#bless you op for the comparison voices

[jelzorz]

189.

They start piling bodies up the morning after the attack.

It's grim work. Opeli has given rites to soldiers and civilians alike, but never at the same time, and never so many at once. She knows most of these faces by name. She remembers when she last spoke to them, knew their smiles and the sounds of their voices, knows the family that will mourn them long after the blessings are spoken and their bodies are burned, and when she bows her head and prays for their peace in the next life, she hides her sorrow and her tears under the sanctuary of her hood and wonders how she's supposed to do it again, and again, and again.

But she does it. Her throat aches by the late morning, her eyes rimmed with red from tears she won't let herself cry. That one was the blacksmith's apprentice. May the Lady of Light guide you through the darkness. That one was a stable hand. May Lady Mercy bring you rest in your slumber. This one was one of her novices, seventeen and barely minted, her service never even begun. May Justice grant you peace in the next life. Go in grace.

Opeli swallows a sob as she presses their eyes closed and pulls makeshift shrouds over each their faces, wondering what these people did that Justice would allow them to die so callously. She has never doubted the Five Sisters, but bodies keep appearing in the rubble and her faith wavers a little more with every set of rites that leaves her lips.

"How're you holding up?"

Opeli's breath rushes in. Soren kneels down beside her, and too late, she realises that she is still kneeling over Eugenie's shroud, the singed banner barely long enough to cover her from head to toe, her novice's robes visible through the tears in the fabric.

"You need a break."

"I'm fine," mutters Opeli, closing her fingers into fists to hide the trembling of her hands. "Is there another one?"

"No," lies Soren, and Opeli knows it's a lie because the line of bodies in the square is only growing longer by the minute. How many has she done now? How many prayers has she whispered? She lost count after the first ten, and the sun has barely even reached its zenith. "You need a break."

Opeli scowls at him, at the wariness in his eyes and the way his forehead is bleeding again beneath the bandages she'd placed there only last night. "So do you," she snaps. "You can't expect me to take one when you and the other soldiers won't either. I have a job to do."

"Take one with me then," says Soren. "I'll stop for a bit of you do. Deal?"

Opeli stares at him. "I—"

"Deal?"

She glances back down at Eugenie's unmoving body and almost breaks, her heart in pieces between her ribs.

"Come on," says Soren, and wordlessly, she lets him tug her up by the hand and away from the line bodies to the water station by ruined gates. For the first time in hours, Opeli's breathing eases, even if the ache in her chest is persistent and won't let up. The water tastes fresh and clean, her parched throat grateful for some relief even though she knows she'll be at it again in less than an hour.

"Are you okay?"

Opeli snorts grimly into her canteen. "No," she mutters. "Not after—" Eugenie's soot-stained face flashes in her mind and Opeli shuts her eyes and takes another drink, wishing it was something stronger. "I'll be fine." She takes a breath then and glances at him, noting, for the first time, the frown on his lips and the dullness of his eyes. "Are you?"

Soren doesn't answer. Not right away. Then he takes a breath. "They found him," he says. "In the rubble. His—his heart was all burned up."

Opeli's breath hitches. Her own grief suddenly seems so pale in comparison. At least she can grieve Eugenie without complication. Soren has been struggling with grieving the idea of his father for years, and now...

"I'm sorry," she murmurs. It's all she knows how to say.

"Don't be," says Soren hoarsely. "I... wanted to ask a favour actually. I know your morning's been just as shit as ours but—" He swallows. "Will you give him his rites?"

Opeli blinks at him. She hadn't even thought about it, to be honest. It was just the next body, and the next, and the next after that, but of course Viren's body is here too, of course they'd find it eventually, but she hadn't imagined she'd have to because war criminals typically do not receive them. They are buried without ceremony, undeserving of guidance and peace in the afterlife, and Viren, of all people, certainly does not deserve such a kindess, and yet...

"I think it's for me, more than it is for him," mumbles Soren. "He was my dad, y'know? He wasn't a good one but... I think maybe being able to say goodbye properly might help me put it all in the past. Does that make sense?"

Opeli studies him. How much he has grown. How good he has become. He is kinder than her now, it seems, because she would have left Viren for dead and would not have bothered with his rites at all. "Yes," she says after a moment. "It makes perfect sense."

"Will you do it?"

Opeli twitches her lips, tired and saddened as she is. Soren has a bigger heart than he will ever know, and because it's him, because he asks and he is her friend, because she knows what he's been through and how much he has had to unlearn, she nods. "Yes," she says. "Of course."

They save Viren's rites for last that day, so it's just the two of them and there are no others to watch. Soren sets the body on one of the makeshift pyres and Opeli lights it, her prayers whispered in the summer wind.

"May the Lady of Light guide you through the darkness. May Lady Mercy grant you rest in your slumber. May Justice grant you peace in the next life."

Soren's hand finds hers. Opeli holds it tight as the fire burns against the darkening sky.

"Go in grace," she says.

Soren swallows. Nods. His fingers tighten just a little around hers. "Go in grace."

[cyberrose2001]

hnnn I don’t normally ask for requests but my TFP fixation came back swinging, your drabbles have been a great read, and I have a mIGHTY NEEEED.. feel free to ignore this one, though!

Could I possibly request human fem reader that’s usually quiet and laid-back and laughs off their problems, getting caught breaking down because they’ve grown very attached to TFP Optimus (or Ratchet, I’d be happy with either) despite not having a guardian of their own (those two are busy mechs after all😩) and even though they’re ready to fight anyone and anything that threatens the ones they care about they realize they’re too small and weak to help protect them if it came down to it?

TFP Optimus x reader

Hi!! Thank you for requesting! This was very nice to write, I hope that this is something you were looking for… enjoy!! <3

Warnings: SFW/Fluff, very brief description of death, reader has slight crush on OP if you squint hard enough.

Word count: 1046

The problem with happy, go lucky people like yourself is that the highs are high, and the lows are low. Yeah, you’re content with whatever life hurls at you and tend to shake the dust off your shoulders, not bothered by grievances. But sometimes, you wonder what purpose you bring to this surreal life you’ve found yourself cushioned in. It’s a blessing and, unfortunately, a curse.

You met the Autobots about a year ago, another heavy boulder that life had hurled at you, but instead of shattering it into a million pieces just so you could brush it off your back, you found comfort and love in it. Especially Optimus, who of which was the one that suggested you join them after a near miss with Starscream. A robust yet imperturbable mech that you would lay down your life for, a life that is relatively minuscule in comparison to your larger Cybertronian companion.

That’s when your mind tends to drift to your purpose. What was the point of being a part of the Autobots aside from protection? When it comes down to it, there’s really not much you can do to help them significantly. You can’t cock a shotgun and run head-first into a hoard of Decepticons; one wrong step from one of them, and you’d be dead, reduced to smush in the dirt and most likely forgotten.

So you sulk. That’s all you can do. You sulk in one of the many corridors of the silo you’ve tended to call home because there is nothing that you could possibly do to safeguard him or at least return the favour for providing you with sanctuary. The floor is cold, but your tears provide a distracting warmth as they pool onto the arms you’ve buried your head in.

You’ve been sitting here for some time now, and your back is tingly from not moving. You’re entirely focused on crying your heart out that you don’t even notice the rumbling footsteps approaching your pathetic form.

“Y/n? Are you alright?”

Oh shit. It’s Optimus. You can’t face him right now, and you don’t want to. He doesn’t need to see how much you’ve been crying. So, you keep your head in your arms, hoping and praying that he’ll walk away, forget about you like your mind thinks he should.

He doesn’t, which you had expected. Instead, you hear the hydraulics of his pedes in what you’d suspect to be him crouching down and the gentle cold touch of a digit gently prying your arms away from your face.

“Has something happened to you? Why are you upset?” The gentle baritone of his voice is so soothing, yet painful to hear because at least he’s pretending to care about you.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.” You croak, wiping the tears away with the back of your hand. It does nothing but smear the salty drops into your hairline. You take the opportunity to glance into his optics, and shit, does he have the most sympathetic look on his face you’ve ever seen from him.

Optimus quirks an optic ridge, then proceeds to sit beside you against the wall with a twang, vibrating the floor beneath you, “I believe I have been around your kind long enough to know that you are hurting,” he turns to face you, “I would not be troubled if you were to indulge me.”

There’s no getting out of this. You need to do what you do best and shrug this off your shoulders.

“I uh,” You sniffle before another barrage of tears flows down your face, “God, Optimus, I’m sorry about this.”

“Do not be,” Optimus reaches down to press a digit to the palm of your hand, an attempt that makes your heart skip a beat, “This is clearly something that is significant to you; take your time and breathe.”

You nod, taking a shaky breath as he orders, “Why do you care so much about me- I mean, us? Why risk your life for a human when you know there’s nothing we can do for you,” Another shaky breath, and you grip his digit, “Why do you do it?”

Optimus’ optics hover over your form, clearly thinking through your words in deep thought. He hums, then turns his helm to the wall before you both, “Tell me, why do you think we protect your kind?”

“Well, we’re pathetic, tiny, primitive meat bags who can’t even-“

“No,” Optimus interrupts you, shaking his helm. A small smile creeps onto his face, “In fact, it is quite the opposite.”

“But how?” You crane your neck to look at him, red, irritated eyes on full display, “How can you say that when we’ve done literally nothing to help your cause?” A pause, and you glance down to the digit that you still cling onto, “I mean- just look. My hand doesn’t even begin to compare to one of your fingers.”

Optimus follows your eyes to his servo, staring at it curiously. He then cups your hand around it, ultimately holding your hand, “It is not the physical differences I am referring to, but the selflessness of providing for us.”

You suck in a breath, blinking away the rest of your tears, “W-What?”

“I do not think you realise your importance to our cause. If not for the valiant efforts to provide us with crucial resources in our battle with the Decepticons, well, we would have no safe place for sanctuary.” Optimus gently squeezes your hand and looks into your reddened windows to your soul, “No place to call home.”

You stare up at him in shock. You never considered that there wouldn’t be a safe place for you to stay if humans hadn't given the Autobots a safe place in the first place. You’re not useless and weak like you think you are. The feeling of relief and disbelief is all too much for you to handle, and you let your tears fall once again, leaning down to rest your head on his servo.

Optimus is unfazed and lets you pour your heart and soul onto him. He closes his optics, basking in your presence as your sobs turn blissful. Content that he can provide you comfort and a safe space, as you have done for him.

[leeyanyanyaaan]

imposter!sagau but the imposter is your sibling au

26/03/2023

imagine | sagau | imposter au | siblings au

alright now that i've fallen into the sagau rabbit hole behold the results...

imagine sagau but the "imposter" that got isekai'ed was your younger sibling (especially as siblings who often get comments about visual similarities)

if i had the plot and motivation to write a series about this, i would definitely write in both the pov of younger and older sibling so that readers can choose which sibling to read as :)

in my pov so that uh we don't have to experience truck-kun's wrath </3 let's say that another way to get isekai'ed is by saying a particular set of words

it's not an absolute phrase set in stone, but rather if someone says a wish or desire in a definite tone.

for example: younger sibling said to their older sibling in an argument that "i wish you were never my sibling"

and thus causes their isekai :)

now this is where things can really start to play around, but let's say that younger sibling is only a casual player of genshin, or rather, they don't really know or play much of the game in comparison to their older sibling, who plays genshin as if it's their lifeline knowing absolutely everything from lore to builds to rituals. older sibling may also be a fanfic reader writer and is aware of the self aware au.

ahaha... good luck younger sibling

younger sibling wakes up in a completely different land they're used to, dressed in rpg looking clothes, and next to a glowing stone statue next to them.

younger sibling thinks this is one detailed dream and appreciates the scenery... until they hear hostile voices approaching

"there they are, that's the imposter that's appeared! seize them!"

start running

meanwhile back in the real world, older sibling wakes up and wants to check up on younger sibling after their fight the night before, but things seem to be off...

their belongings and/or room are now nonexistent. when asking your parents of their whereabouts they only give you incredulous looks not knowing who you're asking of as if they never existed.

"maybe we should book an appointment with your therapist. i fear you're starting to see and hear things..."

adamant to prove your younger sibling's existence, now concerned about all the anomalies happening, you start digging for whatever evidence you can find. specifically, photographic.

but any photographic evidence you had including them has been altered, your sibling now out of the picture... except for in a very specific video game screenshots, where you played genshin impact with them in co-op.

your heart sinks.

immediately you turn on whatever platform you used to play and log into the game. but even in the starting screen you could already sense and see and hear how unusual everything was, how everything was all glitchy and darker.

you're silently hoping it isn't what you think it is...

and then you log in.

teyvat is no longer what you remembered seeing the night before. you hear chaos and discord and ongoing battle music. the skies are stormier and red, the winds howled violently, the earth now uneven with cracks. what is going on? who in teyvat concurred the archons' wrath?

descending upon liyue, regardless of whatever nation you last left from, you are met with not your usual party of four, but rather the traveller you play as, standing in front of none other than the four currently revealed archons who are all on one knee kneeling before you.

as you approach them, the electro and geo archons brighten up, almost eerily, at the sight of traveller, while the anemo and dendro archons stayed more reserved, keeping their heads bowed down.

there's never been an event scripted like this...

"Your Holiness!" ...they've never addressed traveller like this "What an honour it is to be blessed by your presence at last!" oh no... "We must also thank Traveller for bringing their grace to us safely as the Chosen Vessel."

"You're just in time, Dearest Creator, for we have just caught an imposter. Now you may witness their beheading!"

you gasped and put a hand to your mouth, fighting back sobs as you witness your fears come to life.

and of course, they noticed.

"Oh Your Grace... there's no need to cry. Don't worry, this will all be over soon."

no it won't. this nightmare is far from over.

like in the electro archon's quest, your screen became glitchy and red as you are no longer able to control traveller's actions. no matter what keys you pressed and clicked, you could only keep walking towards the yuehai pavilion. though you could see glimpses of sadness on the traveller's face.

and then your troubled heart finally tips over the edge

at the sight of your younger sibling about to be behead.

what will you do now, C̵̗͈̻̺̹̬͔̼̏͗̾̅̃̀̃͗̀͑͊̕͠͝͝ͅŗ̸̭̱̜̮̫̤̳̂̆̈́̆̈͆͒͊̾͜͝ͅę̷͆̽̈́̑̎̀̑a̷̫̟͍̫̫͓͎͍͆́̀̍̈̚͝ṫ̵̡̛̤̯̯͕̾̾̊̈̎̍̄̏̓͌̊͜͠ͅô̸̮̝̌r̴̺̩͚̹̼̜͐͌̽́̅̓͘Y̸̛͉͒͐̐͛̈́́̓̈̕͝͝ö̴̤̺͇́͊͐́̑̅̅́̿͝͝͠ư̷̦̪̗̖̗͈̰̝͂͐̆̐̀̒̍̄̾̑͊̀̄͝r̴̤̰̒͌͌͐͛̅̈͝͝ͅḢ̸̩̰̫͕͍̎̋͑͐̑́͐̀͂͌̕͝ỏ̴͕͉̽̌l̵̛̠̲̣͚̩͑̐̈́̔̈́̍͜i̵̡̛͓̓͒͐͆̈́̌͆̔͛n̶̛̜̗͇͉͙̦͊͛̿̑̇͂͗̏͜͝ę̷̬̯͙̘̼̱̲͆͝ş̴̝͓̹̰̜͕̮̜̩̯̻̯͎͔̇s̶̢̞̥͈̭̔̽̍̈́̎̇̌̐͊͛̓̿̕Ŗ̵͈̼̬͈̘̀͒̅̄͑̇̄̿͑ę̸̛̠̮̬̝̰͙͖̝͖͉͔̺̼͑͌̓͊̄̏̌͊̄̃͝͝ͅả̶̧͔̳̺͎̬̋̍́͐d̷͖̣̤̻̭̱̫̻̦̘̘̎́͌͋͊͒̈́͜͜e̸̳̤̩͓̫̱͇̣̓́͐̔́̕r̸̢̡͚̪̪̞͍̝̱͕̗̫̜͚̀̏ͅO̶͎̗͙̞̳̻͈͉̔̐͂͛̔̏l̵̼̤͓̉̋̀̇͆̍̂͗̍̔̀͝͝d̴͇̗̭͇̾͑̈́͘e̶̛̛̥͇̳͈͍̱̦̗̜̰̅̐͗̋̔̌̓̀̅̈̚͝ṟ̶̱͍̭̕ͅS̸̢̥̱̣͓͊̒͆i̴̡̧͈̟̻̼̯̩̘̣̓b̸̡̘͙̠̯̙̖͇̙̲͖̪̍͒͝l̸̛̠̣͐̊̆̍̀̿̑̓̾̂͠i̸̡̨̤̭̫͕̣̯̦̼͙̊̅̏̇̈̊̊̇̚͝͝n̷̢̛͔̞͈̳̤̱̱̉̔̎̄̇͌̅̈́̌̈́̑͌̚̚ͅg̵͈̟̻̦͚̼̳͖͑̎?

...

i did NOT mean for this post to be this long, it was only supposed to be a snippet of an imagine omg XD and i even had extra ideas that i couldn't fit in like older sibling making a sagau side acc ask the community and find ways to isekai into genshin, ei empathizing with the siblings, and older sibling showing their wrath to genshin (because i would absolutely wreck havoc in hell should anything happen to my younger siblings) D": oh well oh well maybe another time~ regardless, i hope you enjoyed!

[script-nef]

I come for the interaction and the food | Miya Osamu

Category: crack, fluff

2k words; pseudo-reddit thread of Onigiri Miya

The owner of Onigiri Miya

Yo dudes. So my friend was raving about the onigiri shop for ages, and she was so damn relentless that I gave in. And I like onigiri in the first place, especially negitoro, so I went (is this TMI?). Anyway I was like???? So damn shook when I went in because the owner is like???? Damn??? He's so hot and I am simping for him, and the female population in the shop was as well like hearts were flying out of their eyes. I'm going to go there every day and ugh I know it’s cheesy and cliché but I hope he notices me or something like that DON’T JUDGE I’M LONELY OKAY??

Comments [Anon]: I KNOW RIGHT LIKE EVERYONE IS IN LOVE WITH HIM AND HIS ONIGIRI UGH FOOD FOR THE EYES AS WELL AS THE STOMACH

[Anon]: Y’all are simping for a real person and I just have to say: LMAO ME TOO UGH HE’S JUST REALLY HOT AND PATIENT AND HIS VOICE IS SO NICE  

[Anon]: YASSS HE REALLY IS AND HE ALWAYS COMES UP WITH NEW MENUS AND LETS SOME OF US TRY SAMPLES BUT IT’S ALWAYS. AMAZING. HE’S AN ONIGIRI GOD, I TELL YOU.

→ Continue thread

[Anon]: Um, OP? I don't know how to tell you this but… He has a girlfriend… like a really cute girlfriend who he’s been dating for years now.

[Anon]: Say what?

[Anon]: Hey what. What. I didn’t know this. I’ve been visiting his shop for like 3 months and I didn’t know this. What. 

[OP]: Oh. Great. My romance has died even before it started. ;^;

[Anon]: Well you can join us obsessing over their relationship! She visits a lot and they’re cute all the damn time so frequent customers made a small online group to share episodes. 

→ Continue thread

I just saw Hime and wow, damn

So I went to OM today—because wow it’s so delicious please open a second shop MyaSamu—and my eyes were blessed because WHO DID I SEE?? YEP, IT WAS HIME. 

Like y’all know how he calls her Hime as a nickname, which is so [censored] cute, and SHE LIVES UP TO THE NAME. There’s like, a graceful aura around her and it’s sort of blinding? As soon as you see her, it’s like “Ah, yep. That’s her. No one else can be called Hime other than her.” 

AND SHE GOT SO FLUSTERED WHEN I CALLED HER HIME BY ACCIDENT!! It just literally slipped out because I’m a [censored] idiot like that and she turned so red! And started hitting MyaSamu out of embarrassment! But her hits didn’t even look that painful and he was smiling so happily. My eyes were blessed that day.

Comments [Anon]: Oh my god you’re so lucky, I want to see him smile… I mean, he does, but apparently he smiles differently when he’s with Hime and I know that if I see that, my day will instantly become better.

[Anon]: Oh dude, you are not wrong. He somehow becomes more radiant. Just. How?

[Anon]: Imagine being that cute and beautiful together. What a power couple.

[Anon]: You know what happened once? I was really down while I was eating there because I got a bad grade, and she came over to talk to me!! Because apparently I looked way too sad and she was worried about me! UGH I’M FALLING FOR YOU HOW ARE YOU THIS KIND?! ARE YOU AN ACTUAL ANGEL?

[Anon]: This just confirmed, Hime was never human. She is the epitome of angelic grace here to save us and MyaSamu is so blessed for being with her.

Y’all are weird as [censored], why do you do this [censored]

Why are you guys obsessing over real people like that? I would be creeped out if I knew anyone does this, you guys are invading their privacy. Get a life and stop being so damn disturbing.

Comments [Anon]: ??? He knows about this. He literally checks up on this site a couple of times per week. He explicitly said to many customers “Thanks for liking me and my girlfriend so much. You guys are funny.” The [censored] are you on?

[Anon]: I asked Hime once before and she said it’s fine as well unless we’re stalking them or some [censored] like that. And we don’t. We’re just exchanging stories on our interactions with them inside the shop and how cute they are. He said it actually helps with his revenues and sales. 

[Anon]: Literally. They’re just really cute. Like you look at them and boom, you have diabetes, no exceptions.

[Anon]: I think he said like half of his new customers came after seeing this thread, so back off

Ignore that person, GUESS WHO I SAW

Y’all might be thinking Hime, and yes, I did see her as well. BUT I ALSO SAW ATSUMU! He was hanging with Hime and teasing her so much. Then MyaSamu got annoyed and they nearly brawled there lmao perfect representation of siblings.

Hime tried to stop them and when they kept on fighting, she slapped them both on the back and shouted for them to cool it. MyaSamu I guessed since they’re going out, but she tamed Atsumu. Atsumu. My heart thumped because she was so awesome. Like, you’re cool, kind, sweet, amazingly pretty and on top of that, badass as well? Lady, you should be designated as a national treasure.

Comments [Anon]: Bruh. I live super close to OM. I go there practically every week. I’ve filled out the coupon like, 5 times. I’ve never met Hime once. AND YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT YOU SAW HIME AS WELL AS ATSUMU???? WHY HAVE THE GODS FORSAKEN ME??

[Anon]: How cool was she? I can’t imagine Atsumu folding to anyone that’s not his parents.

[Anon]: I feel like he would be rude to his own parents tho lol

[Anon]: True true

[OP]: She was like, the epitome of cool. Based on the sound of the slap I would have been rolling on the floor while crying in pain but they kind of seem used to it or something? She just glowered at them and they immediately shut up. I wonder if she was like that when they started dating as well.

[Anon]: I find it funny that everyone is focusing on Hime while Miya Atsumu, division 1 volleyball player and one of the members of Japan’s national team, is right there.

[Anon]: Atsumu pales in comparison to Hime. This is a fact.

[Samu]: True

[Anon]: ??? The [censored]? Are my eyes working? Is that… actually Osamu? As in like, the Osamu that we’re talking about? Like the owner of OM?

[Samu]: Yes

[Anon]: Okay then bye I’m never coming here ever again. Goodbye y’all and watch me die haha [censored]

Friend of Samu and “Hime”

I can’t really believe this actually exists but it’s really funny and kinda cringey to see everyone fawn over Osamu and “Hime” like this. I've been their friend since high school and let me give you a fact: “Hime”’s nickname during her time in school was Janus like the two faced God. Because she’s really nice all the time but once she gets angry, it’s over for everyone. Everyone. 

So what do y’all do here, just share stories?

Comments [Anon]: Holy [censored] what. What. CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THEM?? WHAT WERE THEY LIKE IN SCHOOL? WERE THEY STILL CUTE AND SWEET LIKE THE BEST BRAND OF CHOCOLATE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD????

[Anon]: YEAH LIKE WHITE CHOCOLATE

[Anon]: I’m sorry, but if you think white “chocolate” is good then please keep that [censored] to yourself because that [censored] embarrassing.

[Anon]: White chocolate is good!

[Anon]: You’re an embarrassment to humankind.

→ Continue thread

[Anon]: As the person on the above thread has said, could you share little stories of how they were like in school? If they’re fine with it?

[OP]: Hmm… well I’ll ask first. 

I got the permission

Hm, I don’t really know what to say about their relationship though. I was friends with them for a long while but it wasn’t really surprising when they started dating. Osamu’s liked her for years. I heard they were childhood friends and were stuck at the hip with Atsumu as well, but she was closer to Osamu. Though that’s kind of a given, what with Atsumu’s [censored] personality.

She was one of the school council members and really popular as well. Always eager to help people, has a smile on her face and a complete disaster. She’s so damn clumsy and uncoordinated that I once saw her trip on air. On air. How. She’s terrible at cooking as well, like apocalyptic level. She somehow managed to burn rice in home economics class even with three other people keeping an eye on her. It was actually pretty impressive.

Anyway, Osamu was absolutely smitten with her and everyone with eyes or common sense could see it. Except for… you guessed it, her. He would literally be tripping over himself to help her and we were all like “boy, please be more subtle you are killing us”. Especially Atsumu since he had to deal with that even at home because they’re neighbours. I once took a photo of him making the most disgusted and annoyed face, but it got deleted when I changed my phone. An international loss.

Where was I going with this? Oh right, how they went out. I gotta go to sleep so I’ll post that later.

Comments [Anon]: ???? YOU’RE GOING TO LEAVE US HANGING LIKE THAT??? HOW ARE YOU SO CRUEL THIS ISN’T FAIR I CAN’T GO TO SLEEP BECAUSE I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED.

[Anon]: EXCUSE ME ARE YOU SKILLED IN TORTURE BECAUSE I AM LITERALLY DYING YOU CAN’T JUST BOUNCE AFTER TELLING US THAT. COME BACK!!!!

[Anon]: Dudes I have a good idea. Let’s spam them with comments.

[Anon]: Oh ho, smart, smart. 

[Anon]: Dude

[Anon]: Dude

[Anon]: Dude

[Anon]: Dude

[Anon]: Dude

[Anon]: Dude

[Anon]: Dude

[Anon]: Dude

LOAD MORE

Damn you guys are persistent

Chill, I need my sleep as well. 

Alright, this was a while ago so some facts might be inaccurate. Also she forbade anyone from commenting on it during school. It’s fine now though, and thankfully I was sitting next to them when it happened.

So Osamu always brings bentos and makes hers as well. He used to make them for Atsumu as well (unwillingly but had to since he complained about it so much) but stopped after like, the second time because they got into a fight. I think the reason was that Atsumu was whining too much about how he doesn’t like some of the side-dishes and Osamu snapped. That was a fun day.

We were eating in the classroom and enjoying our lunch when she blurted out something like “Osamu, you’re so good at cooking! You’d be a great chef. Your wife would want to let you cook for the entire time you’re together!” Which was fine because everyone knows he’s good at cooking. I think that’s what you guys call a gap moe or something, I dunno.

And Osamu just stared at her. You know what moment when you just feel something bad is going to happen? Like that chill in your back? Yeah, it was that. I sensed that from Osamu. Atsumu probably got it as well because our eyes locked and the red alarm of “STOP HIM” flashed in front of both our eyes.

But before we could interrupt, Osamu just smiled and said “I can cook for you like that if you want.” And I [censored] you not, everyone went quiet. We were staring at him like “??? Did you just propose before even asking her out on a date?” And her face, oh god I didn’t know her face could be that red or that her eyes could be so big. She was literally frozen while trying to eat like the rest of us watching them.

When she stayed frozen, it was like there was an error message saying “[Name].exe has stopped working. What the [censored] did you do.” above her head. Osamu eventually moved and dragged her out of the classroom. And they didn’t come back until the bell rang for the next class.

I don’t know what happened during the talk, but I guess he finally confessed because they were holding hands when they came back. 

Anyway, yeah. That’s the story of how they went out. I have to sleep again so bye.

Comments [Anon]: WHAT THE [censored]

[translationandbetrayals]

Satoru Kosaki: a Modern Anime Composer

fading memories

I don’t remember the first time I listened to a Satoru Kosaki composition. I think it might have been in Youtube, probably in a Loquendo or anime related video, and I know for sure that it was before watching any of the anime he actually scored. Nonetheless, I am also sure that I was impacted by them as soon as I became familiar with any of those themes, which wasn’t really hard considering how recurrent they were within the anime and early video-making community. I’m talking 2008-to-2012 kind of old.

The tracks were immediately recognizable and memorable, and while I wasn’t even initially aware they came from anime (I, for some reason, assumed they were public domain compositions, perhaps because of their repeated use), for better or worse, I ended up growing to like them, as funny and engaging. So that was effective.

I would later realize most of the themes I ended up accustomed to came from one source: the Lucky Star soundtrack, plus some of the Haruhi OSTs that might have been used too. Lucky Star is, if someone happens to not know about it, a comedy anime, which aims for mostly a familiar, comfortable ambience that I think gets captured perfectly in its OST. In fact, I think few OSTs come even close to the specific area Lucky Star’s so successfully hits.

Perhaps the exception could be the Azumanga Daioh OST, which might have been an influence based on the fact both works had the same music production company, Lantis, and that the very style of Lucky Star is quite similar as Azumanga’s, even adaptation wise, as both are 4-koma adapted as full-time weekly television slots.

lucky cool star

Now I’ve been talking about Satoru Kosaki scoring work. It is popular and good enough and as I said his work in Lucky Star is longstanding. But if you’re anywhere familiar with Lucky Star as a show you might be wondering about another thing. Who composed that motherflippin’ crazy OP theme? Was it Kosaki? Well yes it was.

There’s also some comparison to Azumanga Daioh, in that it presents a similarly crazed tune, but it also goes nuts in a different direction to Azumanga’s Soramimi Cake. While Soramimi Cake has an olden soul, closer to a folksy euro-japo mesh with nonsensical lyrics (think yodeling+enka), Motteke! Sailor Fuku sounds more like a cocaine driven hardcore edm moe hip-hop meltdown. Now this sounds more like a song that will revolutionize the industry and become a blueprint for following modern anime songs to come. And so it was, basically. After Lucky Star, everyone wanted to have their own deranged cutesy anime themes. And so you can blame Kosaki for your Umaru-chans, Nyarukos, Go! Go! Maniacs, etc.

Something that must be stressed about Kosaki’s theme for Lucky Star is that, on top of being so amazingly crazy and addictive, it was good music too. It was very well arranged and composed, and you should be thankful that he decided to bless us with equally amazing music, and even mentored or accompanied fellow artists that took on a similar approach to anime compositions. And that’s how MONACA enters the picture, as an active music collective of which Kosaki is part, that has had a hand, either by its members, or together as a group, in some of the most remarkable musical productions of recent times, even outside anime. (And like half of these are Hidekazu Tanaka’s... should I make a post about him?)

MONACA! with Kosaki at the middle-left

One of the most defining features of Kosaki’s work is his versatility. I have mostly talked about the Lucky Star music, but that should not be taken as his only reference. He’s able to manage climactic action just as well as the comfortable and funny.

Broadcast episode 12, Live Alive, is to me the actual climax of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I don’t know if the same effect would’ve been accomplished without its signature insert song, now one of the most popular anisongs ever: God Knows, sung by Aya Hirano, who voices Haruhi in the show. It is likely you have listened to God Knows before, after all, it was at one time the most viewed anime related song in Youtube, and its popularity has gone way beyond the -admittedly already popular- source material.

god knows this is good

And this versatility affects not only the scope of his dramatic sensibilities, but also the stylistic elements of his work, which takes on a variety of musical genres. And that is just evident by looking at his anime song work, which even outside of the Lucky Star fusion finds moe-sung ska-punk, soviet-inspired funky metal mashups, hip-hop crossover anthems, PLATINUM DISCO, borderline outsider music, avant-pop delusion, epic rocking tracks, some idol music masterpieces, and of course, classic, straight melancholic J-pop.

This variety in style becomes even clearer when looking at his OST work, which tends to be wildly eclectic, either by his MONACA collaborations (like the soundtracks to Kizumonogatari, Beastars, or the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya movie), or simply by virtue of his own character, in the various projects he scored individually (such as the aforementioned Haruhi and Lucky Star, or Bakemonogatari).

For example, the Kizumonogatari tracks which he composed include funny elevator jazz, french-spoken bossa, suspenseful ambient music, and sentimental, classical inspired stuff. I also really enjoy the Beastars work he’s done and I take it as proof he hasn’t gone stale, quite the opposite. He seems way more confident now in approaching different, out-there styles and arrangements, while also portraying a somewhat amusing maturity: he sounds to me a lot more like the Kuricorder Pops Orchestra or Oranges & Lemons, through the now classic Kosaki trademark nonetheless. And it’s probably because of his established success that he’s able to indulge in such styles now, while still maintaining his high profile as a popular music composer.

kiss-shot acerola-orion heart-under-blade

Even if you are not very well versed in anime, or even if you don’t like anime at all, but partake in current youth culture, it’s most likely that you’ve heard something made by him. Be it by memes referencing Kosaki’s past works, by the liberal use of his music to accompany mid-level internet content, or by his presence as a composer in some of the most successful and far-reaching anime today, such as Beastars and the Monogatari Series, his work has its footprints all around popular media. And I’m thankful that it happened this way, as he ended up enriching something I dearly know and love: the modern anime music industry.

our lord speaking

Salvador González Turrientes

Sources and recommended additional material:

A summary of Kosaki's first of many appearances in Anisong Station 

His second appearance in Anisong Station, in which he talks about Lucky Star 

Another Anisong Station episode, featuring Lantis founder Shunji Inoue 

Satoru Kosaki’s VGMdb entry, which credits -in English- most of his video game and anime music appearances

The Wikipedia article, duh

The official Monaca profile list, including an archive of his body of work (in Japanese)

[blaster-aichi]

Cardfight!! Vanguard Extra Story IF 14 things

links lead to images posted on discord because this post is already far too absurdly long, have too many thoughts, what a rollercoaster ride this was

Shuka’s opening a gateway into the past beneath herself and Emi indicted Link Joker Gate flashbacks because of its appearance

If it wasn’t demonstrated prior to this episode, it’s apparent how Aichi is far more malicious than any incarnation of past (i.e. his soldiers ready to maim or straight up murder Emi and Shuka , having Kai-kun abducted; whether either was 100% intended to occur the way they did is anyone’s guess)

Miwa as a Sanctuary Knight: there’s two points to this          — it’s an astonishing turn as he was part of the Mates during Legion Mate — the season which many people have acknowledged the parallels to — but working beneath Aichi turns that on its head as well as the implication that Aichi’s force was concentrated around the Miyaji Cardfight Club, as well as giving a fifth member to his faction in similar vein to Kourin of Legion Mate.         — it splits up the Kai/Miwa/Ibuki trio down the same lines as Ultra Rare; Suiko and Ibuki being firmly aligned with Emi while Kourin and Miwa fall under Aichi’s command. Rekka and Kai-kun would serve as unaccounted for, though it’s more clear-cut in his case, as Rekka made her appearance and her allegiance known at the same time as Kourin entered the fray, as well as already fighting on the side of restoring the timeline to its proper state before Suiko was pulled into activity.         — and it was foreshadowed right before our eyes when they announced IF 14 would be centred around Kai-kun.

"Whenever I hear the name "Toshiki Kai”, for some reason, I get chills”. It’s a strange statement with his behaviour later in the episode, seeming to recognize and feign friendliness with Ibuki and Kai-kun. The only possibility can think of for this line is Miwa, like Aichi and Emi (and the rest of the Sanctuary Knights), is his Outside World self pulled into IF World and his memories tampered with, he might be privy enough to his relationship with the other two for the sake of his act when meeting with them.

Kai-kun hugging Ibuki with no restraint. Rena down. Fuck that’s so soft.

9 years of being dead or arseholes who abandoned their child, we get Mama and Papa and the whole family is adorable! Mama Kai and Shizuka would get along so well, they’re two peas in a pod aaaaa        — Toshi also pointed how out the Kai family love of curry persists to this day and god bless.

me last night on call with Courtney: “There has to be a reason why Aichi hates Vanguard specifically just because of not meeting Kai-kun. It wouldn’t be any more significant than literally anything else. Hey, Aichi, why not hate rock music instead or something?” Kai-kun’s room: this kid loves rock, how dare you

Said room also makes it feel like the show is saying Vanguard/Aichi ruined Kai-kun’s life as opposed to, you know, his parents abandoning him. Bushi no—

It took just his name. That was it.

The static within the audio around Aichi is a neat touch when there feels to be a theme of glitching in the ED and it isn’t as though either reality is “wrong”, just distorted.

Just how they go about instilling memories of Aichi in comparison to Legion Mate is fascinating. In Legion Mate, the Mates were able to cleanly remember as their fights progressed and able to accept that Aichi existed prior to the season; we don’t know the extent of the changes to their lives as a result of his disappearance, but here is a different story. Kai-kun’s entire life has been altered as a result of the distortion and he isn’t able to simply see Aichi in his memories and realize that someone is missing from his past, and it takes a toll on him for these conflicting memories from another life to present themselves to him.

One has to wonder what Shizuka is going through in regards to Aichi vanishing, but also what Kai-kun’s parents must think if they were to investigate the commotion coming from his room suddenly to see him and everyone else gone and the disarray left from just how they left.

IF being the seemingly most lighthearted season with the darkest cliffhanger (topping even Link Joker and Legion Mate, because nothing comes to mind that could honestly match this), even if we know they would never dare kill off Kai-kun but the insinuation for the characters that he could be dead is chilling, particularly when they consist of his childhood friends, young girls and the root being a boy seeking him out, whose intentions around it we don't know and whom we've seen destablize (albeit in another continuity) when it comes to Kai-kun, so imagine the ramification and what it could do to his state of mind (or Ibuki, Miwa, Emi and Shuka’s, for that matter)  if they really did play with the idea of killing him off.

Horizontal Oath

God bless this ED, it’s so good

There’s a lot in here about the clashing realities around Kai-kun and it’s nice to know the season isn’t overlooking the incredibly weighted implications of putting him in this position.

The fire spurning to life, while a nice nod to his usual choice of Kagero an its absence in his current life, could also be representative that, while he has many hobbies in his IF life, Vanguard is where his passion truly lies above all, as he grips it and contemplates the people who should be around him.

Emi, Ibuki and Miwa occupying the same spots in the frames they exist in is a neat choice.

Kai rushing towards the light/Blaster Blade only for the card to vanish as his fingers nears it screams of midpoint Legion Mate where the Mates finally got a glimpse of Aichi, to hear his own request that they give up. As the preview shows them in the same location, it’s possible 15 will serve as the first, failed attempt to bring Aichi back to his senses and force the group to pick themselves up and try again in the same way the Leon episodes served in Legion Mate, signified by the repeated animation usage when Kai-kun runs towards Blaster Blade a second time.

The price Kai-kun is going to pay is not being overlooked. To restore the timeline, it’s apparent that he’ll have to sacrifice his IF life and parents, inflicting unto him the anguish of his original Manga/Reboot continuity life and the hardships that came with it  The darkness that emanates from his younger self and the glimpses of that original life as he kneels demonstrates that, while he might accept that outcome, it’s not about to be an easy task, understandable.       — Initially had suspected from the preview for 14 that this issue might be raised with him and he would reject erasing everything he knows and have to be brought around to the idea, but the ED actually refutes this, as he faces everything head-on.       — In doing so, it speaks to his character and the strength to allow this incredibly high price, as by relinquishing everything he knows, he’s able to regain the friends he made through Vanguard even with the knowledge of the pain and strife that he’ll endure and allow Emi to have her family back, even at the cost of his own.       — Additionally, as the shot closes in on him and he yells/roars, it appears he could be in pain from having to surrender this version of himself and his life; but ultimately does so as he fades while Dragonic Overlord becomes the more dominant face, signifying his reclaiming his Vanguard and his original life.

This resolve to allow the timeline to be returned to its rightful state also comes through beneath the starry sky that corrects itself, with Kai-kun standing at the back of Emi’s group, the only one of them fated to disappear by setting things right. Though the camera continues on past him, towards the light that grows brighter and consumes everything — perhaps a symbol of the corrected timeline taking hold — he doesn’t so much as glance back, but looks ahead to the sky, even with the reality that he and his world will be no more.

[2012 Fanguard voice] Bench-chan lives on.

Numerous people in YouTube comments remarked that Horizontal Oath amplifies the Legion Mate atmosphere and its emphasis on Kai-kun whilst doing so is notable. As that was his journey to bring Aichi back and the current is Emi’s, the shift in tone with this new ED and new arc incorporating him heavily is a nice reflection of that when the OP remains the same.      — There is an implication, though, that Emi might start to fall back from the protagonist role, as she appears far more passive in the ED while Kai-kun stands front and centre. When the two of them and Shuka are standing in a field, Emi’s feet are surrounded by shade, and when looking to the sun, she stands on the edge of the formation, seeming far more distant. At the same time, Shuka is on the other side, both of the group as a whole and Kai-kun specifically, with her back to the others. Her guilt has been an enormous factor since the truth of her actions came to light and how they weigh on her, but this feels as though her attention shifting away from Emi and towards Kai-kun as a means of atoning for her mistake.     — Going to be hopeful that they can balance what Aichi means to Emi and Kai-kun in similar vein to Kai-kun and Naoki of Legion Mate, so that they both share an equal part in the fight going forward.

IF 15

Thank goodness, we’re getting answers about Aichi, Takuto and the Sanctuary Knights, let’s go.

Aichi pointing a sword at Ibuki and (Kourin) opening up a fissure beneath the both of them — and right in front of Kai-kun — is a stark contrast to the Aichi(s) we’ve known until now, as how he was seen by Kai-kun was something of great importance to him, but depending on the context of the scene, it’s apparent that this version of him gives no fucks about anything of the sort.

Something that’s been on my mind within the last week is that, aside from the scene in the forest when he was acting seemingly normal, Aichi’s right eye is never detailed beneath his visor, or even when he overrode Majesty Lord (typically, his hair doesn’t completely conceal his eye while in a unit). The theories that came to mind were heterochromia, like Voidkuto, a permanent Psyqualia glow or it’s completely blank in typical possession/brainwashed fashion (or some sort of visual cue pertaining to the fact that a great deal is off about him) but by putting on the airs of normality, he was able to mask it as a normal eye when meeting with Shuka.

[crystu-cii]

XDD

I f e e l that pain in my soul-- my older sister uses cologne sometimes and it is sO STRONG AND WILL NOT STAY CONFINED TO HER ROOM-- AMD SOMETIMES SHED DO IT IN THE DOORWAY LIKE HELLO-- XDD

YEAH WH GET SOME SLEEP LEAVE THE STAYING UP TO US-- XDD

YES BABY JAIL, INTO THE UPSIDE DOWN LAUNDRY BASKET YOU KNIFE-WIELDING HEATHEN-- XDD oms XDD well I don't know them but I love them- YESSS THEYRE SO FLUFFY-- I'm actually curious what images pop up first imma check-- FLUFFY PUPPIES-- we've actually never owned ones that fluffy(those actually look more similar to shetland sheepdogs than the shelties we've had so far?? Very similar/similar enough where if someone doesn't know a sheltie we mention shetland sheepdogs), our current one is a purebred that we got for free(she was being given away bc her family never came back for her and the lady taking care of her couldn't afford the time to take care of a second dog long-term think) and she's got pretty short fur in comparison- still fluffy enough, but not quite so long of fur-- she's a blue merle(absolutely gorgeous fur, she's like 8 now with a lot of health problems but she's super loving still 💕💞) anyways about the fur, so long as you brush regularly you should mitigate most of that, and it mostly collects in corners- but like.. be prepared to eat and wear dog fur for the rest of your life-- (actually there's a thing called a fur zapper we bought recent that you put in with your clothes when you wash/dry them(I think it's dry but idk??) that's supposed to get a lot of hair off your clothes in that process? Also lint rollers are your best friend--) AND roombas are really helpful(we bought a knockoff one and rarely have to sweep ever so 👀) XDD WHEEZE I can't even imagine what you did-- but like you could ask for a budgie/parakeet /hj I mean, they aren't very expensive (actually they're pretty cheap) but they're very loud, need a lot of attention(especially if you want them to bond to you!) and you need to research into them a lot to make sure you're doing things right-- loads of vids online!! Loads of websites too!!! I'd know I have one- JUST A WARNING, FEATHERS AND SEED HULLS GET ALL OVER YOUR FLOOR XD p l u s like you have a friend who knows stuff about birbs :3 anyways ENOUGH RAMBLING FROM ME WOW THAT GOT LONG--

💕💕 I feel that XD OMS-- I WISH-- WHAT A D R E A M - s n a k - Awww but what a mood XD

XDDD oms YES-- EXACTLY-- XDDDD another good thing you should try eventually is SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE WHICH IS APPARENTLY DELICIOUS??? I TRIED IT FOR THE FIRST TIME(AT LEAST IN A WHILE) TODAY AND IT WAS SO FUCKIN TASTY????

H E A THEN-- XDD how cool of them to try tho :3 whEEZE Y 'A LL-- XDD

WHEEZE I SUCK WITH INSTRUMENTS SOOOO-- DAMN THA'S SOME BAD LUCK MY DUDE-- MAYBE YOU'RE CURSED DAMN-- oms wOWW--

Yesss-- ooh I've never played 👀 seen some stuff but never played-- (see: my computer sucks XD) I h a v e played Portal 1 and it is SO GOOD and SO SHORT and I WISH I HAD GOTTEN PORTAL 2 INSTEAD BUT THATS OKAY CRIES-- YESSSS THE SONGS SLAP--- ALSO THERE ARE ACTUALLY TWO WHOLE MORE CANON(PROBABLY KINDA MAYBE NOT?? IDK) SONGS, ONE FROM A LEG DIMENSIONS GAME("You Wouldn't Know") AND ONE THAT WAS CUT FROM PORT TWO("Don't Say Goodbye"(Harry101UK made an edit to make it Glados' voice!!)) THERE ARE ALSO A BUNCH OF GOOD FAN SONGS SO YEAH-- ALSO NOT TO BE A SIMP BUT GLADOS' VOICE? PERFECTION. I LOVE HER. ALSO I COULD LITERALLY DETAIL THE PORTAL LORE I AM INCREDIBLY EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN THIS GAME-- ALSO THERES A CLIP THAT SOMEONE MADE USING A (VERY GOOD) GLADOS TTS TO HAVE GLADOS SAY TRANS RIGHTS AND ENBY RIGHTS AND IF I FIND IT AGAIN ILL SEND IT TO YOU-- YOU COULD PROBABLY FIND IT IF YOU LOOM UP GLADOS SAYS TRANS RIGHTS? IT HAS A VIDEO WITH TRANS FLAG COMPANION CUBES ACCOMPANYING IT-- ALSO YES THE PORT MODS(/ADD-ONS? MAYBE? THEY'RE COMMUNITY MADE I THINK BUT IDK ALL I KNOW IS THAT THEYRE COOL AF--) (also I apologize for all the screaming? XD it's like, four am and I was talking about portal so.. whoops?)

Right like wth???? I???? Okay but like December to February babies just fuckin DONT EXIST IN THIS GEN OR SOMETHIN-- CAUSE I FIND N O N E -- Maybe there are more December babies but there are definitely like NO January to February babies it is So Weird--

NEJFQOBGKW WOWW d an g like-p l e a se s t op over sp r aying-- xD and LEGITTTT LIKE- THAT WAS M Y ROLE TO STAY UP LATE- XDD

WHEHEHEZE- LAUNDRY BASKET TIME- G E T I N XDD anD YESS- any doggo is just such a cute doggo 😭💞💞 but for me- fLUFFY ONES ARE WHERE ITS A T- and ohhhh i see- FOR FREE?? W H A T A S T E A L XDD but awwww the poor doggg at least she's with you now ! ;0;; 💞💞😭 aaw such a lovable puppup 😭😭💞 and oHHH i see :00 but oh no- xD i also have a friend that has two dogs and whenever he would give me gifts- there would be dog hair on them no matter what- XDD and ooOhhh those sound really helpful! omg- i swear i dont have to have a pet for the need of a roomba- i already shed so much hair myself its so crazy-- xDD and oH MAN loud animals are really gon get my mom fired up- and OO birds just look so cuteee i always fantasize of having one- but then again- with the noise and all xD the more i think about it i dont think we are prepared to have a pet at all xD but i still dream of at least having one pet in my lifetime!

and OO that sounds awesome!! i have no clue if i even tried casserole before- man- sometimes i just eat food without even knowing wth it is XDDD but THAT SOUNDS so gooodddd :O

and LEGITT LIKE- TF IS HAPPENING WITH MY SCHOOL LIFE- XDD and oh my god- IT GETS WORSE- that year there was a FREAKINGG FIREEEEEEE- it wasnt that dangerous thank god- but it had to get a whole ass room renovated because of it- and guess what room it was- THE ORCHESTRA ROOM- AND GUESS WHAT M A D E I T W OR SE- that year- it was the first time the school replaced those 10+ year old instruments with new ones- NOW THEYRE B U R N T- and mind you that the school's budget isnt so- gr e a t- like oh my god i am still so bewildered over HOW MUCH chaos HAPPENED that year- and i thought that year was gon be the year- yknow? like UGH

and OHH MANN playing portal sounds awesome! but i just dont think the game would be worth my money cause i know the plot- and even with the mods and all my brain would be broken as i would possibly have no clue what to do- xDDD

and HOOOO MANNN game fan songs are just so AWESOMEEE- and those sound pretty cool! :OO and HOLY SHIT FUCK YEAH- GLADOS SAYS TRANS AND ENBY RIGHTS Y A LL- now im gonna look that up and let my ears be blessed by such words- XDDD and DONT WORRY BOUT SCREAMING ALOT- i scream a whole dam lot too XDD

and LEGITTT- finding someone's b-day in january and feb is so rare all of a sudden like wh a t - XDD

[asurayuuhaven]

Chapter 73 - Reaction & Analysis

(Spoiler for Seraph of the End / Owari no Seraph, chapter 73, that isn’t translated to English yet. Do not click the “read more” below if you want to avoid spoiler)

We haven’t had any great chapter for many months, and it’s finally here. Frankly this chapter is one of the best OnS chapter for the whole year. And that’s not an understatement. The action sequence is glorious. It’s like what you’ll see in the end of the season in the anime.

So you all fellas better go grab the seat belt...

Because this going to be one hell of a ride

You know a chapter going to be hype when Asuramaru is on the cover, and he didn’t looks very happy there

Another Asuramaru focused chapter? Sign me tf up

We start with Yuu being a happy little dork as always and-

DID MIKA BLUSHED

THAT’S ADORABLE

I maybe get annoyed by Mika sometimes (actually, a lot) but I love it when Mika shows his positive, humanly side like this

That being said, I still hate his obsession over Yuu

Yuu, Mika, Guren, Shinya and Kureto talk about something idk not like I could have understand the discussion, so let’s skip that lmao

Apparently, Yuu is strong enough to control his “seraph mode” at will, and the wings alone could tear apart the bound that restrict him

(Though considering that Seraph!Yuu can pretty much destroy the whole city easily, that’s not a big surprise)

FIVE MINUTES AND CHILLING

THEN WE’RE ALREADY ON THE HYPE TRAIN

LOOK AT THAT

SHIKAMA DOJI IS FREAKING BEHIND YUU

I got a bad feeling about this

I got a bad feeling about this

FUCKING HELL REEEEEE

These, guys, these....

These.... are what I called as.... “the hype page”

It’s when Kagami gives a freaking goosebump over what’s gonna be happen on this freaking chapter

....And ironically, it’s VERY similar to the scene where Asuramaru confront Yuu at the manga chapter where he fought against Mirai

(This one, here, below)

Coincidence?

I really don’t think so

I can’t believe this

We’re living in a timeline where Shikama Doji, who’s pretty much the most powerful character on the series so far, and the “big bad villain” who control everything, who’s behind the whole fucking plot of the whole story, as the grand mastermind and the very first progenitor of all vampire....

....is confronting Ashera....

Who is, what we can consider, his favorite child

....Words cannot describe how hyped I am....

AND LOOK AT ASURAMARU THERE

MY BOY, THAT’S A BATTLE STANCE

HE’S GONNA WRECK HIS ASS

*announcer voice*

DEATH BATTLE! ONE MINUTE MELEE!

ASURAMARU VERSUS SHIKAMA DOJI!

Also anyone realized how he pull the sword outta his own body?

Well, apparently, that’s one of many thing that he could do

We finally see Asuramaru showing his true combat capability

Can we appreciate how badass he is there?

Hand down the most badass demon

Whoa whoa wait a minute

Shikama Doji throw his scythe, Asuramaru dodged...

AND HE CAN MAKE ANOTHER SCYTHE?

TWO OF THEM?

INSTANTLY!?

This guy is OP as heck, nerf pls

Oh my god

Let’s get a better look at that

THICC SHOTA TRAP DEMON THIGH

(lol jk that’s not what I wanna discuss here)

Apparently, Asuramaru is fast enough to react against TWO attacks at once, from two different direction

....Even Krul Tepes couldn’t do that, as shown that when Ferid and Crowley attack her at the same time, she’s distracted

Not to mention how Asuramaru attacked FOUR times in a second, against freaking death scythe of doom flying at ballistic speed

My boy is strong af

OHHHH MY GOOOOD

HE HIT HIM!

Also that special ability whoa

I can’t wait until Yuu can master that ability

So apparently, Asuramaru got more than one “special move” other than Asura Kannon to use.

Remember, Shinoa and Mitsuba said that “possession type” demon cannot use “special ability” and thus, the fact that Asuramaru (and Kiseki-o) can use special abilities, are exceptionally rare, nearly impossible.

Now we got to see that Asuramaru can do ANOTHER ability

AND WHAT CANONICALLY HURT SHIKAMA DOJI

...This is Shikama Doji that we talked about....

If you didn’t remember, Shikama Doji is someone who’s freaking goddamn powerful, not even Kureto with help of Raimeki AND Mirai’s Abaddon could even land a single scratch

And Asuramaru manage to hurt him 

Reminder that Asuramaru is strong as hell

Oh no

Shi, please be nice

F U C K

Goddammit nooooo

My precious shota trap demon.. ;A;

Apparently, being bitten by Shikama Doi makes Asuramaru remember his past, which makes sense because he used to be his master

(Either that, or it’s just an illustration)

But what is that.... box.... thing?

Is that some kind of prison?

Apparently, Shikama Doji try to cut off his communication with Yuu, because we immediately switch to the scene where Yuu appeared

Annnnnd there you go

Some more Yuunoa moment for those who shipped them

So uhh... I couldn’t understand the dialogue (of course) but it seems that Yuu is in dire condition since he shouted at Shinoa before, probably asking about what the heck is happening

And Yuu seemingly tried to try to contact Asuramaru, but he couldn’t, which makes him went panic as he realized that something terribly wrong is happening right now

HOLY FUCK

GET THE FREAKING HYPE CANNON READY GUYS

YUU IS CONFRONTING SHIKAMA DOJI!!! o_O

AGHHHHHH

GODDAMMIT

Asuramaru is suffering and Shikama Doji give us the “come get me” face

Oh my god

My heart cannot take this

Look at them

I just.... cannot....

;w;

But ironically, VERY IRONICALLY, this is 90% similar to my headcanon on where Shikama Doji will visit Yuu and Asuramaru at certain chapter in the future. And at that time, Shikama Doji will awaken the forgotten memory of Ashera. Then, Yuu will try to save Ashera... in a pretty much NEARLY IDENTICAL visualization that depicted here on the canon

So apparently, Kagami and I think similarly

THEY’RE BAAAAACK TOGETHER

Oh god this makes me so happy

I mean, Asuramaru and Yuu working together to fight against Shikama Doji is pretty much the BIGGEST EVER PLOT DEVELOPTMENT IN THE WHOLE FUCKING STORY SO FAR

Like, hell.... this is a big jump on the plot

It’s like they’re gonna face the final boss

(Also wait.....)

We got a canon height comparison of Yuu and Asuramaru, at last!

My precious smol demon is so smol hahaha

But in all seriousness, let me appreciate this panel. Look at how they stand together, side by side,

Yuu, with Asuramaru... someone who used to be just a normal rookie in the army with his sword, is going far enough to get here.

The two are indeed friend, perhaps almost like a family, but I never imagine for them to stand by side like a comrade in battle, fighting against the big bad villain together like this

Honestly.... it’s an amazing development

God bless this chapter

According to a rough translation that I seen somewhere before, Shikama Doji said that seeing Yuu and Ashera being together makes him felt nostalgic.

Will we able to finally see the truth behind Yuu and Asuramaru? Will the next chapter going to be the chapter that finally reveal their backstory when they’re still together thousands years ago?

BOOOOY THE HYPEEEE

So yeah, this chapter is amazing and it’s been a long year since we can finally some freaking big plot development (not just character development) with the great plus side of a really epic badass battle scene

Great chapter  10/10

[bittysvalentines]

Puppies and Hockey Players

To @missweber

From @maramcgregor

_______________

Local news stations were covering nothing but the sensationalist story in Providence. People talked about how horrified they were. There were calls to local officials.

 Georgia Martin, brilliant strategist and assistant GM of the Providence Falconers saw an opportunity.

 “Hey Bitty. Is Jack there?”

 “He’s in the shower, but I’m sure he’ll be out in a minute. Breakfast is almost done.”

 Georgia hummed, thinking about the crepes Bitty had made one morning when she dropped in unannounced. “If he can smell it in the bathroom, I’m sure he’ll be making an appearance sooner rather than later.”

 “Is there something I can help you with?”

 “Not really. It’s more of a PR/publicity thing I was hoping to rope Jack into. Make use of his not insubstantial assets for the greater good.”

 Bitty laughed, high and bright, “Well, he certainly has an abundance of those.” There was a pause and a bit of muffled conversation.

 “‘Allo?”

 “Jack! What do you think about puppies?”

 “Umm … they’re cute?”

 “Falconers PR is thinking of being a public face to help raise money for the rescue shelter that took in all those dogs from the Reservoir case.”

 Jack sighed. “We’ve had to keep the TV off. Bits can’t stand to see the conditions they were kept in. And everyone keeps playing the same video clips. It’s worse than those SPCA ads.”

 “We have an opportunity to raise money for their care and help them get adopted. You interested?”

 “Sure, George. What do you need me to do?”

 “Nothing, yet. We’re going to get the city engaged and set a date for a fundraising event. Something casual and fun.”

 “Sounds good. Just let me know.”

* * *

 It was the off-season and the days flew by. Bitty and Jack didn’t think too much of the upcoming PR event. It was pretty standard and low-key in comparison to most of the high dollar events Jack was usually asked to attend. Bitty sighed to himself and realized that he was probably not going to get out of those now that everyone knew he was dating Jack.

 The week before the fundraiser, the Falconers PR team revved up into high gear. They had Jack come in with the rest of the team that was still in Providence for the off-season and do photo ops with the dogs that had been approved to go to homes. The 15 dogs were the healthiest of the lot and were well-groomed by the shelter volunteers. These 15 were named by the Falconers with hockey themed names or after players themselves.

 The dogs that were named after players had their photos done with their namesakes. People lost their minds over Snowy holding a tiny ball of white fluff in his goalie glove. The die-hard Potatomann shippers were cooing over the littermates that were named Jack and Tater. They were black and tan large puppies, easily out-sizing every other dog up for adoption. The pictures were widely shared and certain sites tried to argue whether Snowy and his namesake or Jack and Tater with theirs were cuter. Georgia was ecstatic and posted an online poll encouraging the debate.

 Bitty retweeted the poll, kissed Jack on the cheek, and voted for Snowy with the hashtags #SnowyPupWins #SorryBabe.

 The day before the adoption event, Georgia called Bitty directly. “Hey, so we were going to have the WAGs help out with running the raffle and help the children that come to hold the puppies. There will be media there getting video and pictures of the SOs mingling with the fans, holding the puppies, etcetera. As the boyfriend of one of our As, and the face of the franchise, I was hoping to rope you into this. I know you have another year of college, so I’m not expecting this to be a common request, but as it’s the off season -”

 Bitty snorted quietly to himself. “Lifestyles of the rich and famous?”

 “Well, eventually. This is just a puff piece. Something easy and not truly demanding of anyone.”

 “And it’s a good look for the organization and all of the players.”

 “Hey, who doesn’t like large hockey guys and adorable dogs?”

 Bitty laughed. “Ya got me there!” He gazed at the bedroom where Jack was taking his afternoon nap. Well, his post-coital nap while Bitty baked some quick finger foods to snack on and tempt Jack back into wakefulness. Tater was at his physical therapy appointment. Bitty expected him back within the hour. “I have a vague idea of what I signed up for. Alicia has been more than helpful in letting me in on what might be expected once I’ve graduated. And Gabby and Carrie have been really great at making sure that I integrated with the group. I can’t say that I wouldn’t have benefited from starting at regular ol’ SO rather than face of the franchise level, but this might be good for me to get my feet wet with.”

 Georgia kept her voice low and sympathetic, it was a practiced tone, but honest. “I know this has the potential to be overwhelming. It’s why I’m hoping to start you out with a bit of a softball, get the town to really love you. Hockey fans have a tendency to defend their own. And if they see you doing local charity, it’ll go a long way.” Georgia paused and debated with herself for a minute. “Do you think you could make a couple of pies? Or, if it’s not too much trouble, some of that treacle tart?”

 Bitty laughed. “You think you could get me to go to a charity event and not bring pie?”

 “Well, I was thinking maybe you could have your own raffle table. Maybe an assortment of things? Some muffins, some fruit tarts, some pies …”

 “There won’t be any blueberry, unfortunately. Tater hasn’t left a single blueberry in peace since he moved in.”

 “Your instagram stories with him have been priceless. I have loved every update.”

 “Well, bless his heart, I love that boy, but dear lord I have no idea how he has survived on his own for this long.”

 * * *

 Bitty was a bit of a nervous wreck in the hours leading up to the adoption event. Jack chuckled and ruffled his hair as he desperately tried to tame his cowlick in the back.

 “Honey, please. I need this to go well. There’ll be cameras everywhere. And George has me running a dessert raffle. I can’t afford to have anything out of place.”

 Jack kissed him on the temple. “You’ll be fine, bud. And your raffle is going to be amazing. I’m sure you’ll sell plenty of tickets. I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up selling more tickets for your pies than some of the puppies get.”

 Bitty smiled up at him and raised one eyebrow. “Only some of the puppies, Mr. Zimmermann?”

 “Of course. Mine and Tater’s are going to get the most tickets out of everyone.”

 Bitty laughed and slapped Jack’s chest. “I believe you are mistaken. The most popular puppy is surely going to be Snowy. That tiny white ball of fluff sitting in that gigantic goalie glove is too cute for words.”

 “As long as it’s the puppy and not the guy you think is cute,” Jack chirped.

 “I’ll have you know Snowy is quite the looker. But, to be honest, I don’t think I could handle a goalie. They’re just plain weird.”

 Jack pinched his denim clad butt and laughed as Bitty squeaked in indignation.

 “Don’t you start something you don’t have time to finish!”

 * * *

The Providence Pups Charity Drive couldn’t have gone better. Georgia watched as reporters dutifully followed the narrative she wanted crafted. It was fluff, pure and simple. Pictures of the players skating with the dogs in hand, kissing them, photo ops with the fans and the lucky winners. It was perfection. And, to top it all off, Bitty had made her a separate batch of treacle tarts.

 There was stiff competition for most popular dog … if you added Jack and Tater’s together. Snowy won by a landslide. Tater argued that they campaigned their dogs together and it was only fair to add their tickets to come up with a correct count. Jack nodded along solemnly, and forced his face straight as Tater’s arguments grew more and more outlandish. Apparently, “treason from Little B” was now a high crime and the sole fault of why they lost. Bitty promptly informed them both that he was the one cooking their meals and if they didn’t at least try to behave they could go out for dinner for the foreseeable future.

 Jack gave him an overly scandalized look, “Bits, bud, I would never -”

 “Don’t you dare, Mr. Zimmermann. Those sad, blue eyes only get you so far. I’ve seen you sweet talk your way out of trouble with professors, don’t think I don’t recognize that look.”

 “You bribed your way into class with pie!”

 Before the chirping could get out of hand, a woman and her son came over. “Excuse me?”

 Bitty bit back his retort and smiled pleasantly before scooting to the side.

 Jack smiled at them and the small Parson Russell Terrier the boy held. “Congratulations on the dog. Can we help you with anything?”

 The woman, brunette with a few strands of gray, patted her son on the shoulder. “Go ahead.”

 The boy was maybe 13 or 14 years old. He shyly stepped forward and held the small dog to his chest. “Um, I actually have a question to ask - um, Bitty? Is that okay?”

 Bitty was momentarily shocked, but smiled gamely. “Of course. What can I help you with, sugar?”

 He glanced back over at his mom and cleared his throat. “Well, I know the Falcs named all these dogs, but I was wondering - I was wondering if it would be okay if I changed his name?”

 “You certainly don’t need anyone’s permission to change your dog’s name. He’s yours. Free and clear. I’m sure the Falcs won’t mind, just so long as you give him a good home and lots of love.” Bitty tried to keep his confusion out of his voice and off his face.

 “Well, you see, I was hoping to change his name to - um -” he looked down at the puppy that was snuggled into his chest and forced the last of his question out, “to Bitty. If that’s okay?”

 Bitty pressed a hand to his chest. “Of course that’s okay. I don’t know why on earth you’d want to bestow such an honor on me, but I’d be thrilled to know this little guy had my name.”

 The boy gained confidence at that and the words he’d been struggling with poured out. “I just want you to know that you’ve been such an inspiration to me. I know you haven’t been public with your relationship very long, but just the way you chose to be yourself. And being from Georgia and choosing to come all the way up here to go to school? It’s so amazing. And then joining the hockey team? That was really brave. I mean, I just started following your Twitter and YouTube when the Falcs announced who you were. But, I can’t believe you haven’t been playing hockey for very long and managed to get a scholarship to play Division I. And you coming out to your team in your first year? I couldn’t imagine doing that. And knowing that everyone was watching on TV and you are still in college? You declared your love so openly and honestly and I really hope that one day I can find a boy that I feel so much for that I would dare to do that with. I haven’t come out to my hockey team, yet. But seeing you and knowing how hard you worked to get to where you are is so amazing. And I can’t think of a better person to name my dog after. Terriers are supposed to be tough, and fierce, and loyal, all wrapped up in a small package. So, I just … you know … wanted you to know that.” The boy trailed off clearly started to become embarrassed by just how much he said and started toeing the ground with his sneaker.

 “That is just about the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me. I would love for your puppy to be named Bitty. And I hope that he gives you every bit of love and support that you deserve.”

 The boy smiled and left with his mom’s arm over his shoulder. Bitty held it together until they were out of sight and then let the tears stream down his face.

 “Awww, Bits, bring it in.” Jack held his arms open and wrapped them around Bitty as he buried his face into Jack’s chest.

 “That boy - if that wasn’t the sweetest - ugh, I’m a mess.” Bitty snuck a hand up between his face and Jack’s chest and wiped his eyes.

 “My hero.”

 “Don’t you chirp me right now, Mr. Zimmermann.”

 “Non, mon petit. You’re my hero, too,” Jack murmured into Bitty’s hair.

 Bitty chuckled through his tears. “My goodness, you’re not helping me stop the waterworks.”

 “Is fine! I am helping!” Tater grabbed Bitty from the back and wrapped his arms as far around the two of them as possible. “Little B is no longer persona non grata. Have little dog named after him just like Zimmboni and me. And all three have lost to Snowy. Is fair now.”

[khalilhumam]

Pious, assertive, and ‘mother of all Bolivians': The (expensive) political narrative of President Jeanine Áñez

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/pious-assertive-and-mother-of-all-bolivians-the-expensive-political-narrative-of-president-jeanine-anez/

Pious, assertive, and ‘mother of all Bolivians': The (expensive) political narrative of President Jeanine Áñez

Helicopter flights to bless different cities cost more than USD 20,000

Jeanine Áñez assuming Bolivia's presidency on 12 November 2019, with her daughter Carolina Ribera to her left. Image by Wikimedia Commons, open content modified by Global Voices.

Throughout her campaign and current presidency, President Jeanine Áñez has created an image of herself as a pious Christian, a mother, and an assertive authority in Bolivia. Despite leading a constitutionally secular country, Áñez has built her Christian image through political practice and religious speeches, earning her comparisons to President Trump and President Bolsonaro.  In an April 15 Instagram photo with the caption, “Flight of blessings. God bless La Paz”, Añez can be seen waving to one of the four helicopter flights made by the Bolivian Air Force to bless the cities of Cochabamba, Tarija, La Paz, El Alto and Montero.  Each flight lasted about an hour with passengers that included priests, evangelical pastors and legislators who brought along holy water and religious statues. The flight over Tarija reportedly cost the state USD 11,500$ in addition to the, at least, USD 9,000$ for flights over the other cities. The amount is equivalent to five and a half years’ income for someone on minimum wage, which is currently USD 307$.  Blessings on the ground were also organized. In La Paz, the police paraded their patron saint, the Virgin of Copacabana, trying to lift people's spirits at the beginning of the quarantine. In Santa Cruz, evangelical leaders played the “shoffar,” a Jewish instrument, and drove around the city in twenty vehicles for five hours on the “day of prayer and anointing” organized by the Ministry of Defense and the House of Prayer Church. One of this church's ministers is Áñez's brother, Juan Carlos Añez, who is also a candidate for city representative in Santa Cruz.  People have reacted strongly to this situation:

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Hipoclorito de Sodio Geplaatst door La Envidia op Vrijdag 10 april 2020

El cloro, más barato que el alcohol, se ha popularizado como elemento básico para la desinfección de superficies y personas en la pandemia.  

Facebook post: “What are they spraying?” “It’s holy water” “Does it at least have chlorine in it?” Chlorine, cheaper than alcohol, has become popular as a key ingredient for disinfecting surfaces and people during the pandemic.

In addition, President Áñez twice called for people to fast and pray during the COVID-19 quarantine. The calls were rejected in graffiti messages, Twitter, and NGO communications. “It is offensive and humiliating when there are people dying of hunger,” writer Paola Senseve told the newspaper El Deber. Meanwhile, there was a murder-suicide of a girl whose family had not eaten for two days. Her case is one among the projected 453,000 Bolivians who will be driven into extreme poverty this year, as predicted by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).  The phrase “God bless Bolivia” is recurrent in her speeches, as it is in her official government plan. Áñez has also been known to ask her ministers to pray. In her first moments as president, she carried a Bible and said: “The Bible is returning to the Palace”. When asked by the BBC about her faith as contrasted with Bolivia's secularism, Áñez said that secularism was imposed by former President Evo Morales’ party on the constitution and that “Morales is an atheist”.  Journalist Javier Badani analyzed Añez's positions on Facebook: “Religious views are protected by the constitution. What is wrong is to preach personal beliefs while using the state's public resources, prioritizing your beliefs over others. Áñez and Morales have breached basic regulations. It is just as inappropriate that the cross and the Bible “return” to the Palace, as it is that ch'alle and k'oa [Andean rituals] are performed in this state space. It is not correct to seek political gain by instrumentalizing beliefs so deeply rooted in our country.” In his time, Morales was also questioned for instrumentalizing Andean religious rites.

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Los poderes políticos y sus intereses mezquinos nos están matando. ¡Ni Evo ni Medioevo! ¡Paz y justicia! Geplaatst door Muy Waso op Maandag 18 november 2019

El meme compara a Evo Morales con el personaje apodado “El Rey Loco”, de Juego de Tronos, pues prefería destruir su reino antes que dejar el trono; y compara a Jeanine Añez, con la orden cristiana y militar de los caballeros templarios.

Facebook Post's comment: The political powers and their narrow interests are killing us. Neither Evo nor Medioevo! Peace and justice! The meme compares Evo Morales to the character nicknamed “The Mad King” from Game of Thrones, as he preferred to destroy his kingdom rather than leave the throne; and compares Jeanine Añez to the medieval Christian military order of the Knights Templar.

In Bolivia, 88.7 percent of the population identify as Christians, and there is a syncretism of indigenous and Christian elements as a result of colonization. The country has declared itself secular since 2009, but even so, the state budgeted 1.7 million dollars for the Pope's visit in 2015. The church was also one of the mediators during the 2019 electoral crisis, and the police and military have their own Catholic statues of Mary, those of Copacabana and Carmen.  Religion is also a part of half of presidential candidates’ campaigns. While the use of religious symbols is prohibited, it is not a crime. “Religion can be a key factor in attracting voters. This was shown in the last election by the votes gained by an unknown evangelical pastor. Áñez knows how to use this to her advantage. The conflict occurs when her religiosity interferes with public administration, creates costs for the state, and uses public goods, which is to be condemned from all perspectives,” journalist María Silvia Trigo told Global Voices by email. Along with religious references, “assertiveness” is another term frequently used in Áñez's speeches. She tries to show herself to be strong, determined and intolerant of corruption, even though this projected image does not match the real actions of her government, Trigo said. She also emphasizes the fact that she is a mother. “I ask you as a mother” is one of her most repeated phrases. “Proud mother” of her children is part of Áñez’ description on Twitter and Facebook. Áñez dressed up as “Mrs. Santa Claus” to give presents to children at the Government Palace. Her presidential campaign clip begins with her saying, “We had to put the house in order” and shows her leading the management of a home with a group of people. During the quarantine, Áñez's daughter, Carolina Ribera, claimed: “My mother is the mother of all Bolivians”.

Picture credits: Danitza Luna,, member of Mujeres Creando. Used with permission.

Rejecting this, Danitza Luna, a member of the feminist group Mujeres Creando, responded: “I don't accept you Jeanine Añez as my mother” and made a caricature of Añez as the Virgin Mary. The angel has the face of right-wing Minister of Government Arturo Murillo, and the cross on the crown is a symbol of Santa Cruz, the region where the 2019 protests began. The rest of the crown shows the constant threats of prison as a part of her rule, Luna said. Her veil has the U.S. flag and military camouflage, which allegedly supported her takeover. Her halo is made of weapons and at her feet are the police and military. Luna defined Añez's government as “authoritarianism disguised with blessings.”   

Written by Fabiola Gutiérrez Translated by Liam Anderson · · View original post [es] · comments (0) Donate · Share this: twitter facebook reddit

[sinfulfolk]

The Iraq Incantation -- An excerpt from the novel Wilderness of Mirrors

Read below for this subscriber-only excerpt from the forthcoming Wilderness of Mirrors by Nicholas Hallum

Download PDF Version here

An excerpt from the novel

Wilderness of Mirrors

by Nicholas Hallum

    DECEMBER 2001

IRAQI DESERT SKYRISE SECURE OPERATION

The CIA team bought black Land Rovers from a car dealership in Beirut on the first day, with American money laundered through the Syrian-funded group now calling itself “Huzbollah” and no one caring for business receipts in those heady mission-driven days right after 9/11. Cash was available, and the mission trumped all other concerns. The team departed Damascus on the second day, with the idea they would drive through Ad Dumayr before crossing the Iraqi border and moving to points east in the uncharted desert. They drove on a line drawn on a map by Ishmael, the CIA station chief in Beirut, a man who had a compass, an out-of-date U.S. made cartographic map from World War II, and no sense of direction.

The out of shape chair monkeys around him turned red as lobsters and sweated profusely when the air conditioning was turned off to preserve gasoline. None of them had been prepared for a Special Forces-style Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol, but here they were.

Then of course there was Peter himself. This was a young man’s journey, heading into the heart of the Arabic Empty Quarter, and he was no young man. By the end of the third day, they’d dug the tires out of the soft desert dirt twelve times and Peter’s calves ached with a deep abiding pain. Yet in comparison with the CIA men along for this ride, he was in comparatively good shape. Despite the sun and the work, he was sadly in better shape than half the CIA personnel.

They were desk baboons, out of their cubicle jungle, trapped out here in the middle of the Syrian Desert, approaching the uttermost limits of the Iraqi desert. Most of them would be lucky to never have to hike two days straight in the desert. For all he knew, they’d once been trained as great strategic thinkers at Harvard and Stanford. But he knew these noobs would never survive.

Peter kept playing that morbid game in his head: who would survive? Besides himself and Ishmael, there was the silent European man with the Chinese wife back home. He had been trained by the Spetnatz, but he was always silent, always watching. Hendrick was his name: he might make it.

Peter shook his head every time the Land Rovers choked on dust. Here he was, at fifty-one years old, on a damned cowboy adventure in a war zone, still being forced to hump over-weighted cars out of desert potholes.

***

Hours after they left the half-maintained roads of Jordan, road one hundred and seventy miles east of Beirut, Peter glimpsed the figure of a man in the distance ahead – a figure waiting for them in a traditional keffiyeh lounging against the side of a weather-beaten Toyota pulled to the verge of the dusty expanse.

Peter had read the files of all the agents they could have deployed in this region – he had read many of their emails and listened to their phone calls as well. There were a variety of Syrian mercenaries they could have called upon as guides – and some ex-PLO Jordanians who might also be helpful in these famished places. There was supposed to be a private CIA deal with the Israelis to provide them with a desert guide who would be freed from prison to take them deep into Iraq.

So on the road ahead, he was prepared for any number of hungry desert guerrillas, strong from long labor, raw and desperate from Israeli interrogation. But as they approached nearer and nearer to the man standing resolutely beside the car, Peter began to think that it wasn’t a mercenary or a PLO fighter that their CIA team had hired at all.

The man standing resolutely against the old white car looked indeed to be Professor Mahmoud El-Amin, the Arabic scholar Peter had last seen two weeks ago in Prague. Peter had last seen the scholar in a dusty Café by the St. Charles Bridge, but he looked rather different now, on the open lonely road outside of Beirut. First, the red-checked Bedouin keffiyeh wrapped around his head and the traditional djellaba he wore transformed him into a denizen of the desert. Even his posture was more vigilant, like a desert vulture –Peter would not have been surprised to see an AK-47 held casually in his hands.

After their posse of Land Rovers slid to a halt, Mahmoud was instructed by the CIA chief – Ishmael – to leave his car behind. But the Arabic scholar demurred: he asked for payment for the ratty old car. Peter was again surprised – the scholar negotiated like an Egyptian market shopkeeper, with a gameful ferocity of purpose.

First Mahmoud described, with great dramatic flourishes, how the car had served him and his family well for nearly a decade, and now it would be left behind. The desert dust and sand would drift over it in a matter of days, and the wind-blown grains would strip the poor, abandoned vehicle down to the bare bones of its mechanical skeleton. Mahmoud – and his car, and his family going back three generations – could not abide such shameful treatment. By the time he finished, it was a matter affecting his great-grandfather’s honor.

“In’shallah, in’shallah – show me mercy – in the end, there will be nothing left to me,” he wailed. “Save the word of the prophet, blessed be his Name.”

Finally, after much arbitration and negotiation, Ishmael named a very high sum that Mahmoud agreed to, and he jumped in a Land-Rover without a glance backward at the dented Toyota. After that, they kept moving across the desert with the professor in the backseat, crammed behind Peter and two CIA men who reeked of days-old sweat and halitosis.

Mahmoud, in contrast, smelled sweetly aromatic, coriander burnt in the sun. He slipped the CIA payment – in U.S. dollars – into the pocket of his djellaba and settled back into his seat, sans seat-belt. Then he turned to Peter.

“As-salamu alaykum,” Mahmoud greeted him. “We are a long way from St. Charles Bridge, are we not, my friend?”

“Wa alaykumu s-salam wa rahmatullah.” Peter gave the extended form of the greeting reply, as an acknowledgement of their comradeship. May the peace and mercy of Allah come to you also.

Mahmoud gave a broken-toothed grin as Peter fumbled the Egyptian pronunciation. “I do not know if we will find peace and mercy here, my friend, and I hope that God is with us, but I do not know, in’shallah.”

On the next day out from Jordan, the CIA’s Jordanian station chief received an encrypted signal from Washington. The orders arrived at four a.m. – and the orders said to split the team. On this day, the majority of the team was to go overland to the north – shamal – into the border region controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Al-Qaeda affiliated group Ansar-al-Islam. They were to collect intel on Ansar activities, document the al-Qaeda fighters they found and discover if there were any chemical or biological weapons in the villages in northern Iraq.

Mahmoud and Peter were to be left behind with supplies, but no transportation. Ishmael, the CIA officer, looked concerned. While the other men worked yet again to dig the Land Rovers out of a rut in the road, Ishmael walked with them to a vantage point outside of range from their camp. “Apparently, you’re dead to me now. No communication. No rescue even if you guys are in trouble. Some kind of double-blind black op you’re on, I guess.”

He turned to Peter, his face gray as a corpse in the early morning light. Ishmael looked down at the encrypted tablet on which he’d received the orders. “Here’s the thing,” he said softly. “Whenever you reach the rendezvous point the Bedouin are taking you to, you’re supposed to activate your beacon, and paint the target bright. You can communicate then, right? Keep your GPS live from that point out, you copy?”

Peter nodded. A glance at Muhmad showed him nothing.

Ishmael’s voice dropped to an even lower whisper. He shook the tablet nervously, as if the orders might change. “You have to wait there until you get a signal confirmation from the forces in Kuwait. They’ll send out a division of the 10th Special Forces Group.”

“On your signal, they’re sending them across the border – that’s an act of war – so you better be damn sure you’ve got the right spot, and you’re ready to kick off this fuck’ng party. Operation Iraqi Freedom will start when you turn it on.”

Peter looked down at his GPS unit. A signal from that device would start the cascade. That’s what was making this man nervous: a war would start on Peter’s word.

“You send your signal, then we’ll see the elephant,” said Ishmael. “You copy?”

See the elephant. Peter recalled the phrase from his early days in training in the Army Signal Intelligence School in the 1970s. Even in the modern era, centuries after Hannibal’s elephant-led invasion of Asia, military men still described the onset of warfare as the moment one saw the elephant – a shocking advent of destruction. Once war began, the momentum became unavoidable, it became a power in itself, thunderous and terrible as any earthquake.

***

On the next afternoon, as they came into a desert wadi, there were riders on camels in the distance. He squinted, trying to ensure this was not another sun-spot apparition. Peter watched as the camels lolloped across the desert toward them, driven on by cries of ‘hut, hut!’ and ‘yalla, yalla!’

Two camels with empty saddles were yoked to their train: one for Peter and one for Mahmoud. They came quickly into the wadi. The men slowly unbent themselves and swung off their stringy-muscled steeds.

“Al kuwa,” said one of the riders, speaking badawi, Bedouin Arabic, his voice coarse and gravelly from desert dust. God give you strength.

“Allah-i-gauik.” Mahmoud gave the traditional reply. God strengthen you.

After that exchange, the Bedouin men did not ask for their encrypted identification codes or mention any of the protocols that had been discussed in far-off Washington D.C. Such identifiers mattered little in such a wasteland. After the greeting, the Bedouin turned to their priorities of water from the deep wadi well for their camels, grain and dry grass measured out in small quantities, and the treatment of small wounds and abrasions on their camels’ legs.

Mahmoud was left to explain who they were, and he did so in the Egyptian manner, by reference to their familial heritage. “Bedu,” said Mahmoud. “They are Kufra Bedouin, Sanusi, descendants of the Banu Sulaim.”

Peter watched the men work in their careful manner. Their camel’s legs mattered, and the feeding of the beasts, and then the cleanliness of the water, and after all that was done, only then did they see to their own feeding, and water and comfort.

Matters of sustenance and survival were of infinitely higher importance to these men than the implosion of some distant skyscrapers. For centuries, tribespeople such as these had trickled through the desert’s too-porous boundaries – just as they did in the 1960s with Kim Philby and Robinson Gale – just as they had done forever, through the vagaries and incursions of the World Wars. Peter wondered if such Bedu tribesmen who wandered the desert terrain between Jordan and Mecca, even cared which nation they were in any more. They ranged freely over the great escarpment of the Arabian Peninsula, and further north, crossing the Sinai and into Egypt and the great southern Sahara desert, crossing without regard for the national borders of such recent “countries” as Syria and Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Even now, as this new highly vaunted “War on Terror” disrupted nation states across the region, the destination of these people would always be the horizon – their strategic goals the next well, the next wadi, the next grazing for their sheep and camels. The Bedouin might play a part for a time, but the next move in the great game was for such travelers only a momentary pulse in the great and everlasting current of the desert.

***

As the sun set across the expanse of wasteland, the men somehow produced a live lamb from their packs. A small snuffling white thing, seemingly nearly comatose from its day-long journey on the back of a camel. With words that sounded like a muffled oath, one of the men struck the head off of the lamb – an act that came as a shock to Peter because the violence came with no warning – and the man held the blood draining onto the ground in a shaking circle but without interest or enthusiasm.

Yet as Peter watched the lamb’s blood splash out in a shaky circle around the edge of the wadi, passages he’d read as a child came to him: the lamb sacrificed for the sins of the people, the wave offering and the meat offering. This was the land, this was the world in which such sacrifices were done, and here they were not abnormal at all, but every day.

Moments later, the lamb was skinned, the fleshy meat impaled on sticks, sizzling over the blazing fire. They ate in the traditional Arab manner, using their hands to dip the meat and the bread into sauces and spices on its way to their hungry mouths.

Satiated, Peter sat back part way through the meal and watched the men laugh and talk and trade stories with one another. His Arabic was very good, but these men spoke in the accents of the deep wastelands of Syria, and it was hard to catch their meaning.

Mahmoud saw the same. “The desert abides, and the Bedu abide, in the care of Allah, most merciful, most bountiful,” he murmured. Peter knew what he meant, for as they watched the camels step carefully through the desert, Peter felt himself out of time.

It occurred to him that foreign travelers had come here for nearly a century, caught in the wasteland, sending signals up to bounce off the ionosphere, sending signals home. Even T.E. Lawrence had used radio, ancient vacuum tube contraptions. Hypothetically some of his signals still bounced around the ionosphere, degraded now beyond deciphering.

The journey took seven days. Slow plodding on camelback, no wasted energy or effort under the hot sun and the frigid nights. For it was January – winter here too, in this latitude – and in the Iraqi desert, the temperature dropped precipitously in the late hours. Peter found himself thinking of the T.S. Eliot poem, a description of another journey in the middle of winter. He muttered those words at dawn, as they all crawled groaning and shivering out of their bedrolls. “Ahlan, what do you say?” said Mahmoud.

Peter spread his arms, and said Eliot’s words loudly like an invocation, as dawn came across the horizon:

“A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of the year.” He skipped the part about summer palaces and silken girls bringing sherbet. Not so useful to think of now. “A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly.”

Peter stumbled. “I forget the middle,” he said. “It ends with “I should be glad of another death.”

Mahmoud grimaced at him. “I thought you would offer words of hope, not such dark sounds. You drink too much poetry.” He gave Peter a look, mingled disgust and compassion, and packed up his bedroll. After a moment, he handed him a steaming cup of the dark Turkish coffee, their breakfast, such as it was.

***

The Bedouin had a destination in mind and kept them moving through the hot hours and through dusk and sunset and into the next night. As the sky darkened, the stars above grew from pinpricks of light to a sweeping constellation, a river of sparkling brightness. Peter glanced upward and shivered as he sensed a flickering uncertainty in the wavelength of light, a vibration that caused the night sky itself to seem to waver for a moment. He looked down, watching his camel make its careful way across the dim desert landscape.

Finally, they made their destination. They had come to a new wadi – a well or small oasis – at a rocky place the Bedouin called Ba‛al Hadad, or in the ancient Semitic languages, the place of the worship of Hadad, the storm and rain god of the ancient Sumerians. However, the well at Hadad was dry and useless to them – it was filled with stones and sharp bits of grit. The weariness of the day took much from them, and they had no energy to search for other water now.

“The Bedu say this dry well is where Moses watered his sheep, a thousand years ago,” said Mahmoud after consulting the Bedouin. “He was a sheepherder, you know?”

“It was longer ago than that,” said Peter. “And he was more than that.” He pictured the Moses portrayed in the illustrated Bible he’d read as a child, holding a flaming rod of power, calling down the angel of death upon the Egyptians.

In the dark hours at Ba‛al Hadad, night terrors came on Peter. Not insomnia, but instead terrible dreams of cannibalism and worse. An hour before dawn, the sky was a deep blue, like the bottom of the ocean, and Peter was unable to even try to sleep.

Finally, when he turned his flashlight on, he could see bones all around their campsite. Human bones, slick and raw and warm to the touch still: and the bones were distributed in rotating patterns, creating vast unnatural vertices and graphs, the shapes out of sync with human geometry or natural ability.

He put his light across the dead fire, towards the hobbled camels, on the other side of the huge stone. But the camels were gone too, every one of their bones stripped bare and distributed around the campsite as well.

Something moved across the great stone shelf of the Ba‛al Hadad. He flinched only to realize that it was merely desert mice – jerboa – hopping among the bones, their random movements startling him afresh.

He turned desperately towards Mahmoud’s bedroll: but Mahmoud was alive, and snoring happily in his sleep, oblivious to the world. Peter turned back to the pillaged campsite. At the outskirts of the camp, he could hear a great wind beginning to rise, hissing and spitting as it came closer.

Among the scattered bones, he found the men’s clothing, separated thread by thread.

Colonel Schwarzkopf had told him this hard truth in Washington D.C. before they departed: “We’ll arrange for an enticing offering, one that will be willingly devoured.” Peter winced to remember that statement now. He had known all along, in his heart of hearts, how few might return. He thought of their families, the wives and children they had mentioned back in Jordan and Syria. If their families were confronting him now, what would he say? He doubted that he could appeal to the “cost of freedom” as a justification for his actions.

The wind was rising over the stone slab: the desert preternaturally calm in the pre-dawn darkness.

Peter quivered with unshakeable fear: his hands trembled and shook as he desperately dug through their belongings. He had to upend their packs on the dirt before he found the military- issue short-wave radio that they’d been given, for use only in emergencies. He had to search again for the frequency code, and finally found that in his wallet, where he’d placed it for safe- keeping nearly a month ago, when he was safe in Alexandria, Virginia.

His fingers shook so much he had to take multiple stabs at the “On” button on the short-wave. Finally, he hit it, and he turned the dial to set the frequency. He plunged the tiny speaker on its wire into his ear. Static surged in waves on his radio, screeching sounds rising and falling as he tuned in. Mahmoud stirred and opened his eyes, looking at him in concern.

As if in response to the sound on the radio, the wind around him gusted, the dust and dirt of their campsite wavering in the air. He glanced away from the great stone shelf of Ba‛al Hadad on the horizon. He had the weird sensation that a sandstorm was coming their way, even though they were several thousand miles from the open Arabian desert of the Empty Quarter. A static storm was rising on his short-wave, a raspy buzz of nonsense filling the spectrum. He felt as if he were standing akilter on the world, his feet or his head askew, and now he could hear in his head that apocalyptic sonnet of John Donne’s, the words echoed eerily in his brain:

At the round earth’s imagined corners blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, ARISE From death, you numberless infinities Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ; All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,

Static crashed in his head. He felt himself mesmerized by the oncoming sound of the wind. There was an illness in his inner ear, nausea and dizziness overwhelming him. He fumbled again at the frequency, hoping to hear the station numbers come in clear. He found himself muttering words he only half-understood: “All whom the flood did… war, death, age, agues, tyrannies…”

He tuned the dial back and forth, trying to raise the station despite the black spots that filled his vision, the disorienting ebb and flow of his pulse in his veins. He felt as if a whirling thing were moving through him, edging hard against the rhythm of his heart. He punched the access code in, the Morse code bits falling out of his fingers as he peered at the paper: dit, dash, dit dit, dash, dit dit. The solidity of the Morse calmed him. The military would take care of this, just thinking of the efficiency of the military calmed Peter down.

Despite his dizziness, rising nausea, and uncertainty, he saw that Mahmoud was awake now. But he was muttering archaic Arabic words Peter could not understand, eyes closed as if in concentration. Perhaps he was praying. When Peter touched him, he found himself pushed back by static electricity, as if something were grounded there, like a high-tension electrical wire sending power popping and hissing as it ran current into the ground unnaturally.

A voice spoke in his ear, a sound he did not expect to hear. “Acknowledged. Enter validation code, ID: Strike Wanda Forty-Two.”

Peter found himself breathing faster at the sound of the military voice, and he fumbled the first time he entered the code, and had to re-enter it. The validation voice changed the signal, transmitting his voice to his command officer. The voice came in, a bold brassy American sound, but wavering over the miles, in and out of range.

“So, Fisher, you’ve found it? What’s your GPS lat long, we’ll do a pickup next week, all right? Got it all locked down there? Mission complete?”

“No, no,” stuttered Peter. “Goddammit, we need immediate evac, I think it’s gone all wrong. I don’t feel safe. We’re in danger here. It’s not safe – I didn’t expect to – ”

“Need those GPS coordinates though,” came the calm voice over the air. “Don’t care if you’re under fire, won’t help us find you without coordinates.”

Peter wildly wondered if the GPS coordinates could shift and move under the stress of whatever Coriolis force was whirling around them and through them. What if the coordinates moved like a will-o-the-wisp? What if they were gone, and by the time the military arrived, the solid earth and its precise geo-location had moved hundreds of miles away? What if the location was lost to them, and Peter and Mahmoud with it?

It had been a long journey from Lebanon across the Syrian desert and through to this last well at Ba‛al Hadad. He was weary beyond belief. And now the bones of their Bedouin guides were scattered in precise patterns all around them.

He groped desperately through his pack until he found the GPS unit, and he saw that the unit was solid and the numbers on it unmoving. He read off the numbers, and asked for immediate evac again. Mahmoud had stood up now, he was shivering in the strange wind.

“All right,” said the blustery man on the radio. “But the weather guys tell me there’s some sort of storm coming in, around your location, so we can’t send a chopper to you through that. We’ve got a Stryker brigade starting your way though. Your coordinates are about 800 klicks away. We should be there in about forty-eight hours. Let’s say 1600 hours Tuesday, if we come straight through.”

Peter felt himself exhausted, his voice hoarse, his pulse pounding in a weird syncopation. He felt as if he were going to have a heart attack. “What the hell are we supposed to – ” Peter began. But the military voice interrupted again.

“Put Professor El-Amin on the line.”

Mahmoud listened seriously for a long time. He was trembling with the same syncopated rhythm that affected Peter.

When he got off the radio, his face was ashen in the ruddy light of the oncoming storm, and the unreal reddish twilight of the dawn. “Begin negotiations, min sadiq, that’s what your Amerikanee military wants us to do.”

“But we’re surrounded by dead bodies, and they want us to write mathematical formulas? It’s unreasonable to – ”

Mahmoud was not listening to him. Mahmoud had scratched the beginnings of a great seal of Solomon, and added the vertices that made it into what Peter knew to be the precise geometric form known as a Petersen graph, on the desert ground itself, close beside the great shelf of stone. Peter’s own equations and mathematical algorithms, in neatly printed form, were rapidly unrolled by Mahmoud from the case near their side.

Mahmoud swallowed hard and looked at him. “Min fadlak, do you really want this thing on the side of the Amerikanee?”

“We must,” said Peter, hesitating. “It currently it is on the side of Saddām, he feeds it. I have been instructed to bargain with it. And if it is on anyone’s side…”

“You will choose to feed it? They are insatiable.” Mahmoud turned to him, his eyes wide with terror. “Do you understand what I am saying in these ancient words of Aramic and Arabic? Do you know what your great masters told me to do, what you are offering this… this thing?”

As Mahmoud spoke, the words sounded corrosive, acidic in his throat. Sweat poured off his skin; the tendons stood out on the backs of his hands as he wrote in the dust and the blood. Peter stared at him, seeing a small vein that curled like a snake at his temple throbbing from strain. Mahmoud wrote furiously in the sand, a border line of protective words all the way around them, and an invocation.

Peter nodded his head slowly. He had designed this work, these mathematical systems.

“Then you are cursed,” Mahmoud pointed at him, in the Arabic manner, with three of his fingers. “You should pray to Allah, most-merciful, that you do not know. I hope this is truly what your country of the Amerikanee wants. For there is no re-negotiation of such promises.”

Peter looked up at the night sky. Will this all be worth the cost? That one last thought filled his head as a green aurora rose on the horizon and encompassed the sky, the brightness casting abnormal shadows across their camp as it swept towards the Ba‛al Hadad, overwhelming the world in a tidal wave of light.

***

In his dreams later on that fateful night, Peter was standing on the stone carapace beside the Ba‛al Hadad, a luminous and unnatural fog drifting around him. Mahmoud was with him, and this time, he saw a bearded King approaching them over the mirage of a reflecting pool.

Mahmoud spoke, his voice like a dry leaf before a storm. He mouthed the ancient words of greeting:

“Oh great one, blessed are you and blessed be your fertile lands.”

The ancient King held up his hand, turned it, discarded Mahmoud’s statements with a backwards brush of the hand, in the Arabic style. “I do not rise to hear your praise, I come because you call me with a promise of blood and flesh.”

Our own dead bodies, thought Peter desperately, that’s what he means, not any future deaths, not any more.

The King glanced at Peter, as if he could read his thoughts. “And I see you wish to make me promises of more. Much much more!” The King clapped his hand formally, as if in command, and in some kind of unnatural joy at the prospect.

“Now,” said the King, bending close to them. And his breath was redolent with corruption, of long unburied bodies. “You have been entrusted to make an offer to me. I am beholden to a self- styled Lord of this Land, the man Ṣaddām who comes of the tribe Hussein al-Takriti. I can leave this Assyrian emperor’s service, as I am not held securely by him, and he has not fulfilled all his promises, but I cannot leave without knowing what you will give me for my honored service. What do you offer me in return?”

“Much more, much more,” said Mahmoud, echoing the King’s words from moments before. And Peter saw a vision of bodies laid in concentric circles all around him in the desert, bodies laid out in dead and dying patterns as far as the eye could see. Cities of the dead, all for the taking. Mahmoud read from his text to the King, but Peter could barely understand the words he said, as his head buzzed and sang in the dream.

“And furthermore,” said Mahmoud. “You will not be bound to a structure, you will instead be free to act upon this land as you will, taking the lives you need to serve us. Our masters also offer many many up as a willing sacrifice: at least one hundred thousand souls. And in the end, the Amerikanee offer to grant your freedom.”

The King frowned, but Peter saw he was concealing a smile in the deep folds of his beard. “This is well, min sadiq, this is well. But as you will not be binding me, how shall we then speak, as we must for me to know your commandments? We cannot always meet in dreams, you know. The visions are not always clear to you with such short lives.”

Mahmoud hesitated, and Peter realized that no one knew enough about such entities to know about the difficulty that a semi-free entity might pose, in terms of basic communication. How to give battlefield commands to such a creature? Peter found himself dismayed, and turned to leave the dream.

And then a new vision burst into his sight: he saw a group of orange-suited men, tied in grotesque positions, being brought to know death over and over, but not dead – not yet. Instead, they were brought to the borderline between life and death, and muzzled and incoherent, blind and deaf in all their human senses, forced to exist on that borderline until they absorbed the djinn’s reality. They spoke only in the creature’s harsh and guttural tones, their voices and their very souls subsumed in the creature’s corrosive and unnatural tones.

The King pointed, and as Peter watched, the orange-suited slaves faded away.

“These will serve me, these will be my speaking voices,” said the King. “You will destroy these simple tribespeople for me, and through such half-dead creatures, we will have concourse. I agree to these terms. You may honor me now.” And Peter and Mahmoud then both bowed down flat on the ground, to show they understood.

***

When Peter woke in the morning, he found himself still in the posture of worship, legs and arms and neck cramped from long obeisance before the vision in his dream.

Mahmoud hardly woke at all. He was hot to the touch, and his lips were blistered, as if they had been all night held to a hot kettle. “Ma`amaltesh hāga ghalat,” he muttered in his delirium, and Peter laboriously translated: I haven’t done anything wrong.

Mahmoud sang gently then – an Urdu song, a traditional ghazal. An ancient poem, nearly forgotten by time. Peter didn’t even know that Mahmoud knew Urdu – it was a language of Pakistan. And the fact that he was reciting poetry unnerved Peter to the core.

What if the poetry was an invocation, just as the many poems that his father had forcibly made him memorize over the years – the haunted elegiac poems by John Donne and George Herbert and Angleton’s favorite, T.S. Eliot. Was Mahmoud invoking something, or trying to stop something?

“Mahmoud,” said Peter. “We’ve got to get out of here. Or if we can’t do that, we should complete the ritual. Fulfill our mission and get the hell out of here then.”

Mahmoud did not open his eyes, but he croakingly his voice emerged. “We have completed this thing we were sent to do, min sadiq. We have done the task.”

“’Ana ’āsef,” muttered Mahmoud. I am sorry. “I’m sorry too.” Peter fumbled frantically in his backpack. With his eyes closed, he managed to

get the radio on and the frequency dialed in. “’Ana mehtāg doctor.” said Mahmoud. I need a doctor. Min fadlak. Please.

“I know, I know,” whispered Peter. “I’m looking, I’m trying.”

Peter opened his eyes and initiated his call sign on the radio in a kind of trance. The voice on the radio was brusque in response, demanding an answer. “What did it say? Did you present the terms of the negotiation? Do we have a deal?”

“The answer is Yes,” Peter said. “I don’t know – I think it said yes to all the terms. Some modifications – some necessary adjustments – but yes.”

“It is the end of me,” said Mahmoud. “I am sick to death – ’Ana `ayyān.” “You’ve got your damn answer, ok? Can you get us immediate evac?” yelled Peter into the

microphone. “I don’t care what it takes. Goddammit, I got a guy dying here.”

“We’re close, son,” came the calming voice over the radio. “Close enough to see your position on the horizon. We’ll be there within an hour.”

Mahmoud coughed then, unexpectedly, and then he spoke aloud, desperately. “But you must warn them, the djinn will take the first sacrifice which is offered – this is the fee we must pay him upon his emergence. And the men in their Stryker jeeps, they do not know this. You must tell them to seek a djinn’s protection, seek some sign of protection.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

Mahmoud stared at him, once last time. ’Ana ’āsef, he said again. I am sorry. And then the radio connection was gone, the signal fading away. “Ma`as-salāma,” said Mahmoud, and his eyes closed. Good-bye, my friend.

Then Peter recalled the words he said when he was standing beside his small Toyota on the desert road. There is now nothing left to you, my friend, nothing. I hope that is worth enough to save you now. Peter gently closed the man’s staring eyes. Blessed be your name.

A negotiator, who had completed his final bargain. He remembered Mahmoud negotiating for his car, and he hoped that the man had been just as fierce in negotiating a settlement for his family in the event of his death on this mission. None of us ever think we are going to die.

He looked down at Mahmoud’s sunken cheeks and unmoving chest, where the blackened stone from the Washington monument was resting uselessly. Even that stone had not been enough to prevent Mahmoud’s mind from cracking under the strain of this invocation. He remembered what Colonel Schwarkopf had told him with such confidence: we’ll arrange for an enticing offering, one that will be willingly devoured.

***

The Stryker battalion arrived at the Ba‛al Hadad one hour later. Mahmoud had not moved in all that time, but Peter was very much alive. He opened his eyes to see a man with the stripes of a lieutenant general bending over him, shouting at him in American desert fatigues.

Peter looked around, confused. He was lying on bare desert ground beside the dusty prone form of Mahmoud El-Amin. Above them was a bright blue sky and a few faint clouds.

The sergeant wordlessly handed him a bottle of water. Peter looked around, still halfway expecting to see the bearded King. Yet he knew that they’d been living in a desert dream.

“We’ve got a whole damn NATO contingent here for you, boy, I hope it’s worth all this.” The lieutenant general pointed behind him, where European flags waved.

Peter turned his head, to see German and French troops standing far back, coming after the Americans. Then he laboriously got to his feet, feeling bone-weary in heart and body. He leaned against the jeep, and took a long drink of the proffered water. There was a tank moving ponderously through the dirt towards the stone, and a brace of rugged-looking Strykers. A quartet of Humvees in close proximity, full of healthy looking soldiers disembarking and securing the location.

He looked around at the men with their guns moving into the haphazard campsite, all around the Ba‛al Hadad.

“So where is this thing?” said the sergeant impatiently.

Peter gulped down another drink of water and pointed towards the great black stone shelf. “But there’s danger,” said Peter. “You shouldn’t – ”

Then it was too late.

As the carapace protecting the great spirit of Ba‛al blew apart, and the stones began to fall from the sky like hail, Peter felt himself to be hallucinating, everything colliding in his head: the heat, deprivation and the undeserved death of Mahmoud all overwhelming him at once, numbing him to the sight of terror. A great whispering reverberated through him.

***

Twenty yards ahead, the soldier standing next to the useless tank with its heavy armaments put his hands up nervously to his brow, as if to brush away a gnat. Peter saw a thin line of blood trickle out of the man’s ear. By the time the soldier got his hands to his hairline, the shuddering rhythm had done something to how the man held his fingers.

Peter watched as the man took a firm grasp on his own head and jaw, and wrenched, snapping his own neck with his bare hands, and the last time that Peter saw him, the man’s eyes were turned round the wrong way staring at him with a terrified knowledge as the body collapsed sideways to the desert floor.

Somewhere in the distance, the howling of jackals or desert wild dogs seemed to jerk together in a simultaneous uncertain cry. With a chill, Peter knew then that the sounds he’d been hearing in the distance were not made by jackals or dogs.

A susurrating, shuddering rhythm emanated out of the deep desert. It came closer to them every moment. The sound was enthralling, and made it hard to think as it pushed into them, welling up and down like an electrical current, a wave coming up out of deep, deep water.

The iron token Peter held in his coat pocket wouldn’t be enough to protect him.

“Do you have a dollar bill?” Peter said urgently to the sergeant standing next to him.

“What?” the man was staring open-mouthed at the soldiers sinking slowly – some resisting – to the desert floor around them. There was no sound as they were rendered immobile – no screams or moans of agony. They simply stopped moving.

“Do you have a fucking dollar bill?” Peter screamed, and wordlessly, the sergeant reached in his wallet and handed one bill over as a line of blood seeped out of his left ear.

The current rose around them, cycling stronger. And Peter shut his eyes and desperately massaged the shape of the pyramid on the back of the wrinkled dollar bill, feeling the swelling power of the eye that looked unceasing, and he could feel the current slow to ebb around him, a tidal flow moving subtly around a battlement.

He could feel the weak ties of this ancient symbol pulling him through that vast sea of power, slowly towing him back out of the deep waters to safer ground. But he was oh so deep in this mess, and safety was so very far away.

And without even thinking about what he’d heard, Peter knew that the explosions had come in unnatural patterns of scorched concentric circles, one overlapping the other in an endless disharmony of waxing and waning. Circles, branded into the desert forevermore.

There was a great throbbing lurch and the world fell sideways. Peter’s eyes shot open in time to see the tank vibrate wildly, sinking into an uneven mirage, before it disintegrated into smaller and smaller parts that hung in the desert air for a moment before blowing outward in an angry and soundless explosion. Behind the tank, Peter could see the great stone carapace of Ba‛al Hadad blowing itself to bits as well, every solid iota of it exploding outward into the desert.

The stones went up into the atmosphere; he saw an immense expanding cloud of material silhouetted against the night sky, occluding the stars.

Half the stones came back to earth with a rumbling crash, dirt and rock flying past the remaining Humvee and the prone bodies of the dead men. The stones whistled madly as they flew past him. With a sharp penetrating pain, a small sliver of errant rock sliced into his belly and upward to lodge against his rib. The grinding agony of it came a moment later. He clutched his side and cried in breathless anguish.

The escarpment of stone had vanished as each stone was propelled outward as the thing inside finally, irrevocably, moved. His wound throbbed, and Peter knew that the bait had been taken.

He moved to the side like an automaton. A solitary Humvee was still standing next to him, solid metal, unshaken. With a wondering finger, he touched the small Chinese symbol scratched into its hood by a superstitious soldier. That ancient symbol was the only reason why the vehicle was untouched, why the person inside had survived thus far. Peter saw that he was, in fact, still alive. But unmoving.

In the driver’s seat sat a man frozen in terror. Hendrick, said a NATO name tag. The young man was shaking, eyes bloodshot and hollow with fear. Without further thought, Peter pushed the trembling Hendrick into the passenger’s seat. Peter got into the driver’s seat. He turned the key and shifted gears. Then he pulled the wheel to one side to avoid a body lying across the road. His hands were sticky with blood. He glanced down at the spearhead shaped wound in his side.

Peter found himself panting hard. Blood bubbled out of the wound in a slow leak with each of his breaths. The purifying light of that blast had hollowed him out – he felt himself now to be just a moving husk.

Three hundred yards ahead, he could see the observer post, where the rest of the NATO contingent had halted, while the advance team of Strykers went in and never came out. But although he could see the cracked stone shelf where they had been at Ba‛al Hadad, the NATO contingent had disappeared already, the unified force already on the move. In the far distance, a plume of dust showed the path that they’d taken towards al-Shad and points beyond. Kuwait was ahead, if they drove for forty hours straight, and were lucky as hell.

Peter shifted gears frantically as the tires snarled and slid in the gritty sand. He never let go of the dollar bill with its talisman, clenching his fingers tightly around it like a claw. His face was streaked with the lines of dried tears. It felt like his face might crack apart along those fractures. The man next to him was whispering, mumbling to himself now, a mad mantra: I was following orders, orders, orders, just orders.

Peter tried to ignore the man’s insane mutterings. After all, he had seen what had happened to Mahmoud. He felt that would happen to him as well, he saw no way to avoid that fate. In his heart of hearts, Peter knew that he was welded now to this thing in the desert, that he was tied irrevocably to this moment.

Always, Peter saw that great phosphorus light exploding in his head, cauterizing all his memories, everything he’d ever been.

An excerpt from the novel Wilderness of Mirrors by Nicholas Hallum

I write dark fantasy, horror and SF as Nicholas Hallum. You can follow me on my Amazon Author page here, visit me on Twitter or Facebook.

  The Iraq Incantation — An excerpt from the novel Wilderness of Mirrors was originally published on Ned Hayes