of two civilians, Jenny Martin and Polly Wright, whose consistency in both bad luck and bad choices meant that neither of them was able to stay out of serious trouble for any length of time.

There are many glimpses of the London home front through the eyes of two boys, both eight when the war began: John Hardiman, of Canning Town and later of Aldgate, who was evacuated in 1939 but soon returned to London, and Donald Ketley of Chadwell Heath, who was never evacuated at all. Donald, who thoroughly enjoyed himself during the war, had an experience that speaks to our own recent reality:

Another good thing: quite early in the Blitz, his school had been totally destroyed by a bomb. Since Donald was shy, a poor student and unpopular with his teacher, he was overjoyed when he heard the place was gone. Thereafter he went each day to his teacher’s home to pick up lessons, which he brought back the next day for marking. In the following months he changed from a poor student to an excellent one, and although he was aware that his teacher rather resented it, he didn’t care. 

Mosley also introduces us to Archibald McIndoe, the real-life counterpart of Patrick Jamieson, Bill Patterson’s character in the Foyle’s War episode ‘Enemy Fire.’ Art seems to have imitated life pretty accurately in that instance: he and his burn hospital in East Grinstead were apparently exactly like what was depicted, the only difference being that the hospital was set up in an existing hospital building, not in a requisitioned stately home.

Backs to the Wall seems to have been one of the earliest books to make substantial use of Mass-Observation writings. Most M-O diaries are anonymous, but there are two named diarists here who stand out. John James Donald was a committed pacifist whose air of lofty detachment as he observes the reactions of those around him to air-raids and other wartime event and prepares for his tribunal — which, in the end, he decides not to attend — quickly grows irritating. More interesting is Rosemary Black, a 28-year-old widow, in no small part because she differs markedly from what I had thought of as the archetypical M-O writer. Here’s her self-description on M-O documents: “Upper-middle-class; mother of two children (girls aged 3 and 2); of independent means.” Mosley continues:

She lived in a trim three-story house in a quiet street of the fashionable part of Maida Vale, a short taxi ride from the center of the West End, whose restaurants and theatres she knew well. She was chic and attractive, and lacked very few of the niceties of life: there was Irene, a Hungarian refugee, to look after the children; Helen, a Scottish maid, to look after herself and the house; and a daily cleaning woman to do the major chores.

Black took her children out of London at the beginning of the war but quickly brought them back, and when bombs began falling she kept them in place — air raids might be disruptive for them, but apparently relocation had been worse. She was very much aware that she was riding out the war in a position of privilege, and she often expressed guilt feelings; but this tended to fade away before her irritation at the dominance of “the muddling amateur or the soulless bureaucrat” in the war effort. Offering her services, even as a volunteer, proved very frustrating. “She was young, strong and willing; she typed, spoke languages, was an expert driver and had taken a course in first aid,” Mosley tells us, “but finding a job even as a chauffeur was proving difficult” in September 1940. (She actually wasn’t all that strong physically: as we learn, she suffered from rheumatism which grew worse during the war years and probably affected her outlook.)

Black was greeted with “apathy and indifference” by both A.R.P. and the Women’s Voluntary Service. Early in 1941 she was finally able to get a place handing out tea, sandwiches, cake, and so on to rescue and clean-up workers at bomb sites from a Y.M.C.A. mobile canteen. She was a bit intimidated by the women with whom she found herself working:

Their class is right up to the county family level. Nearly everyone is tall above the average and remarkably hefty, even definitely large, not necessarily fat but broad and brawny. Perhaps this is something to do with the survival of the fittest.

And the work did bring her some satisfaction, even if it was of the type that lent itself to being recorded with tongue placed firmly in cheek:

We had a pleasant and uneventful day’s work serving City fire sites, the General Post Office, demolition workers and Home Guard Stations, etc. We were complimented at least half a dozen times on the quality of our tea ... I think the provision of saccharine for the tea urns to compensate for the mean sugar allowance is my most successful piece of war work. What did you do in the Great War, Mummy? Sneaked pills into the tea urns, darling.

For all her good humor and astute observations, Mrs. Black was far from immune to tiny-mindedness. After an evening out in 1943 she wrote:

I had to wait some time for the others in the cinema foyer, and I was much struck, as often before, by the almost complete absence of English people these days, from the capital of England. Almost every person who came in was either a foreigner, a roaring Jew, or both. The Cumberland [Hotel] has always been a complete New Jerusalem, but this evening it really struck me as no worse than anywhere else! It is really dismaying to see that this should be the result of this war in defence of our country.

Indeed, Mosley cites the results of a multi-year Mass-Observation study that showed a marked increase in anti-Jewish views London’s general population over the course of the war. Since it’s just one study, and since I haven’t seen that study mentioned anywhere else, I am reluctant to trust blindly in its accuracy; and there’s also this:

The small flat which George [Hardiman] had procured for [his family] ... in Aldgate was cleaner and airier than the old house in Canning Town [which had been bombed], and the little Jewish children with whom John now went to school seemed to be cleaner than the ones in Elm Road; at any rate, he no longer came home with nits in his hair.

On the other hand, Mosley himself gives us only a fragmentary view of London’s wartime Jewish population: everyone seems to be either a terrified refugee or an impoverished East Ender. We hear nothing about the substantial middle- and upper-middle class population — mostly of German descent and in some cases German birth — that had already taken shape in Northwest London; and while we are briefly introduced to Sir David Waley, a Treasury official, in connection with the case of an interned Jewish refugee, we aren’t told that Waley himself was Jewish, a member of “the cousinhood.” On yet a third hand, Mosley also quotes other M-O surveys from the same period that indicate largely hostile attitudes to most foreigners in London, with Poles at the bottom of the ladder and the small Dutch contingent on top. (Incidentally, the book’s extremely patchy index identifies Vere Hodgson as a Mass-Observation diarist, which she wasn’t.)

Backs to the Wall closes with a very brief, remarkably non-partisan account of the 1945 general election and its immediate aftermath. “Neither side had any inkling of the way the minds of the British voters were turning,” he writes.

When [Churchill’s] friends suggested that he was a victim of base ingratitude, he shook his head. He would not have such a charge leveled against his beloved countrymen. Ingratitude? "Oh, no," he said quietly, "I wouldn’t call it that. They have had a very hard time."

The book is worth reading for the primary materials that it includes, but it probably tells us as much about the era in which it was written as about the period that it covers.  

[notebooknebula]

Randy Lawrence, The Real Estate Preacher, Joins Jay Conner LIVE!

https://www.jayconner.com/randy-lawrence-the-real-estate-preacher-joins-jay-conner-live/

Jay Conner is joined by The Real Estate Preacher, Randy Lawrence.

“I’ve seen and done it all in real estate. Now I want to help you achieve the success I’ve enjoyed.” – Randy Lawrence

Prosperity Capital Partners lives its mission of serving others by providing Investors with financial freedom: Double-digit returns with zero capital loss and excellent tax benefits to our private investors for 17 years via asset-backed real estate investments.

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Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.

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————————————————————

Jay Conner (00:02):

Well, hello and welcome to another episode of Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner! I’m Jay Conner, the Private Money Authority, also the host of the show. And I wanna welcome you whether you’re a brand new or you’ve been following the show for some time. My lands! We’ve launched back in June, 2018, tracking fast over 300,000 downloads. Thanks to you. And I do need your help. If you find this episode to be valuable, and you can use this information in your real estate investing business, then please help me out. Let’s share this information, like share, subscribe, write, and review whether you are on iTunes or watching on YouTube or any of our other platforms. Well, here on the show, we talk all things that relate to real estate investing. We talk about how to find deals. We talk about how to fund the deals without relying on local banks, mortgage companies, or even hard money lenders.

Jay Conner (01:11):

We talk about how to sell houses, rehab houses, and how to automate your business to where you’re actually running it. And it’s not running you. But as I mentioned, I’m known as the private money authority. I became an expert on raising private money and I’m not talking about doing business with brokers. I’m talking about actually attracting hundreds of thousands and in the millions of dollars in funding, that’s got nothing to do with your credit, your verification of income, or actually even the number of deals that you’ve done. If you’re interested in getting more funding for your deals to where you never miss out on a deal because you didn’t have the money, I’ve got a free gift for you. Yes, I have got a new monthly membership that I launched that I’m going to show you how to get free access to the membership. It’s called The Private Money Academy, and on the, or in the membership twice a month, I am live on Zoom with coaching for all of the Academy members.

Jay Conner (02:11):

We’re tracking fast to a thousand members. Right now, we got about 150 members. And as a matter of fact, the next live Zoom coaching call is within the next week. So I’m going to tell you how to get in, you get the live coaching. We also put someone, one of the members in the hot seat where we analyze your business, figure out your challenges and fix your challenges to where you’re able to take your business to the next level. And we also have new content and training in the membership every month on finding, flipping, automating funding, selling, et cetera. We also cover all in the membership, all types of real estate deals. We cover single family houses, commercial land, self storage, and you name it. We got it covered. So here’s how you can take advantage of checking it out for free. Go to www.jayconner.com/trial.

Jay Conner (03:10):

Again, that’s JayConner.com/Trial. Look forward to having you live on the membership Zoom conference calls. Well now in addition to that, if you’ve been tuning in for any time, you know that here at Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner, I have amazing experts. And in fact, the guests that I have on today’s show is a good friend of mine and is a fellow member of a very top and mastermind group where we have about 120 real estate investors from all across the nation. We get together about four times a year and help each other out on our businesses. Well, let me tell you about my friend. First of all, he’s an entrepreneur with over as of today, 24 years of experience, and he has four very successful real estate investment companies.

Jay Conner (04:08):

In addition to that, my friend and I have got the same, same heart, and we’ve got a lot in common. He’s a pastor and also a founder of multiple life-changing ministries. And as of this day in the last 15 years, he has impacted and then blessed impact over 40,000 people. He’s been seen on CBN, NBC, CTN and featured in the St. Petersburg times Tampa Tribune. And he’s known as the transformation expert. In addition to that, he’s experienced his own life transformations as well, overcoming the upbringing from a broken home and his life as a drug dealer to becoming a successful entrepreneur, pastor husband, and a father. In addition to that, his spiritual breakthroughs led him out of the economic collapse and the financial collapse of 2008. And man can, I not relate to that! Took him from bankruptcy to a real estate rehabbing business, generating a seven figure annual income, again, something else that he and I have in common.

Jay Conner (05:16):

Also he, and I’ve got another yet person. That’s a mutual friend and mentor back in 2013, he co-authored a book titled Dare To Succeed with Jack Canfield, who is the co-creator of Chicken Soup For The Soul detailing in this book his personal and professional rise from the ashes, his mentors and his coaches include world renowned business leaders, authors, international speakers, such as Les Brown and also John C. Maxwell. He also is an active member contributed to the same mastermind group that he and I are a member of. Comprise, as I mentioned of nation’s elite real estate investors, beyond that he passionately believes in God’s promise of abundance and freedom, and he uses his unique strategies to help transform lives like yours by unlocking spiritual, mental, and tactical financial potential through real estate investing. He also has a very popular podcast titled The Real Estate Preacher on the podcast. He shares his successes and his failures along with his proven strategies and techniques that help build systems that work he’s proven them to work. And he does this so others like you can achieve their own seven figure incomes and their own abundance, just like him. Welcome to the show. My friend, Randy Lawrence also known as the Robo State Preacher.

Randy Lawrence (06:47):

Awesome! My brother. Good to see ya.

Jay Conner (06:49):

Good to see you too, man! Would you reach around please? And like scoop up a little energy and bring to the show to grab a little more

Randy Lawrence (06:59):

After that intro I’m ready to jump up and run around the building Man! Praise the Lord!

Jay Conner (07:04):

Randy, you’ve got quite the story, quite the backstory at one time you were a drug dealer you were bankrupt. You were like, you know, you were like slap dab in one time. And the financial collapse of 2008.

Randy Lawrence (07:19):

Yup!

Jay Conner (07:19):

So, before we get into those pieces of your story how about give us your backstory and little an overview as to.

Randy Lawrence (07:29):

Yeah

Jay Conner (07:30):

Where you’ve been in, what you went through to get you where you are now

Randy Lawrence (07:34):

For sure, man. Well, so my background, I come from, you know, a broken home parents divorced it, you know, four or five years old that kind of led to, by the time I’m in middle school, high school doing my own thing, kind of wayward with the wrong crowd, wrong group, doing the wrong things and just, you know, partying and all like that. Went on through college, got my degree in finance, minor in economics, went into the stock brokerage business right after that really kind of continued on with that same kind of money and partying lifestyle and all. And it was probably about 27 that I, you know, had had success in, in that respect, but really wasn’t fulfilled. And it was at that time that I really kind of found through reading a book Norm Miller chairman of Interstate Batteries, where it outlined about faith in God.

Randy Lawrence (08:25):

I put my trust in Christ. It really just complete 180 from my life, Got involved in the church locally and then got met my wife there. We got married and then, you know, God called me in the Ministry as well. And so I’m running a money management company that I started and then also ministering there at the church and probably around about 2003, God, just really, Has showed the power of the difference of what real estate can do versus, you know, stocks, bonds, option traditional money management. So really started focus on that. And you know, that was really the beginning of where things took off for us. We sold our money management practice in 2006 and moved out North of Tampa to start a church. And then of course that’s where we were having gone through that economic collapse that happened here in Florida.

Randy Lawrence (09:17):

And it was just quite the incredible journey because I was simultaneously pastoring the church, also running the real estate business and navigating the economic collapse that the whole country went through. So really kind of an incredible time at that moment in time.

Jay Conner (09:34):

Did you say you met your wife at church?

Randy Lawrence (09:36):

I did. You know, it’s funny. My dad always used to ride me now again, he was in North Carolina, we’d see each other, maybe once a year, talk on the phone once a week, I’d be going to the bar at happy hour after work, you know, and talk to him on the weekend. And he’s like, what’d you doing? That’s all, I’m going out with some friends at a ball game. And he’s like, man, you should go to church. I’m like go to church? He’s like, well that’s where you going to meet you a right girl. And I’m like, yeah, that’s not the kind of right girl. I want to meet, but he was right. You know? And so yeah, I was blessed to meet my beautiful wife, Sarah Jo there. And we’ve been married now 21 years coming up in October.

Jay Conner (10:16):

Did you say her name is Sarah Jo?

Randy Lawrence (10:18):

Sarah Jo? Yeah. She’s.

Jay Conner (10:20):

We got two things in common, We both met our wives or our to be wives At church.

Randy Lawrence (10:25):

Yeah.

Randy Lawrence (10:25):

And both of them have good Southern devil names. Mine’s Carol Joy,

Randy Lawrence (10:32):

Okay.

Jay Conner (10:32):

And yours is Sarah Jo, you want to know something else we got in common?

Randy Lawrence (10:36):

ah.

Jay Conner (10:36):

So in your bio in 2013, you coauthored a book with Jack Canfield named Dare To Succeed.

Randy Lawrence (10:44):

yup!

Jay Conner (10:44):

Well guess what? Two years later in 2015, I got certified as a Jack Canfield trainer by Jack Canfield.

Randy Lawrence (10:53):

Awesome. Yeah, it’s a, it’s amazing how many things, you know, it’s like the commonalities that the Lord, when you surround yourself with great people, it’s like you attract those similar qualities. And then here it is, you know, that we’ve been together through CG and the friendship there. And then now as we connect together with that further, you find all these backstories that line up with the identical things. That’s just pretty cool.

Jay Conner (11:22):

Well you know, I don’t know who came up with the idiotic idea, In my opinion, that opposites attract that’s stupid.

Randy Lawrence (11:29):

yeah.

Jay Conner (11:29):

I want to be around people. That’s like me. It’s like birds of the same feather flock together. Right?

Randy Lawrence (11:34):

For sure. Absolutely. And that’s, you know, we’re really, as you begin to have the synergies, the thinking is the same, the thinking that elevates one another and pushes each other to higher levels. That’s when I heard your intro about the monthly mentorship program, it’s like, man, that’s what people need to be a of because you know, you just, you come together with great thinking and then it inspires your thinking and then you see these actions that others are doing, or, you know, it’s just a win, win. It’s like the synergy of one plus one, it’s more like, you know, two times two equals four and then it just expansively grows, you know? And that’s the thing, man. So,

Jay Conner (12:15):

Yeah, exactly. So would you say, first of all, were you raised going to church or no?

Randy Lawrence (12:21):

I was not. You know, both my parents, you know, kind of by the time I was in middle school, I was kind of given ability to start making my own decisions and, you know, good parents, but this not focused on, you know, religion or, and again, as a broken home you know, they were just trying to do the best they could do to do their thing. And, you know, so that left me to my own accord and left them on accord. I probably connected together with the wrong group and ran with the wrong crowd and all that kind of stuff.

Jay Conner (12:53):

So I want to speak for a moment to people listening in or viewing whichever platform they’re viewing as someone or listening. My best guess is the majority of people out there like you and me went through a time in their life. The majority, not all, but a lot of people went through a time in their life or an extended time in their life that was very dark. Right? And I went through my dark time. My dark time lasted from the time I was 21 years old until I was 24 years old. And it just progressively got darker and darker and darker. Here’s my question for you. Did you have a wake up call? If so, what was it?

Randy Lawrence (13:42):

Yeah.

Randy Lawrence (13:42):

And if you did, what was it?how did you get out of it?

Randy Lawrence (13:50):

Yeah, So I was, you know, in that period for me would probably been 13 through 27. So like 14 years kind of like a Joseph in the journey, the two kind of coming out of the pit and all like that. But it was really at 27. I was helping take care of my mom. She had gone through numerous health challenges with failed back surgeries and all like that. And I had gotten a DUI charge, you know, for driving home apparently intoxicated. And again, I’m like, no, you know, that’s not the truth, but really what it was for me at that moment was it was this wake up call that here I am, 27, I’m facing the possibility of losing my license for six months. And, you know, I worked at a brokerage firm in Tampa. I lived in Seminole there with my mom helping to take care of her.

Randy Lawrence (14:43):

There were these recoveries and health things she’s going through and it just hit me like, you know, good Lord, man. I’m nowhere near where I want to be in life, cause if I lose this thing, now I’ma have to ride my bike to the 711 and maybe get a job. There not knocking people to work at 711, but that was not my aspiration. And I’m like, what I’d aspired to become and to do and achieve is nowhere near the realities. And the truth of the matter is it’s because of where I’m at in my life and the choices. And so that began to be that process to me, to see it’s like, what I’ve been doing is not the right thing. And so in short order, I laid my hands on a book, another friend of mine and I we’d started in an automotive garage and in the we sold interstate batteries.

Randy Lawrence (15:33):

And so the interstate battery salesman dropped off a book called beyond the norm. And it was about Norm Miller and his journey. I thought it was a sales success book, but it was his journey on how he came to faith in Christ. And then they became the number one battery reseller in the world and went on to such great success. And when I read that book, I’m like, that’s it, he’s got a beautiful wife, he’s got success, he’s got fulfillment. He’s in, he’s found it all in Jesus. And I’m like, wow! And I’m like, you know, Lord, if that’s true, and this is real come into my life, come into my heart, show me the direction you want me to go. And it was just like wham! This giant Volkswagen that I’ve been carrying on my shoulder for 15 years was just released. And it was just an incredible thing. And I, I knew I didn’t know what exactly happened, but I knew something happened and that my life had been changed. I could just feel it at that moment,

Jay Conner (16:31):

If you would like to follow Randy Lawrence and his story, you can follow Randy at www.TheRealEstatePreacher.com So Randy what does your, so how’d you. So when did you start in real estate? How did you get into real estate and what is your business model look like today?

Randy Lawrence (16:52):

Yeah, so we started in 2003. I bought my first multifamily property with little small duplex in 99. And you know, just really loved real estate even while I was a stockbroker and a money manager, you know I just loved real estate. And the more I looked at it, I saw the power of the returns you could generate in real estate with a really a lower adjusted beta or better risk adjusted return than what we were getting with our stock portfolios. And so it was 2003. I mean, God just really helped me to see that’s the direction. And so we bought our first small apartment complex in 2003 and began buying more properties. Now in Florida, it was a real white hot market. So it was tough to get properties. My first mentors had a several thousand doors that they own in apartments.

Randy Lawrence (17:41):

And so that had always been our focus, but you know, we probably started in five and six rehabbing houses just cause there’s so much, you know, money that could be made in that arena. And so we started building that business and also, you know, owning the small multi-families and 2008 hit. We went through the decline here in Florida you know, thankfully it was a great retooling that helped me to just learn a lot through that process. And so we came out through that process where a lot of people just left real estate. We did a huge short sale business, helped hundreds of people. And then, you know, 2011, 12, 13 started rehabbing houses again. And then 15 started focused back on large multifamily. So now to this day, kind of fast forward, we have over a hundred million dollars in apartment complexes on our commercial multifamily side. We have probably three more complexes under contract. Now we’ll buy eight more complexes next year. It’s kind of a velocity approach that we use. And then we still on the residential side buy fix and sell about 70 houses a year.

Jay Conner (18:53):

Wow! That’s quite an operation for both single family and your commercial, what size operation do you have as far as employees that are with you full time and numbers size is your team?

Randy Lawrence (19:08):

Yeah. So our internal team here in the office, we’re based in Largo, Florida, which is kind of the Tampa Bay area. We have seven employees in our internal office team. And then we have right about 28 employees that are through our multifamily side, through our management partnership so that, you know, they’re, they’re not direct report to me, but they work for our company through our management operations. So with every property that we buy, cause on the apartment side, our complexes tend to be 75 units to 200 units is the range kind of the sweet spots, probably a hundred, 110 15. And so every one of those complexes, we always have a full time manager and a full time maintenance. And so with every complex we buy that adds two more people to the mix. And then we have a regional manager that oversees them. And then one of our internal asset managers that oversee them as well

Jay Conner (20:07):

On your apartment complex projects is your business model to search for distress properties that you can fix up and get the rents raised and then turn them for a profit or what’s your business model would like, are you staying in the deal long term or what?

Randy Lawrence (20:24):

Our focus typically is about a three year hold. We look for kind of the threefold, the Holy grail, if you will, that we’re looking for the, the property that has a, you know, original type condition. So we focus on workforce type housing. So that’s people making between 30 to 60 grand, you know, real C, C plus type property. These people are, you know, typically blue collar or lower end white collar workers, you know, just good quality working Americans. They need a good place to live. So that property typically built in the seventies, early eighties, original condition on the interiors. A lot of times, a little bit of deferred maintenance, you know, where they’ve owned it, but they just haven’t really fixed it up and kept it spruced up on the outside. They’re typically, you know, keeping the cashflow and then operational areas where we can improve efficiencies.

Randy Lawrence (21:15):

Cause we have a more corporate structure, you know, large scale discounts. So with that, we’re able to go in upgrade the units so that they’re for about $3,800. We’re able to make them like new two thousands, you know, paint the cabinets, new floor, new lighting and then bring the rent because if they’re renting at 800 and the market’s at nine, it makes sense. This place is a little tired. The place is not updated. So we’re able to update the units on the turn. So that keeps cashflow consistent. It keeps us to be, you know, positive out of the gate so that we’re not running a negative. And it also is much more secure because we’ve got positive cashflow from day one. So on a hundred unit property, it takes us probably about 18 months to cycle through the rent roll, renovate the units. The first 90 days though we renovate the exterior. So it gives it a fresh pop and looks nice. So, you know, you know, the first three months you pull up on the property, looks like a new place and we’re able to start methodically working through the rent roll to improve the interiors during that time as well. And then that prepares us to be done within 24 months and then operate it for another 12 months to really improve the the T 12 and prep it ready for sale.

Scott Paton (22:37):

I think we lost Jay for a minute there, Randy. So.

Randy Lawrence (22:42):

No problem. Well then, you know, so just kind of carrying forward with our business model on it. So typically those properties, you know, we’re buying them at 85, 90, 95% occupied, and we have people that invest with us in the complex. So, you know, we’re buying a, let’s say a $10 million complex, we get a seven and a half to $8 million loan. And then that additional 2 million comes in the form of our capital as well as other people investing with us. And you know, it’s a typically like that is a three year hold period based on the model that I just share.

Scott Paton (23:18):

Cool! So I have a question that’s of interest to me, and that is, is the, if I invest in your deal or your project, is it interest that comes back or interest plus a percentage of profits? Or how does that?

Randy Lawrence (23:33):

So how it works on the majority of our properties, we have a preferred return model where you’re getting a 12% preferred return. So you get 7% paid on cashflow. So that’s a quarterly check every quarter. And then you get another 5% appreciation that is then a preferred return so that you, for example, put in a hundred grand, you’re getting 7,000 a year paid quarterly and then another 5,000 a year that’s accruing as appreciation so that when the property sold in three years, you get the hundred grand back plus another 15,000. That’s the appreciation. And then meanwhile, you were paid 21,000 through the cashflow during that three year hold period. The interesting thing with apartments too, and this is one of the greatest elements to it because you’re an actual owner in the individual apartment, you get a K1.

Randy Lawrence (24:24):

And so instead of a 10 99, you get a K1. And on that K1 because of the depreciation, you’ll get you typically on a hundred thousand, about a 40,000 depreciation loss. So you actually got 7,000 of income, but your tax statement shows you lost 40 grand. So you don’t pay any tax on that 7,000. So it really is a highly favorable and tax efficient investment vehicle.

Scott Paton (24:48):

I don’t understand why anyone would buy stocks, just listening to you right now. But Jay has returned.

Randy Lawrence (24:54):

Awesome!

Scott Paton (24:54):

I’m going to step away and make room for him right now.

Randy Lawrence (24:58):

All right. Very good.

Randy Lawrence (24:59):

So I don’t know what happened, but poof! I’m going poof I’m back

Randy Lawrence (25:05):

Yeah.

Jay Conner (25:05):

So, You may have already answered this question, Randy, but one more chance, your favorite way to find your apartment deals and how many of you got the analyze to buy one?

Randy Lawrence (25:14):

Yeah, they’re very good questions. So really, you know, we network in any market. So like if you focus on a market that you want to be in, we want to be in high growth markets cause that’s where demographics and jobs are coming. So in that market, you’re going to have typically three to five people that are the majority of the brokers that sell the big projects. Right? And so we develop a relationship with those people. They know that we’re no BS shake on it, we get it done. And with that, we’ve developed a very clear track record and a confidence. So when a deal comes that’s like, I just got an email yesterday, guys like, Hey, we’ve got an amazing property that it’s off market. The sellers looking to want to sell it. We want to get your input on it. First we get that kind of first shot at stuff that other people aren’t going to get because of the relationships we’ve developed and the performance that we’ve done in executing, you know? And so that’s really the number one strategy that is yielded the results that we’ve seen. And then currently we own 11 complexes right now just over a thousand doors. And then we have three more complexes under contract right now. That’ll bring us right to about 1400.

Jay Conner (26:34):

Awesome. And how many deals you’ve got to analyze to buy one?

Randy Lawrence (26:37):

Oh yes. That’s the question right there. So it probably is anywhere from 30 to 40, a lot of times, you know, we’ve developed a system where I have a full time acquisitions person. We have a two 10X14 double spreadsheet and he’s just going through property after property, after property. And so on a weekly basis, kind of the crap that’s on the back and it migrates to the front. So now when you get to the front page, the top 5 to 10 are right there for me to look at. And then we say, okay, dive into this one, this one, this one. And that’s a process that we’ve refined and developed so that we’re able to go through that kind of ball on, because you got to shift through the chafe, define that, you know, nugget of gold and you know, and that’s really been the key.

Randy Lawrence (27:26):

And so I think a lot of times people looking at apartments, you know, they mistake well like, Oh, well I look at this one or look at that one. And it’s like, that’s really not how it works. You’ve gotta be willing to 1, be accurate and understanding the dynamics that go into it. And then 2 have the volume ability to be able to look at a lot of deals.

Jay Conner (27:45):

Excellent. Well, Randy has been such a pleasure to have you here on the show and folks to stay connected with Randy Lawrence, go on over to his website at www.TheRealEstatePreacher.com. God bless you, Randy. Thank you so much.

Randy Lawrence (28:04):

Thank you so much, brother. You have an awesome day. God bless.

Randy Lawrence (28:07):

You too. There you have it. Folks. This wraps up another episode in show of Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner. I’m Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority wishing you all the best here’s to taking your real estate investing business to the next level. And I’ll see you on the next show!

[sgnjiah]

THIS WEEK’S TEA ? B U R N I N G  H O T  ! ! ! 

 A RECAP OF THE END OF THE YEAR GLAMPING RETREAT

hey tigers, did you miss me?  🐯 

summer is finally upon us, and with this year’s glamping trip now over, I can honestly say that you all know how to bring on the heat. the three day treat certainly was eventful. there was so much going on that i struggled to keep up with everything going on, but fear not, i did manage to gather some interesting stories i know you’d all love to hear. so buckle up because while this retreat did certainly have a lot of singing under the stars, i know you all would rather i just spill the tea. 

what’s a glamping trip if you don’t take this time to stargaze? it seems like i’m not the only one who feels the same way as both nights saw flocks of students sitting under the stars. and are we surprised that seongnam’s resident astro-lover, nam taeoh ( @sgntaeoh ) was spotted among the large crowd? but perhaps he should take some lessons from our resident playboy and not take his love interests on dates in the same place (albeit different nights). word on the street is he was seen acting cozy with both kwon sian ( @sgnsian ) and seok dawon ( @sgndawon ). what can i say? i guess both girls were lost staring at the stars in his eyes rather than paying attention to his lack of commitment. 

speaking of our resident playboy, is it really a signed, wooyoo story if i’m not talking about son junhyung ( @sgnjunhyung ) ? it seemed like he certainly had a fun time with all that he got up to. first on the list, he had all of us on the edge of our seats at the possibility of his friendship break up with seongnam’s resident sunshine, jo danbi ( @sgndanbi ), who by the way was also seen locking lips with a very interesting character. kwon taeho( @sgntaeho ) i’m looking at you. but back to the main tea, yes, that’s right, the inseparable pair of friends were seen arguing before going on the obstacle course. fellow peers of ours said that it certainly got heated. but it seems like all is well now, as they two of them apparently made it. 

but someone else that perhaps did not get a happy ending in regards to junhyung is the quiet girl, jeon jiwoo ( @sgnjiwoo ). jiwoo was seen crying to junhyung for some unknown reason. hopefully she’s not another victim of his games, because i honestly thought she was better than that. what a shame. 

and i wish that i could be done talking about him, but he wouldn’t be our resident playboy if he didn’t mess with some good old feelings. i’m sure you all remember his storybook romance with a certain natural sciences ta, yooa ( @sgnyooa ). well the two of them were seen getting cozy on the way over to yeongnyu, with yooa falling asleep on his shoulder during the bus. again, storybook romance, am i right? however, it seems like not everyone is thrilled at their romance, as i heard our sweet, sweet innocent first year, kan hyesoo ( @sgnxangel ) arguing with yooa over junhyung? something along the lines that yooa was jealous about angel and junhyug’s relationship because she spent a night with him only to be dumped? ouch. looks like angel has some fire in her after all. 

a quick list of people who got lost in the woods this trip. son baekso ( @sgnbaekso ) and seo hyein ( @sgnhyein). seems like while the two are fake friends, they have so much in common. being in the film industry, getting lost in the woods, reuniting with old flames during this trip. yes, unfortunately for hyein, her savior came in the form of her ex-boyfriend shin hyunjin ( @sgnhyunjin ). talk about awkward. and now, you all must be wondering about son baekso, because he’s been seen with a certain lee haru ( @sgnharu ) a lot recently. well it turns out the pair, or baekru as i’ve heard them been called in the streets, were actually not official until the retreat. but no worries everyone, my sources confirm that they are in fact official now. wow, they really are the endgame.  💖 

now, with that lighthearted happy news, here are a few more shenanigans that happened during the three day trip. cousins seok dawon and seok hansung ( @sgnhansung ) now have the distinct honor of being the only people to get kicked out of the starlight resort’s cooking classes after they set a kitchen towel on fire (somehow while they were making kimbap), making it so that the fire alarm went off too. congratulations! seongnam tribune’s park taejoo ( @sgntaejoo ) and jang sunwoo ( @sgnsunwoo ) were also seen trying to find bigfoot or something in the woods. all i have to say is that i don’t know what our school newspaper is feeding them to make them think that they could find bigfoot in south korea. wrong continent buddies.

and what’s a camping trip if you don’t try to irritate the spirits and summon a demon? well certain camps got a fright when they tried doing so, only to be met with our school’s queen bee, bok seungah ( @sgnxseungah ). i’m highly doubtful that they found the demon that they were looking for in seungah, but maybe campers were hoping that the movie, jennifer’s body would be turned into real life? 

also, i always tell you all to be safe and careful, but apparently the presumed leader of seongnam’s infamous friend group, han seungwoo ( @sgnseungwoo ) did not heed to my advice, because he hurt his knee during the trip. i’m wishing you a speedy recovery! also, can i just say, it was quite amusing seeing you howling and vehemently rejecting the use of a duck floatie to go into the lake? i’m sure i’m not the only one who enjoyed it. but don’t worry, i’m sure we all also found it adorable. 

well, tigers, i hope you do actually listen to my advice to stay healthy and safe, and of course watch your backs. i feel like this three day trip has brought me closer to all of you. i’ve learned about your relationships and interests. and we’ve all gotten so close that you all have also ruined going on late night walks in the woods for me, because the amount of you that decided it would be a good idea to go skinny dipping in a campsite this populated, is quite appalling. 

yes i’m talking to you nasties, yoon serena ( @sgnserena ) , kwon taeho, shin siwan ( @scottsgn ) , kim subin ( @subinsgn ) , son junhyung, kan hyesoo, and you losers who lost that game of volleyball. reevaluate yourselves, please. 💖 

‘till next time

xoxo 

                   wooyoo

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[pulpwriterx]

THE ONCE AND FUTURE PRINCE (Part 1)

For Reylo Week 2020. Day 6, Past, Present and Future. 

Kylo Ren is dead. But Ben Solo is in solitary confinement in a bunker built just to hold him, about to go on trial for Lord Ren’s crimes. Half the Galaxy thinks it’s an injustice to try Ben for a dead man’s crimes, but the other half wants to see Kylo Ren hang from the highest gallows. Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa have both returned with Ben from the World Between Worlds. Luke and Rey are on one side, Leia is on the other. As Ben’s trial approaches, he ponders the past, tries to endure the present and hopes there will be a future for him in spite of Kylo Ren.’

This takes place in the same AU as “The Most Dangerous Game” and is a continuation of that story. 

Ben Solo finished his push-ups, and his sit-ups, and he drank some water before doing his chin ups.’

He stretched, and did isometric exercises against the walls and then he sat on his cot.

It wasn’t that bad, really.

There were no chains, just the stun collar. And his cell, made of concrete and steel stood alone in an open concrete desert bordered by a vast green forest, in a perimeter of barbed wire and electric fences.

There was a little slot in the top that he could look through, if he stood on his cot, and a locked slot in the metal door, to shove his food through.

He liked to stand on his cot, and look through the slot, at the jailer's cottage, beyond the concrete desert, at the edge of the wood.

He also was allowed an hour of exercise outside, and every other day, the jailer would march him to the refresher stall at the other end of the perimeter, so he could keep clean.

He was not permitted a razor, so he kept his beard braided, in a long, thin braid that now reached just past his collarbone.

It wasn’t that bad, really.

When he was kept in a cell during his Sith training, he was always naked, there was no cot or pillow or sleeping bag or blankets, and the lights were always on.

There was only a toilet.

Also his wrists and ankles were manacled together and there was only thin soup and bread once a day.

In this cell, he got to wear shorts.

He had a berth to sleep on, and a desk, and he got three meals a day and books to read.

The jailer put the lights on at 9, and turned them off at midnight.

When he was in Sith training, Ben lived in a malnourished, fluorescent-lit, oatmeal-colored naked Hell of fear.

This was a whole different kind of Hell.

One that might last the rest of his life.

He hoped to either be set free, or sentenced to death.

Then again?

It wasn’t that bad, really.

Ben screamed, he roared and rushed the wall.

The collar stunned him, and he fell, unconscious, on the floor.

***

In the jailer’s cottage, a red light went off.

The jailer was not afraid of his prisoner, he felt bad for the man, for the conditions he was held under.

The red light nominally meant escape, but all it meant under current conditions was that Captain Solo had made a run at the wall so the collar would stun him, and he could have a little slice of oblivion.

He unlocked the cell and found his prisoner on the floor, unconscious and twitching, and he revived him.

“Ben? Ben, can you hear me?”

His heels were still drumming on the floor, so Commander Antilles administered the hypo.

Captain Solo returned to consciousness with a groan.

The Republic Air Command, which supported him, had promoted him from Lieutenant after the Battle of Exegol.

“Ben, you shouldn’t do that to yourself.”

“Oh, shit! The collar made me piss myself, again. I’m sorry about the mess, Commander Antilles. I’ll  clean it up.”

“You probably can’t even stand, yet I brought the mop. It’s just pee. It wipes up. But you have to stop activating the stun collar. It’s not good for your body. It might kill you.”

“When, Wedge? When?”

***

“What happened? Did he try to escape, again?”

“Leia, I can’t do this. I remember when me and Luke used to take him to the park to fly his model X-Wing! You should come here, and shove his meals in a slot in a Beskar steel and concrete door! Talk to him through a tiny slot in the wall of the bunker you put him in, while he stands on a chair! You should have to run in and revive him after he runs, screaming at the wall so the collar stuns him! Find Ben lying there, twitching, in a puddle of pee!”

“Wedge, do you think I want to keep Ben confined like this? He broke out of four jails and put 15 men in the hospital! One of our Generals told me, regretfully, that we should just have him put down! Put down! Like a sick old tooka cat! He did this to himself! This is the very best I can do for Ben, right now!”

“I know. But it’s not easy.”

“Sometimes, Wedge? I’d like to just land at night in the Falcon, and say goodbye to him and tell him to listen to Chewie and be good to Rey and talk to me once in awhile and let him go.”

“He just got a letter from Rey. And one from Luke. I’ll take it to him, and slip it under the door with his dinner. See if you can get him some visits with her. Or maybe just get the regulations relaxed so that I can bring him his meals in person.”

“We’ll see.”

*** Dear Ben,

I’m back on Tattoine again. I’m in Anchorhead, to give another rousing speech for the Justice For Ben Solo movement. I’d say public opinion is about 60-40 at this point. The good news is, 60 in your favor. The bad news is, the other 40 percent still want to see you hang from the highest tree. I just about have the Tribunal ready to let you wear clothes, so I’ve sent you a box of coveralls. Republic regulation overalls that say “Captain Solo” on them, just to remind people of who you really are. And you hated it when I made you finish at the Republic Academy; even if I did try and cut your head off, Crazy Old Uncle Luke was right, sometimes. I’m still behind you a hundred percent, Ben, and so is your Uncle Chewie. He sent you a tin of Wookiee cookies. Also in the package is a rug for your floor that Rey made from the rags of old Resistance uniforms that Leia wanted to throw out. Wedge told me that you’re beginning to despair. There’s no reason for despair, Ben. I’m sure I was sent back from the World Between Worlds for your sake, and you were not sent back to rot in a cell for the rest of your life. Even if you are sentenced to life, or a long term, I will never stop fighting for you, and against the injustice that you should be punished for a dead man’s crimes. I have convinced the Tribunal to let you appear at your hearing from your cell, but I’m hoping it won’t be the prison that you are in.

Stay strong, Ben. May the Force Be With You Crazy Uncle Luke.

***

Dear Ben, Chewie and I just got your new pilot’s pants with the red Corellian bloodstripe down the leg, and a certificate from Han’s home planet that they were awarded to you by the Corellian Parliament. Hopefully, you can wear them at your trial. Commander Antillies said he didn’t care if it was against regulations, he’s letting you have the rug that I made you. I used my old arm wraps to make the pattern so that you would have something of me in your cell. I’m on D’Qar, still, and I’d say it’s about 70-30 for you, here, and the 30 percent who think you should go to prison aren’t for a life sentence. The Resistance understands what you sacrificed, and what you did for us. By all your savage gods, Ben, I miss you so much. I used to be ashamed of what we almost did in Snoke’s Throne Room, and I always felt guilty that you and I would meet at the Skywalker Farm, but now I’m glad we did. Do you remember , during my training, when you told me that in a totalitarian state, sex is an act of rebellion and love is revolution? I never knew what you were talking about until they carried you out of the Infirmary on a stretcher to throw you in jail. I’m proud that we were lovers. I wish we could be, again, and not for political reasons. I’m so lonely for you, Ben. I’m still sleeping in your tunic from the Battle of Exegol; I’ve had to wash it, but it still smells faintly like you, and I snuggle it close to my body at night, wishing I could snuggle up close to you. I even miss the fights that we used to have through our bond; I keep trying to find a way to reach you through the Force-disrupting field they have around you. I suppose I should write something really dirty to you, like the things I get embarrassed about that I yell while you make love to me, but I can’t think of things like that unless I’m in the moment with you. Chewie and I have decided, if you get life, or anything more than 5 to ten years with a chance for parole? We’re breaking you out of jail and going on the run. Nobody on Tattoine or Arkanis will ever give you up; and like you always tell me? You’re a Skywalker, the stars belong to you. Don’t forget that, Ben. Or that I love you so much. 

All my love, Little Rebel Girl.

On-board the Finalizer; Supreme Leader Kylo Ren’s Flagship

It was a short walk to Lord Ren’s private exercise room, but they ran into General Pryde along the way.

He and Ben had a brief exchange and then they were on their way.

Rey waited until Ben had activated all the security locks.

“Is this private?”

“Yes. Ask your question.”

“Why does General Pryde make my skin crawl.”

“Because he’s an evil man. The only reason I have let him live is because I want him to live just long enough to see me destroy his life’s work.”

“That’s cruel, Ben. And you let him think that he’s, well, like a mentor to you. And you’re not a cruel man. Why?”

“Because he’s the most evil man I have ever known. General Pryde was the Chief Officer in charge of Snoke’s Detention block on his ship. He also organized the training for Force-sensitive First Order officers. Better known as Sith Training. It was more like torture. He had the trainees locked up in worse conditions than the prisoners. He made us fight to the death. His trainers were all former Imperial officers who were entirely depraved men. These are men who were in the detention blocks of Star Destroyers scheduled for execution by my grandfather when they were rescued by the end of the war. Pryde was one of them. They enjoyed subjecting us to beatings. Torture. Humiliation. Some of my fellow trainees, men and women, were systematically raped, to break their spirits.”

Rey was shocked.

She remembered General Organa-Solo telling her that even the people who were confederatesof the Sith and the Dark Side were drawn to its evil, because they were themselves evil.

But she hadn’t thought in terms of rapists.

Or sadists.

Or killers.

“That policy ended with me. Now that I am Supreme Leader, there is no torture. No corporal punishment. Rape, by anyone, in any form, on anyone else? On this ship, or off? It’s a capital crime. Off with your head. Execution by lightsaber.” Ben stood up, and ignited his weapon.

“This lightsaber. Alright, Rey.  Enough talk. Let’s pick up where we left off the last time.”

“You mean, in the woods?”

“I do. I owe you a dueling scar. But I won’t put it on your face. Maybe on your shoulder.”

Rey jumped back.

“Wait! Don’t we wear blast vests, or something?”

“No. What’s that going to teach you? No more talk. Defend yourself.”

Ben swung at her and Rey blocked him.

He saw the fear in her face change to anger and resolve.

Too much anger.

“Do you know why you beat me, in the woods, and gave me this scar, Rebel Girl?”

“Because I’m good.” Rey snarled.

Rey battled him back, as easily as she had before.

“Yes. You have balls, and some skill. And you are strong in the Force.”

They were at crossed sabers, but when Rey raised a fist to knock Kylo away, he blocked her punch, made some fast move to get away from her, swung around, kicked the lightsaber out of her hand and stopped his swing less than an inch away from her throat.

Fear returned to her eyes, but also a stubborn defiance.

“But you won because I didn’t expect you to have any skill. And because I was tired, angry, and emotionally desolate over what Snoke made me do. But I’ve won fights in worse shape, and with better opponents. You won because I didn’t want to hurt you. No one else you cross sabers with will have any such compunctions.”

Rey’s breath was short.

She could feel the heat of his lightsaber on her throat, but she refused to ask him to move away, or retract his blade.

Ben sensed mortal terror instinctively rising in Rey, and her struggle to keep it at bay.

That was too much.

He shut his lightsaber down.

She was trying not to shake with relief.

“Breathe, Rey. Breathe deeply. Listen to the sound of your teacher’s voice, and understand that I mean you no harm. Search your feelings. You know that what I am saying is true. This was a lesson. To teach you about just how much you do not know. And to show you that you’ll pay a high price for anger and arrogance, in combat. But you were never in danger. During some of our lessons, you may feel like you are in danger. But you’re not. And it’s not just because you are precious to me and I would never hurt you. I have absolute control over my lightsaber. It’s like an extension of my body. My lightsaber is my arm, my shield, my flesh made fire. I use it to create what I wish and destroy what I will. I want you to sit in this room, in the dark, with your lightsaber ignited in front of you. Do this until I return, and meditate on that concept. Remember my words.”

Rey meditated on Ben’s words, the concept he was teaching her, and on her own actions.

She eventually called to mind the image of Ben striking down General Pryde, amid fire and explosions ten times what she had seen on Snoke’s ship.

And she called to mind him at crossed sabers with her, telling her that she needed a teacher, when he could have effortlessly stuffed out her life.

She thought about him lying in the snow, wounded and bleeding.

He could have called his lightsaber to his hand and struck her down.

But he stayed his hand.

One man.

One lightsaber.

Two sets of actions.

One Light, and one Dark.

And the struggle, in the dark, with her lightsaber in front of her, to find the balance of the two within herself.

She was beginning to understand.

***

In that first week, Ben taught her the basics of swordsmanship, and after their practice, she did her lightsaber meditation for an hour.

She was surprised at the subject matter for the second week.

Fighting, and target shooting with a blaster.

Rey had thought herself pretty good with both, and she was better than at the lightsaber, but Ben, of course, beat her, effortlessly.

Then he explained to her why she had lost, how he had beaten her, and taught her a targeting meditation and an anger meditation.

You never win a fight, he explained, when you lash out in anger, and even in a fire-fight, you always have time to carefully draw, take aim, and fire.

“If I taught the troopers to shoot, instead of instructors like Mad Dog Hux? They’d be a lot better at it.”

The rest of the week he showed her how to fight and how to shoot.

Rey thought she saw a pattern in Ben’s training until he had them both dropped off in the wastes of Tattoine, with him dressed only in a pair of short exercise shorts, and her in a pair of those and an exercise breastband.

That, and desert boots.

They had no sun protection, no hats, and one canteen between them.

The midday suns blazed overhead, already roasting them.

“This is crazy! We’ll die out here.”

“No, we won’t. You’re a desert rat, and this is my Uncle’s home planet. My father’s business was based on this planet. We’ve both used to the desert. And there’s a moisture farm about ten miles from here. All we have to do is get there alive.”

“And we have no sun protection.”

“No.”

Rey took the shorts off, and squatted on the ground to make some mud.

She put her shorts back on and started slathering the mud on her exposed skin.

“This is really going to be a nasty, stinky day.”

Her teacher actually laughed as he pissed in the sand.

“Could be worse. We could be so dry that we had to look for a pool of Bantha pee. That really stinks.”

*** This test, of course, was about endurance, Rey thought.

But, when they finally made it to the moisture farm, Rey wanted to scream.

The place was clearly abandoned, and it looked like it had been for at least ten years.

Rey hardly noticed that other than windblown sand, the courtyard was clean.

Ben pressed his thumb against where there should have been a lock on the doorknob of the blighted main door, and then he turned it.

“We’re home.” He told her.

Rey walked into a beautiful place, all in browns and greens and cream.

It was cool, and smelled fresh, and as she walked from room to room, lights came on.

You couldn’t even hear the cooling unit working.

And it was very comfortable in the rooms; Ben must have started it from the ship, before they got off.

Unlike Ben’s rooms on the Star Destroyer, this place looked like somebody lived here.

“Rey?”

Ben was still in the doorway.

“This place is beautiful? Is this your home?”

“Yes. The old family homestead. You’re getting pee mud, everywhere.”

“Oh gods, Ben, I’m sorry!”

“It’s OK. I’ll have BB-9E clean it up. He must be around here, somewhere, because the cooling unit is on. There’s a hose behind the shed out back. We’ll get hosed down, and come back and take a long bath. Then you can look around.”

Ben looked around the door.

“Niner? Where are you?”

Rey heard an angry bleep.

“I’m sorry for him, in advance. I built him from junk when I was a teenager, and Artoo helped me repurpose a partly fried personality chip. Niner’s like me. He has moods.”

“Is this the same droid that ratted BB-8 out?”

“Niner didn’t know you, then. He’s my droid, Rey. Why wouldn’t he be loyal to me. Well, mostly. NINER!”

The black and silver astromech droid rolled over to Rey, bleeped, rolled away, and she heard rummaging from the kitchen.

He rolled back, and his head twirled around, and he opened one of his ports and a little hose came out.

He started squirting water all over Rey, and the floor.

“Niner! Stop! Don’t you squirt water on me, I’ll take out your cleaning circuit. I meant to clean the floor.”

Niner chirped, excitedly.

“Yes, I know we are both also a mess. Just clean the floor. Come on, Rey. He’s like a big, stupid dog. He pissed on you because he was excited to meet you.”

It sounded like Niner was bleeping an obscene retort at Ben as they went back outside.

***

It was, of course, the old Lars-Skywalker Farm, and it was Ben’s home.

The neighbors knew him as Ben Skywalker, a starpilot, and the grandson of Ani Skywalker, local lad made good, who was also a starpilot.

In the tunnels beneath the house, in the tanks where the Lars family had stored water, only one tank had Ben’s water supply.

The rest were filled with money, supplies, and a smuggler’s bounty.

He even had one tank that was a walk-in freezer, full of meat and frozen food.

One of the other locked tanks was a locked vault.

“That’s where I keep my money. I could hide out here for five years, if I needed to. Maybe more. The door is also coded for your fingerprint. This is your home now, too, Rey. I’m sorry I didn’t carry you over the threshold, but you smelled like piss.”

Rey laughed.

“Ben, you can’t. I’ve done nothing to deserve this?”

“You gave me a month to show you that I am not a monster. To begin your training. You know. Among other things.”

Rey felt herself blushing.

“You’re so cute when you pretend to be a prude. But I know better, don’t I? We’ll get to the tour of the bedroom, don’t you worry. And before you ask? All the plates and cups and utensils and so on are made of wood or stone because I’m a wild man. When I get angry, or when I brood and I feel said and that makes me angry? I love to throw things. And there’s only a mirror in the bedroom and the bathroom because I’m also a mirror puncher. They’re made of unbreakable glass. So are the windows. Because I also like to punch windows, and throw things through them. And this is the bedroom. Just like on the ship, this door leads to your bedroom. Only your fingerprint locks and unlocks it. If I’m having an episode, just lock yourself in this room and wait.”

“Is that why you have extra furniture in your stash.”

“Yes. But if you hear me in here, breaking things? Or in my office?  Set your blaster to stun and shoot me. I’m not kidding. I never trash my office or my bedroom, but I can’t afford to destroy things, in here. And when I go into Wild Man mode? I just don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Ben also explained to her that if he was in Brooding Mystic Spoiled Brat mode, she should let him alone to brood in his office.

Or outside.

Unless she wanted to participate.

That was usually the mood accompanied by a whole jug of Huttese whiskey.

“Do you have other moods?”

“Yeah. My usual normal. Weird Cocky Goofy Idiot. And your favorite. Sexual Death Star.”

“I wouldn’t say you were normally a weird cocky goofy idiot. You’re so mean to yourself.”

“No. Just honest. It’s been a long day. I think I’d like to lie down and take a long nap? You can retire to your room, or you can try out my bed.”

“I’m tired, Ben. I’ve been walking in the desert all day. And if you think that all you have to do to get me interested, after the day you’ve put me through is lie there, naked, on your bed and look at me like that? You’re absolutely right. I am going to make you pay, you Sith bastard, for that desert march!”

“Talk is cheap, Rebel Girl.”

*** They stayed at the Skywalker Farm for the next two weeks, and then Ben returned Rey to Ahch-To.

Master Luke was waiting for them.

Ben was lugging a large crate with him.

“What’s that, Benjamin?”

Ben pointed his finger in his Uncle’s face.

“Don’t call me Benjamin! You’re a crazy old man, and I feel sorry for you, that’s what! So there’s a Wilderness Survival Pod in here for you along with the Wilderness Survival Tent for Rey. And also?”

He made another trip back to Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter, and returned with a small black canvas bag, with mesh panels on the end.

“My tooka had kittens. You shouldn’t be alone out here.”

Ben carefully handed his shocked Uncle the canvas bag.

“Bye Bye, little Ani. I want you to look after Crazy Old Skywalker. He needs a friend.”

“If he can’t take care of that kitten, Rey, you take Ani back to the base with you.”

“I will, Ben. Try not to get killed before I see you, again.”

“Hey, I killed Snoke, right? How hard can killing all his minions and toadies be? It’s not like I don’t know how the Sith operate.”

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren got into his TIE Fighter and flew away.

Rey turned to Master Luke, who had taken the little kitten out of the little carrier.

“He has a tiny little collar with his name on it. And his claws have been clipped.”

“Ben’s cat just had ten kittens. His and Hux’s quarters are full of tookas. I don’t think he has time to take care of them all, or room for them, so he has to give some of them away. It’s very sad.”

That was not what Luke meant.

He cradled the little cat, and Rey finally saw him smile.

“You know what this little fuzzball is, Rey? Hope. Let’s open these crates and put these tents together, and get this little guy back in his carrier, until we figure this out.”

[sol-futura-est]

Sol was always smug when he talked, but when you found him, he was looking off into the distance wild eyed. As if you were right next to a tiger still in the grass looking down on prey mere yards away. As if he was seeing things he couldn’t move out of his visage.

    “What happens next? After I’m in Suceava.”

    “Not for me to say. More than you at play, my friend. More situations than you will know. Just be well behaved, and do what you think is right, just as you’ve done.”

    This man, this being, was rigid. Rules were rules, and they did not bend for him or I. At least now, there didn’t seem to be much to say, but he sat smiling, as if seeing me was a delight, a reality he was happy in.

    “There’s not much to tell me then, now that the ball’s rolling.”

    “Not much, no. Besides reminding you that you’re not just an anomaly. People don’t remain mystical for long. Before man found the narwhal, the unicorn was an anomaly. Albeit one that didn’t exist.”

    Sol always made good points, but there was no sense in talking. I simply nodded, before walking away. Laughter rang out as I passed, and when I turned, his glinting, shining eyes stared me down.

    “This won’t be our last meeting, Octa. Trust me.”

    Feet didn’t stop for him. Nor for his amusement. As soon as I lent my hand on the door, it ceased, and the guards greeted me all the same. Each stretch of hallway was as pristine as it was the first time I came in. As I entered the apartment, Mortimer was still there, sat on a stool where he was standing just a few hours ago, thinking. 

    “So what happened?”

    “Send a letter to Pescariu. I’ll be there for the winter.”

    “Just like that?”

    “I don’t think there’s a single choice here that will lead to anything bigger than any other. At least here, I’ll end up learning to ride a horse, and I can spend some time in a new place, learning something valuable.”

    “It’s not a bad idea, kid, but I’ll talk to him about it first thing tomorrow. Are you gonna head off to bed?”

    “Not for a few more hours.”

    “Marcus told me to give this to you.”

    When Mortimer reached across the kitchen island, he gripped an old notebook, a date written on the front in old marker, laminated over by hand with clear packing tape.

    September 2199 to January 2204

    “Is this Marcus’ Journal?”

    “He said it was from his time in Damascus as a military attache to local militia, he actually was with Julian when this happened. The consul.”

    “He mentioned some earlier.”

    Morty winced, clear with disgust.

    “He doesn’t skimp on details when you ask him in person, but he doesn’t in there either.”

    Nodding softly, I turned to Mortimer, smiling, patting his shoulder before going off to my room. At first I set it on my desk, and didn’t read it. Part of me was scared to read an account of the great peace, only to see it be painted in a brutal light. Part of me knew, at least when I read a history book, that there were details missing. This was much different; this was Marcus’ life.

   

   

"March 9th, 2202

    I have no words beyond rigid facts. Neither does Julian, who even for a skilled member of the espionage corps. I never figured the world would wind up this backward, this amoral, again. I thought we left this behind. I thought it wasn’t possible with our republic holding the reigns of hegemon.

    This warlord, who my interpreter will not utter the Arabic name for, calls himself the Sandstone Demon. Harun will not elaborate much, but the context of the word demon here isn’t exactly a djinn, but something different. Phonetics aside, we call him the Nomad. Not a bedouin, or a pilgrim, or even a caravaner, but a nomad. Without context, simply a wanderer. He bore us gifts of gold inlaid human skulls, that we identified were like Ethiopian, from some thirty or forty years off. Our scouts previously reported every major town in Ethiopia and Somalia to be deserted, desecrated by corpses. Much like the rest of Africa, those who lived after the civil wars retreated to the jungles or the oases. 

    He brought us slaves. Amputees who were supposedly ritually chopped up, and consumed. Those who were quadruple amputees were strapped onto the sides of camels like trophies, some were apparently great warriors who the Nomad defeated or defiled. 

    Our sentries at first repelled skirmishers, but later were offered slaves.

    Whatever is to the south, if anything, has to contend with this man who has made a cult of himself, no doubt from the cesspit of morality that the past was. Formless people striving only toward what is stable, even if barbaric. Malaise was what one of my team leaders said was his first feeling. 

    When I told Julian we can’t risk contact, and that we should shoot on sight any who come within five hundred yards, he shook his head, saying that the senate won’t report this. They’ll just declare the zone uncontested sand, worthless. Our outposts will always remain, but there would be no way the new guys would try to let the image be squandered.

    It came down to optics? What if there’s a would be explorer wanting to see the sand buried city of Mecca, and is instead eaten alive? What then? This is the fact of point, that these creatures lie to the south and they are to be blacklisted? 

    I even saw the Nomad face to face. He was deformed by something, as if his eyelids were melted into some kind of artistic menagerie of lines and swirls. At first he simply sat on his camel, under mounds of white cloth, accented in gold and turquoise, but he told me about how in the deserts both here and in the Horn, the ruins sometimes are filled with places rotten to all life.    

    Could be chemical weapons that went sour, probably not nuclear. Or maybe he simply tried using mustard gas on some unsuspecting village people and was on the other side of the breeze. If it was my discretion, I would’ve killed him, but it’s not under my jurisdiction to do that. Even if I can’t get that girl out of my head, the one who cradled herself on the side of a camel, carved from hip down.

    Each eye was pallid, sunken behind the ridges of the bone. More than mere starvation, it was like her body was decaying whilst alive. As if her soul was bleeding, and each drop of life came down into the veins and sundered everything her creator had deigned hers.

    If I find an excuse, I’m taking it. What good is this senate if justice is unanswered? Perhaps it’s my own discretion that must be requited tenfold. Maybe good men must break the rules."

   

    Rarely did I let myself be unnerved, disgusted, like I did imagining Marcus in this situation. Marcus had been in his forties here, but before the special treatments that I’m told made him so fierce, full of zeal and eager to see enemies. Was it the treatments? How would enhanced adrenaline, lengthened bones, hyperstrength, and extreme intelligence and reactivity do that? If anything, they would make you arrogant, feeling like a superhuman. What if this was why? Seeing the aftermath of things that were once human, scarred from things normalcy would never allow. Almost viscerally I can see the Nomad in front of my face, the reek of sweat and blood mixed into the sight of a clay figurine disfigured, laid out into the sun where the cracks could fill with grime. Draped in rippling linen, like a bust covered for fear of retribution in the disgust, the shock, of seeing it. Brown eyes eternally made rouge, a single struck hawk perched against the cliff, blush and blank stone marbling behind him. Each breath from under the veil filling you with flustered disgust, knowing behind it was once the same life within you. That your blood could be an object of greed to him. That he would reduce you down to that, despite looking in the mirror and seeing himself. Does he look at himself, imaging his own sweetness, or does he realize, for a moment, that he desecrates one of nature’s greatest works, perhaps for some her magnum opus? That, if we believe there to be a soul within one’s chest, that by defiling their body, he defiles his own soul?

    Shaking my head with vigor, I sat still for a moment, realizing the same shock came over me that Marcus may have been under for weeks, months. What did it all mean to him?

    As I held the journal between my fingers, I looked at my right hand. One of the pages was singled out, like someone had turned to it over and over. I turned to it slowly, flattening out the page and breathing slowly.

   

    "November 24th, 2203. 

    Julian hasn’t been able to talk to me for hours. I don’t care. No reason to now. I asked nine men from my personal section to join me, the ones I already knew had proven their loyalty to me in combat. Career men who had quashed bigger bugs for less.

    We tracked across the desert through the long night until we found his camp. As grand as the display was, it wasn’t defensible. Not for camel riders who, frankly, couldn’t see in the dark. Even if they could see us, it was fighting a bear with fists. Our plasma against their rifles older than any ruin you could find. Decorated pieces of fashion more than weapons. 

    As we parsed through the wreckage, the fires were a welcome break from the frigid, flowing sand. When we found him, naked, covered in boils scarred over, his face spouting blood from the burning hole in his stomach, he just looked at me. When you take him off the horse, he doesn’t stand half as tall. A glorified cripple who would’ve died to another tribe in ten years time. 

    But seeing his lifeless corpse after I stood on his neck, it was worth it. The only question was the amputees. After we piled the bodies up, some asked for us to take them back with us. The question was where. So of course, we promised we would return, with trucks, and bring them back. 

    Julian stonewalled the order for my drivers, and drug me into a room once I got back. We hadn’t spoken once, but he arrived just in time to belay the order. When I told him to not speak over a tribune of the republic, he told me to hush, that he could have me subject to a war council and imprisoned for what I did. For killing cultist cannibal raiders. But for what he said next it was hot air.

    The senate still wants no word of this, so we agreed to keep the raid under wraps. When We got the camp to see about the amputees, some had died from suicide. Only a few remained, mostly those who could not, but they asked us to kill them anyway. Julian nor I wanted to, but we did. This was pure injustice. Unadulterated madness. 

    We’re both leaving the desert come January. Not to attest anything before the senate, but instead because our time here is up. The sector is stable enough for the consul.

    This world will not break me yet. But I don’t intend to deny myself justice."

    I wasn’t surprised at the cut short ending or the details within, but I realized in the final words that this wasn’t knowledge to most anyone else. I had to question if Marcus intended this journal for me, or another. Was this world he saw, the world that was beyond the borders of the known and civilized places, where human culture was warped against the circus mirror, then painted against the canvas with the blood of an innocent man? Or was it Marcus just getting unlucky? Seeing the worst there was to see.

    Part of me didn’t want to believe I had even half the details. Or even if Marcus had changed or not. All I knew was this man was beginning to make some sense, here and there

[bluesakura007]

What She Had to Do - Chapter 7: What Happens Now - Khan Noonien Singh x OC

Summary: It’s the final chapter of What She Had to Do. Zinalya’s crewmates and family receive a pre-recorded goodbye message, and she and the person she loves are finally free to sail off into the sunset. 

Warnings: Ever so slight angst and mentions of alcohol abuse, but it’s mostly fluffy. 

"Captain Kirk, commander Spock." Admiral Fletcher greeted the two newcomers who’d just been beamed down to Sierra-Lambda 3’s front gates, a day onwards from Zinalya’s successfully engineered plan to awaken and aid the escape of Khan.

"Admiral." Replied this captain courteously as he and Fletcher shook hands, the latter then doing the same with the first officer. Both he and his captain were wearing their on-duty Enterprise uniforms, having been contacted early that morning by the admiral about this breakout of the man sentenced to cryosleep those two years ago, along with the vanishing of the seventy-two other Augments who were still currently sleeping in their own tubes.

"I wish I could be talking to you under better circumstances, but this is all we’ve got so I guess we’re gonna have to do the best we can." Said Fletcher, before beginning his explanation of the events which had unfolded the previous day. "I’m told that somebody’s coming to carry out a transfer order of a batch of torpedoes kept here to Starfleet Headquarters, and then the next thing I know a couple of hours later I’ve got a phaser pointed at my head. When I woke up a few hours later, the cryotubes we’ve also been keeping an eye on here since two years ago had gone. Vanished into thin air."

"Every cryotube, sir?" Spock queried, somewhat amazed that such a feat was successfully accomplished. Sierra-Lambda 3 was one of the most secure Earth Starfleet facilities you could think of.

"Yep, every damn one." The older man in front of the pair of officers from the Enterprise replied, nodding his head in confirmation. "Except for one. The one containing the very man you went up against those same two years ago."

"Khan." Said Kirk, his voice dropping a notch or two in both pitch and volume at this name.

"What could one hope to achieve by taking all seventy-two of the other Augments only to leave behind him in particular?" The half Vulcan put forward another question.

"Khan wasn’t left behind, commander. He was woken up and took part in the escape that happened next - he’s the reason behind why some of my men are being treated for broken arms right now."

"Whoever did it knew the facility and managed to get in with that fake transport order, so it’s a foregone conclusion that they must’ve been a Starfleet officer." Jim reasoned, him and Spock both beginning to get a tiny feeling deep down in their guts, although they wasn’t consciously aware of this feeling’s presence yet, that who they were thinking was responsible for this might turn out to be the true perpetrator.

They could, after all, think of only one person off the top of their heads who’d resort to doing this to break out the jet black-haired man from his sentenced slumber. "And they must’ve had advanced combat knowledge and experience to get past all your guards, even with his help."

"You’re right for both, captain. That’s why I’ve called you two down here and why the Enterprise specifically is involved: what do you know personally about a certain security chief by the name of commander Zinalya Hamilton?"

Spock and Kirk both exchanged looks with each other of their newfound knowledge that what they’d been subconsciously suspecting was indeed true.

"We don’t really know her personally as well as Mr. Scott and ensign Chekov do because the three of them have been friends for a while, but after Khan was brought here for his cryosleep sentence she was hit pretty hard by it." The Enterprise leader told him a few seconds later as the three of them entered into the front entrance of the facility alongside each other.

"She held a great deal of affection towards him." Added Spock, remembering the emotion of concern evoked inside his mind whenever he would hear about another of Zin's drunken nights which sometimes involved outings by herself through the city of San Francisco, to later be found by one of the others and talked to. "And she developed a reliance on beverages with a high level of alcohol content in order to assuage the sadness she felt in his absence."

"Yeah. She told me about the stuff she'd been through before she came here." Said Fletcher, the trio coming to a stop off at the side in this entrance, a few scientists and guards walking past them in a more hurried manner compared to yesterday, which was probably because of them having to check that everything else there was fine and to find out whether anything else was taken. "She said she ended up having to depend on what's at the bottom of a glass to get over her troubles even for just a couple of days, and said she used to try and fool herself that maybe he'd just come back on his own and walk in through the door if she waited long enough. Apparently she was thinking about everything that could've been and going over hypotheticals for a while, and said she felt justified enough from that to come and take him and the others." The way he said this last part of his sentence gave off a sense of someone looking down their nose at another person, prompting Spock and Jim to experience another recollection of their worry for her.

"Did commander Hamilton have any assistance from any other individuals outside of Sierra-Lambda 3?" Asked Spock.

"We don’t know - if she did then we’ve got no idea who it was. We think the programmed chip she used to disable our security systems might’ve been given to her by somebody else, but we can’t be sure who specifically or whether that’s even the case to begin with."

"And they got past every in-person security measure?" As he asked this question, Kirk’s eyebrows raised themselves by a few degrees, not quite sure whether or not it’d be morally incorrect for him to be impressed.

Fletcher nodded again. "The guards were armed with higher-powered phasers and the research personnel and doctors had hypos full of anaesthetic powerful enough to drop half a dozen horses at their disposal, and they still got away." His lips tightened slightly in irritation. "One of them, Baxter’s her name, said she tried to take him down with one but she got the commander instead, and some of the others told me they saw him carrying her away afterwards like a damsel in distress. Because she’s not a superman like him, she’ll sleep for a while, around a few days."

With Spock also thinking the same thing, the captain mentally realised that Zinalya must have taken that accidental sedation to stop it from happening to Khan instead: in combat situations she didn’t tend to get caught by the enemy easily, doubled with the fact that she had a big heart and they all knew how much she cared for him. If she had the chance to stop it, she wouldn’t have just let him be captured like that. "So what happens now, sir?" This same captain asked after a silent moment which took up this realisation. "What do you want the Enterprise to do?"

"Well, I’ve sent word out to the rest of Starfleet command and they’re considering going after them." Responded the admiral. "There’s no warp signature around Earth that matches up with the time soon after they beamed out, so they must’ve covered up that signature and ran for the hills, but they’ve decided the Enterprise is the Federation’s best bet for starting the search because of it being the fleet’s most advanced ship and because you and your crew worked with her, so you’ll have the best chance at getting her to come quietly. Especially ensign Chekov and Mr. Scott, being friends of hers like you said."

"What about Khan?"

"They’ve said you can use any means necessary to bring him back here so we can put him back into stasis, as long as he comes back in one piece, and once Miss Hamilton’s brought back to Earth they can hold a tribunal to decide on what her own sentence is gonna be; they think it’ll be something like a few years in prison. But they’ve told me they don’t have to go ahead with beginning the hunt so as to say if you turn it down." Despite this final sentence taking the pair by mild surprise, they continued listening as he explained this further. "Because of that fact that you’re her colleagues, they’re gonna let you guys have the final say: it’s up to you whether the search for her and our good old pal Mr. Singh goes ahead, so you’ve got a couple of days to decide but I don’t suggest taking too long on that."

"He said it’s up to us?" Sulu addressed Kirk and Spock for clarification that what he’d just heart was correct, him and the other senior officers including Carol all standing together as a group in a meeting room onboard this ship of theirs.

"That is correct, Mr. Sulu." The latter confirmed. "The matter of whether the Federation begins the search for commander Hamilton and Khan is ultimately of our own choosing."

"They could be anywhere by now; how the hell are we gonna find them anyway?" Said Bones, adding to the conversation.

"Admiral Fletcher told us that we would have several other ships assisting us, allowing us to cover a wider area outside of Federation space."

"Poor Zinalya." Pavel, from a few feet away next to Scotty, commented in addition. "She felt so lost without him that she was pushed into doing this in the end."

"Aye, he did mean a lot to her. I can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone else change as drastically as her after Khan was gone." This engineer with him spoke his own mind out loud in agreement with what had just been said. He and the young ensign both often worried for her the most especially, as they were just as grateful for having a friend like her in their lives as she was for their presence in hers. It’s a universal concept that friends always look out for each other no matter what.

"And the look in her eyes when she talked to me about it all one night - it wasn’t just infatuation, what she felt towards him was definitely genuine. Nothing about that look was superficial." Said Carol, remembering this particular night she was referring to. "She must’ve decided that the only way to properly solve her troubles was to go to the root of the problem itself and undo it."

"It makes you think about that length of how much he meant to her for her to go ahead with a plan like this." Said Pavel.

"Captain." Uhura suddenly spoke up, looking at the screen of the computer console off at one side of this meeting room which she was stood near to. "We’ve got an incoming message, from her."

"What, from Zinalya?" Asked Scotty.

"Yes sir."

"Can you pinpoint where it’s coming from?" Queried Kirk, him and the others gathering round as the lieutenant sat down in the seat in front of this console, setting to work at opening the message.

"I can’t, it looks like it was rigged by her at some point yesterday morning to be sent to us at this time; this same message has also just been sent to the address of her parents in Canada."

"It’s gotta be something personal if she’s included her parents in it too." Dr. McCoy vocalised his own current thoughts, before the communications officer opened the message, allowing the video file which was seemingly embedded in it to begin playing.

It appeared to be a pre-recorded message in this video form. Its creator and sender was perched on a bed, presumably the one located in her family's home in Manitoba based on the casual decor and windowsill ornaments behind her. Outside this window, which was on one side of the video frame and located behind her head, several trees and pieces of greenery here and there could be seen, along with a small portion of a light blue-grey sky.

This Zinalya in the pre-rec video quietly sighed for a moment, before she began to speak. "If you're watching this, then it means one of two things: either I did it and I've managed to get Khan out, and we're pretty far away by now, or the worst case scenario I could think of has happened and I'm locked up in a prison cell." She chuckled lightly to herself at this second possibility, most likely in an attempt to add even just a slight atmosphere of humour to a worrying thought.

"But whichever of those two has happened, I guess I owe you an explanation. For a while, as you might know already, I've been struggling a lot with coming to terms with the fact that he's gone, and I have a little beer and vodka problem sometimes because of that." She continued, her now former cremates still watching and not daring to tear their eyes away or to speak yet. "And that's not right, basically. No matter what happened that led to all this, this sentence he'd got... it's not justice." Zin took another brief moment to pause before she launched into her main point. "No one should have to live with having the person who they find out they love taken away from them forever. Him being medically knocked out and kept knocked out indefinitely in the name of a punishment to control him is a half life, if you can even call it life in the first place - it's just death with a pulse. That's all this time without him has been for me, too. A half life." 

She then seemed to be stuck for what exactly to say next, smiling to no one in particular for a couple of seconds as a result. "This whole business of getting my feelings out into words is harder than I thought... but I guess I'm gonna have to carry on and just do my best. I had high hopes, you guys. I felt scared and electrified with him both at the same time, and the way I couldn't stop thinking about him was all I needed to convince me that I had those kinds of feelings for him. I know by the end of the court trial and everything I'd known him for a total of a week, but a couple of times being around him was like I'd known him for years and years. As far as I can remember Khan was the only man I felt that strongly about in my life; I had plans, I can't remember a time when I haven't wanted to ultimately end up getting married someday to guy I love and maybe even have children later. When Khan was suddenly gone and sent to sleep in some science facility hangar by the Federation authorities, it was like those plans had been taken away with him." The already poignant look on her face grew a little bit in intensity.

"I tried getting my head back into the dating game after a while, see if I could find anyone else who could be Mr. Right, but that didn't work. None of them turned my head like he did. So that's when I decided, somewhere around a year ago, to do this. To wake him up again and get him back myself, I mean if the Federation won't let us go to a new home, I guess we're gonna have to go anyway. Worst case scenario as I've said is that I'll end up getting caught and thrown in jail for trying it, and even then it's a case of still having a warm bed and three meals a day. And I will have given it a try and gone down fighting." Another pause momentarily set in. "I digress, though. The main point behind why I'm recording this right now and why I'm going to set it to get sent out after I'm done is because I want to say goodbye - I'm not going to get into the stuff that happened in court and the decisions that were made, I'm just going to tell you guys that I'll miss you. Talking honestly, I don't know when or even if I'll ever see you again, but I love all of you, and I wouldn't have traded the years I've had with you for anything." Another smile appeared on her features. A smile that soon grew to be wider than those belonging to her previous chuckles so as to express her happiness, which seemed somewhat bittersweet at this moment due to this goodbye she had to make to her family and friends. "A new kind of adventure's waiting for me. So long, everyone."

And then the video ended.

For the next moment or two that followed, the crew still remained silent, and so did her brothers Enaar and Rajen Hamilton and their parents Mason Hamilton and Siazru Tebal, who had all just additionally watched this pre-recorded video message in the places where they were located on Earth.

"It seems that commander Hamilton chose to take any means necessary in her own goal." Spock was the first to break this silence in the meeting room.

"Well, I’m happy for her." Scotty then added, nodding his head and feeling relieved that he had visual closure to back up what had happened being his best friend’s choice that she alone made. Although he was sad that she was now gone, a small smile made an appearance on his face. "I know the way she did it might be a bit illegal, but I’m glad that lassie’s managed to ride away into the sunset with Khan. It means she gets to be happy again - truly happy."

"And by ‘a bit illegal’ you actually mean very illegal?" The helmsman asked jokingly.

"You get what I mean, Mr. Sulu." Chuckled the Scotsman in reply.

"I’m happy for her too; we still did our best and it still helped for at least a while, but there was only so much we could do to help her cope with what she was going through." Said Chekov. "In the end, undoing the fact which was causing that was the only way she could go back to fully feeling like herself, if that makes sense."

"Yeah, I get that." Bones said in response to the Russian with a nod of his own head. "I know I’m don’t normally take part in sappy crap, but I guess you’re right: her gettin’ Khan back and running away with him was the only way to get the old Zin back too. The old Zin who had that... I don’t know, some kind of twinkle in her eyes like every day was some kind of new adventure. Or else God only knows how long she’d still be going over not being able to see him or talk to him again."

"What should we do, sir? Should we go after them?" Uhura, turning around in the chair she was still sitting in, queried.

For a few seconds, their captain still didn’t speak. The inside of his mind was a battleground with all the thoughts, options and arguments in this matter at hand crashing around within their walls. He had a duty to Starfleet and to the Federation, to make sure that Khan, a convicted criminal, served the rest of his indefinite cryostasis sentence as ordered by his court tribunal those fateful two years prior and to also ensure that his now former security chief answered for her own crime of awakening and aiding the escape of said convicted criminal.

However, another duty that he simultaneously had along with this one was to her as one of his trusted crewmembers and companions. He didn’t want to trample on her freedoms and happiness or that possibility that she could be able to help Khan with becoming a better man in their exile together, as she’d said during the above-mentioned court case when asking for this ultimately declined exile. Admiral Fletcher had told him and Spock that whether the Federation fleet began searching for the couple was up to them. Jim looked around at the remaining members of his senior crew, ending with his gaze landing on Carol.

"No." His answer came. "If nobody has any objections, we’re going to not go out looking for them or send any other ships from the fleet to do the same. We’re just going to leave them alone and let them go."

"So that Miss Hamilton can be given a chance to amplify good traits within Khan." Spock, who seemed to have been thinking along the same lines, added. "Spoken like a true romantic." Nyota remarked, this being with a small edge of a lighthearted joke but with the soft, loving look deep within her eyes conveying one simple fact: she was glad that he’d managed to grasp the emotional side of the situation.

"I do, however, also agree with the point made by Dr. McCoy, ensign Chekov and Mr. Scott. This could be her only chance for reclaiming the joy she lost after he was sentenced."

"Even if we do end up probably not seeing her again, she’ll be alright - she’s a fighter." The CMO, deciding for now to not once again voice his opinion on his ongoing discomfort at the first officer’s concurrence with him, said.

"You’re right. I’m sure the two of them will be able to count on each other if they do face some form of threat in the future." Carol expressed her own agreement with this latest statement.

Realising the fact that all of these others around him were speaking the truth of the matter, Jim nodded, and slowly began to smile. "They’re gonna be alright."

"Do you think she’s going to be safe with him?" Mason Hamilton asked, he and his Trill wife still pondering on the possibility of them perhaps never seeing their daughter again due to her technically now being a fugitive.

"Of course she will. She chose this, and you and I both know she’s a smart woman, so she wouldn’t have made that decision if she hadn’t weighed everything up." Siazru replied reassuringly while sitting next to him on their living room sofa and putting her hand on his shoulder in the same manner.

"You are right there. You’re always right." He chuckled fondly, before looking out in front of him, staring into space while still maintaining his attention on his surroundings at the same time. "And I'd be a liar if I said I didn't still love her with every decision she makes." Siazru nodded, agreeing with this point of his.

"Can I ask you something...?" Meanwhile, the now twenty-seven lady of the moment put forward this question quietly in the darkness of the quarters onboard Iadras' ship that she and Khan were using until their arrival at Ceti Alpha V another two days on from then. She'd been told to just rest in bed until this arrival, in order to recover her energy back from the efforts of this Trill captain's medical officers to counteract the sedative from yesterday - anaesthetic intended for use on Augments and the physical enhancement of theirs that allowed them to be more resistant to sedation.

"Hm?" This baritone-voiced man laying with her in this bed responded. The lights were turned off due to it being late at night and the pair deciding as a result that they should get some sleep, so it took a few minutes but they were currently able to faintly make out each other's outlines in this darkness of the room.

"When you were in cryo, did you dream?"

"Are you referring to the most recent occasion, or to the previous instance which lasted over centuries?" Khan made his own query for further clarification.

"Either."

He thought for a moment or two. "I'm not entirely certain. Most of what you might call my dreams were no more than fleeting images and sounds, and even then it's impossible for me to fully recall every one of them."

"So it was like how people dream during normal sleeping? How people get a kind of feeling of déjà vu when they're trying to remember one but they can't actually remember anything?" Said Zinalya.

"I suppose it is. From what I can remember of my dreaming whilst I was in stasis on both occasions, the images I saw were mainly memories from my life, some of those experiences being good ones and some being less so, and I believe I have vague memories of seeing the sky in my dreams, as well." He gave his answer to the main question which had brought this conversation into being. "Both times after awakening again it was like my physical body and one half of my mind were saying it was only moments since I went into sleep, with the other half knowing that it had been a much longer time. But I think we should try to begin with the average method that applies to everyone."

"Yeah - agreed." She admitted to the current tiredness she was experiencing. "Goodnight, Khan."

He smiled in soundless bliss. "Goodnight, Zinalya."

The hybrid with the green eyes, burgundy hair and Trill spots dotted sparsely on the sides of her forehead and neck found herself returning this same expression as, with her having no objections to it, Khan once again gently pulled her closer towards his chest with his arms around the back of her shoulders.

[creepingsharia]

Illinois: Grandson of honor-killing, terror-linked ‘Palestinian’ Muslim running for Congress

Rashad “Rush” Darwish’s platform: support for sanctuary cities, amnesty for illegals, and taking guns from law-abiding Americans.

via Ballotpedia:

Rush Darwish (Democratic Party) is running for election to the U.S. House to represent Illinois' 3rd Congressional District. He is on the ballot in the Democratic primary on March 17, 2020.

via Chicago-Sun Times: Chicago-area congressional candidate’s remarks about Jews, Israel spark questions

Rashad “Rush” Darwish, 42, runs a television and photography production business in Pilsen. He said in the interview he adopted the less ethnic-sounding name of Rush in 2001 — before the 9-11 attacks — when he was hired for an on-air TV news job in Tyler, Texas. He later switched careers and returned to the Chicago area.

His parents, now Lemont residents, were born in the West Bank village of Beitin. At age 6, his family moved from Stone Park back to Beitin for two years to live with his maternal grandmother. At that kickoff event this summer, Darwish said, “The very foundation of who I am, the values I learned growing up in Palestine, is embedded in me.”

Darwish is on the executive board of AMVOTE, the American Middle East Voters Alliance PAC, a state-level political action committee.

As he seeks to make history, Darwish’s newfound political muscle is bringing attention to comments he made this summer and years ago.

At a campaign kickoff event in June, Darwish in a speech incorrectly said Lipinski got $15,000 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel influential lobbying group. However, AIPAC is not a political action committee, does not endorse and does not donate to campaigns. AIPAC members and allies, like anyone, can contribute as individuals and use their personal networks to raise money for candidates.

Darwish provided no details to back up his $15,000 assertion when the Sun-Times asked him about it, saying “what I can do at this stage” is “take a closer look. … So if I technically said it wrong, then, I would have to look into that.”

Back in 2015, as a provocative radio talk show host, Darwish excoriated a guest, Ray Hanania — who, among other things, comments on and writes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Darwish told Hanania he sounded “like you are praising the Israeli people and the Jewish civilization as if they are great people.”

Darwish told the Sun-Times, “I’ll be honest with you. I may have misspoke if I said the word Jews. That was a mistake on my part. Usually I think I’m pretty good at knowing on the show not to use the word Jews because Jews are not, that’s not the problem.” His problem, he said is with a “pro-Israeli government agenda.”

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

A quick look at Darwish’s webpage and he is open about not only his platform in support of illegal aliens but his ongoing personal support to illegal aliens. Excerpts from his platform below:

In my personal time, I have been connecting undocumented families I know with pro-bono immigration attorneys to assist them in gaining legal status...what we need as a country is comprehensive and fair immigration reform to put these families on a path to citizenship...

As your Congressman I would:

Support sanctuary cities and asylum seekers...

Support comprehensive and fair immigration reform to make our immigration system simpler, more accessible, particularly for non-native english speakers

Expand my work personally to create and market a large network of pro-bono immigration attorneys to assist undocumented families in gaining legal status.

Darwish is also anti-Second Amendment and an open gun grabber. Again from his platform site:

Taking assault rifles, high capacity magazine clips, and other weapons of war completely off our streets...

Rush believes Congress should immediately pass a national ban on the importation and sale of all assault rifles and high capacity magazine clips.  These weapons should only be utilized by our Armed forces and at certain times by local law enforcement.

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

Darwish focuses on preventing some law-abiding Americans from even purchasing guns, specifically, what he refers to as “white nationalist” and Trump supporters. There is no mention of his co-religionists and their jihad.

But Darwish is not only an open border, sanctuary city supporting, amnesty for illegals, gun grabbing socialist, Darwish is the grandson of one of the first known Muslim honor killers in the United States.

Twitter user @kristintweeted engaged Rashad, aka Rush, about this on her Facebook page. Shortly thereafter he blocked her. Screen shots here.

Darwish’s father is Amir Darwish, President of “The Coalition of Palestinian-American Organizations.”

In this 1991 St. Louis Post Dispatch article on the 1991 honor killing of Tina Issa, Rush Darwish’s father defended his father in law who was convicted in the Islamic honor killing of his own daughter. via Parents guilty in murder of daughter:

A St. Louis Circuit Court jury deliberated less than four hours Friday before finding Zein Isa and his wife, Maria, guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing of their youngest daughter.

The prosecutor, Assistant Circuit Attorney Dee Joyce-Hayes, said she was pleased but added she had been concerned that jurors might have found Maria Isa guilty of the less serious crime of second-degree murder.

Her lawyer, Charles M. Shaw, had contended that Maria sided with Tina in a growing family rift. The mother tried to protect Tina when Zein Isa plunged a knife into the girl's chest on Nov. 6, 1989, at the family's South Side apartment, Shaw said.

Amir Darwish of Chicago, a son-in-law of Zein Isa, said he was distressed by the convictions.

''I think all the facts were not on the table for the jury in this case, '' he said.

The prosecution's most important evidence was a secretly made tape- recording of the murder. Seven minutes of it was filled with Tina's shrieks as she was being stabbed. Some jurors cried when the tape was played for them on Wednesday.

But they asked to hear the tape Friday for a second time, and sat grim-faced and alone in the locked courtroom, listening to the tape over headphones.

In her final argument to the jury, Joyce-Hayes said, ''I can't think of any other way to describe this incident other than as a blood sacrifice.''

She said the Isas believed the only way to ''cleanse'' the family was through Tina's blood. ''They assassinated her,'' the prosecutor said.

The prosecutor could not bring herself to call the heinous crime what it really was. An honor killing. And she even went so far as to claim it had nothing to do with Islam.

A 1993 Chicago Tribune article, A FAMILY TRAGEDY OR TERRORISTS' SCHEME?, uncovered the terrorist ties in the honor killing.

Again, this is the family of Rush Darwish - now running for a seat in the Unitied States Congress.

"Quiet, little one! Die quickly, my daughter, die!" Zein Isa said in Arabic. He stabbed her six times while his wife, Maria, held her by the hair.

"Mother! Please, help me!" Tina pleaded.

"What help?" Maria Isa replied.

As Tina lay dying, her father put his foot on her mouth to muffle the cries.

Jurors heard it all. An FBI bug picked up the parents' words and the daughter's screams. Zein Isa, the bureau explained, was suspected of working for the Palestine Liberation Organization, which at that time had not publicly disavowed terrorism.

Jurors were told that he, his wife and Tina's older sisters believed she had dishonored the family, going against Muslim tradition by having a boyfriend.

She dishonored the family. Her penalty was to be honor killed. But the FBI suggested she knew too much about her father’s involvement in an Islamic terror group for which he was later indicted.

The organization, a violent and nihilistic 1974 offshoot of the PLO, was labeled by the State Department in 1989 as the world's most dangerous terrorist group. It is responsible for more than 90 terrorist attacks in 20 countries, according to the department's annual assessment of terrorism.

A federal grand jury in April indicted Zein Isa, 61, already on Death Row for his daughter's murder; Saif Nijmeh, 33, of St. Louis; Luie Nijmeh, 29, of Miamisburg, Ohio; and Tawfiq Musa, 43, of Racine, Wis. All are in Missouri prisons awaiting trial.

The four are accused of a variety of acts under federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statutes: obtaining illegal weapons, such as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher; procuring and using bogus passports; illegally transferring money overseas; and conspiring to murder Tina Isa.

...

But reviews of tape-recorded conversations between Zein Isa and his daughters and their husbands also show that killing her to preserve the family honor was being discussed as early as August 1989.

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

While Rashad “Rush” Darwish was not involved in the honor killing of his aunt, he doesn’t stray far from his ‘Palestinian’ roots. He is adamantly anti-Israel, pro BDS, and he has the support of Hamas-linked CAIR.

Darwish has also campaigned with another name-changing ‘Palestinian’ grandson of an Islamic terrorist whom we posted on two days ago: Ammar Campa-Najjar.

When “Rush” still went by the name Rashad, he was a member of the notorious Hamas-funding Bridgeview Mosque.

The mosque hosted al-Qaeda’s spiritual leader and it’s terror ties were so well known that a bank shut the mosque’s account and refused to do business with them. The mosque was also linked to the largest terror-financing conviction in U.S. history.

What other skeletons are in Rush Darwish’s closet? The media won’t investigate.

Do Illinois voters really want to find out the hard way? Was the lesson of Barrack Hussein “Barry Soetero” Obama not enough? 

In less than ten days we’ll find out.

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

Update 1: Rashad Darwish lost, and Lost Big

[xtruss]

Diggers, Denial and Despair: The Macabre Story of the Srebrenica Cover-up!

“A Genocide of Muslims By the Criminal Christian Serb Forces!”

— Alastair Sloan, Peter Oborne | 6 May, 2017 | Middleeasreye.Net

Bosnian Serb genocide deniers are being courted by the Trump White House. Could rising anti-Muslim hatred in Europe lead to another killing spree?

TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — There is no ventilation in the room where they keep the bodies. There is no central heating in the room the forensics team work in. The cleaners were laid off long ago because there is no money to pay them. The plumbing in one of the lavatories is bust. The rent has gone unpaid for 12 months. The building is a dreary industrial unit with uncleaned windows and broken shutters.

Welcome to the International Commission on Missing Persons in Tuzla where earnest and stretched forensic anthropologists try to identify the victims of the Srebrenica genocide.

'He said he wanted to kill me, he chased us across the field cursing my dead children ... The police did nothing; this is Srpska now'

We had blithely assumed that the international community - and the governments of both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia - would have ensured that the organisation working to find mass graves, painstakingly identify the bodies and then inform the families, would be adequately funded until the very last victim was found. We were wrong: "We wanted to get sniffer dogs to find the remaining graves," the only staff member in the building told us, "but we couldn't afford it."

The rundown building is a perfect metaphor for a genocide that is forgotten by many, ignored by others, and completely denied by many of those most closely involved.

Dragana Vucetic, a 36-year-old Serb, is the director of the centre. A forensic anthropologist by training, she was a child in Belgrade during the terrible civil wars that ripped apart the Balkans in the 1990s.

Dragana joined the International Commission on Missing Persons straight after university and has worked tirelessly in the 13 years since.

Bida Smajlovic, 64, survivor of July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, stands at a memorial center in Potocari, on March 24, 2016, while pointing at the name of her husband, engraved among names of other victims of the massacre. (AFP)

She showed us half a skeleton in a room next door to the mortuary, laid out on an aluminium table. She holds up a "skeletal inventory" in which they track the bones. Most of the diagram is red, indicating the bones that are missing. "It's a relief every time we identify someone," said Dragana. She described what she knew about the human remains in front of her. They belonged to a male, who was probably killed with a gunshot to the head.

Thanks to modern DNA techniques, the International Commission on Missing Persons has been able to identify him, even though much of his body is missing.

His family have been informed, and they are now ready to bury the remains. Many families, however, delay for years, waiting for more bones to be found. The reason for the majority of these delays is macabre.

Mass Graves Dispersed With Diggers

As Serbian paramilitaries found themselves hounded by international investigators intent on bringing the murderers to justice, they would carve up the mass graves at night with diggers, move the soil and bones to secondary sites, and then perhaps move them again for good measure.

The skeletons of Srebrenica were therefore spread across mass graves up to 20 kilometres apart.

It dawned on us that the genocide had actually worked

In the mortuary we see half a jaw with five teeth left in a semi-translucent plastic bag. On the shelves above each set of remains are corresponding brown paper bags containing whatever clothes, wallets or other scraps of belongings may have belonged to that person.

Most of the mass graves are now thought to have been found, but Dragana tells us there are one, "perhaps two”, still to go. Now that funding has dried up, they may never be discovered.

From Tuzla we drove towards Srebrenica, some 32 kilometres to the southeast, a haunting journey through villages that had been ethnically cleansed by Bosnian Serb forces and Serb militias during the war. Many Bosnian Muslims have left forever, while newly built churches mark Bosnian Serb possession of the territory.

We also realised that that we were taking the same journey – only in the reverse direction – as the so-called "Death March" of 11 July 1995 when 10,000 Bosnian Muslims fled Srebrenica towards Tuzla after UN forces refused to protect them. Of those 10,000, some 7,000 were killed by Serbian forces.

Eventually we reached Srebrenica, the site of the only genocide in Europe since the Second World War. The UN camp, which failed so terribly in its task to protect, has now been turned into a museum.

As at Tuzla, we were in for a very nasty shock. We had come to Srebrenica to learn about the events that led to the genocide. Chillingly, we learnt something else as well. It dawned on us that the genocide had actually worked.

Act of Defiance

With most of the town's former Muslim residents dead or emigrated, Srebrenica is now controlled by Bosnian Serbs, the majority of whom refuse to accept that that genocide took place.

We met a survivor of the genocide who moved back to Srebrenica in an act of defiance, marrying a fellow survivor and having three children.

'They are being taught that the genocide never happened. You turn on the TV and it is like the war never ended'

"For a long time I thought we could make a life here," he told us, but now they want to move away. "Our first child is starting at the local school. They are being taught that the genocide never happened. You turn on the TV and it is like the war never ended."

Nedzad Avdic cannot doubt the genocide took place because his uncle and father, and many other male relatives, were also killed (only the bodies of his uncle and father have been found so far). His story is horrific: he himself survived after crawling away badly wounded from a mound of defenceless men who had been shot dead by the Serbs.

Nedzad Avdic survived the massacre by crawling away (Rooful Ali/MEE)

"The denial of the genocide hurts," said Mejra Dzogaz, whose sons were murdered in the hills around Srebrenica. The elderly lady told us her story in the United Nations base from which refugees were expelled by Dutch United Nations peacekeepers in the hours before the killings began.

"We are still hoping the deniers will turn round finally and think about us and all the other mothers, but all they want to do is deny. If you turn the TV on all you can hear is them denying. We cry and cry and they still deny."

The mother told us that the first time she returned to her home, a neighbour threatened her. "He said he wanted to kill me, he chased us across the field cursing my dead children. Luckily my neighbour came. The police did nothing; this is Srpska now."

Srpska is the semi-autonomous northern and eastern region of Bosnia-Herzegovina which includes Srebrenica and borders Serbia. Since the war ended Srpska has been dominated by Bosnian Serbs.

Mejra Dzogaz told us that many of the same men she remembered carrying out the killings she now sees around the town, some holding offices at the local council or senior ranks in the local police force.

"I put so much sugar in my coffee every morning," she added, "but no matter how much I put in, it still tastes bitter."

Every year, the international community gathers in the cemetery at Srebrenica to commemorate the genocide.

The ceremony remains an important reminder that a genocide in Europe has happened since the Second World War, and that leaders should always be on their guard to avoid it happening again.

Mejra Dzogas says that she still sees people responsible for the genocide walking freely in Screbenica (Rooful Ali/MEE)

This year, the preparations for the memorial must be in doubt. Last October a Bosnian Serb nationalist politician, Mladen Grujicic, was elected mayor of Srebrenica. “When they prove it to be the truth," Grujicic has said, "I’ll be the first to accept it."

Like many Bosnian Serb nationalists, he still refuses to use the word genocide about the atrocities of July 1995 - even though Srebrenica is now regarded as the most well-documented and best evidenced war crime in history.

"I always said that what happened in Srebrenica was a terrible crime against the Bosnian population and that there were also terrible crimes against the Serbian population." Grjujicic has said, adding that "I leave it to competent institutions to qualify it."

Genocide Denial

This is genocide denial. He ignores the fact that the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia have both clearly ruled the killings "genocide".

A United Nations Security Council motion proposing to condemn the Srebrenica killings as genocide in 2015 was vetoed by Russia, Serbia and Republika Srpska's ally, but both the US Congress and the European Parliament have also passed resolutions calling the massacre a genocide.

The chairman of Remembering Srebrenica, Dr Waqar Azmi, said: "It is a cruel irony that the election of a new mayor of Srebrenica, who is a genocide denier, was made possible only because of the ethnic cleansing of its Muslim population." In Serbia itself, one 2015 poll showed 54 percent people do not question the crime's brutality, but an extraordinary 70 percent still deny it was "genocide". In November 2016, Serb legislators excluded Srebrenica from a new law forbidding genocide denial more widely.

Grujicic does not hold a minority view among political leaders in both Srpska and Serbia, and Bosnian Serbs who now live in the Republika Srpska.

Once 2015 poll showed that in Serbia, 54 percent of people do not question the crime’s brutality, but 70 percent still deny it was "genocide". In November 2016, Serb legislators excluded Srebrenica from a new law forbidding genocide denial more widely.

Boak Bollocks Mladen Grujicic, mayor of Srebrenica, with Zeljka Cvijanovic, prime minister of the Republic of Srpska, at the 65th National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on 2 February 2017 (Republic of Sprska Government)

With such a palpable atmosphere of denial everywhere we went, one question lingered on - could such a crime happen again?

It is as if European Jews who survived the Holocaust had found themselves being ruled by the same criminals who denied the gas chambers existed, and who themselves had ordered the killings.

There is more than a little crossover between the anti-Muslim Chetnik Serb nationalist ideology, and anti-Jewish German Nazism.

"It was genetically deformed material that embraced Islam," Biljana Plavsic, the president of the Republika Srpska from July 1996 to November 1998 - regarded as the ideologue who provided the pseudo-intellectual underpinning for the genocide - once said.

She was later sent to The Hague and convicted of war crimes. "And now, of course, with each successive generation it simply becomes concentrated," she continued.

'It really hurts when people deny the murder of your family. It is just like a dagger to the heart, as if they never even existed'

- Lilian Black, chair of the Holocaust Survivors' Association

"It gets worse and worse. It simply expresses itself and dictates their style of thinking, which is rooted in their genes. And through the centuries, the genes degraded further."

Plavsic was a former Fulbright scholar and acclaimed biologist, lending a chilling air of scientific callousness to the "Greater Serbia" ideology of Slobodan Milosevic.

Lilian Black, the chair of the Holocaust Survivors' Association and director of the Holocaust Heritage and Learning Centre for the North, was also on the trip.

Black was shocked by the culture of denial in Srpska, and drew comparisons with her own family's experiences.

"It really hurts when people deny the murder of your family. It is just like a dagger to the heart, as if they never even existed. When we got the Nazi records from the International Tracing Service in Germany of our family’s persecution it was a truly cathartic experience," she said.

"It was like saying yes they were here and this is what happened to them. It doesn't change their fate, but it is somehow a means to helping us accept what happened."

Bosnian Serb Nationalists' Trump links

Hungary was only a few hours drive from where we were standing, where Prime Miniser Viktor Orban has recently framed his own anti-refugee policy on distinctly religious grounds.

"Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture," Orban wrote in a commentary for Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper.

"Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims."

In December, Slovakia banned public authorities from allowing Islam to be recognised as a religion.

Potocari cemetery overlooking the old United Nations base (Rooful Ali/MEE)

In the recent Dutch election, Geert Wilders described Islam as "possibly even more dangerous than Nazism". During his election campaign, US President Donald Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States".

One of the most disturbing aspects of our trip was the discovery of links between the new Trump administration and the genocide-denying tendency amongst Bosnian Serb nationalists.

Mayor Grujicic, who denies Srebrenica was a genocide, was invited to attend the prestigious National Prayer Breakfast event in Washington two weeks after Trump was inaugurated.

Grujicic said he hoped it would be "an opportunity to make contacts with some important persons, and I will try to do something useful for Srebrenica's residents".

Milorad Dodik, the president of the Republika Srpska, also received an invite to the Trump inauguration ceremony, extended by his transition team (before it was knocked down by a concerned US State Department).

'Nobody tries to argue that the Holocaust wasn't so bad because the allies also committed some war crimes'

Dodik has called Srebrenica "the greatest deception of the 20th century".

Our trip, which was organised by the British charity Remembering Srebrenica, was hosted by Bosnian Muslims who had fought or suffered greatly during the war.

Systematic Atrocities

None denied that crimes by Muslim fighters had also taken place against Serbs, but there was an important and qualitative difference between the two.

According to Azmi, who is now working on plans for a Srebrenica memorial centre in Britain, "Nobody tries to argue that the Holocaust wasn't so bad because the allies also committed some war crimes.

"Bosniak [Bosnian Muslim] war crimes were sporadic and isolated, and Bosniaks were fighting for a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society. Serb war crimes were organised and systematic, and Serbs were fighting for a mono-ethnic 'Greater Serbia'."

It is clear when you visit Srebrenica that what happened there in July 1995 was by far the greatest atrocity of the Yugoslav conflict.

It was also not an incident that can be understood simply by tracing out the mechanics of what took place minute by minute, hour by hour, on those particular days.

Srebrenica was the culmination of years of increasingly explicit anti-Muslim hate speech in the Serbian media, and in the speeches and rhetoric of figures like Slobodan Milosevic, and the Bosnian Serb political and military leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

Milosevic, who was overthrown in 2000, was extradited to The Hague and accused of genocide and other war crimes but died before his trial concluded. Karadzic and Mladic were both captured in Serbia, in 2008 and 2011, respectively, with the former found guilty of genocide and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Mladic's trial, in which he faces two indicted for two counts of genocide, is ongoing.

Yet the strength of their anti-Muslim ideology clearly lives on in Serbia and Republika Srpska. It is this that made us wonder - could a Srebrenica-style genocide in Europe happen again?

— Alastair Sloan focuses on injustice and oppression in the West, Russia and the Middle East. He contributes regularly to The Guardian, Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye. Follow Alastair's work at www.unequalmeasures.com

— Peter Oborne was named freelancer of the year 2016 by the Online Media Awards for an article he wrote for Middle East Eye. He was British Press Awards Columnist of the Year 2013. He resigned as chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph in 2015. His books include The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying, and Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran.

— The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

— Photo: A Bosnian woman mourns over a coffin of a relative at the Potocari Memorial Center near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica on 10 July 2015 where 136 bodies found in mass grave sites in eastern Bosnia will be reburied on 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. (AFP)

— This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

[ourspeakeasy]

The Handmaid’s Tale AU - Part 1

You looked at the plain four walls that you were stuck in. Stark white walls surrounded you. This part wasn't exactly according to plan, but you guessed you could make this work in a pinch. 

When someone entered the room, you ignored the figure and looked completely bored. Clearing their throat, they began, "As of right now you are a prisoner of Gilead. We will begin your trial in a few days and see where to put you."

You laughed mockingly at him, "I wasn't exactly planning on staying that long. So you can just leave."

The guy looked nervously into the camera for a split second before leaving the room the same way he came in. You looked in the same camera and smiled. Even did a weird ass wave even with your hands handcuffed to the bottom rung on the chair. Yeah, doing this in a pinch was going to be a bigger bitch than we thought. 

The door opened again and you sighed heavily, "Are you seriously that fucking dense?"

This time it got you a smack in the mouth. But instead of the reaction they were expecting, which would be pure fear, you turned back and laughed. Both men seemed pissed off with your reaction and stood on either side of you. The older one started, "My name is High Commander Winslow."

"Uh-huh," is all you got back while looking around again and trying not to make it seem obvious that you were trying to get a cuff off. 

"The other man here is Commander Blaine. We will be assessing what to do with you before your trial is to begin," Winslow said while staring at you. 

You stared at the one who commanded to be held in high priority, "I don't think your little bitch told you. I'm not planning on staying that long."

"That man is a respected member of The Eye. You will respect him as such."

"Nope. Give it to get it is how I look at that one," you looked at him pretty boardly.

"God has said...," he began before you quickly stopped him. 

"That I really don't care," you shrugged at him. 

"Sir, maybe we should just leave her here until the tribunal is set," Blaine said after a long silence in the room. 

"No. She needs to know where she belongs in this world!" Winslow said before slapping you again. 

You let your head wipe to the side and just let it hang there. You needed time to get your barrings and let him think he had the upper hand. So you kept quiet, but your face kept talking. Something your mother always told you you would get into trouble for. 

"Wow, you are going to fun to break...," Winslow said while standing back up and straightening his suite. 

"Sir," Blaine then got in the way of Winslow, "We should wait."

"Commander Blaine, I would get out of my way if God is truely on your side," he said before stepping around Blaine to get to me again. 

Blaine sighed heavily and changed his tactic, "Before you go at her again. You might want to know what she did to the Guardians and Eyes that found her."

Winslow slowed down and tilted his head, "Do I?"

Blaine looked at you, "She killed two. Sent several to the hospital. Injured the rest. Not one walked away from that fight without getting hurt."

"Oops, secrets out," you whispered loudly while looking between both men. 

Blaine seemed amused by that while Winslow wanted to kill you right then and there, "You haven't been the elegant lady that you should be."

"Not by a fucking long shot. Been your worst nightmare actually," you smirked and tilted your head at him. 

Blaine then interrupted again, "She is practically the Leader to the Canadian resistance."

"Someone knows whos who. How cute, Nick," Winslow then stopped dead and looked at Nick before looking at you very confused. "Oh, you don't think we know who you all are? Not exactly a secret here guys."

Finally, Winslow b-lined out of the door leaving Nick behind with you in the room. He looked at you and sighed, "You do know what they are going to do with you."

You sighed and became in control again, "I do. They are going to use me for a trade to get the children back that had just been given sanctuary in Canada. If the Canadian government refuses then I will probably be up in your concentration camps. But considering who I am and my talent to get out of difficult positions, I am leaning heavily towards a public execution. I am definitely going to guess those are my options if it were up to Gilead."

He just nodded and looked at the camera in the corner, "Those will be your 'options' if you like."

You looked at him, "I've already said. I don't plan on staying here for that amount of time."

"You are a high security inmate. There are Guardians and Eyes all over the place. There is no way out. At least not yet." You arched a brow at him. He got closer while 'checking' the cuffs, "I know you have other plans in your head. Give me until the tribunal. Please."

"You are helping a traitor to the Republic of Gilead. You are a Commander. A new Commander I may add," you reasoned with him. You really didn't want to trust him in this capacity either. 

After he finished with messing with the air he looked at me straight in the eye, "Let me worry about my status. You are a legend within every facet of the resistance. Helping you will help a lot more handmaids and children. Just... let me help you in this."

[gingersnapwolves]

The Sum of its Parts: Book Eight

It's been three years since Puck found out that werewolves exist and became the alpha of the Arcadia Lake pack. He's put all of the events of that winter behind him ... or so he thought. Then Owen Henley, the previous alpha, starts appearing in his dreams. His daughter is in trouble, and Puck is going to help him ... whether he likes it or not.

e-book | kindle | paperback

Previously in TSOIP:

Book One: The Way Out is Through

When a young woman is found murdered on the property she used to own, her brother enlists Puck Schneider - the nosiest teenager in Arcadia Lake - to help him find out who killed her. It doesn't take Puck long to realize that he's getting way more than he bargained for, as he's drawn into a world of werewolves, monsters, and murder

kindle | e-book | paperback

Book Two: Rebuild All Your Ruins

With things in Arcadia Lake finally settling down, Puck begins to think about expanding his pack. Then he gets the news that the hunter community is determined to get Hugo Durand out of jail. Fortunately for Puck, someone else seems just as determined to keep him there. Unfortunately, his mysterious ally doesn't seem to care if Puck and his pack are caught in the crossfire.

kindle | e-book | paperback

Book Three: The One You Feed

Things in Arcadia Lake take a turn for the complicated when the Lycan Tribunal shows up to evaluate Puck as an alpha. Not only are they dubious that a human can truly hold that mantle, their leader holds a grudge against Connor Henley. If Puck fails the trial, the sentence is execution - and if the pack objects to the ruling, their lives are forfeit as well.

kindle | e-book | paperback

Book Four: The Boy in Red

Just when Puck thinks he might get a break, a warlock turns up in town and starts targeting his pack with dark magic. With no better options, Puck is forced into a cat-or-mouse game with their enemy. The struggle to keep his pack safe takes its toll on Puck in more way than one, and he finds himself facing threats he never would have expected.

kindle | e-book | paperback

Book Five: A Wolf in Hunter’s Clothing

Puck is hoping for a relaxing summer, but fate has other plans in mind. Every three years, the hunting community gathers to share information and discuss tactics and strategy. This year, Alex Durand is given the honor of hosting, which means that over a hundred hunters are descending on Arcadia Lake.

kindle | e-book | paperback

Book Six: The Line in the Sand

Justin St. John is the leader of the Lycan Tribunal, the most powerful and influential werewolf in the world. When he goes missing, his mate comes to Puck for help finding him. What seems to be a simple search and rescue ends up having more twists and turns than Puck had anticipated. Before long, he's in over his head with the local contingent of hunters, who suspect him of murder.

e-book | paperback | kindle

Book Seven: Love What is Behind You

It's another busy spring for Puck and his pack. His grandparents are visiting, and he's doing his best to keep them from finding out about werewolves and getting into trouble. Combined with a nosy state police officer and a series of strange deaths, and Puck is beginning to think that his final exams are the least of his worries.

e-book | kindle | paperback

Previous reviews:

I sat down to read a chapter or two before I made lunch but just ended up eating biscuits as I got sucked into the story and didn’t want to stop reading long enough to put something together.

This book is pure, 100% plot. There is romance, Jason and Sophie are ridiculously cute and cuddly, but their relationship isn't the focus here. This is about Puck, and a murder mystery, and building a Pack (family). There are freaking puppy piles and cuddles and gah! I don't have the words for how wonderful this was. This is the book I was looking for when I typed werewolves into the search engine.

I absolutely adore this. When I first stumbled upon it, I was desperately searching for detective fiction with a twist of supernatural. My friend nudged me towards this, and while I was a teensy bit skeptical at first, I have to say I fell head over heels with Puck and his friends.

I love this author, I finished this series after two days, because who needs sleep when you can laugh out loud, snort in response to the amazing snark, or wonder how the mystery is gonna resolve itself.

I hope you all enjoy the latest installment of The Sum of its Parts!

[mostfacinorous]

Whumptober 5th

[1] [2] [3] [4]

Whumptober 5th: Gunpoint

Aziraphale had spent the last sixty-some years being horrified at the things being done in God’s name. Again. Continually. 

But this time was so much more creative than past wars-- this wasn’t armed people against armed people, with the scattered civilian casualty and ransacked town-- terrible as that was.

This was a war waged from home to home, by the church and thugs hired by those in charge who were meant to be protecting the people they ruled over. 

This was public executions that were really more like torture shows. Flame in the squares and screaming that never seemed to end, the salt of tears hanging in the air beside the smoke that smelled of death, fear pulsing from every street and blood that ran into mud. 

They called themselves the Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición. 

They called themselves Catholics.

They made rules, applied checks and balances, made every effort to seem righteous-- and then broke them. Lied. Tortured. Destroyed lives and families and livelihoods.  

It all made Aziraphale sick and made him feel powerless-- hopeless. 

There was only so much he could do, one miracle at a time, sparing what lives he could without putting himself in danger, and feeling all the more cowardly for that. 

But he’d do no one any good discorporated and waiting to have his request for a new vessel filled. 

He had to take some comfort that, at least here, he was doing some good. 

That, and he hadn’t seen Crowley anywhere, which meant that hopefully none of this was his doing. 

If it was…

Well frankly, Aziraphale didn’t know how he would ever be able to look him in the face again if it was, let alone uphold his end of The Agreement.

Not when this might be the result. 

That said, the only thing worse than this being Crowley’s work was the possibility that it might be part of God’s plan. Aziraphale would hate to think he was somehow thwarting Her in his efforts to do good, and that uncertainty had choked him up more than once. 

He hadn’t forgotten the ark, or Sodom, or any of the other smite happy days of old. He’d really hoped they’d moved beyond such things, not that he’d ever voice such a criticism out loud. 

And so, in those days, even he was careful as he moved about the streets and went about his business. Was careful to be seen in church and turned his godliness up a good ten percent. 

And he was left, blessedly, mostly alone. 

A familiar feeling hit him one day, though, returning from a particularly good lunch. Fear, of course, and pain. 

And Crowley. 

His heart sank and he sped his steps, only hoping he wasn’t too late, though he had no idea for whom. 

There were a handful of men surrounding Crowley, who was backed against a wall in an alley. The men all wore the uniform of the Inquisition, and that was enough to stop Aziraphale in his tracks. 

“Turn back, señor. This man is a danger to society.” One of them had noticed Aziraphale and had turned a bit to speak to him, allowing him to see that Crowley was held in place at gunpoint, and what was more, had been shot already.

His arm was smoking from between his fingers, and Aziraphale’s heart sank further. 

What kind of madmen blessed their bullets?

“What is his crime?” Aziraphale asked, miracling himself confidence and an air of authority that the men seemed immediately to respect. 

“He is accused of passing counterfeit currency, seducing men and women, theft, harbouring other dangerous and illegal individuals, and blasphemy and heresy. We have proof enough to satisfy any trial, and he is guilty enough to be burned.”

“And why is he shot?” Aziraphale demanded, well aware that these men were not supposed to spill blood. 

“He attempted to flee, and then to fight. He has been injured in defense of the inquisitors’ wellbeing.” 

Of course. Aziraphale met Crowley’s eyes, wide and scared from what he could see through the darkened lenses. 

“Look how it smokes-- he should be killed now, before his unholiness can spread.” One of the other inquisitors murmured, captivated and horrified and younger than the rest. 

“The trial may be difficult, given we have spilled his blood. Perhaps we kill him now, to save the trouble, and none will know it was us.” Another offered, and all their eyes slowly turned to rest on Aziraphale, who, despite his miracled authority, now threatened their plan. 

“Kill them both.” The apparent leader decided. “We will make it seem they killed one another, and then were robbed.” 

Aziraphale tried to speak, but found himself staring down a pistol instead, as he was marched backwards to stand beside Crowley. 

“Well, not my favorite way to run into you,” Crowley said, words roughened by pain. 

Aziraphale swallowed. 

“I assume you couldn’t stop the bullet because it was blessed. If I do that, can you get them or us out of here?” He knew his voice was higher than he’d like, but he felt it was justified, given the stress he was under. 

“Gladly,” Crowley confirmed, and Aziraphale gave him a small smile of gratitude. 

“What is so funny?” One of the men demanded, stepping forward to press his pistol to Aziraphale’s head. 

He closed his eyes, concentrating for the ability to slow things down, to stop the bullet before it left the gun. 

Another man stepped up and aimed at Crowley from close, but not so immediately close as Aziraphale’s executioner. 

“On three.” Commanded the leader.

“One-- two--”

Aziraphale caught the blessed bullets with his will and God’s grace, and Crowley moved them away, so that they landed, still too close to one another, in the room in the inn that Crowley had taken out. 

After a moment of letting their ears stop ringing from the shots, Crowley held his arm out.

“Would you mind?” He asked, and Aziraphale pulled the bullet out of the wound, allowing Crowley to heal it up. 

“I think,” Aziraphale said quietly, “I should like to go back to England in the very near future.”

“You and me both, angel.” Crowley murmured, fingering the bloody hole in his shirtsleeve and the still bright red skin where the hole in his arm from the holy bullet had been. “In the meantime-- wine?”