#can north finish one project without starting another one challenge (impossible)

[lt-north]

based on that one thing that happens in act 3, part 1 out of probably 2

nooo lonely wizard nooo you need to let go noooo don’t fight your grief directly but instead fight to push through it and ultimately grow as a person noooo

[hedwigstalons]

High Expectations - Ch17

This was meant to be a fic about Gordon but as I get further through the timeline the other brothers start waving more and pointing out that they are an important part of this and should be considered too.  Alan has been feeling a bit left out and wants some attention.

Thanks to @willow-salix for her amazing editorial skills and ‘quick chats’ that are somehow never very quick.

Earlier parts: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, 

AO3 chapter link

Chapter Seventeen

If Gordon’s journey out to Marineville for officer selection had been different to his first visit to the base it was nothing compared to the contrast of the journey home.  This time his journey north had needed no furtive sneaking off, no cover stories and no lies.  There had still been plenty of butterflies in anticipation of the trials ahead but he had faced those trials with the blessing and support of his family.  His father had even travelled to the airport with him rather than entrusting him solely to a driver.  

The journey south, however, was accompanied by butterflies an order of magnitude greater.  

As he exited Marineville to board the bus back to the airport it was impossible to miss the imposing hire car in the visitors’ parking lot or the even more imposing man stood next to it.  So far he had managed to maintain a level of anonymity but as he left the cluster of participants he was acutely aware of the whisperings behind him.  He ignored the mutterings and strode over to his father, his head held high, it didn’t matter if they worked out who he was now, he knew he had earned his place on his own merits.

“So Gordon, how did it go?”  There was still that look of pre-emptive sternness, as though Jeff was waiting to receive another mediocre report card.

Gordon couldn’t stop the grin that flashed across his face or the air of cocky smugness, he was riding the wave of success again and it felt good.  “Aced it.  The standard was a lot higher and only about a third of us got through but when the next intake comes around you are looking at the newest recruit to WASP.”

The sternness dropped away and was replaced by the look of pride Gordon had seen directed at his brothers far more than himself.  “Good, son.  You can tell me about it on the journey home.”

As they headed away from the base Gordon recounted the tests and challenges he had faced.  For Jeff it was like having a much younger Gordon back, the one who had regaled him with tales of race wins and given blow by blow accounts of dives, turns and sprint finishes.  His fourth son spoke freely and animatedly in a way he hadn’t heard for years and Jeff realised just how much of his sons’ lives, all of them, he had missed out on by burying himself in his work and leaving the boys to fend for themselves.  He was trying to be more involved again, to listen to them, but his sons had gotten used to existing without him around.  All too often he’d come in to hear Gordon ending a call to one of the others, usually Virgil, or arrive home just as Alan was finishing telling Gordon about his day.  He rarely got to hear their news now and was almost never the first to be told; it didn’t make it any easier knowing this was a situation of his own making.   

Jeff drove them, not to the main Marineville airport, but to a much smaller private air strip just out of town.  As they turned off the route being followed by the shuttle bus Gordon kicked himself for not realising sooner that they wouldn’t be on the regular flight.  Of course they wouldn’t, his father hadn’t taken a scheduled flight in years.

As they entered the cockpit of the jet Jeff slipped into the co-pilot’s position leaving the main pilot’s seat for Gordon.  It had been an intensive few months going from minimal experience at the controls through to being able to take charge of the family jet.  His swimming training had always prevented him from experiencing this part of the family education before but now his time in the skies had him thrown in at the metaphorical deep end in the race to get qualified before starting WASP training.   Scott of course had gained his private licence on his seventeenth birthday, desperate to achieve official recognition at the earliest possible moment, and Virgil and John hadn’t been much older than the official minimum themselves.  Gordon’s dedication had been tested as he crammed in what the others had spent years learning gradually.  

This was where the butterflies came in.

He still wasn’t yet able to fly unaccompanied but he was getting closer.  Today though it seemed he was to be tested to a whole new level.  A two hour flight down the coast, taking off from an unfamiliar runway, was a jump up from the short flights he had taken until now.  To make that leap while utterly exhausted following a gruelling three day selection course was perhaps a step too far.

He looked to his father for confirmation that this really was what was expected of him and received only a silent nod in return but if there was one element of being a Tracy that Gordon had truly mastered it was not backing down from a challenge.  He pushed the tiredness away, buried the self-doubt with it, and with Jeff next to him scrutinising his every move he requested permission from the tower and taxied out onto the runway.

Jeff stayed silent as Gordon completed the maneuver.  He watched the precise and controlled movements his son made, finding little to pick fault with despite watching with a highly critical eye.  He knew Gordon must be desperate for his bed, the dark bags under his eyes a testament to what his body had been subjected to, but he needed to be sure his son would be capable of rising to a challenge.  Now that he knew Gordon had been accepted into WASP and would receive rigorous training on all manner of submersibles his son changed status from dependent child to potential rescue operative.  

He had already started considering the possibilities of expanding the scope of his organisation to include water rescues, indeed he already had the first concept sketches for a submarine, but for that to become a reality he needed an aquanaut.  Being accepted into WASP was a start but until Gordon held both his pilot's licenses, for both up in the sky and under the waves, Jeff wasn’t yet ready to consider his fourth son as a full part of his vision and so for now he was content to watch, and wait, and plan, leaving Gordon ignorant of his ideas.

xoxoxox

Barely a week after the selection course the letter arrived confirming what Gordon had already been told at the end of the trials, that he would be joining the next officer training intake.  Even though the contents of the letter were no surprise it was still reassuring to see it in black and white, indisputable proof that WASP had confidence in him and that his future path was set.  

“So, when do you start?” Jeff asked across the dinner table.

“Huh?”  Gordon snapped his head up in surprise, he had been oblivious to the room around him as he read the letter through several times, drinking in the validation it gave him while butterflies fluttered in his stomach at the prospect of actually going off and doing it.  “Oh, um, beginning of July, then it’s…”

He didn’t get any further.  The scrape of chair and the clatter of discarded cutlery cut him off as Alan flew from the room and disappeared down the hallway, the slam of a bedroom door confirming where he had gone to ground.  Jeff sighed and half rose from the table, his expression showing anger at the rudeness of the departed teen, but Gordon waved him down. 

“No, I’ll deal with this.”  

Gordon had been sensing the impending storm ever since he got back from Marineville.  Amongst the congratulations of the family one voice had been noticeably absent and it seemed that the official confirmation letter was all that had been needed to bring it to a head.  The last thing he needed was for their father to make a difficult situation worse by laying down the law.

Alan’s room was the typical teenage mess.  Clothes lay discarded on the floor and various electronics were piled on surfaces next to empty water glasses but in amongst all the mess it was clear where his passions lay.  It was like wandering into an untidier version of John’s room.  Star maps adorned the walls and there was a model rocket that Gordon had every confidence could make it into space if that was how Alan had designed it.  The difference between this room and the usually unoccupied one next door, apart from the mess, were the newspaper cuttings, article print outs and piles of Olympic memorabilia that vied for space with the astronomical paraphernalia.  Dotted around the room was evidence of a devotion to Gordon and the swimmer was sure you could piece together the story of his sporting career if only you took the time to collate the collection. 

“Alan…”

“Leave me alone, it’s what you’re going to do anyway.”  The voice was muffled, smothered by the pillow in which Alan was buried face down.

“Alan, please, talk to me.”  Gordon picked his way carefully across the room and sat on the edge of the bed next to the sprawled figure.  The only answer he got was a choked sob and he felt a wave of guilt at the upset his brother was feeling.

“I hate it here.  I hate it.  I hate it.”  Alan sat up and glared at his brother, there was venom in the voice as anger crept in around the upset.  “Everyone gets to leave and I’m going to be stuck here on my own.  Maybe Virgil will add me to his pity list and call me cos you sure as hell won’t have the time.  I don’t want to be his next pet project and charity case though.”  

Alan’s words cut deep, as he had intended them to, and Gordon found himself wondering if that was all he’d been to Virgil, a project to feed Virgil’s desire to help people.  Surely not?  The friendship and growing bond between them felt real enough but the familiar doubts began to creep in about his self worth.  He tried to shake them off, knowing the dark places such thoughts could lead him to.

“That’s if Virg can even make time for me in his busy schedule once he goes off to Tracy College.  Why the hell does he need to get space rated anyway?  He’s never shown any interest in being an astronaut before.  Fine, John’s pretty much had his name down for the space programme since birth but why does Virgil get to go too?”

So that explained the animosity towards Virgil, Alan was harbouring a deep jealousy that he was getting to do something that was Alan’s own dream.  The youngest Tracy had always made it clear that he would be the third of that name to head into space after his father and middle brother and yet here was Virgil taking his spot, seemingly on a whim.  This, coupled with the growing bond between Gordon and Virgil, had evidently ignited a burning resentment.

A shuddering breath wracked the Alan’s body as the primary reason for his upset flooded back into his mind.  “I..I don’t want you to go.”

Whatever the issues were with Virgil, Gordon couldn’t shy away from the fact that he had been slowly drifting away from Alan to set up a new life.  He had been Alan’s primary source of company for so long, had been a confidante and carer to the younger boy, and now he was heading off leaving Alan facing a future of loneliness.  Their father was trying to be more involved but he was still a virtual stranger in Alan’s life and had a lot to learn about parenting teenagers. 

He wanted to let Alan know that it would all be ok.  Wanted to tell him that soon enough he would be out of this hateful city and in a place where their father and at least some of his brothers would be around a lot more.  He wanted to tell him about the rockets and the space station and everything that he knew would ignite his little brother’s passion.  But he couldn’t.  Even if their father hadn’t expressly forbidden it there was still a fundamental  issue in that the island wasn’t actually theirs yet and until the deeds were signed and move confirmed he just couldn’t plant the seeds of the dream in Alan’s mind if there was any chance of the dream crashing down.  Instead he had to make do with platitudes that must have felt empty to the devastated teen.

“It’ll be ok, you’ll see.”

“Will it?”  The words were spat at him.

“It will; trust me on this.  I’m not going anywhere for a little while yet and I’ll still be able to call, I’m going to be at Marineville not Mars.  Those first 6 month of training will be pretty intense but I’ll still get some time off.”

“And what about after that?  What about when you aren’t at Marineville but you’re getting sent all over the place like Scott does?  You won’t be able to just pick up the phone or head back for a weekend if you’re under water on the other side of the world.  You may as well be on Mars then.”

Gordon slung an arm around his younger sibling, drawing that smaller form into a hug.  He half expected Alan to pull away but he took it as a good sign that the anger was burning out when Alan acquiesced and leaned in heavily against him.

Alan felt like his whole world was dropping away.  Of course he had known this moment would come but the arrival of the letter had just hammered home the inevitability of the situation.  He felt angry at Gordon, angry at their father and more than a little angry at himself.  He was fifteen for goodness sake, he shouldn’t be needing hugs from his big brother, but he still didn’t pull away from that warm hold.  There was something comforting about those strong arms, honed through years of hard exercise, that made him feel safe and with that feeling of safety came the assurance of familial love.  He clung to it, knowing that all too soon his last brother would be leaving just like the others had; his big family had run out, he was the last and he would be alone.

Of course he had been alone before, Gordon had been away enough times at competitions that he was capable of fending for himself but this time was different.  This wasn’t just a few days with the excitement of following the swimming results to keep him occupied, this was a whole new future and he was facing the prospect of being alone with the father who seemed barely aware of his existence.  The next few years stretched bleakly ahead of him leaving a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“None of us know what the future holds but even when I’m not here you aren’t going to be on your own.  You’ve got four big brothers and we all care about you, you will always be able to get hold of one of us.  I need to do this though, Al.  If it wasn’t Marineville it would have been college somewhere and it won’t be much longer before you’re choosing what you want to do with your future too.”

There was a damp sniff.  “Gonna miss you.”  The admission was a quiet whisper but it stabbed deeply into Gordon’s heart. 

“Gonna miss you too, Sprout”  

They sat there a while longer, each lost to their silent thoughts but still needing that physical contact.  Gordon sincerely hoped it would be okay.  He’d been so focussed on his own future and excited about the prospect of a fresh start and fresh challenges that he hadn’t fully considered what he would be leaving behind, or rather who he would be leaving behind.  He had been looking out for Alan for nearly five years and now he would be leaving.  Alan’s whole life had been punctuated by loss as first his mother, and then the brothers who had stepped up in her place, disappeared one by one.  Now he would be adding another loss to the pile leaving Alan behind with just the father who had been far too distant for far too long.

[fic-for-fic-sake]

Project Infinity

Pairing: Eventual Steve x reader

Description: Reader is an enhanced individual whose power comes from the power stone. How will her life change when she crosses paths with Steve Rogers?

A/N: This indicates Polish

Prologue can be found here.

Chapter 1:

Present Day (2017)

Warsaw, Poland.

You sighed as you turned your key and opened the door to the little coffee shop. The solitary bell rang out as you brushed light flurries of snow off of your hair and jacket. Going behind the counter you turned on the machines and went in the back to get the pastries you had started to make last night. Now they only needed to be put in the oven for a half hour and they would be nice and warm when customers started rolling in.

Coming back into the main area, you started your own cup of coffee before cleaning the general seating area. It wasn’t much but it was yours, at least for the time being. You had been playing house here in Poland for six months and still nothing. HYDRA was being suspiciously quiet and it was beginning to make you uneasy. Hearing the espresso machine come to life and pour out your coffee was the only saving grace of the day so far. You was waiting to hear word about if you should stay on in assignment here or finally call it quits and look elsewhere.

Moving behind the counter you pulled the milk out of the refrigerator and steamed it to your liking, before adding it to the espresso cup. You grabbed your apron and tied it around your waist, watching the clock. Customers should be arriving soon. You took a deep swig of coffee, not bothered by the scorch it left in your mouth. You didn’t feel pain anymore, not since you was cursed. Wiping the glass counter top, you looked as violet eyes stared back at you. Sometimes still forgetting that they were your own.

The bell chimed, breaking you out of your reverie. You smiled as your regulars poured into the shop. They chatted among themselves as you made them coffee and passed out the fresh batch of bread. The warmth was appreciated during the unforgiving morning temperatures of the north.

Your Polish was good, enough to get by and make polite conversation. Most people thought you just stuck to yourself, a loner. They weren’t wrong. Being undercover was challenging and it made it difficult to let people in. You had a hard enough time with that in general, add being a secret agent hunting terrorists and a social life was damn near impossible.

The coffee shop helped. Your superiors said you needed to be more social, that you couldn’t spend the entire assignment in stakeouts with spy equipment. That this was the real way they would catch HYDRA. You knew they were right, but it didn’t make it any less annoying. But now, you didn’t mind the coffee shop. It gave you another reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Looking up at the clock you couldn’t believe where the time had gone. It was a quarter past eleven and you needed to prepare for lunch. You were about to go into the back room to grab the pre-made sandwiches when you heard a chime at the front door. You turned to see two men in black walk into the shop. They gave you a polite nod before sitting at a table in the corner.

You walked in their direction, notepad ready to take their orders. When you got to the table you noticed something was off. Both men had a subtle hint of gasoline on them, not enough to raise alarms for the masses, but you knew better. You smiled as you asked if they wanted anything, they said they needed another moment to decide and waved you away.

Going into the back room you grabbed your glock and carefully placed it in a holster around your waist and under your shirt. You took two deep breaths before you went back into the main area. Lucky for you, the rest of the shop had cleared out. You continued to wait on the two men as if nothing happened, while you subtly locked the front door.

The two men left money on the table and got up to leave, having finished their drinks. They went to pull on the door handle only to realize it was locked.

“Miss, I think there’s something wrong with the door, it won’t open.” The taller man said. He had a small white scar that ran the length of his eye, and you found yourself wondering what happened to him.

“There’s nothing wrong with it.” You replied carefully, stepping out from behind the counter and pointing the gun at him. “Now, I need to know, who is your supplier?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, you’ve got the wrong guys.” The second, stockier man said.

“Save it, I know you two are working with HYDRA, I know you had close ties with Rumlow and Stryker. So, I’ll ask again, who is your supplier?” You questioned as you stalked towards them, never lowering your gun.

Their eyes drifted somewhere behind you as you felt a gun press against your head.

“Put the gun down sweetheart, we don’t wanna have to hurt you.” The man behind you said in perfect English.

“That makes one of us.” You quipped as your eyes flashed a brilliant purple. In an instant the man holding the gun to your head was on the floor thrashing in pain. You calmly removed the gun from his hand before turning your attention back to the other two by the door. They soon drew their own pistols and began firing several rounds at you. You easily dodged them as you made contact with the stockier HYDRA agent. Without breaking a sweat you bent the man's arm backwards as a harsh crack erupted from him, signaling the breaking of bone. You kneed him in the chest and sent him spiraling towards the rack of pastries on the counter. The agent behind you wrapped his arms around your neck in a vice like grip but you just laughed before flipping him over you like he weighed no more than a sack of flour.

You stalked towards the one with the broken arm, hoisting him up with a strong grip around his throat, not enough to kill him but enough for him to know that you could, and more importantly, that you wanted to.

“Who is your supplier.” You growled through gritted teeth, lifting the man higher still. Until his feet were thrashing and his hands clawed at the ones wrapped around his throat.

“I will never tell you, you devil. Rot in hell, Hail HYDRA.” He choked out before he bit down on the cyanide capsule in his mouth.

With a frustrated groan you tossed his body back on the ground before moving on to the one with the scar. His eyes widened in terror as he scrambled backwards to get away from you.

“What are you?” He asked, voice trembling.

“Your worst nightmare.” You remarked, smiling darkly as you stalked towards him, your eyes glowing purple once more. Before you could deal with him though, you found herself being tackled to the floor by something, or rather someone.

Through the gap between the persons arm and the floor you could see someone else tackle the man who had held the gun to your head. You thought you knew the person, the way she moved and fought. Swift and officiant, how she had been trained, but it couldn’t be. She was supposed to be in jail.

In your bewilderment, you looked above you to the stranger who had tackled you. But he wasn’t exactly a stranger, not really. It was none other than Captain Fucking America. He got off of you and extended a hand but you scoffed.

“I didn’t need your help, I was handling it.” You chortled as you stood up on your own.

“Having someone die on your watch, almost killing another, and having the third almost shoot you dead was handling it?” The Captain shot back. “Sam get in here and get these two prisoners into the quinjet, get ready for take off in 5.” He ordered into his comm.

“You have your way of dealing with things and I have mine.” You said, raising your voice.

“Who are you anyway, what business do you have with HYDRA?” He questioned, moving closer to you as he did so. A hint of suspicion written on his face.

“That’s Y/N.” Natasha interjected from her spot in the room, where she was strapping a pair of handcuffs onto one of the HYDRA agents. “She’s a former SHIELD agent, used to work with Fury on a secret project.”

“What happened to being in prison?” you quirked an eyebrow as you teased Nat.

“I got bored.” The now blonde assassin bantered back with a wink.

“Why am I not surprised?” you chuckled as you shook your head.

“I’m sorry, you two know each other?” Steve interjected, breaking up the reunion between the two women.

“Yeah, we used to work together. One of the best partners I’ve ever had.” Nat stated matter of factly.

“How am I just now hearing about this?” Steve questioned, looking between the two of them in shock.

“We worked on top secret projects for Fury, it was on a strictly need to know basis. Looks like your name never made the cut.” You quipped as you crossed your arms over your chest.

Just then, another man, who you assumed to be Sam, came into the shop.

“Okay, I’m ready to load the cargo. Wheels up in 3.” He announced as he was about to grab the first agent.

“Not so fast,” you stated as you grabbed Sam’s arm, “These men are in my custody, I still need to question them.”

“What a coincidence.” Steve responded, “So do we. Load ‘em up Sam.”

“If you want to question them, you’ll just have to come with us. Besides, I have some questions of my own for you.” Steve stated before heading out of the coffee shop to where the jet was waiting.

Natasha gave you an apologetic shrug as she forced the other prisoner to start walking. With a dejected look at the destroyed coffee shop you made your way outside as well, taking one last glance at your old life.

Taglist: @fairchild21, @moli1497

[nezzfiction]

ENMY Chapter 89 - Fourth Crusade (Part One)

Chapter Synopsis: The Kingdom of Vacuo is about to enter its most daunting challenge since its conception. Salem is launching the Fourth Crusade. A war to end some of Remnant’s greatest warriors, including Team ENMY. Assistance from Atlas is on its way, but will the Fleet arrive in time to make a difference?

Only one thing is certain. Whatever happens in Vacuo will echo the events to come for the rest of Remnant.

Series Synopsis: Team RWBY is disbanded, and Yang must find herself new allies. For her, that might very well be yesterday’s enemies. Joining up with the likes of Emerald, Mercury, and Neo, the four will comprise Team Enemy(ENMY).

Links to read the series: Ao3 or FF.net

Or hit the jump below

.

Fourth Crusade (Part One)

.

Well, I looked my demons in the eyes, laid bare my chest,

Said, “Do your best. Destroy me. You see, I’ve been to hell and back so many times, I must admit,

You kind of bore me.”

.

.

“Have you finished relaying the situation?” Temujin asked.

“Ran your people the basic play by play,” Emerald answered. “Cuckoos gone, some of their loved ones gone, hordes of Grimm, plus, a giant freakin’ butterfly making a beeline for us.”

“Moth.”

“What?”

“It’s a moth.”

“Right. Behemoth. I get it.”

“Have you modified their emotions?”

“Tweaked them just a touch. They were as angry as you wanted them to be and ready to war without it.”

“That will do. Wake them. And connect my thoughts to theirs.”

“From sweet dreams to full-blown nightmare. This is gonna be a scene.”

As the mental connection secured, Temujin stepped onto the balcony of the Hanging Gardens. She sat on her small stool, and took her familiar horse-fiddle in her hands. As she touched the bow to the strings, her throat opened and she drew strength from her diaphragm.

Another tragedy to carve in these old bones one last time.

One last burden.

One last sin.

Temujin bore her soul bare to the untethered sun and the desert’s hot air.

Answer me, one last time.

My Kingdom of Blades.

A low, soulful song reverberated into the skies above Vacuo. Its volume began low, but slowly and surely, its melody became a crescendo that shook the heavens. The citizens roused to its sound. The voice of their Great Khan, the voice of their Kingdom. It called them to arms.

I failed you.

I deceived you.

I betrayed the Code I set for you all.

But will you answer me once more?

If this is our end, will we stand together?

How will we march into the darkness?

With fear?

Or will it be with Wrath in our hearts?

A single command coursed through the minds of her people. A pure emotion of most unmitigated rage. A sweltering draught that drowned away their sorrows.

All across the city, the citizens of Vacuo stirred. They stood tall with their chests out. Their weapons drawn and raised high.

“An Eye for an Eye.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

Despite the conference room in Atlas HQ being something the size of a small theater, all its occupants were struck silent. None could watch the floating projection, and not be horrified by what was displayed.

Finally, a lone, timid voice spoke what they were all thinking.

“They’re doomed.”

The digital map zoomed out to show the Vacuo capital and its surrounding lands. Rounding to hit the city from the North and South were hosts of Grimm almost twice the city’s size A flood of red markers filled the edges of the map, but the more imminent threat was displayed by the monstrous Behemoth flying directly from the West.

Murmurs began flooding the room. Mutterings of disbelief and fear rose with a rising tide.

“How can that many Grimm be controlled?”

“If something like that attacked us, would the Aegis and Javelin System be enough?”

“We should order our Fleet back. Strengthen our defenses here.”

“It’s all over for them.”

A hand slammed loudly onto the table. Cinder’s furious gaze silenced the room and brought order to the staff.

“How far is the reinforcement Fleet?” she asked.

None made a move.

“How far are they?!”

They all jumped, and one officer rapidly tapped her tablet.

“Still a day’s flight, ma’am! Twenty hours estimated!”

“Is there any way to shorten the travel time for the remaining distance?”

“They could possibly cut down a few hours by traveling at maximum thrust. However, that would only be possible for a small portion of the Fleet.”

“…”

“It would be advised not to separate—”

“I know that!” Cinder shouted in exasperation.

“……Ma’am, I think we should consider withdrawing the reinforcements.”

The Black Queen offered no response to the suggestion. She remained quiet, studying the scales and balances in her head. There was a tough call to make in this. The future of Atlas, and more importantly Remnant’s, would hinge on the actions she took now.

We didn’t expect Salem’s resources to be so extensive.

Can Vacuo hold until the Fleet arrives?

Even with the little aces up our sleeves, the chances of victory are too low to entertain.

Initiating the fight with Salem backfired.

No, it would have been worse to wait. At least, the Cuckoos have been removed from the board.

Is the situation still salvageable?

…

The smart move would be to recall our forces.

By the time they arrive, Vacuo will likely be overrun to a point they cannot recover.

…

…

Team ENMY must be evacuated.

Cinder looked up to the officer-in-waiting.

“Sortie the light-traveling transport marked Swordfish ahead to retrieve—”

“Belay that order.”

Cinder turned in surprise to Weiss’ sudden interruption. Her surprise quickly transitioned to smoldering fury.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“We aren’t sure Vacuo is lost yet,” Weiss answered.

“With all due respect, my fellow Queen, Vacuo can’t possibly hold out against that,” Cinder motioned to the projection. “Not until reinforcements arrive, and even then, the chances of victory are too small to consider.”

“We need to contact Team ENMY.”

“We will give them the order to evacuate—and they will follow it.”

“Cinder…”

“…What?”

The Black Queen squinted, as the White leaned closer to speak loud enough so only they could hear.

“You know, better than I, the things Team ENMY is capable of.”

“I do,” Cinder nodded. “They can perform the impossible given the right circumstances. With adequate preparation and strong mental grit, they can and will perform outside expectation. But what Salem has brought to the board is completely out of their depth.”

“I want to hear what they have to report first.”

“And we shall, but do not hold out hope.”

“At this point, hope might be all we have.”

Cinder went quiet for a moment.

“I detest the idea of abandoning our allies more than you would believe, and this miscalculation frustrates me to no end—but we cannot afford to be stubborn at this juncture. I thought you were smarter than this.”

“I doubt we can outsmart the Witch, if that’s what we’ve been trying to do.”

“…”

“She’s had decades to prepare and plan and manipulate the variables, Cinder. We can’t win that way.”

Weiss’ words rung deep with the Black Queen. It was a thought she fought hard to abate, but seeing the might Salem brought live on the projection, Cinder could only face the truth. If this was a chess game, it wasn’t fair to begin with. The Witch had too many pieces from the start and moved several times before her first turn came.  

It was enough to dishearten anyone.

But that was not what Cinder saw when she met her coregent’s eyes.

“…What are you thinking?” she couldn’t help but utter, almost disbelievingly.

“I’m not sure myself,” Weiss shook her head. “I think we have a choice, Cinder. It’s the choice you and I have been dreading without really knowing what it was.”

“…”

“I can feel it. We have to make a stand here. We have to.”

“…Is that your head speaking, or your heart, I wonder?”

“Both.”

“Very well, Weiss. We will delay ordering the retreat.”

Weiss blinked in surprise.

“Really?”

“As I said before, your counsels are always welcome. No matter how naïve or ludicrous they may be.”

“Hmph!”

Seeing her fellow Queen pout brought a slight smile, as well as lighten Cinder’s mood. She turned to the adjutant and gave the following order,

“Mobilize all the light transports. Few reinforcements sooner are better than none too late. Have the rest of the Fleet maintain course. Inform Trafalgar and Ironwood of the situation and our decision.”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am,” the officer saluted, and tapped at her tablet.

“And open a direct channel with Team ENMY in real time. Priority one.”

“Ma’am, it will take some time to construct a secure line.”

“It doesn’t need to be encrypted. I don’t care if Temujin eavesdrops on our conversation.”

“Yes, ma’am. Right away.”

Cinder breathed a quiet sigh and glanced at Weiss beside her.

“This is quite the gambit, my Queen.”

“You could have overruled me easily. You are, as you’re so fond of reminding me, director of all affairs military.”

“Indeed. But if I had to say…”

“I also think, a stand must be made.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

The throne room of the Hanging Gardens was instantly converted into a war room. Various communication equipment had been rigged around the chamber to coordinate their armies.

Ilia was busy giving sortie orders to the city wall’s hangars and garages to mobilize airships and other modes of transport. Nai had left earlier to join the battalion heading North. Minerva was dividing her students between those transported to the safety bunkers and those who would join the battle in the South.

Meanwhile, Temujin, the Rakis siblings, and Team ENMY had their attentions concentrated on the bigger picture.

“You’re sending an awful lot of your people to cover the armies at the flanks,” Emerald commented.

“Yes,” Temujin answered simply.

“But Behemoth was going to hit the city first. You want to take the fight to the other fronts, outside the walls.”

“Yes.”

“We were supposed to be locking down siege defense after we got rid of the Cuckoos.”

“We were.”

A tense silence filled the atmosphere.

“……You’re abandoning the city?” she whispered low.

Temujin didn’t give Emerald an answer. She rechecked how Vacuo’s military was being divvied up. It appeared none of the staff officers noticed how none of their forces were being devoted to Behemoth. The only way that was possible was if…

Emerald felt the stares of the Rakis siblings on her. Mouse and Knives were the most senior commanders just below Temujin. Minerva and Nai weren’t around, hands full with their own tasks.

“You knew you would have to abandon the city?” Emerald asked, remembering the Precognition Semblance the siblings had. “This was a future you guys saw?”

Mouse and Knives nodded slightly.

“So, what?! We went through with Operation Gun Dog for nothing?”

“It served its purpose. We also believed it might cause a deviation in the future they saw,” Temujin explained. “But it seems our gamble did not pay off on that venture.”

“Great! Thanks for clueing us in this late in the game. We knew Salem’s army wasn’t fucking around, but the wonder siblings didn’t see that big ass, Mothra-fucker coming?”

“The Witch did well to hide it. If you studied the material on our Grimm, you know Behemoth was outside expectation.”  

“Yeah, it’s only in its adult form seven days out of the whole year. It also works on a strict timeclock, so you spawn-kill it as soon as it hatches out of its cocoon, far away from the any settlement.”

“There were measures to exterminate it months from now. In the worst case, we would have waited until it exhausted its lifespan.”

“Looks like there’s a new worst case now.”

“It is near impossible to defeat in fair, open ground. If the brunt of our forces were used to counter it, there would be nothing left when Salem’s main army arrived.”

“FUCK!”

Emerald continued to trade glares from Temujin to the large moth taking up the monitors. Poisonous powders spread beneath the Grimm’s shadow. Its toxins carried into the gusts of its wings. Once in a while, a few scales would drop from its body, unrolling into giant, armored caterpillars.  

In addition to its other absurd traits, the Grimm possessed one other ability.

“You guys see any new visions of the future?” Emerald asked.

“…Yes,” Mouse squeaked out an answer.

“Let me guess. If you kept all your people behind the walls, and concentrated your attacks on Behemoth, it would’ve suicide bombed the city.”

Upon the Grimm’s death, it shed all of its scales, which caused an unfathomable amount of carnage in the surrounding environment. It was another reason the Vacuo military tried to lessen the damage by disposing it elsewhere.

“Salem won’t waste time. She’ll have it belly flop the city anyway,” Emerald bit her thumbnail. “That’s what I’d do. It’s too slow to wipe a good percent of a moving army, but it can level a lot of your standing fortifications. Salem’s trying to weaken the siege defense for the later game.”

“We have come to similar conclusions.”

“Any chance we can bring it down before it gets inside the walls?” Emerald continued to press.

“My sister and I foresaw something else, which our scouts have since then confirm.”

Mouse touched a nearby monitor and enhanced the image on the screen. Zoomed onto the back of Behemoth was a small army of Grimm. The groups seemed to be crowding something at their center like a shield wall. When the image was further enhanced, Team ENMY saw what was there.

A few of the Grimm Clan Leaders were identified. Camlann, Azkaban, and Combine were commanding their brethren from afar, while riding Behemoth’s back. The combination of area effects between Azkaban and Combine alone were enough to deter any real resistance. Their abilities were much more potent than the average Cuckoo or Daemontor, and their effect radiuses even wider so.

“…Crap. Then, what’s the plan?” Yang spoke up. “You guys do have a plan, right?”

Temujin looked to her goddaughter strangely, and sighed.

“A course of action is in place. Behemoth will be allowed to detonate within the city. After its death, our armies will retreat back behind whatever is left of the fortifications and initiate siege defense as planned.”

Yang threw Temujin an accusatory look.

“But the other citizens…!”

“Some will survive.”

“More will die!!!”

“Our warriors will fight all the harder.”

“You can’t be serious!”

Just then, Yang felt the oxygen empty from her lungs. She coughed violently from Temujin’s sudden activation of her territorial Semblance.

“I am deadly serious, my foolish goddaughter. It is the only way my people will survive.”

“By offering some of them on a silver platter…!” Yang forced her voice through. “I didn’t know you had such an ego…! I didn’t know you were so cold…!”

“You have no idea.”

“You’d sacrifice anything to win! What makes you so different from Salem?!”

“…Not much I suppose.”

“Bullshit!!!” Yang turned, and stormed from the throne room. Her team followed after.

Once ENMY was gone, Temujin bade a forlorn gaze to Knives and Mouse. Both were positively fuming and biting the edges of their lips to keep silent.

Good job holding back, you two.

We can’t have them staying behind, if they knew the truth.

Yang is right, though.

I would sacrifice anything to win…

Even myself.

.

X  X X  X  X

.

As Yang stomped angrily out into the hall, her team caught up to her—right as she punched a hole through the nearby wall.

“Yang,” Emerald said with a hint of disappointment.

“I know what you’re going to say, Em.”

“Yeah, well. I’m going to say it anyway. Temujin’s making the right call.”

“I don’t know about ‘right’.”

“Either some die, or they all die together. Minus one is better than minus a hundred. The math isn’t hard to figure.”

“Or, we can make it’s minus zero.”

Yang stared at Emerald meaningfully, while the team leader narrowed her brow in return.

“Yang…”

“We can bring down Behemoth, Em.”

“Not after the gas we just spent on Operation Gun Dog. Not in time, anyway.”

“We can do it.”

Emerald held her head like she was massaging a migraine.

“Do I have to remind you how this is supposed to work? We frontload our hand on Operation Gun Dog. THEN, we rest a tic to recover what we spent. And only after, do we actually get in on the real fight with Salem’s army.”

“Except there’s no time to rest, because Behemoth is going to cannonball the city! We’re the only ones with enough firepower and mobility to stop it!”

“Alright. So tell me, what happens when we burn ourselves down to the felt taking down Behemoth—which is a little more than an impossible ask, by the way? You think Salem’s gonna pass up the chance to ghost us while we’re catching breaths in-between suicide missions? We know a certain somebody won’t.”

“We have to, Em! Innocent people will die!”

“You and I both know the safety bunkers might hold up,” Emerald crossed her arms with a suspecting stare.

“We don’t know that,” Yang argued back.

“Some of them will.”

“A lot of them won’t!”

“Yang.”

“What?!”

“I should be asking you that.” Emerald stepped close to Yang’s face. “What’s with you? Since when were you so touchy about people dying?”

“Since always!”

“No, not when we had to fight on Dracul. Not when we were making enemies in Vale. And definitely, not when we were taking over Atlas. I mean, you did, but not like this. So, what gives?”

Yang gave Emerald a long, pleading look, before answering.

“…Because this was our chance to do some good.”

“…”

“Hehe…! Stupid me, right?” she chuckled sadly. “After all the shady things we’ve done, I just wanted to do some good—some actual, honest good. Save lives instead of being the reason people lost them. Guess I should’ve known better.”

“Yang.”

“I know, Em.”

“It’s not how our team does things.”

“Yeah. We’re the enemy. We attack. Protecting and saving people isn’t our rep.”

“I’m…sorry.”

“No. Nothing to be sorry about.” Yang gave a vague shake of her head. “I’ll get my game straight in a second. Just let me know when we’re moving out of the city. Till then, I’ll take a rest. Gotta refill the reserves, right?”

As the girl dragged her feet off with drooping shoulders, Neo braced her waist with a comforting hand. Together, they went to look for a private room. Emerald and Mercury were left alone in the hallway.

“…Don’t say anything,” Emerald said, after a time.

“What?” Mercury put his hands up innocently. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Stop. You go weak whenever Yang pulls that ‘puppy dog that just got kicked’ look.”

“More like, ‘you just kicked that puppy dog’s dreams’ look, but same difference.”

“UGH!”

“What are we gonna do?”

“What do you mean?! I just said what we were going to do!”

“Yeah…but what are we really going to do?”

Emerald glared fiercely at Mercury’s passively waiting demeanor. The staring contest lasted for a couple of unblinking seconds.

“AAARRRGGHHH!!! DAMMIT! FUCK!!!” the team leader vented her curses.

“You’re getting softer, boss.”

“And who’s fault is that?! Stupid, moral, nobility craphat. Annoying, blonde, bullshit, punchy…”

As Emerald continued to mutter endless profanities under her breath, her scroll gave a soft ring.

“Welp, saw this coming.” She coughed to clear her throat, before answering. As soon as the line went live, Emerald tried to make her tone as professional as possible. “Let me guess, we’re being ordered to ditch Vacuo?”

“…The matter isn’t finalized,” Cinder’s voice came from the other end. “There is no shame for you and your team to retreat.”

“Yeah, I’ll say. Shit’s not about to just hit the fan here, it’s going to—am I on speaker?”

“Yes.”

“Whole room?”

“Fortunately, only Weiss and myself.”

“Great.”

“Your report.”

“It’s bad, Cinder. Real bad. I know you probably have an idea, but it’s nowhere close to what we’re seeing here.”

“So, Vacuo is lost?”

Emerald thought for a moment.

“……These people are strong,” she gave an uneasy laugh. “I saw Salem’s army with my own eyes—it’s like signs of the freakin’ apocalypse! But these people, they want to fight. They will die fighting.”

“You cannot let their behavior influence your own.”

“I know, I’m trying to say something different. Cinder, Vacuo is worth saving. We shouldn’t abandon them. We need them on our side.”

“They are that valuable an asset?”

“They are. This alliance is the most important investment Atlas needs to make.”

“Sounds like a sales pitch. Tell me what truly whispers in your heart.”

“…” Emerald braced a hand to her chest. “Team ENMY is going to take down Behemoth.”

“So soon after your previous mission?”

“I know we were supposed to take a power nap before the next big fight, but you see that thing.”

“You intend to accomplish this by yourselves?”

“Temujin’s diverting all her forces to the North and South.”

“She plans to forfeit the city. A calculated choice.”

“We’ll manage.”

“This is reckless,” Cinder ended with a short pause. “What would you do if I ordered you from doing so?”

“……I’ll always listen to you, Cinder. If you tell me to take my team, and get the hell out of Vacuo, I’ll do it. I’ll drag Yang back, even if she hates me. You say the word, I’ll listen. Always.”

“…”

“But I’m asking you to trust me. Let me make this call. My team can swing this.”

For a moment, Emerald swore she heard Cinder’s breath stifle with emotion. A second later, the other spoke again.

“You are ordered to return to me,” the Black Queen commanded almost angrily. “Alive and in one piece—but at a time of your choosing.”

“I promise!” Emerald answered quickly. “I promise I’ll come back!”

“Hmph. You are aware any infidelity towards your Queen’s orders incurs the highest of penalties.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“So, how do you plan to perish the creature?”

“…”

“Emerald?”

“I have an idea.”

“So, speak it.”

“You guys might not like it.”

“……Speak it.”

Emerald took a searing deep breath between her teeth.

“We might have to use a couple of the aces we’ve been banking.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

A few miles south of the capital, Vacuo’s military made first contact with the Grimm army. The battalion was tasked with eliminating the enemy’s first wave and slowing their advance towards the city. A part of them knew it would be no easy task.

But they did not know how difficult it would be until they saw the head of the horde.

“My, aren’t these some familiar faces?” the cold voice lingered.

While countless Grimm smashed into the lines of Vacuo’s warriors, a smaller battle was waged in the midst of chaos.

“Tai!” Glynda called.

“I know!”

The head of a Grimm King Taijitu struck at Glynda and Minerva, trying to snap the pair of sorcerers in its jaws. But Taiyang was able to position himself in time. His hands gripped each fang firmly, and slid his feet to a stop. Tattoos covered every inch of his arm, signaling the activation of his Semblance.

While their vanguard held down the threat, Glynda and Minerva aimed a set of spells at the source. A storm of raining ice and flames fell before them. Their target, pelted with blizzardous hellfire.  

“Hm. That was much less than I expected,” the chilling voice came again.

Undaunted by the Magic spells, an enormous tortoise shell remained when the sand clouds dissipated. It was white, bony, and jagged.  And as the Grimm barrier cracked open, it revealed a dark silhouette underneath. Their arm still connected to the King Taijitu head grappling with Taiyang.

“It seems my Crusade will be easier than I anticipated,” Salem taunted. “I knew you would be lost without Ozpin—but I didn’t quite know how lost.”

She gave her arm a tug, and from atop the Taijitu’s skull, a scorpion’s tail sprouted. The stinger snapped towards Taiyang’s head, but the man was able to dodge the blow at the last second. The tip caught his collar, but even then, it only left a small mark on his reinforced skin.

“That all you got?!” Taiyang shouted.

“Typical,” Salem scoffed.

The Witch materialized a long, ornamental hairpin from her robes. Its end was decorated with an elegantly jewel-crafted butterfly. Then, without any hesitation, stabbed the point of the needle into her collar bone, matching the placement with the scratch inflicted on Taiyang.

At the same time, blood spewed both their bodies. The man let out a scream of panicked anguish before steeling himself enough to leap back to safety. His hand clutched the base of his neck, where blood dribbled between his fingers.

The Witch on the other hand, showed only indifference to the curse-inflicted wound. She continued to observe her three opponents without paying mind to the black liquid spraying out. Only after a few seconds passed, did Salem spin a web from her fingertip to bandage the gash.

Taiyang badgered himself for his carelessness and forced his wound close with his Semblance. Though it stopped the bleeding, the fix was only skin deep. Regardless, he took a fighting stance, showing he was ready to go, but a gentle hand rested his shoulder.

“Assist the others, Tai,” Glynda spoke with consolation in her voice. “Leave this to me and Minerva.”

“This battle will no longer take place within the confines of this realm,” the Headmaster of Shade added.

Taiyang wanted to argue back, but prior experience held his tongue.

“Yes, run along now, little lionheart,” Salem condescended with a brushing gesture.

“Only certain performers are allowed to share this stage.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

“This is the best we could do, huh?” Yang asked.

“Yep. Everything’s zeroed on this spot,” Emerald replied.

“Couldn’t make it any farther out?”

“Considering all the last-minute strings we had to pull to make this puppet show dance, I’m surprised we made this much space at all. Let’s just be happy and take what we can get, shall we?”

On the farthest edge of Vacuo’s western wall, Yang and Emerald plopped down to take a seat. Their feet dangled off the side. Neo and Mercury joined them shortly. The four stared passively at Behemoth encroaching their position. They could see armies warring at the corner of their peripheries to the left and right.

Although they were aware of the violent events transpiring, and those to come, the team basked in the oddly-serendipitous moment of peace. For them, nothing would happen for the next few minutes. All manner of dangers were far or on their way. All they could do was wait. And likely, due to repeated instances of high intensity, even a few minutes of waiting was enough to bring a calmness to their nerves.

Neo pulled out an apple, and sliced off a few pieces with her sword. One by one, she passed the slips of fruit to her teammates. And the four munched on the small snack, while watching Behemoth beat its wings towards them. Nothing left, but to bide their time until the omen of destruction’s arrival.

“So, everyone around’s been cleared out?” Yang started.

“Yup. Zero possible casualties, except for maybe us. Just the way you like it,” Emerald replied.

“See? Doesn’t it feel nice to do the right thing?”

“Fuck the right thing. That’s not why I did this.”

“Oh? Then, why did you do it? I thought your self-proclaimed moral compass was broken.”

Emerald glared at her silently.

It is broken.

I mostly did this cause of you…

“Still, thanks for doing it.” Yang beamed with a warm smile. “I mean it, Em.”

Yang was about to pop another apple slice in her mouth, when Emerald snatched it midair. Taking it as some abstract price exacted, the girl didn’t make a fuss. Only taking replacement from Neo, who was performing her own magic trick of producing endless fruit out of thin air.

“Hey, Em?”

“Yeah, Yang?”

“Did Temujin seem…weird to you? You know, back there?”

“Temujin’s always weird.”

“Yeah, but… evasive.”

“Temujin’s always evasive.”

“You know what I mean,” Yang groaned. “Back when she told us she was abandoning the city, and even when we told her our plan, she just okayed it like it was nothing.”

“You prefer she argue with us? We practically handed her a ‘we’ll save your city for free’ card. Maybe, she just didn’t want to look a gift horse in the anus.”

“Uh, it’s teeth.”

“What is?”

“The saying. It’s ‘gift horse in the teeth’.”

“Oh. Mercury lied to me.”

“No, it’s definitely anus,” Mercury mumbled, stuffing more apples into his mouth. “That’s how you tell the horse’s age.”

“Okay! But you know what I’m saying,” Yang brought the topic back. “What futures did Mouse and Knives see? And what else aren’t they telling us? Temujin doesn’t seem the type, but she looks kind of like she’s given up. What else are they hiding?”

“Who knows,” Emerald shrugged.

“I know you’ve thought about it.”

“I got a few ideas, but nothing concrete.”

“This isn’t the time for our sides to keep secrets.” Yang let out an exasperated groan before popping another slice into her mouth. “Cinder and Weiss are ready to pull us out. Temujin has to know that. She needs to be open with us.”

“It’s not like we tipped all of our hand to her either. Still gotta play a few things close to the chest. Distrust goes both ways.”

“I thought we were in an alliance.”

“I think this is about as much two Kingdoms can trust each other without actually merging. And that’s without all the bad blood between Vacuo and Atlas.”

“We need to be on the same page, Em. Salem found a crack in our team, and pried it apart. What do you think she’ll do to two Kingdoms?”

Emerald paused, and then bit into the next crunchy morsel Neo handed her.

“True. If Vacuo somehow gets out of this intact, I wouldn’t put it past Salem to turn one of the Kingdoms against the other. You have an idea bouncing around that noggin? Or do you just like adding new problems to my ‘shit I gotta figure out’ list?”

“We need to have a sit down with Temujin. At the least, we need to hear everything the siblings predicted so far.”

“Yeah, she’s kept us in the deep dark about their visions. Not just us, but her own people, too.”

“And if we’re learning anything, whatever Temujin hides is worth finding out.”

“Emerald,” a voice came over the Enchantress’ mental link. “Are we ready to begin?”

“Yeah. Just about,” she responded, and got up.

At that moment, a number of transmissions reached Team ENMY’s communications.

“Alrighty. Time to set the world record for taking down a bunch of Nightmare Class Grimm in a row, maybe!” Emerald announced.

“All boss speedrun!” Mercury fake cheered.

Yang turned to Neo with a loving stare.

“Got my back?” she winked.

Neo smiled widely.

Yup.

.

X  X X  X  X

.

(An hour ago)

“Are we sure this is wise?” General Ironwood couldn’t help voicing his doubts. “We were supposed to wait until we were closer to attempt this.”

“Drastic measures, General,” Trafalgar answered, next to him on the bridge. “Sometimes, all we can do is take a leap of faith.”

“There are countless variables which can skew the accuracy.”

“That’s why it’s called a leap and not a step, or a modest crawl.”

Ironwood breathed a sigh, before speaking into the console.

“Alright, Penny. Permission to arm.”

“Armed and READY, Mr. Ironwood!” the girl answered with a chipper.

“Execute.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

“……. What the hell are you kids thinking?” Qrow muttered his disbelief.

“I’m thinking we need your help to bring down Behemoth. Is the wax building up in your ears, grandpa?” Emerald replied.

“Don’t call me grandpa!”

“The other guy is definitely a grandpa. As a matter of fact, he’s the grandest of grandpas. So, you gonna help us or not?”

“I thought the plan was to surprise Salem with an ambush.”

“Plans change. Roll with it.”

Qrow breathed one of the most soul-draining sighs in his life, before centering himself to continue.

“Okay. So, let me make sure I got this right. You need me to use Titan’s power to help you kill Behemoth.”

“Yup!”

“But before that, you need me to stick my neck out.”

“You got it.”

“I immediately don’t like this…”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

“I think I’m going to like this,” Raven gave a soft chuckle.

“I thought you would,” Emerald shared in the mental laugh. “Shouldn’t be a violation against whatever your contract is with Salem, right?”

“Only you brats could come up with something this sloppy and effective.”

“Compliment received.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

Out in the ocean separating Atlas from Vacuo, the acting reinforcements of the Atlesian Fleet came to a full stop. While the airships hovered as still as possible, their artillery battery raised to a high angle. Tapped into each vessel’s control system and calculating a complex aiming algorithm was a certain android.

“Coordinates fixed. Real-time calculations complete. Trajectory courses confirmed!” Penny cheered.

“FIRNG ALL ORDNANCE!”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

(Back to the Present)

Team ENMY turned their gazes eastward, where a flock of glistening projectiles soared towards their position.

“Whoa, that’s gonna be close,” Yang commented.

“Yeah, well. It’s supposed to be,” Emerald sneered, as she elbowed Mercury’s side. “You’re up, top gun. Make sure it’s not us that gets our ass fricasseed.”

“On it, boss.”

Mercury activated his Semblance and felt the surrounding atmosphere come under his control. His senses extended to the oncoming shells. Their trajectories mapped out in his mind’s eye.

Damn. Not a bad shot from fifteen-thousand plus kilometers away.

Just need to sharp it just a little…

Mercury adjusted the turbulence and atmospheric pressure to suit his needs. He played out the simulation in his head, and matched it to the present. Their “back-up” fire would land exactly where they wanted it to on the dime.

“Merc,” Emerald elbowed him a few more times. “Hate to interrupt your beautiful mind moment, but the big bad bug is coming up faster. Maybe, short the fuse on lighting this candle?”

“Sure, just gotta speed up the momentum on more than a thousand combustible Dust shells. No big deal.” The sarcasm exaggerated in his voice.

“I had to hallucinate a whole Kingdom. Don’t get cute with me about making the big plays.”

The crying flock of whistling missiles screamed across the sky ever closer. At the same time, the great shadows and winds kicked up by Behemoth brushed the team’s backs.

Despite being caught between an arsenal of hellfire and the largest Grimm ever recorded, ENMY showed no signs of panic. Once Mercury finished his modifications, he expelled a small sigh of relief.

“Nice,” Emerald smirked, while putting on the sunglasses she took from Coco so long ago. Yang, Neo, and Mercury were producing their own pairs, when she also took out her scroll. She then, held it out and struck a smug pose.

“Are you actually taking a selfie right now?” Yang asked in slack-jawed awe.

“I wanna send a picture to Cinder. It’ll also make a good memory.”

Without wait or permission, the rest of the team crammed into the camera shot. They made random faces, while throwing up a series of hand gestures and middle fingers.

Meanwhile, high-pitch whistling from the Fleet’s artillery was at the peak of its cries when they were suddenly muffled. Bellowing explosions cut the sound off with its own. Raining hellfire engulfed Behemoth’s back in clouds of inferno. It was a carpet bombing of a creature that could have been a small island onto itself.

“Sweet fireworks,” Yang grinned. “Did you get the shot?”

“Got it!” Emerald confirmed.

“I always wanted to help destroy something beautiful,” Mercury shed a single tear.

Neo threw her hands up, cheering with mute excitement.

Fire! Fire! Burn!

“Okay, okay,” Emerald called their attention. “I know that just made the inner pyros inside us cream, but we still got work to do.” She tapped her in-ear communicator. “You there, OG?”

“I’m here.”

Flying above the incinerating back of Behemoth, a black bird swooped down. Its feathers shed upon its descent, giving way to a human form. He aimed the landing of his dive before the intact form of Combine, Chief of the Cuckoo Grimm.

The parasitic bird gave a gross chirp, as it recognized its bodyguards were burned away by Penny’s fire bombing.

“This… really sucks!” Qrow complained.

Sweat dripped down his face. He could feel the life being siphoned from him, leaving his skin cold. If he didn’t possess the Old One’s longevity, he might have died instantly in Combine’s presence.

Azkaban was somewhere near, so Qrow couldn’t activate his Semblance to save himself. But if things went according to plan, he wouldn’t remain vulnerable for long.

…

“How much could I pay you not to save my brother?” Raven posed to Emerald via their telepathic link.

“Discount low five figures,” the quick answer came.

“That was a joke.”

“Was it, though~?”

From her cliffside in the Black Oasis, Raven gripped the hilt of her katana and went into a low iaido stance. Her senses attuned to the combination of Emerald and Neo’s information. There, she saw her brother’s back turned towards her.

“Now, don’t flinch, little brother.”

…

“Neo?” Emerald prompted.

The petite girl poised her estoc in a thrusting motion above her shoulder. A silver light gleamed in her irises. She made out the positions of three key figures: Combine, Qrow, and Azkaban, before sealing the sight into her blade.

Neo took a long-drawn breath, and then emptied her lungs of all its air. She concentrated a majority of her Aura into the ultimate technique she created herself, leaving just a little in reserve. It was the most powerful move in her arsenal, and she would only be able to perform it once for a long while.

The small swordswoman felt traces of Yang’s influence swell in her soul. A bright fire of her beloved’s sun licked heat on her fingertips.

Neo’s hand moved quicker than the naked eye could catch. The sounds of shattering glass only followed after the fact.

In the same moment, Raven freed her blade from its sheath. Her bloody double-slash was going to cut a blazing X across the sky and Qrow’s back. But at the very last second, the move collided with Neo’s.

It was a clash of ultimate sword techniques that resounded across the entire continent. A piercing blade of blinding, silver glass and a cross drawn by a sinisterly, crimson paintbrush cut the sky into pieces. The world itself seemed to tear briefly, like it was made of paper.

Raven’s attack was barely deflected enough from her brother’s back, and guided in the direction of Combine instead. Likewise, Neo’s thrust was diverted towards Azkaban. Both their blades struck their marks down, slaying the Nightmare Grimm with their god-like skill.

Hmph, Raven scoffed with an impressed thought.

Out of the four brats, she might be the one who grew the most in all this…

“Not that I’d tell her that.”

…

“Uncle Qrow!” Yang shouted.

“On it, kid!”

With Combine and Azkaban down, Qrow felt the burden on him lifted. He tapped into Titan’s ability, while harnessing his own Semblance. A pair of great scythes unfolded in each of his hands. A familiar green glow permeated from his body to envelope the burning Behemoth.

The Grimm’s flying motion slowed to a crawl. Time slurred in the space it occupied until the creature stopped just above the wall and Team ENMY. Wind, fire, poison, and intermingled with it, falling caterpillar Grimm froze midair.

Yang and Mercury stared up, before bumping their fists.

The Spring Maiden felt adrenaline rush her veins. A crystallized crown formed its halo around her head. Her eyes blazed with the fire of her Semblance. She watched lightning crack across her vision, outlining Behemoth’s multiple weaknesses caused by redundancies in its anatomy.

“Wouldn’t be easy if we could just strike one spot. We’re gonna have to hit them all.”

The pair rocketed into the sky.

Mercury and Qrow went to work first. The young man summoned a storm to carry him across the Grimm’s expansive mass. Every kick he delivered made the floating island shudder. Likewise, the veteran Huntsman used his Reaper’s Semblance to sow death from atop. Together, they layered a cacophony of craters and trenches into Behemoth’s exoskeleton.

And then, Yang rose to join them.

“Many search the meaning of the shape given to their soul,” she heard Nai’s words echo the depths of her mind.

“I am Poison.

I am a Weapon.

I have lived and learned to become the agent that destroys my enemies’ bodies.

What does your life embody?

What meaning does its shape give?”

Yang jumped from falling debris to falling debris, making her way to the belly of the beast.

For my friends, I’ll be their warmth.

When they are lost, I’ll be their light.

And for anyone who tries to hurt them,

I’ll be the banisher of their darkness.

Yang’s Ember Celica shifted its form. Pistons fired across her entire arm. It rumbled with all the power and force of a jet engine.

I am the Fight that Life brings.

I am Fire.

And I Burn.

The exact moment, the noon sun reached its highest crest, the Spring Maiden’s punch let loose a flame likened to the birth of a new star. A supernova erupted in the center of Behemoth’s stomach, scorching constellations across the vulnerabilities of its body.

The halting of time was no small feat, and Titan’s ability only lasted a breath before reality resumed. But it was enough for Behemoth’s annihilation to be realized.

“Alright! It’s gonna pop!” Emerald shouted. “Clear the area!”

Yang, Mercury, and Qrow escaped the burning wreckage’s vicinity, as the Grimm plummeted down. Its body decomposed into countless scales, which combusted on any contact. The repeated detonations and weight of its carcass drove a crag into the wall and a small part of the city.

…

Yang let herself freefall. Burning cartilage still flew around her. Much of her energy was spent, but not all of it, per Emerald’s orders. But there was no denying the weariness setting into her nerves.

“Well, that was a thing.”

She looked to the side, and saw Mercury speed down to Emerald. Their leader stood on what remained of the wall. Her Uncle was nowhere in sight.

*Sigh* “I really want this day to be over…”

Just then, among the falling scraps, Yang spotted an oddity. It was a little singed, but it stood out from everything else with its white-colored design and the way it spun sharply through the air.

Yang squinted her eyes, and saw it was a playing card.

The Ace of Spades.

.

X  X X  X  X

.

“Is this truly all the strength you can muster?”

Salem gave a wave of her hand, and the bright projectiles Glynda and Minerva cast her way dissolved into squirming maggots. As they writhed uselessly on the ground, the Witch made a claw with her hand. Her long nails thrusted in the direction of her opponents.

Suddenly, the sand beneath the sorcerers’ feet coiled like tentacles, pulling them into its embrace. Salem’s hand squeezed, and the prison of silt closed tighter.

“You’re spellcasting is rather rudimentary compared to what I’ve seen over the ages. But I suppose that is the folly of mortals. Not enough age to hone that wisdom, no matter the potential exhibited.”

“Then, perhaps another challenger is in order? One you can’t bully with your tricks.”

A crow flew down, before expanding its form into a man. He snapped his fingers once, and the “living sand” about to suffocate the sorcerers was dispelled.

Glynda blinked, not believing her eyes. The image of the man before her seemed to phase in and out of existence, as if their identity wasn’t solidified.

“Ozpin?”

“Apologies for the tardiness, Glynda,” the white-haired man with small glasses said. “There was an issue that required our assistance.”

“But, how…? What about Qrow?”

“Also, here,” the figure of Ozpin replied with a voice that was not his. “This body sharing thing is more complicated than it looks.”

The immortal’s body flickered between Ozpin’s visage and Qrow’s, and then another Glynda recognized as Beacon’s past Headmaster Myrddin’s. Reality bent, and several iterations blinked in quick succession. Some figures she remembered from historical texts, more of them she did not. The spinning of the forms continued until the image settled onto a small, hunched-back old man. He had the look of a retired farmer and had to use a cane to support him like a third leg.

“Titan…!” Salem snarled with rising furor.

“…Wicked,” the Old One spoke in a grounded tone. His voice was crass, but it dissipated into the surroundings like an earthquake. “Must we continue this vicious cycle?”

“Oh, it will not continue. Not for you.”

“So, it was inevitable. You and I must battle once more.”

“Immortal versus immortal,” the Witch gestured to herself, then Titan. A bloodthirsty Magic coursed her veins, making them pulse black across her pale skin.

“There can only be one.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

Yang was in no position to react. The playing card spinning outside her reach was practically a calling card for her death. All she could do was leave her fate to another’s hands.

…

Fortunately, those hands were the ones she trusted the most with her life.

The sound of shattering glass scattered pieces of Neo’s mirror portal into the falling sky. Her sword was held, outstretched. Its point pierced through the card as a bullet punched a hole through the same middle.

It should have been a perfect killshot. Yang and Neo read the trajectory, and it would’ve drilled right through Yang’s forehead, but Neo’s interference skewed its course.

“Shit!”

Yang whipped her neck as fast as she could, just in time for the bullet to tear a chunk of her hair off along with part of her right ear. Blood stained her cheek and a sharp ringing noise penetrated her eardrum.

“Hey, you. Can you hear me?” Emerald’s voice came from her comms, as Yang could see her leader smirking in the distance. She flipped her the middle finger.

“Told you she’d try.”

“Really, Em?! Now?!”

“Hey, you were the one who wanted to do this, despite my fair and wise warnings.”

“Can we save the ‘I told you so’s for later?”

“Say hi to her for me,” Emerald waved.

“WILL FREAKIN’ DO!!!”

Yang flashed an angry glare to Neo, who gave her a quick nod.

A second later, and her partner conjured a mirror for her to drop into. The portal pushed her into another, and then another, and so on. Each segment accelerated her into the distance.

Yang didn’t aim her fist. She knew Neo would do that for her. All she had to do was swing when the time came.

And at the last shuttle interval, she threw her fist.

Yang’s landing struck the terrain like a miniature meteorite. The target and source of her bullet wound was knocked off her feet, and onto her back. The shooter could have put up resistance, but the looming Spring Maiden erased any thought of that.

Instead, Inna Kao simply smiled.

“Hey, Yang.” She tipped her hat, still on the ground.

“Hey, Inna. Long time no see,” Yang replied unenthusiastically. “Em says, hi.”

“Oh? Tell her I said hi back.”

Yang did a quick sweep of her surroundings.

“No Bean?”

“Nah. I wanted to take my shot away from him just in case. Guess I made the right call on that.”

“Too bad. I wanted to see him.”

Inna stared at Yang for a while, before tilting her hat down.

“Heh… Well, you got me good. Don’t tell me ya’ll fixed that trap for lil ‘ol me?”

“It was Emerald’s idea. We’ve been ready ever since we heard you and Bean were around. We know we can’t underestimate you.”

“Shucks, Yang. Now, yer just makin’ me blush.”

Yang stared long and hard at the cowgirl.

“……I heard about your team. Sorry.”

“Yeah, well. I’ll be joinin’ them soon.”

“Funny thought that.”

Yang grabbed Inna’s rifle laying on the ground, and snapped it in half across her knee. It pained her a little to destroy someone’s personal weapon, but the bad feeling disappeared when she remembered she was missing part of her ear because of Inna. The gun would be repaired eventually. As far as she was concerned, they were even.

“Nothing to worry about if you don’t have your rifle,” Yang tossed the remains at Inna’s feet. “I’m done killing people, especially people I like.”

“…I can’t stop coming for you, Yang.”

“Yeah, you can. All you have to do is stop,” Yang shrugged. “But if you really want to keep trying, go ahead. I’ll be ready.”

“Hm hm! Told you, you’d be sorry, Inna,” Raven chuckled, as she stepped through her portal.

“Mom. Why am I not surprised you’re here?”

“Your little girlfriend actually matched my favorite move.”

“She’s a keeper.”

“I guess.”

“I’m totally telling her you approve.”

“I don’t. And another thing—”

Just then, Raven and Yang’s heads were flooded with an amalgam of information. Rather information, they were a bit like actual memories, but of events that had yet to occur. It was disorienting to say the least, but one thing was clear.

“Hey! Did you get that?!” Raven asked Yang.

“Yeah. What the hell was that, Em?”

“It’s the visions the Rakis siblings have been seeing. Don’t know why, but Knives was suddenly in a sharing mood. But after seeing what was in them, I think we can make a guess!”

“That vision…Temujin…!”

“That’s why you and Raven should get your asses back here on the double!”

“Mom!” Yang turned to Raven, and saw fear there like she never had before.

“Let’s go.”

.

X  X X  X  X

.

“Hm. They brought down Behemoth,” Temujin rubbed her chin with an even composure.

The throne room, which was once a bustling war room, was now vacant. The lone ruler of Vacuo sat on her chair with only the Rakis siblings for company.

“Any deviations?”

“With almost all our fortifications intact, more of Vacuo’s citizens will survive by the end,” Mouse answered.

“Haha… They are truly something. Troublemakers. The perfect enemy against Salem and fate.”

The old woman smiled ear to ear, before breathing a contented sigh.

“Everything else is proceeding according to script?”

“……Yes.”

A nearby monitor showed an endless replay of Team ENMY’s assault on Behemoth. Right before the artillery from the Atlesian Fleet struck, a wisp of dark mist engulfed Camlann, and seemingly warped it out of the area.

On a security monitor, three figures made their way through the Hanging Gardens. The colossal armor of Camlann was recognized. Beside the Grimm were Adam and Blake. It wouldn’t be long until they reached the chamber.

“You two should go,” Temujin said to the siblings.

“No,” Mouse refused shakily. “We won’t leave you.”

“You have to guide our people.”

“We won’t leave you!”

The boy now had tears streaming his eyes. He wanted with everything to overturn the future he and his sister saw. A future where the Grimm overran their land. A future where their closest friends died…

…A future where Temujin offered her life to further incite the rage of her people.

“Oh,” the old Faunus put a hand on Mouse’s head. “You know, I faced a lot of criticism for adding that Eye for an Eye thing at the end of the Code. Mostly from Minerva, but whatever.” she smirked. “Who knew it would be the strength our people needed in their weakest hour? Surely, not me.”

Gentle sobs continued to escape Mouse, as Temujin continued.

“No, definitely not me… But if the death of one old woman past her prime can be the rally cry of our Kingdom, I will answer my duty with a full heart.”

“…”

“Go. My time is over.” Temujin announced proudly. “This is goodbye.”

“We won’t leave you!!!” Mouse cried back.

Temujin scratched her ear in frustration, before turning to her other side.

“Knives. I entrust you with your brother. You know what must be done. The both of you must regroup with Nai and Minerva. Notify them of my death. The first waves of the Grimm should be dealt with by then. Fall back here with Team ENMY, and eliminate Camlann. Hold the siege until Atlas’ Fleet arrives.”

The younger Rakis made no move to respond.

“Knives? Did you hear me?! Knives!”

Temujin shook her shoulder, and saw the girl’s expression turn with surprise.

“Oh, right!” Knives answered with wide eyes. Her tone was different from her usual. “Actually, I agree with Mouse there. You really shouldn’t be so quick to sacrifice yourself.”

The elder Faunus was struck speechless.

“There’s a lot of people who would mourn your death, Temujin. They’d be heartbroken,” the girl continued. “I know one person especially!”

“Who…?” the old Faunus could only mutter. “Who are you?”

The girl with the appearance of Knives could only smile brightly.

“There’s always a way to change fate, as well as those who are willing to fight it. You said it yourself.”

“…”

“But they can’t help you if you don’t believe in it too,” Knives held Temujin’s hand in both of hers. “This girl loves you so much. She begged for a way to save you, even in her dreams. That’s how deep her resolve is.”

Temujin continued to stare blankly at the girl. Knives met her gaze, unabashed. The young girl’s eyes seemed to glint with a brighter silver than usual.

Then, Temujin remembered where she heard this speech mannerism before, as well as this unflinching determination.

“Summer Rose?”

[blog-researchblog]

The Making of a Middle School Teacher

Katie Smith

Why Teaching?

After finishing my schooling at Kutztown, I want to be a 6th or 7th grade math teacher. I’ve known this for a while now because of how much I loved helping my mom with her grading, setting up her classroom, working with kids, etc. Using the article “7 Power Questions To Find Out What You Want To Do With Your Life” written by Scott Christ, I was able to further understand myself and my goals, which allowed me to make sure teaching matched my needs for my career. Important things I learned from myself was how important it is to have a great work environment, to be active, and to be able to move to a different state if I wanted to.

Ever since I was little, I loved the atmosphere of a school. So, moving forward in deciding my career, I knew I wanted to be in that atmosphere. A good work environment is key for me to be productive, and what’s good about being a teacher is I would get to create my own environment and ensure that it feels welcoming and encourages productivity for me and all my students.

I also knew going into planning what I wanted to do next was that I wanted to work with kids. I find the energy and creativity of adolescents to be refreshing and very insightful. I knew I wanted to be there to help and watch the adolescents that I work with grow into each person that they want to be, and middle school is the age where they are just starting to figure all that out. Being a teacher would also allow me to be moving around all day, which was also very important to me. Being active allows me to learn and be focused and I know movement is essential for adolescents too.

Teaching also gives me the flexibility to go anywhere in the nation and the world. Many states accept Pennsylvania teaching licenses and there are a bunch of programs that take teachers overseas to teach in any of the continents. So even as a teacher I could travel to places all over the world that I’ve dreamed about going to.  

All in all, teaching is the career I wanted for a while for many reasons and evaluating myself only solidified that. Teaching would enable me to check many things off my “job necessities” list such as: having a positive work environment, being active, being flexible with where in the world I could work, working with kids, etc. As a teacher, I am going to be shaping the future generation. Therefore, I will work hard to make sure I am the best I can be so the students can become the best they can be. In order to figure out more about the logistics of being a middle school teacher, I consulted the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Here are the Facts:

When people think about what it means to be a teacher, they think about summer vacations, being around kids, and not getting paid much; but there’s much more to teaching than meets the eye, and the Occupational Outlook Handbook entry about, “Middle School Teachers” tells the reader about the job of a teacher more in depth. A lot of people don’t think about the after-hours work teachers have to do; such as, the constant communication they need to have with parents/guardians of their students, the schooling process a person needs to go through to become a teacher, or the wide range of employment opportunities. 

The job of a teacher goes far beyond the school day. Teachers need to write lesson plans for the next day or week and grade student tests and assignments. Teachers can also be involved in coaching, being a club adviser, or after school tutoring programs which further extends their working hours. In most school districts, teachers work 10 out of 12 months and have the remaining two months as summer break. 

To become a teacher, an individual needs to obtain a bachelor's degree and receive a state issued teachers license. A teacher needs both the degree and certification to teach, and in order to get the certification, the prospecting teacher needs to pass a state certification test. To be a middle school teacher you also need to have an area or concentration you are specializing in. This could be any of the core subjects such as Math, Science, Social Studies, or English. Depending on what concentration a teacher has, determines which certification tests they would want to take.

  The average pay of a middle school teacher in the year 2018 was $59,570, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook. However, pay varies greatly based on both state and school district. This career is projected to grow a total of 3% in the next 10 years, which is on the slower side. On a map provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, some states with the highest employment levels are Texas, California, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, and Virginia. 

While looking at the data of the job is beneficial, it is important to actually see and be in a classroom in a teacher role. In order to really look behind the lens of a teacher, I sat down with my mentor teacher from Brandywine Intermediate School and asked about the reality of the teaching profession.

Through the Eyes of a Teacher

There’s always a story behind why someone wants a certain career. For Lyndsay Levengood, a 5th grade teacher at Brandywine, her reason was her brother. Her brother has down syndrome and throughout her life she played an active role in her brother's growth and learning process. She knew after that that she wanted to be a dual certification general education and special education teacher.  After originally starting out as a special education teacher, she is now a 5th grade math teacher. I met Lyndsay through a cohort program at Kutztown University, and she is one of two of my mentor teachers that I see weekly at Brandywine Intermediate School. I knew going into the program that my ideas of teaching were different from traditional teaching styles; I just wasn’t sure what exactly it was going to be. Over the past three semesters, Lyndsay has helped expose me to an alternative teaching style, personalized learning.

Because of personalized learning, Lyndsay’s typical day and classroom structure is different from what someone may see in a traditional classroom. Every day is different and needs to be flexible because of how important it is to Lyndsay to meet each student’s needs. Each day she’s teaching different and students work on all types of activities. Personalized learning is a lot of work when you look at it. It takes a lot of self-reflection and challenges; you need to think outside of the box in order to meet the needs of each student. Figuring out how to implement this teaching style also takes a lot of co-worker collaboration; “Without the help of our Instructional Coach, I wouldn’t have been able to wrap my head around the fact that’s it’s okay to not give all the students all the same work. Instead I needed to give them practice that would challenge them each at their own level”. 

Lyndsay also shared with me that whether or not you are a teacher who uses personalized learning, it’s important not to over work yourself each night and weekend with teacher work. She said that while completing work outside of school is an important part of the teacher profession, making sure you have time for yourself and your family is also important. Lyndsay recommended to me that as a new teacher I should either go in early at the beginning of the day to do work, stay late after the school day, or work at home for no more than an hour reflecting on the lessons and teaching. Lyndsay warned me that a lot of teachers over work themselves in the beginning and end up becoming miserable in their chosen profession. Being excited and conveying the love of your job to the students changes the learning environment dramatically. Lyndsay enters the  classroom everyday loving her job and wanting to be there, and that enables her to make lasting relationships with her students. Lyndsay said, “One of my favorite things about this job is that I am able to make connections with my students and then through that relationship and trust, I get to watch each of my students grow in a multitude of ways”. But just like any job, Lyndsay said there are some difficult aspects of teaching.

Lyndsay told me how she wishes there was a way for her to help solve the uncontrollable factors. Many of her students struggle with the environmental limits to learning. Many students struggle with family issues and that interferes with their learning, but as the teacher she said that it’s our job to figure out how get those students involved and active. Another struggle Lyndsay mentioned was how as a teacher, we have a lot of aspects of our job that are controlled by outside people. She wishes teachers had a little more freedom and control over how they could teach the material, but because of various government education bills and standardized tests, that's nearly impossible.

But there’s hope. Lyndsay told me that education is constantly changing and right now she’s excited for direction it appears to be going in. Lyndsay loves opening her room to try out new educational strategies to see what she can do to help her students reach their potential. She told me that every student is treated like they have their own IEP (Individual Learning Plan). IEPs are given to students that have disabilities and it helps outline both long and short term goals that students are encouraged to meet at the end of each year using their strengths and weaknesses. So, Lyndsay said that when I start teaching it’s important I set goals for my students and myself and work hard to make them a reality. Lyndsay told me in order to help them reach their goals, that it is important to use their strengths to build up their weaknesses. During that process, it’s important to reflect and not be afraid to hear input from co-workers or the students.

Lyndsay has helped me a lot in learning about other teaching styles and working on being open minded towards new teaching strategies. Lyndsay explained to me, “It is very important to be flexible as a teacher. Whether that’s in the form of noticing your students aren’t benefiting from your lesson by the way you’re teaching it or because you want to try something new”. Either way Lyndsay said that I should just approach each situation with the interests of my students in mind. 

One of the ways I can look out for the interests of my students is by ensuring I am teaching them accurate and full picture material. An article in The New York Times brings attention to how state legislature and textbook companies don’t always paint the entire historical picture.

Teaching in the News:

In the article from The New York Times, “Two States. Eight Textbooks. Two American Stories.”, author Dana Goldstein highlights how schools are politically influenced not just by federal law, but also through the textbook industry. By just comparing Texas and California, it became evident that while some information was consistent in both states, there was some information that didn’t align with the textbook from the other state. There are political issues in the book that lean more toward the state in which the book is used. Some of the inconsistencies are White resistance to the progress of African Americans post Civil War, historical role of LGBTQ+ groups in Native American tribes, immigration, the role of big businesses in American society, and so on. The view on each of these issues tends to lean towards the conservative in Texas and liberal in California, which is believed to be intentional by states to raise a future generation of voters.

Previously to this article, I’ve never really thought about how schools are heavily influenced by politics in the curriculum. Throughout our entire schooling, we as adolescents weren’t only being influenced by our parent’s political beliefs, but also subtle state political beliefs hidden within our school materials. I chose this article because of the relevance it has to my career as a teacher. My major here at Kutztown is Elementary Education grades 4-8 specializing in the subjects of math and social studies. If I do become a social studies teacher, it’s important to be aware of different biases that lay in the curriculum. Simply because, in my opinion, in order to teach your students to be good citizens, you need to shape them to become well rounded adults. The only way to do that is to ensure that students have the entire historical picture painted for them. With that whole picture students will be able to form their own worldview. This article shows one of many ways that students are influenced in that process.

This article taught me a lot about the reality of biases in the school system. It taught me how textbook companies portray or just don't include aspects of history that supports the state’s political affiliations. It showed the truth behind people saying writers always have an agenda. However, despite all this, I’m still curious about if all states are discreetly imposing their opinions on students. If they are, in what ways are they indirectly imposing their beliefs on students? What effect does that have on students? By answering these questions, I would get a better understanding of how I can help fight biases in my classroom. So that I can encourage students to learn about all perspectives and form their own beliefs and educate them on the existence of biased opinions and help them be aware of their own.

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

Signs of Recession Are Hitting Europe—And Its New Central Bank President May Not Be Up for the Challenge

Digital Elixir Signs of Recession Are Hitting Europe—And Its New Central Bank President May Not Be Up for the Challenge

Yves here. Europe is looking wobbly and Brexit looms…

By Marshall Auerback, a market analyst and commentator. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute

We now know that there will be a changing of the guard at the European Central Bank (ECB) in October. The current head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, will succeed current ECB President Mario Draghi at that time.

A known quantity among the political and investor class of Europe, Lagarde seems like a safe choice: she is a lawyer by training, not an economist. Hence, she is unlikely to usher in any dramatic changes, in contrast to current European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, who significantly expanded the ECB’s remit in the aftermath of his pledge to do “whatever it takes”to save the single currency union (Draghi did this by underwriting the solvency of the Eurozone member states through substantially expanded sovereign bond-buying operations). Instead, Lagarde will likely stick to her brief, as any good lawyer does. There’s no doubt that her years of operating as head of the IMF will also reinforce her inclination not to disrupt the prevailing austerity-based ECB ideology.

Unfortunately, the Eurozone needs something more now, especially given the increasingly frail state of the European economies. The Eurozone still doesn’t have a treasury of its own, and there’s no comprehensively insured banking union. Those limitations are likely to become far more glaring in any larger kind of recession, especially if accompanied by a banking crisis. That is why the mooted candidacy of Jens Weidmann may have been the riskier bet for the top job at the ECB, but ultimately a choice with more political upside. An old-line German central banker might have been able to lay the groundwork for the requisite paradigmatic shift more successfully than a French lawyer, especially now that Germany itself is in the eye of the mounting economic storm.

It’s summertime, but the living is certainly not easy in the Eurozone. The Mediterranean economies—notably Greece and Italy—have never really achieved sustainable growth over the last decade, and to the extent that either country ran deficits, or received bailout assistance, it was largely used to pay off debts to a range of bank creditors, rather than generate higher employment.

However, the Eurozone’s weakness is now rapidly spreading to the North, notably in Germany, where the Ifo Institute’s manufacturing business climate index is “in freefall,” reports the Financial Times. The Ifo indicator—a good coincident gauge of overall economic health in the Eurozone’s main manufacturing hub—registered its worst reading in nine years, precipitously declining to minus 4.3 in July vs. a gain of plus 1.3 in June. Furthermore, Germany’s Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) has plunged to the mid-40s over the last few months. Fifty is the demarcation separating expansion from contraction, suggesting an imminent recession.

On top of that, Germany’s leading bank, Deutsche Bank (DB), is steadily being revealed to be the greatest repository of corporate corruption since BCCI. Whether it be money laundering for Russian oligarchs (or, allegedly, the Trump family); involvement in interest rate scams such as LIBOR manipulation; violations of U.S. economic sanctions on Iran, Syria, Libya and Sudan (among others); or the sale of toxic securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, DB has played a leading role, and is now paying the price. Berlin has repeatedly sought to find a buyer for the bank, but both Commerzbank and UniCredit have had a closer look under the hood and ran for the hills accordingly. The share price performance suggests that Deutsche Bank is an imminent candidate for a bailout, if not outright nationalization.

This comes during a historically unprecedented situation in global bond markets, particularly in the Eurozone where negative yields are now pervasive—in other words, investors are now willing to pay certain governments to safeguard their money, whether this be Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, or the Netherlands. This is a foolhardy risk to incur, given that all Eurozone governments are currency users, not issuers (only the ECB creates euros), and therefore carry the same kind of theoretical solvency risk as, say, an American state or municipality.

As the economist Frances Coppola notes, “Every Danish government bond currently circulating in the market is trading at a negative yield. And the inverted curve tells us that markets are pricing in further interest rate cuts, most likely to hold the ERM II peg when the ECB cuts rates and re-starts QE.” Which means yields can become even more negative. Such is the desperation for perceived “safe assets” that Austria, Belgium and Ireland have all sold 100-year securities (the yield on Austria’s 2117 bond has dropped nearly 100 basis points since it was launched two years ago with what was then considered a derisory 2.1 percent coupon, and recall that Ireland’s banking crisis placed the country close to national insolvency 11 years ago). It’s virtually impossible to make sensible economic forecasts a few months out, let alone a century, so this does suggest a certain kind of collective madness (or desperation) now taking over the bond markets.

All of which tells us that something is indeed rotten in the state of Denmark (and elsewhere), as Lagarde takes over as president of the ECB. The constellation of soft economic data in Europe  has investors clamoring for the ECB to act, but negative yields suggest that there is little more that interest rate manipulation can do to generate an economic upturn. Indeed, economists Markus Brunnermeier and Yann Koby have persuasively argued that negative yields represent the juncture “at which accommodative monetary policy ‘reverses’ its effect and becomes contractionary for output.” In other words, monetary policy has reached the point where further attempts to cut rates might actually hinder economic growth, rather than promote it.

As Rob Burnett, a fund manager at Lightman Investment Management, has suggested, “What is required is demand-based stimulus and spending must be directed into the real economy”—in other words, fiscal expansion, which unfortunately is not the purview of the ECB. Furthermore, the central bank’s “quantitative easing” purchases of sovereign bonds have hitherto been conditionally predicated on the national finance ministries’ continuing to practice fiscal austerity, which in turn produces the exact opposite economic outcome that Burnett has proposed. The unfinished architecture of the Eurozone makes this problem particularly awkward, given that there is no “United States of Europe” treasury equivalent—a gaping institutional lacuna in the Maastricht Treaty—which in itself creates unstable dynamics that constrain national policy fiscal space. Politically, the ECB represents the awkward focal point in regard to increasing global market integration on the one hand with growing demands for reclaiming national political sovereignty on the other. Such challenges become more acute in the context of a global economy that, outside of the United States, is teetering toward recession (or worse).

It’s also a terrible environment for banking in particular, especially as any attempts to reduce deposit rates below zero (in effect charging depositors for the privilege of having banks store their money) would almost certainly trigger bank runs. Nor are the banks inclined to generate profits via lending activity when there is a steadily decreasing supply of creditworthy borrowers on the other side.

The other problem also relates to the Eurozone’s faulty half-finished architecture: free intra-Eurozone capital flows are promoted within the Eurozone (via the Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross Settlement Express Transfer system, aka the “TARGET2 system”), despite the absence of a unified supranational banking system or common, Eurozone-wide deposit insurance (such as the American FDIC). This creates ample scope for bank runs from one country to another (as the economist Peter Garber predicted back in 1998), and which were occurring in earnest back in 2012, as investor George Soros observed, and specifically tied to TARGET2.

Across the Eurozone, bank assets generally exceed GDP. They also do in non-Eurozone countries, such as Norway, Switzerland, and the UK. But the difference in the non-Eurozone countries is that they are all sovereign currency issuing countries, which means that all have unlimited capacity to provide deposit insurance in the event of a bank run. Paradoxically, it is precisely because of this unlimited currency issuing power that such bank runs seldom go very far in these countries. The public intuitively understands that the insurance can be made good.

This is why the United Kingdom and Switzerland were able to handle their respective banking crises in 2008 without threatening national insolvency. Retaining sterling as the national currency, the UK had unlimited fiscal capacity to offer credible deposit insurance instantaneously during its crisis. To cite one example, in 2007 a regional bank, Northern Rock, applied to the Bank of England (BOE) for emergency support to help it through a liquidity crisis triggered by the subprime mortgage slump in the U.S. and temporarily incurred substantial deposit runs as a result. The BOE’s prompt actions (made easier by the fact that they did not need to secure the collective approval of 19 other countries, as occurs in the single currency union) put a halt to the withdrawals. Likewise, Switzerland was able to recapitalize its own major banks relatively quickly after the 2008 crisis began in earnest and avoided the prolonged banking crises that characterized the Eurozone countries.

Ireland is a good example of the latter. An economy structurally similar to the UK, Ireland experienced a banking crisis with far more longstanding deleterious effects (including an unemployment rate almost double that of the UK at its peak). The crisis was far more serious than in non-Eurozone countries because the markets intuitively understood that the country did not have the fiscal capacity to adequately safeguard the banks’ deposit base (despite pledges to do so on the part of Dublin’s policymakers).

Within the Eurozone, the Emerald Isle’s problems were by no means unique. As is now well appreciated, all Eurozone member states operate under the same constraints with no national currency. In regard to coping with a potential banking crisis, however, the currency issuer, the ECB, does not have the regulatory or political authority to close a bank, regardless of what country the bank claims as its home (in the same way that, say, the American FDIC can operate to shut down a bank, no matter which state, and credibly restart it quickly, by virtue of the backstop of the U.S. Treasury). So far the member states within the single currency union have managed to dodge this particular bullet, but given the mounting strains now intensifying in the Eurozone, a credible banking union of some sort must ultimately be on the table. Wolfgang Münchau, columnist for the Financial Times, outlined the four key “centralised components” required to make such a union workable and durable: “a resolution and recapitalisation fund; a fund for joint deposit insurance; a central regulator; and a central supervising power.”

Even a central banker as powerful as Mario Draghi has yet been unable to persuade the major Eurozone powers, especially Germany, to accede to such a proposal, which Berlin still regards as a covert means of putting German taxpayers on the hook for billions of euros’ worth of other countries’ banking liabilities. In light of the current travails of Deutsche Bank (and the longstanding financial difficulties of Germany’s regional lenders, the so-called “Landesbanken”), however, attitudes might change in Berlin.

In any case, this represents one of the more formidable challenges Christine Lagarde is likely to face in her new job going forward. Given the existing institutional limitations of a monetary union without a supranational treasury backstop, no Eurozone FDIC can be credibly established absent institutional ties to the ECB. National banking interests cannot interfere with the deposit insurance fund because this would immediately destroy the credibility of the banking union. But absent broad multinational consensus, no such supranational FDIC can come into being.

The glue holding the Eurozone’s institutionally fragile structure together has always been the European Central Bank. As the sole issuer of the euro, the ECB is operationally free to provide as many euros as needed to keep the funding system in place. It cannot go broke. But politically, it is an orphan. The problem is that calls for international cooperation to improve its supranational governance structures to address these cross-country dynamics reinforces the impression of eroding national control, which in turn heightens populist backlash across the continent. Mario Draghi’s monetary gymnastics helped preserve the Eurozone, but the battle is not yet won.

One wonders whether someone with Christine Lagarde’s comparatively limited economic and financial expertise has the ability to confront these challenges with the same aplomb her predecessor. We shall find out soon enough.

Signs of Recession Are Hitting Europe—And Its New Central Bank President May Not Be Up for the Challenge

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[redantsunderneath]

Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run (an autobiography)

This is going to be more exorcism than exegesis – this book is odd, and I can’t stop thinking about why. The review line here is that this recent Springsteen autobiography is worthwhile enough if you are somewhere north of a casual Springsteen fan but if you are looking for a single Springsteen historical document, you’d be better served with the Dave Marsh biographies.  Superfans will of course love it, the curious will find it entertaining if they wind up with a copy, and the odd people like me who are obsessives without being real superfans will, well, find it peculiar but involving.  

 Bona fides: I’m an obsessive in that I’ve listened to every Springsteen song, legally released or leaked, up to 2006-ish, have read many of related books, filtered through ephemera, had the concert experience numerous times at different stages of his carrier, and have intermittent year long bouts of compulsively listening/getting moved/thinking about the whole Springsteen enchilada.  What really attracted me to him as an artist was that, unlike chameleons such as (Bruce fan) Bowie who committed to one thing at a time, he seemed to carry a bunch of different influences simultaneously, the skills of which he was proficient in, and would combine and project them - the arena rawker, the street party leader, the acoustic poet, the rock and roll revivalist, the RnB review, the storyteller, the piano balladeer - often capturing several in the space of a song. He also had such great phenomenological and artist-as-story interest: I had seen this with Elvis, but this was more complicated and comprised the sum of on stage relationships, story content, song preoccupations, personal life leaks, and attitude towards fans coalescing into a legend of an avatar of the American working class and underclass, coming in with a bunch of buddies who together were a family, to redeem something in the American spirit, all on the shoulders of some incredible will and discipline.

 So why am I exiled like Moses, able to see the super fan promised land but never enter? First (and this is not restricted to Springsteen) I find the fan ethos offputting.  It combines a deification I loathe with a fake chumminess that makes me nauseated.  More importantly, though, I really don’t like much he has produced since Tunnel of Love marked his most significant career transition.  I note only one great song (“Terry’s Song”) written since the Chimes of Freedom EP which marked the end of the ToL tour, his first marriage, and the initial E Street Band run.  This includes a take it or leave it attitude towards current concerts on my part (the spark isn’t there for me) and wariness about where the Springsteen “story” has gone. One of the greatest things about him early on was the mastery of basically every corner of rock and roll, and his attempt to incorporate new elements and stay fresh are kind of embarrassing (I like Rage Against the Machine too, but the weak link there is Tom Morello’s guitar, and Springsteen hired him to “rejuvenate his sound”.  Ugh).

 So, why is it weird? I don’t read many autobiographies (only one I can remember finishing is No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish) so maybe it’s par for the course, but this isn’t a sculpted recounting of history but a chain of 80 or so “stories” like extended versions of the ones he would tell on stage, and are concerned more with internal rhythm than an external sense of pace or continuity.   There is a lot of backtracking where the reader needs to “match” events. This story approach extends to frequent use of his stage voice(s), where he will go into revival preacher or beat poet mode, do stream of consciousness riffs, and recount back and forth embellished dialogue (without quotes, but with interjections like ‘Marone!’) like he is arguing with himself.  The good news is you can truly hear his voice in the semi-poetic prose. The bad news is it doesn’t flow well, leaves strange things out, cuts back and forth, and the story seems incomplete.

 The best thing about the book is an authentic third angle on the Springsteen legend that I legit had never heard before.  The Springsteen myth is heavily curated by the Boss himself and has always painted a picture, as I noted above, of a rock’n’roll family bringing a fun redemption to the world. This had to be resolved with journalistic and tabloid information that challenged the story, but there was always a fan synthesis that incorporated the info and left the godhead intact.  My memory of rec.arts.music.springsteen (one such recounting was called “a good man,” gagh!) is that Juliana Philips was seen as “a mistake of exposure to big success” and “a vain actress,” and he soon realized that what he needed was a good Jersey girl (which resolves how the marriage never fit fan image of him and sands the edges off of the inconvenient timing of the affair). Springsteen’s recounting of this is a good example of the value of his non-filtered point of view.  He goes out of his way to demonstrate the small town authenticity of Phillips and describe her as wonderful and loving.  The problem was that he was impossible to get along with for anyone after a couple of years and his mishandling of the separation (not wanting the press to know while he began another relationship and got caught) is the biggest regret of his life (because of how it impacted his then-wife).

 This approach reveals him as a hard guy to know.  He describes himself as a narcissist and self-hater (cue Venn diagram of the overlap of narcissism and self-doubt being Art), and he tells story after story of the men in his life where he lengthily but gently drags them through the mud, then says “but we would die for each other and I love him.” These stories come off as whatever happens to passive aggressiveness after expensive therapy (and this book is therapy-speak rich), and often serves to make him look worse than outside data does (the Mike Appel story especially where Springsteen was utterly in the right and was maliciously kept from recording for several years, but here Springsteen does everything to make excuses for him, gives him a butload of credit, and still manages to come off a little petty, i.e. these stories tend to backfire).  He spends a lot of time recounting how he told the bandmembers that they just had to understand that he needed all the control and that he had all the power, so they needed to suck it up.

 The upbringing stuff is probably the best material and the most untrod ground. His family history is pretty compelling and I finally understand how his religious and ethnic background shaped his personality.  The sex stuff makes him look idiosyncratic and selfish: a monk sometimes, do anything that moves one year, but usually a serial monogamist with uncondoned cheating.   He comes off like a terrible boyfriend and worse husband (lots of lost weekend stuff), but this doesn’t really capture how odd the sex stuff is as much as that one passage about he and his dad went to Tijuana and he came back with the crabs.  He mentions prostitutes more times than he mentions groupies.  

 He picks several concerts to elevate to most important status that are not big ones in Springsteeen lore, but have some kind of multicultural underpinning.  To at least some extent, this is to craft a version of a guy who is in touch with human experience. He spends so much time on post Katrina, 9-11, and his hurt at the cops rejecting him after what he thought was the evenhanded “American Skin (41 Shots)” (the fact that he was surprised surprises me).  His talk about race and Clarence Clemons is fascinating – their relationship was molded on stage because he thought it was an important one to America both as an example and as an aesthetic statement.  They only knew each other in this context and rarely ever saw each other outside of stage and studio.  So their friendship, such as it was, was a Springsteen story performed into existence.  He is very conscious of (and calculated about) his cultural legacy.

 So much is left out, yet there are a lot of stories that are barely OK, but seem there specifically to mark time so that it’s not Born in the USA cut-to everybody starts dying (thinking of the horse riding stuff as an example). His discussion of his depression is very valuable, but asynchronously told and thus hard to follow.  The book is full of “aw shucks” enthusiasm, idiom, and showmanship, but is somehow unexpectedly unguarded about the inner workings of his mind. He comes off as someone driven and not comfortable in his own skin unless he is accomplishing something, but in a human, actually painful way, that I have only ever seen divulged by a celebrity once before (David Foster Wallace).  I had an idea of Springsteen as reasonably well adjusted, but after this if he commits suicide I would not be surprised.

 In the end, the book crystalizes in a new set for meanings of that old story of him ripping down the posters saying “the future of rock and roll” at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, 1975 – Springsteen is a control freak, most of all about what people think of him, crippled by self-doubt, with the constant need do something, anything, to reassert mastery over his art, his message, and his mind.  That this is at odds with the book’s willingness to go deep and spill stuff he would usually keep close and it is this tension (along with its storyteller-quilted nature) gives it its strange charge.  In the end, there is a grandiose humility that keeps it together and I’m glad I read it.

[toomanysinks]

Why can’t we build anything?

Last week, California governor Gavin Newsom announced that he was intending to aggressively scale back plans for the state’s high-speed rail system, which in its most ambitious routing would have connected Sacramento to San Diego. The immediate cause was ballooning costs, which have risen from $33 billion to $77 billion and looked likely to exceed 1.6 Zuckerbergs within a couple of years (the local CA currency, otherwise known as $100 billion).

Unlike other megaprojects, Newsom — and California — were fortunate on the timing. The costs of the project skyrocketed so much and so early, that Newsom still had the credibility and political capital to kill the project. And while a short route from Bakersfield to Merced remains on the table, I don’t expect even that route to be ultimately constructed, since no one knows where either of those cities are.

Why can’t we (i.e. America) build anything? High-speed rail isn’t Silicon Valley whizbang magic technology, it’s definitely not Hyperloop. It’s pretty standard in a bunch of industrialized nations around the world. Clearly that question was on the minds of reporters, because we have been inundated with autopsies on HSR. Yet, the hot takes don’t seem to be adding up to anything meaningful (surprise).

So, we are going to explore this question over the coming weeks, as one of our newest obsessions here at Extra Crunch.

This weekend, I read a book called “Politics across the Hudson: The Tappan Zee Megaproject.” In the book, Philip Mark Plotch chronicles the forty years of planning that led to the reconstruction of the Tappan Zee bridge, which connects Rockland and Westchester Counties north of New York City over the Hudson River. If you want to read about the weeds of government dysfunction around infrastructure, this is your book. It’s a telling tale of patterns we see repeatedly when trying to build great things in the United States:

No one wants to talk about finance: Politicians love selling the value of a megaproject without actually discussing the ways they are going to have to pay for it. Yet, paying for it is the project, since it will ultimately affect how citizens enjoy the infrastructure.In the Tappan Zee case, politicians wanted to avoid talking finances because finances meant tolls, and increasing tolls meant losing elections. New York’s current governor Andrew Cuomo ends up avoiding this conversation through luck, as the state received huge indemnities from Wall Street banks related to Iranian money laundering and sanctions that helped fund the bridge (which one planner called “manna from god”).That avoidance has led to the “Willie Brown” model of infrastructure, named for the former San Francisco mayor who wrote about how to get infrastructure projects done:

News that the Transbay Terminal is something like $300 million over budget should not come as a shock to anyone.

We always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Just like we never had a real cost for the Central Subway or the Bay Bridge or any other massive construction project. So get off it.

In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved.

The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.

Of course, that model can lead to situations like Boston’s Big Dig, where the final ticket price for a project is so high, that it effectively bankrupts an entire city and its transportation system for years to come.

Infrastructure finance may not be a sexy topic, but it is absolutely critical to getting a project done. It’s hard to tuck tens of billions of dollars in a line item in the state’s budget, and it is hard to get the different funding levers of government involved when a project’s finances aren’t clear.

Lack of direction / lack of leadership: Building infrastructure is hard. It’s even harder in the U.S., where a patchwork of regulatory bodies and all levels of government are involved in infrastructure decision-making. In the Tappan Zee bridge case, there were nearly two dozen agencies involved, all with their own agendas and fiefdoms. A dedicated bus lane on the bridge was cut to avoid bringing in the Federal Transit Administration. The Tappan Zee is built at one of the widest points of the Hudson River rather than the narrowest since planners wanted to avoid the jurisdiction of the Port Authority.Here’s the thing though: there were real differences of opinion about the project and what it should accomplish. Some people wanted a rail line, some wanted bus rapid transit, some wanted carpool lanes, and still others wanted more lanes of vehicular traffic. Nothing got done because there was absolutely no consensus either from the communities involved or from their elected leaders.

One might call a 40-year planning process dysfunctional, but another view would say that this is exactly government working as intended. Things don’t get built if there is no consensus, and that’s the value — and price — of democracy.The challenge though is that you can end up in these counter-veto game theoretic morasses (the book uses “wicked problems”), where no progress will truly ever get made because everyone has an incentive to block a project to get their vision included. Here is where leadership makes such a difference. A leader in these contexts can find points of compromise, build coalitions, set agendas and a vision, and create the momentum required to get these projects moving. Unfortunately, finding leaders in American politics is excruciatingly difficult.

Impossibly high expectations / feature creep: Every tech product manager knows the challenges of feature creep. Another person swings by, and they have a choice feature they want added that is going to take time and resources, and has limited benefit to the rest of the user base of the product. Unfortunately, infrastructure projects face many of the same challenges.

When a megaproject looks like it has built up momentum, everyone tries to glom on to it, adding their pet project. What starts as a bridge replacement project soon morphs into a bridge replacement with a new 30-mile railroad, multiple train stations, a new bus rapid transit system, and a complete zoning overhaul for multiple counties. Yet, those extra “features” also add additional veto points and complications to the original project. They are effectively barnacles on the hull of an already slow-moving ship.

Big projects galvanize our imaginations, but they shrink under the weight of their own mass. Better to down scale these projects into more bite-sized chunks with clear goals and deliverables rather than being all things to all people.

One thing I was surprised reading about the Tappan Zee bridge is that the actual construction phase was relatively uneventful. The bridge was built mostly on time and on budget, mostly due to extreme attention from the NY governors’s office to not allow deviations (except to stop construction on July 4th so that construction wouldn’t mar riverfront BBQs).

Four years and billions of dollars to rebuild a bridge might be ridiculous, but so were the 36 years of planning that proceeded the reconstruction. Maybe that pattern isn’t true for every project, but the lesson of Politics across the Hudson is that once the government had a plan and timing on its side, it was (relatively) smooth-sailing to the finish line.

Lawyers!

Classen Rafael / EyeEm via Getty Images

Startups need attorneys to succeed, and today, Extra Crunch is pleased to start helping you find the most helpful ones in the industry.

Extra Crunch managing editor Eric Eldon has published his deep-dive package into startup law and startup attorneys today. The package will include profiles of leading attorneys who have been identified by founders as the most helpful to their startups (today’s profile focuses on Cynthia Hess). We also have attorney Daniel McKenzie writing about “How and why you should work with a startup lawyer.” Finally, Eric and his team created a comprehensive overview of all the legal issues that come with building a startup that they compiled into a handy A-to-Z guide.

Our hope is that some of the thornier issues of building a startup can be made just a bit easier if you are armed with the right, vetted information. Let us know your thoughts.

“Mo Money, Mo Problems” for SoftBank

KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

SoftBank’s voracious spending habits might be starting to catch up to the company. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Vision Fund’s two largest investors — the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company — are growing increasingly frustrated with the fund’s investment process, governance structure, and the exorbitant valuations and prices paid.

Apparently, dishing out billion dollar checks like Halloween candy doesn’t make you popular with the people who give you those billions of dollars.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard angry whispers from Vision Fund investors, with previous reports suggesting SoftBank significantly pared down previous investments in WeWork and other portfolio companies after facing serious LP pushback on the check size.

Part of the LP concern over SoftBank’s laissez-faire attitude towards check writing comes down to issues of governance. As we’ve previously discussed in our attempts to unravel SoftBank’s beast of a corporate structure, SoftBank often invests in companies at the SoftBank holding company level before selling the ownership to the Vision Fund at a later date. In the follow-on transactions, the Vision Fund often ends up paying more — in some cases billions of dollars more — than the initial investment. Now, LPs are concerned that they’re getting fleeced for billions on the back end as SoftBank drives up those investment valuations.

The ownership transfer process is just one aspect of the reportedly more general investor concerns around an opaque, complex, and disorganized investment process where SoftBank figurehead Masayoshi Son can overrule any investment decision with a “Gladiatoresque thumbs-up, thumbs-down”. According to the WSJ:

Concerns about valuation of the fund’s investments are closely linked to concerns about its investment process, in particular the power wielded by Mr. Son. In recent weeks, Mr. Son overruled objections from partners within SoftBank to a Vision Fund investment valued at as much as $1.5 billion into Chehaoduo Group, a Chinese online car-trading platform, according to people familiar with the matter. Chehaoduo was accused of fraud in recent weeks by a competitor.

And as LPs are growing concerned on how money is flowing out of the Vision Fund, SoftBank is also facing pressure from regulators on the money it is bringing in. While we’ve touched on SoftBank’s “love for leverage” before, credit agencies are once again expressing concern over the Vision Fund and SoftBank’s frothy debt levels, even noting that the company’s already junk-rated credit ratings have a better chance of getting downgraded further rather than improving.

All this goes to say that while sexy headlines and frequent nine-figure-plus deals make it easy to think SoftBank has a blank check to dish out to any unicorn they please, the clock may be striking midnight for SoftBank as they face the reality of their enormous spending, which may not bode well for their hopes for a second Vision Fund.

The Overlooked Element of the Amazon HQ2 Battle

Written by Arman Tabatabai

Amazon’s decision last week to halt plans to bring a second headquarters to New York City’s Long Island City neighborhood brought passionate responses from two completely schools of thought.

Some celebrated the breakup as a defeat of unjust corporate tax breaks, subsidies, and gentrification, while others threw up their hands in outrage over the disappearance of tens of thousands of jobs and future economic value that an Amazon presence would bring.

While these two arguments have been beaten to death, the remaining half of Amazon’s HQ2 development in Northern Virginia highlights an aspect of the controversial process that often gets overlooked.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post highlighted how Amazon’s pending arrival in Crystal City has helped accelerate large infrastructure projects that have long been in limbo, including public transport expansions, roadway expansions, and the construction of a new bridge to the Airport.

On top of financial investments into these projects from Amazon, the operational dates for the new HQ2 creates a timeline and has forced urgency to actually finalize plans and get these projects completed.

A huge but often overlooked political benefit of Amazon’s HQ2 process is this ability to catalyze action around public projects that otherwise may face the purgatory of public infrastructure development. While many have criticized Amazon for its auction-style selection process, many mayors and representatives from other cities that participated in the HQ2 process actually viewed the process in a positive light because they were able to unlock economic value and incentives for the city that would have been much tougher to realize otherwise.

Obsessions

More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

We are going to be talking India here, focused around the book “Billonnaire Raj” by James Crabtree

We have a lot to catch up on in the China world when the EC launch craziness dies down. Plus, we are covering The Next Factory of the World by Irene Yuan Sun.

Societal resilience and geoengineering are still top-of-mind

Some more on metrics design and quantification

Thanks

To every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to danny@techcrunch.com.

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/19/why-cant-we-build-anything/

[fmservers]

Why can’t we build anything?

Last week, California governor Gavin Newsom announced that he was intending to aggressively scale back plans for the state’s high-speed rail system, which in its most ambitious routing would have connected Sacramento to San Diego. The immediate cause was ballooning costs, which have risen from $33 billion to $77 billion and looked likely to exceed 1.6 Zuckerbergs within a couple of years (the local CA currency, otherwise known as $100 billion).

Unlike other megaprojects, Newsom — and California — were fortunate on the timing. The costs of the project skyrocketed so much and so early, that Newsom still had the credibility and political capital to kill the project. And while a short route from Bakersfield to Merced remains on the table, I don’t expect even that route to be ultimately constructed, since no one knows where either of those cities are.

Why can’t we (i.e. America) build anything? High-speed rail isn’t Silicon Valley whizbang magic technology, it’s definitely not Hyperloop. It’s pretty standard in a bunch of industrialized nations around the world. Clearly that question was on the minds of reporters, because we have been inundated with autopsies on HSR. Yet, the hot takes don’t seem to be adding up to anything meaningful (surprise).

So, we are going to explore this question over the coming weeks, as one of our newest obsessions here at Extra Crunch.

This weekend, I read a book called “Politics across the Hudson: The Tappan Zee Megaproject.” In the book, Philip Mark Plotch chronicles the forty years of planning that led to the reconstruction of the Tappan Zee bridge, which connects Rockland and Westchester Counties north of New York City over the Hudson River. If you want to read about the weeds of government dysfunction around infrastructure, this is your book. It’s a telling tale of patterns we see repeatedly when trying to build great things in the United States:

No one wants to talk about finance: Politicians love selling the value of a megaproject without actually discussing the ways they are going to have to pay for it. Yet, paying for it is the project, since it will ultimately affect how citizens enjoy the infrastructure.In the Tappan Zee case, politicians wanted to avoid talking finances because finances meant tolls, and increasing tolls meant losing elections. New York’s current governor Andrew Cuomo ends up avoiding this conversation through luck, as the state received huge indemnities from Wall Street banks related to Iranian money laundering and sanctions that helped fund the bridge (which one planner called “manna from god”).That avoidance has led to the “Willie Brown” model of infrastructure, named for the former San Francisco mayor who wrote about how to get infrastructure projects done:

News that the Transbay Terminal is something like $300 million over budget should not come as a shock to anyone.

We always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost. Just like we never had a real cost for the Central Subway or the Bay Bridge or any other massive construction project. So get off it.

In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved.

The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.

Of course, that model can lead to situations like Boston’s Big Dig, where the final ticket price for a project is so high, that it effectively bankrupts an entire city and its transportation system for years to come.

Infrastructure finance may not be a sexy topic, but it is absolutely critical to getting a project done. It’s hard to tuck tens of billions of dollars in a line item in the state’s budget, and it is hard to get the different funding levers of government involved when a project’s finances aren’t clear.

Lack of direction / lack of leadership: Building infrastructure is hard. It’s even harder in the U.S., where a patchwork of regulatory bodies and all levels of government are involved in infrastructure decision-making. In the Tappan Zee bridge case, there were nearly two dozen agencies involved, all with their own agendas and fiefdoms. A dedicated bus lane on the bridge was cut to avoid bringing in the Federal Transit Administration. The Tappan Zee is built at one of the widest points of the Hudson River rather than the narrowest since planners wanted to avoid the jurisdiction of the Port Authority.Here’s the thing though: there were real differences of opinion about the project and what it should accomplish. Some people wanted a rail line, some wanted bus rapid transit, some wanted carpool lanes, and still others wanted more lanes of vehicular traffic. Nothing got done because there was absolutely no consensus either from the communities involved or from their elected leaders.

One might call a 40-year planning process dysfunctional, but another view would say that this is exactly government working as intended. Things don’t get built if there is no consensus, and that’s the value — and price — of democracy.The challenge though is that you can end up in these counter-veto game theoretic morasses (the book uses “wicked problems”), where no progress will truly ever get made because everyone has an incentive to block a project to get their vision included. Here is where leadership makes such a difference. A leader in these contexts can find points of compromise, build coalitions, set agendas and a vision, and create the momentum required to get these projects moving. Unfortunately, finding leaders in American politics is excruciatingly difficult.

Impossibly high expectations / feature creep: Every tech product manager knows the challenges of feature creep. Another person swings by, and they have a choice feature they want added that is going to take time and resources, and has limited benefit to the rest of the user base of the product. Unfortunately, infrastructure projects face many of the same challenges.

When a megaproject looks like it has built up momentum, everyone tries to glom on to it, adding their pet project. What starts as a bridge replacement project soon morphs into a bridge replacement with a new 30-mile railroad, multiple train stations, a new bus rapid transit system, and a complete zoning overhaul for multiple counties. Yet, those extra “features” also add additional veto points and complications to the original project. They are effectively barnacles on the hull of an already slow-moving ship.

Big projects galvanize our imaginations, but they shrink under the weight of their own mass. Better to down scale these projects into more bite-sized chunks with clear goals and deliverables rather than being all things to all people.

One thing I was surprised reading about the Tappan Zee bridge is that the actual construction phase was relatively uneventful. The bridge was built mostly on time and on budget, mostly due to extreme attention from the NY governors’s office to not allow deviations (except to stop construction on July 4th so that construction wouldn’t mar riverfront BBQs).

Four years and billions of dollars to rebuild a bridge might be ridiculous, but so were the 36 years of planning that proceeded the reconstruction. Maybe that pattern isn’t true for every project, but the lesson of Politics across the Hudson is that once the government had a plan and timing on its side, it was (relatively) smooth-sailing to the finish line.

Lawyers!

Classen Rafael / EyeEm via Getty Images

Startups need attorneys to succeed, and today, Extra Crunch is pleased to start helping you find the most helpful ones in the industry.

Extra Crunch managing editor Eric Eldon has published his deep-dive package into startup law and startup attorneys today. The package will include profiles of leading attorneys who have been identified by founders as the most helpful to their startups (today’s profile focuses on Cynthia Hess). We also have attorney Daniel McKenzie writing about “How and why you should work with a startup lawyer.” Finally, Eric and his team created a comprehensive overview of all the legal issues that come with building a startup that they compiled into a handy A-to-Z guide.

Our hope is that some of the thornier issues of building a startup can be made just a bit easier if you are armed with the right, vetted information. Let us know your thoughts.

“Mo Money, Mo Problems” for SoftBank

KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

SoftBank’s voracious spending habits might be starting to catch up to the company. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Vision Fund’s two largest investors — the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company — are growing increasingly frustrated with the fund’s investment process, governance structure, and the exorbitant valuations and prices paid.

Apparently, dishing out billion dollar checks like Halloween candy doesn’t make you popular with the people who give you those billions of dollars.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard angry whispers from Vision Fund investors, with previous reports suggesting SoftBank significantly pared down previous investments in WeWork and other portfolio companies after facing serious LP pushback on the check size.

Part of the LP concern over SoftBank’s laissez-faire attitude towards check writing comes down to issues of governance. As we’ve previously discussed in our attempts to unravel SoftBank’s beast of a corporate structure, SoftBank often invests in companies at the SoftBank holding company level before selling the ownership to the Vision Fund at a later date. In the follow-on transactions, the Vision Fund often ends up paying more — in some cases billions of dollars more — than the initial investment. Now, LPs are concerned that they’re getting fleeced for billions on the back end as SoftBank drives up those investment valuations.

The ownership transfer process is just one aspect of the reportedly more general investor concerns around an opaque, complex, and disorganized investment process where SoftBank figurehead Masayoshi Son can overrule any investment decision with a “Gladiatoresque thumbs-up, thumbs-down”. According to the WSJ:

Concerns about valuation of the fund’s investments are closely linked to concerns about its investment process, in particular the power wielded by Mr. Son. In recent weeks, Mr. Son overruled objections from partners within SoftBank to a Vision Fund investment valued at as much as $1.5 billion into Chehaoduo Group, a Chinese online car-trading platform, according to people familiar with the matter. Chehaoduo was accused of fraud in recent weeks by a competitor.

And as LPs are growing concerned on how money is flowing out of the Vision Fund, SoftBank is also facing pressure from regulators on the money it is bringing in. While we’ve touched on SoftBank’s “love for leverage” before, credit agencies are once again expressing concern over the Vision Fund and SoftBank’s frothy debt levels, even noting that the company’s already junk-rated credit ratings have a better chance of getting downgraded further rather than improving.

All this goes to say that while sexy headlines and frequent nine-figure-plus deals make it easy to think SoftBank has a blank check to dish out to any unicorn they please, the clock may be striking midnight for SoftBank as they face the reality of their enormous spending, which may not bode well for their hopes for a second Vision Fund.

The Overlooked Element of the Amazon HQ2 Battle

Written by Arman Tabatabai

Amazon’s decision last week to halt plans to bring a second headquarters to New York City’s Long Island City neighborhood brought passionate responses from two completely schools of thought.

Some celebrated the breakup as a defeat of unjust corporate tax breaks, subsidies, and gentrification, while others threw up their hands in outrage over the disappearance of tens of thousands of jobs and future economic value that an Amazon presence would bring.

While these two arguments have been beaten to death, the remaining half of Amazon’s HQ2 development in Northern Virginia highlights an aspect of the controversial process that often gets overlooked.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post highlighted how Amazon’s pending arrival in Crystal City has helped accelerate large infrastructure projects that have long been in limbo, including public transport expansions, roadway expansions, and the construction of a new bridge to the Airport.

On top of financial investments into these projects from Amazon, the operational dates for the new HQ2 creates a timeline and has forced urgency to actually finalize plans and get these projects completed.

A huge but often overlooked political benefit of Amazon’s HQ2 process is this ability to catalyze action around public projects that otherwise may face the purgatory of public infrastructure development. While many have criticized Amazon for its auction-style selection process, many mayors and representatives from other cities that participated in the HQ2 process actually viewed the process in a positive light because they were able to unlock economic value and incentives for the city that would have been much tougher to realize otherwise.

Obsessions

More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

We are going to be talking India here, focused around the book “Billonnaire Raj” by James Crabtree

We have a lot to catch up on in the China world when the EC launch craziness dies down. Plus, we are covering The Next Factory of the World by Irene Yuan Sun.

Societal resilience and geoengineering are still top-of-mind

Some more on metrics design and quantification

Thanks

To every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to danny@techcrunch.com.

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

Via Arman Tabatabai https://techcrunch.com

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Education is the key to awareness best shapewear and knowledge, which in turn are the keys to reformation. So, it is correct to believe that if the society has to be reformed by reducing the divide between social and economic classes in India, education has to become the prime priority of not only the government but also of every citizen. Realizing that education is a comprehensive solution to improving the standards of the Indian society, the government has launched several initiatives. However, the problem is with the quality of implementation. Lack of resources and trained personnel are becoming the main reasons for inadequate education. One way to bridge the gap is to divert private investment into the education sector and make it possible for every child to have access to good education. Corporate Social Responsibility can become the key element for improving the quality of education.Children belonging to economically backward sections struggle for basic amenities such as uniform, stationary, books, bags, shoes and socks. Schools lack furniture and Maternity Shapewear other essential amenities. The lack of these amenities discourages children from going to school. CSR funds can ensure that children have access to these facilities so that they do not lose interest in attending school.Teachers define the interest and enthusiasm that children have towards studies. Donations from the private sector will enable good quality graduates to educate children and develop a keen interest in them towards learning. Often, the poor quality and lack of enthusiasm among teachers in these schools contribute to the collapse of the schooling system for these children.One example of this benefit is seen in the work of an NGO called Teach for India. This NGO has branches in washer dryer clearance various cities. The basic work that the NGO does is recruit passionate, motivated and intelligent graduates who wish to volunteer to teach academic concepts to children in government schools. These individuals are assigned to different schools in various parts of the country to empower children with quality education. Education should make children ready to survive and win in the current world. So, in the present scenario, education is incomplete without equipping children with the knowledge of modern technological advancements such as computers and Internet. Furthermore, with private funding, children can get access to educational videos, webinars and seminars from different parts of the world.In the highly competitive world today, mere academic knowledge is not enough. Students also need to rank high in soft skills and employability skills. Unfortunately, such skills are not an appliances houston integral part of the Indian education system. CSR initiatives can play a major role in making qualified trainers accessible to children so that they can obtain the benefits of an all round personality. CSR can also enable children to go on field trips and industrial visits so that they can experience the real world that awaits them in the future. Children can get access to abacus training, yoga and other such programs that help them develop into strong and skilled assets to the society.Lead Nation, a training and skill development organization based out of Bangalore, has a vertical called GUARD in which they channelize private sponsorships to develop soft skills, life skills and conduct personality development trainings for the underprivileged children. They assign highly qualified and experienced trainers to car dealerships in houston underprivileged schools to empower children emotionally, mentally, socially, psychologically and physically.Udaan is another Not for Profit organization that trains children in government schools in computer skills and spoken English.Despite awareness about the importance of education, the school dropout rate remains alarmingly high in India. One of the main reasons is financial constraints and lack of adequate resources. CSR can bridge this gap and ensure that more number of students are completing their schooling and going on for higher education. CSR can also help children enroll in vocational courses that can help them have a dignified career.Several foundations and NGOs such as CRY (Child Rights and You), Barefoot-College India, Pratham and Make a Difference are committed to empowering children using CSR activities. What do you think the reason for school is? Do you think school teaches you how to live when you become an adult? Do you think you go to school just because government laws force luxury cars houston you to attend? There is some truth to those statements. A skilled orator could argue successfully that learning to interact with society is a very important reason behind formal education. It's also true that by law you must get that formal education, but there's more to school than truancy laws, and the ability to act right when you're among other people. "They know enough who know how to learn." Henry Adams Let me tell you the real reason you go to school: School teaches you how to learn. What do you think about that? Do you believe it? I didn't understand that when I was young. Over the years I found that finishing school only gives you the right to start learning how to live a rewarding life. That ceremony called "Commencement" is a celebration of your internalizing the abilities to find answers you'll soon need. In adulthood you run up against obstacles that block the path to your goals. You face new problems every day that you must solve on your journey to a successful life. If you don't know Houston SEO Expert how to remove those obstacles, or solve those problems, you won't achieve the results you envision. There is so much to learn about how to live that your brain goes into overload if you don't know how to soak knowledge up. And when you're soaking it up you're learning. Spending time in school gives you discipline and teaches you how to soak it up. Make sure you and your kids understand what formal education is all about. Your true learning starts after school, and we call that learning life experience. Your commitment to self-education brings you the true knowledge in your life. And as Henry Adams said, when you know how to learn, you know all you need to know. You merely have to put your knowledge to valuable use. Joseph Jackson retired at the early age of 46, and now travels in his recreational vehicle, hitting scuba, camping, and kayaking destinations for playtime. He enjoys writing reports and books to pass on his experience and knowledge to help others succeed. He also searches for, and makes available, products that improve the enjoyment of his playtime activities. Computers have caused a revolution in education, but the tremendous changes seen in the last decade may be surpassed in the next as those computers are connected in a global education network. Teachers and high school students sample the water in Lake Baikal in Siberia while at other lakes around the world, other teachers and students take similar samples from local lakes and SEO Company Toronto subject them to the same simple water-quality tests. Via their school computers, they exchange their results and their observations about how water pollution problems are the same around the world. They are part of a "global laboratory" project that includes scientists specializing in water pollution. A similar computer network pins citizen activists, joined with students, teachers and scientists, in "sister watershed" groups throughout the world.Amateur birdwatchers and biologists pool their rare bird sightings in a North American computer network that is linked with bird researchers in Central America and South America.The differences between classroom and community education are blurred on the global computer networks. Voluntary organizations, government agencies, students and teachers are all involved in a real that has become, for many, a virtual what career is right for me classroom, without walls, and increasingly without borders.Already, pilot projects have high school students sharing the methods and results from field studies of environmental quality, using computer telecommunication to leap national boundaries. Elementary school children share their life experiences end visions of the future the same way. Their messages to one another, passed with tremendous speed and shared simultaneously among many classrooms, provide strong, personal lessons in science, geography and human relations.Environmental education curriculum development, pursued independently and often in isolation by teachers, school districts and universities over the past two decades, is now linked in a global forum that can respond immediately to the ever more complex and urgent environmental problems the world faces. Teachers the world over are connecting with their counterparts to discuss how they can do their jobs better. Co-ordination of international education projects is less burdened by the constraints of time and travel budgets as computer networks provide forums for collaboration.The technology for this business analyst certification exchange takes advantage of the personal computer's ability to communicate over standard phone lines using a modem. The simplest networks connect personal computers in a "store-and-forward" system that echoes messages from one to the next, until all have copies. These least-cost networks are linked to larger, faster computers that act as central information storage banks and relay stations. They in turn exchange information with one another and tap the power and data in computer systems at major research and educational institutions.In many ways this vast new sea of information presents its own challenges, often akin to "drinking water from a fire hose." The enormous glut of fact and opinion is impossible to take in, and has forced those who would taste its power to devise new ways for organizing and sampling the information flow.Electronic mail services and computer "conferencing" let students and teachers communicate with each other privately, or publicly as members of large discussion groups. Computer conferences are organized much like those where people meet face-to-face, except that the meeting rooms are inside each participant's computer. Computer conferences transcend time zones, since participants review and comment on early childhood development each others' written postings as their time and interest allows. Everyone gets to read and think about questions or statements posed in a conference, and everyone has a co-equal opportunity to reply.Computer networking is making classroom walls disappear. Real environmental problems are entering the classroom with immediacy via computer nets, and students are jointly seeking understanding and solutions with scientists, citizen activists, journalists, government officials and community leaders of all kinds. While access to computer networks is still remote for most people on the planet, it is becoming more and more available to the gatekeepers and opinion-leaders who help shape common understanding of the global situation. The increasing abundance of the multiple information sources available via computer networks, if viewed as a well-stocked marketplace, may also stimulate demand for more and better goods by the world's information consumers.Citizen participation in the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), for example, has been ccoordinated via computer networks on seven continents, giving NGOs access to complete text of the preparatory committee documents, and providing public forums for news and issue discussion. This availability of information has a dramatic effect on how an event such technical schools near me as UNCED permeates the mass media everywhere.Underlying the often chaotic view presented by the mass media, structures are developing to channel the new rivers of information to empower this and coming generations to deal with the issues it describes. A variety of efforts at computer networking for environmental education provide some great models. At the root, these efforts are all based on the same notion: that environmental problems must be viewed with a global perspective, but responded to by A+ certification training individuals acting locally, in their own communities or homes. All of this new technology is not without cost, and the developed countries are clearly ahead in providing computer access for education. But even in the United States, where computer telecommunication is becoming commonplace, profit rather than educational reform is a dominant force in determining who gets access.The harsh reality used appliances houston has motivated citizen computer networks to band together in the international Association for Progressive Communications (APC) to make computer network access broadly available. The APC hosts several promising educational efforts on its partner computer networks that now extend to more than 90 countries around the globe. These services may be tapped by anyone with a personal computer and modem, often via a local call, at costs roughly equivalent to a newspaper plus size shapewear subscription or monthly telephone bill.

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Meet the Man Who's Just Run an Ultra Marathon on All Seven Continents

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

"My background isn't as a runner," explains Joel Runyon, the founder of Impossible X. In fact, the Illinois native readily admits: "I don't like running so much."

Though not unusual among the general population, this is a curious statement from someone who earlier this year ran four ultra marathons in the space of six weeks to complete a total of seven ultras on all seven continents.

"I don't love running as much as what running gives me from the mental aspect," Joel told VICE Sports in June, not long after completing his 777 challenge. "It forces you to be out there on your own and decide if you're going to keep going or if you're going to quit, because there's points where everybody wants to quit."

Joel completing ultra number five of seven, in Thailand

Unsurprisingly, his journey to this unique juncture was not straightforward. It began with an unemployed college graduate living in his parents' basement.

"I graduated school in 2009 and I couldn't get a job," Joel explains. "I ended up working at a postal delivery service for three months around Christmas. I was in a pretty bad mental space. I wanted to start a business, to travel the world – all these different things – and I couldn't do any of them because I had no money; I was living in my parents' basement and nothing was really going right.

"I looked at the things I'd wanted to do and one of them was a triathlon. But I didn't know anything about triathlons – I didn't know which three sports were in a triathlon!

"So I decided to do an indoor triathlon where you swim for 10 minutes, bike for 30 and run for 20. It's not even an actual triathlon – it's about as low-level as I could get.

READ MORE: Run For Your Life – The Catharsis and Conflict of Ultrarunning

"But when I did it, I distinctly remember having this feeling. I'd thought this was impossible, but then I'd trained and managed to do it. So, what else was out there that might seem impossible but, if you went after it, you might be able to do?"

From very humble beginnings, Joel's competitive endeavours began to escalate. He ran more triathlons, graduated to running Olympic distance, and progressed up to a half Ironman. "I realised then that I'd tricked myself into running," he says.

In 2012 Pencils of Promise – a New York-based non-profit – reached out to Joel and challenged him to run an ultra marathon in support of their organisation, which builds schools and provides educational programming in the developing world.

"As soon as that seed got planted I just had to do it, so back in 2012 I ran my first ultra and we ended up raising about $27,000 for charity," Joel recalls.

Joel on a recent visit to a Pencils of Promise school in Laos

"After doing that we got to go to Guatemala and see the school we'd built and meet the kids. I thought: 'How can we take this to another level and do something that actually seems physically impossible to me?'

"So I decided that the next project I would do was 777. I kept finding out about these ridiculous cool ultras across the world, so we picked out seven on seven different continents and just decided to go after it. That's how I got to wanting to do the project."

And so 777 was born, the full project name referring to the fact that the money raised from running seven ultras on seven continents would be put towards building seven schools with Pencils of Promise.

Unsurprisingly, given the scale of the undertaking, this would prove to be far from simple.

Ultra #1 – September 2014 – Patagonia International Marathon (South America) Joel's first ultra took him to Patagonia, a region in South America that encompasses southern parts of both Argentina and Chile. The race itself takes place on the Chilean side, in Torres del Paine National Park. If Joel had been hoping for a smooth take-off for the project, he was out of luck.

"I was 26 miles into a 40-mile race. I was coming around a curve and there were 25mph winds, which shifted and blew me across the road," he recalls. "I ended up coming down this hill way off balance and rolling my ankle pretty badly. But at the time I thought: 'Okay, it's just a little messed up.' So I ran-slash-hobbled the last 13 or 14 miles on it and thought I'd be okay…

Joel in Patagonia, possibly run-slash-hobbling post-ankle injury

"When I went to the doctor they said I'd torn my peroneal tendon pretty bad – it's the tendon that goes from your toe to your knee – so I had to do six months of rehab after the first race!

"It was just one of those things; I'd done all this work to announce it, to get ready for the first race and have everything planned, and then immediately had to change everything."

Ultra #2 – October 2016 – Chicago Ultra 50k (North America) The project was put on hold while Joel went through six months of rehab and dealt with some challenges affecting his businesses (which he has explained in more detail by way of video and blog post).

Some might have suspected the 777 project was dead in the water, but after a long period lying dormant it started up again without warning.

Joel in Chicago

"We lined up the races and knocked them out in like five months. It was pretty quick once we decided to go after it," says Joel, who was targeting completing all seven before he turned 30. The first was Chicago.

"It was kind of a race to figure out if I could still do this. I didn't tell anybody I was going to do it, I just showed up with my brother. It was a race for my confidence levels, to say: 'Hey, even if this is really tough you can still run these.' Chicago is my hometown, it's where I ran my first ultra, and it's where I got my confidence back."

Ultra #3 – December 2016-January 2017 – Narrabeen All Night Marathon (Australia) Having got back in the saddle, things began to move quickly. Ultra number three was a 12-hour overnight relay event in Sydney that began in 2016 and ended in 2017. Here, the challenge was as much mental as physical.

"Starting on New Year's Eve at 6pm, you run 1.5 miles out and 1.5 miles back as many times as possible," explains Joel. "It's like a mind game – you pass the same tree 20 times and by the end you think: 'I never want to see that tree again!'

Ultra #4 – January 2017 – Antarctica Ice Marathon (Antarctica) From Australia's high summer, Joel next pitched up in Antarctica less than three weeks later for what sounds like the loneliest marathon on the planet.

"There were 10 of us running the race. Antarctica is surreal – a really weird place – and I ended up running the 100k, which was easily the farthest I'd done up to that point."

The event is not just lonely in terms of the small entry list. Picture a marathon and you'll probably imagine streets lined with cheering supporters, urging the runners on. Unsurprisingly, there's not a great deal of fan participation this close to the South Pole.

"Nobody's out there," says Joel. "There's no crowd support and no sound anywhere. If you stop and hold your breath for a few seconds you don't hear anything. I've never experienced anything like that – it's a crazy place."

Ultra #5 – February 2017 – The North Face 50k Thailand (Asia) Asia was ticked off the list with a 50k in Thailand. While not the longest event, Joel remembers it as the greatest challenge.

"People have asked me what the toughest part of 777 was. I had all these crazy, weird experiences, but the toughest one for me was this 50k, which isn't even that far." (Speak for yourself, mate).

"It was relatively hilly, but I came into it feeling confident after doing the 100k. There were a lot of hills in the first half, but there was only supposed to be one on the back half.

"I'd misread the elevation chart and everything about it, so apparently this last hill, instead of being a relatively wide dirt road that we'd been running on, transformed into a single-track, straight up for two miles. You couldn't run it – you had to pretty much power-hike it and there were tree branches to move out the way. It took a decent amount of mental energy just to make sure your footing was okay.

"I thought more about quitting during that one section than in the whole project. In my mind I was like: 'You could just turn around…'

"That race was short but it tried to break me. Between the heat and the climbing and the type of track, it was just gnarly."

Ultra #6 – February 2017 – Rovaniemi 66k (Europe) Despite his suffering in Thailand, Joel's next ultra took place just 13 days later, in the considerably colder climes of Finland. "It was 66k, mostly on ice: frozen rivers and ponds," he says, before explaining that this event also posed some big challenges.

"The water bladder that I was going to take broke 10 minutes before the race, so I took another water bottle instead. I ran out of water a little way into the race, so I started eating snow.

"Halfway through we got to a stopping point and I was able to melt snow over a camp fire and put it into my water bottle. After two miles that water was so cold – I think it was minus 16 out there – and the bottle froze solid. I got lost two times, and when I finished my entire right foot was swollen and purple; I thought I'd fractured it, but the doctors said I'd just worked it too hard.

"That race is probably my favourite story – in fact, I tell people it was more of an expedition than a race."

Ultra #7 – April 2017 – Two Oceans Marathon 56km (Africa) After injury, isolation and an expedition, the challenge ended with a comparatively – though not entirely trouble-free – 56km ultra in South Africa. By completing it, Joel became one of just five people to run an ultra on all seven continents.

"After Finland I gave myself a month to heal up and feel good about the foot, then went down to do the Two Oceans. I ended up running it with a buddy. It was nice to finish the whole project at a big race. There were 11,000 people running the race and crowd support the whole way. So it was cool to finish in that environment."

* * *

Having initially raised $156,000 – just short of the targeted $175,000 and enough for six schools – Joel partnered up with Jesse Itzler, an entrepreneur and fellow ultra runner.

"Jesse has a fitness challenge that he puts out on the internet called We Do Hard Stuff. For every finisher that month he'll donate $100 to a charity. I'd known him for a year or so and I reached out and said: 'Hey, what do you think about making Pencils of Promise and 777 your charity of the month, and anything that you guys raise I'll match.'"

READ MORE: Meet the Scottish Ultra Runner Tackling an Ice Marathon

Jesse agreed, and brought a friend on board who also agreed to put in $100 per finisher. Through this a further $36,000 was raised, bringing the 777 total to a little over $192,000. With Joel having completed seven ultras on seven continents, the next step will be to see seven new schools built in the developing world.

* * *

While raising money for Pencils of Promise was the main goal of this project, Joel's approach sheds light on the mindset of ultra runners.

Running is therapeutic, and potentially very addictive. If you asked every person on an ultra why they did it, you'd get a whole range of responses. For Joel, it's more about what they give you psychologically than physically.

"There's always a point where you hurt; there's always going to be something that comes up," he says. "Like, it's minus 16 and my water's frozen; or I'm overheating in a Thai jungle; or I'm in Australia and I can't see a couple of feet in front of me. There's always that option to quit, go home, not deal with the pain anymore. The reason I run ultras is to get to that point and then keep going. Because every single time I do it I get stronger, I become a better runner. And I try to take that mindset and put it into my life. Because when I'm really uncomfortable, in pain and tired but can figure out how to keep going, in my day-to-day life it's so much easier to recognise that same mindset of 'this is tough, I want to quit and go home.' That's why I run.

"If you decide it doesn't matter what happens – 'If I have to crawl for 20 hours that's what I'm going to do' – then when stuff does show up you're not surprised. It's a case of: 'I'm in pain and I was expecting that, so let's keep going.'

While his doctors may not be entirely on board with that attitude, seven new schools in the developing world seems like an outcome well worth suffering for.

@Jim_Weeks

Meet the Man Who's Just Run an Ultra Marathon on All Seven Continents published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[golfchillicothe]

TIGER’S BLOG: MY GOAL REMAINS TO WIN

Woods pleased with his showing at Hero World Challenge and looks forward to returning to Riviera By Tiger Woods

I hope you enjoyed the holidays!

I am working hard to sharpen my game for 2017, and my goal is simple: to win. Winning takes care of itself.

This year, I’ll start my season at the Farmers Insurance Open and then head to Dubai for the Omega Dubai Desert Classic. Next up will be the Genesis Open followed by The Honda Classic here at home.

I’m still testing clubs and trying to find the best ball-wood combo. What people don’t realize is that Bridgestone made the Nike golf ball for a number of years. It’s a great ball and making the switch wasn’t that hard. I’m really excited to join the Bridgestone team. For now, I’ll probably stick with some of my old Nike equipment, and use my Scotty Cameron putter. I’m also proud to be working with Monster and look forward to the things we’ll do together.

Returning to Riviera Country Club for the Genesis Open, Feb. 16-19, is going to be great. Although I haven’t competed there since 2006, it’s where I played in my first PGA TOUR event in 1992 at age 16. It’s huge for my foundation and a big test for my TGR Live team, which will run the tournament, because we’re coming home to Riviera with all its history. It was actually the first PGA TOUR event I attended with my dad, which makes it more special.

Unfortunately, I’ve only played well there one time. But I’ve got a guy on my bag, Joe LaCava, and his former guy [Fred Couples] plays well there every year.

Looking back on 2016, the last few months were pretty big.

TGR Design’s first U.S. course, Bluejack National near Houston, was chosen as the No. 1 new private course in the country by Golf Digest and Golf Magazine/Sports Illustrated. I am so excited because it’s a vision of how I think golf should be played. It’s fun and challenging but also very open, making it difficult to lose golf balls. You buy a dozen balls and lose a dozen balls on most golf courses.

I am also excited about the opening of The Oasis Short Course, our new 12-hole par-3 design at Diamante Cabo San Lucas. With this design, I’m trying to go back to my roots. I grew up playing Heartwell, a par-3 course in Long Beach, California. That’s how I got introduced to golf.

Golf now is almost impossible to play in less than five hours, so why don’t we open things up? We can play faster and have more fun in an entertaining environment — like a short course — where everyone can participate, practice and learn the game, and kids can play without being overwhelmed by a big golf course.

I’m also looking forward to the work we’ll do in Chicago at the Jackson Park and South Shore Courses. It’s a challenging project that should be a lot of fun too.

It’s hard to believe my foundation turned 20 this fall. I know Pop would be very proud of what we’ve accomplished. I believe we’re changing the world one child at a time through education, and I’m grateful to all my friends and supporters who gathered at the New York Public Library to help me celebrate this milestone. My good friend Phil Knight joined me on stage, and we bantered about golf and my plans to expand the foundation globally. It’s one of those nights I’ll never forget.

I thought what I did at the Hero World Challenge was a positive step. I just need to keep building off that and eliminate the simple mistakes I made. Being away from the game that long, I made some really dumb errors I don’t normally make, and it cost me. On top of that, I got a couple bad breaks and didn’t recover from them. My good stuff was really good, which is a great sign.

That first tee shot was a little weird to me because it was left to right, and the wind was howling off the left. I had just seen Matt Kuchar slice the ball into the desert on the right, and he never misses a fairway. I decided to go for a low, pull-cut up the left side and hit a straight money ball right between the bunkers.

From there, I had a pitching wedge from 150. I played for a flyer and it came out perfectly. From then on, I was fine. I was back at a tournament again, no problem, no issues. At the second hole, I stuffed it in there and felt comfortable the rest of the way.

The only doubt I had was the physicality of the round — the length and duration — because I hadn’t been able to practice or play much golf. I got sick just before Thanksgiving and lost about 10 pounds. All three of us [my children Sam and Charlie] got blitzed by a virus, and it kicked our butts. I didn’t know how much energy I would have, and I ran out of gas all four days.

That was my biggest concern. If I just had to play the event, totally cool. But I had to host and do a bunch of other things outside the normal golf tournament, which is fine, but draining.

Shooting 65 in the second round felt great, but more than anything, keeping my card clean meant the most. The fact that I didn’t drop a shot that day showed I had come a long way.

I want to give special thanks to Hero and its Chairman, Managing Director and CEO Pawan Munjal, Tavistock, all the members and staff at Albany, my foundation and the TGR Live staff. They went over and above.

I know many people doubted whether I would play competitive golf again, and to be honest, even I wasn’t sure. A year ago at Hero, I was asked the question and gave a completely different answer. But after a year of working harder than I’ve ever worked to get back, I knew it was possible.

My love for the game never left. It’s just that the body would not allow me to play. Now my body is allowing me to do it again. Combine that with the amount of support I have received from so many people, and the help I’ve had from players and friends, and there is great reason for optimism.

I was overwhelmed by the guys on our Ryder Cup team. The old guard knew me, but not the younger guys. They didn’t know what to expect because they had never been in a team room with me. But the way they treated me and the excitement they had for me being out there on the golf course watching them play … it was inspiring for me to see them go at it like that and do everything they possibly could for one another.

You’d see guys walk to dinner together, eat together and just generally interact, and you didn’t have to tell them. It was a closeness that was more apparent than any other team I’ve been on.

They got me good in the team room Friday night. It was hot, and they all wore these red, white and blue onesies with ‘USA’ on the front, a gift from Rickie Fowler. Zach Johnson stood up and thanked me for my contributions to the game. He had given every player a red T-shirt, which they wore under the onesies. They all stood, unzipped the front, and the T-shirt read, ‘MAKE TIGER GREAT AGAIN.’

Many of them know what I went through because they live in the Jupiter area. Some of their kids go to the same school as my kids, so we see each other quite a bit. They saw me at Medalist trying to make a golf swing and said, ‘Don’t hurt yourself. Wait and be patient. You’re not ready yet.’ So I took their advice until it was go time.

I recently played with President-elect Donald Trump. What most impressed me was how far he hits the ball at 70 years old. He takes a pretty good lash.

Our discussion topics were wide-ranging; it was fun. We both enjoyed the bantering, bickering and needling. I also shared my vision for golf and what I’m trying to do.

We didn’t have a match and played for fun. I was testing drivers and fairway woods, and changed some settings. I think he enjoyed seeing the difference in shots when you experiment.

I’ve now had the privilege of playing golf with Mr. Trump, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and I appreciate the opportunity.

A shout-out to Stanford football for beating North Carolina in the Sun Bowl and finishing at 10-3. Notah Begay III, my former teammate and close friend, served as honorary captain for the game and did his job.

Finally, I am heartbroken about the injury to Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr, who was having an MVP season. Typical football, next man up. You’re one play away from having a devastating injury, and that’s just the way it is. Hopefully, guys will rally and take it as far as they can. I’ll be pulling for them in the playoffs.

Best wishes for a safe, happy and healthy new year.

Source: Tigerwoods.com

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