#hey remember the lizard election

[bunny-banana]

like. please name just one other website that has organised an annual April's fool joke for the entire usebase for years

[ckret2]

Ghidorah & Gigan Crash the Opera

It's hard for a blade-covered chicken-penguin cyborg and a three-headed snake-cat-bat dragon to get opera tickets.

But it's fine, Gigan has a plan: convince the ticket seller they're VIPs.

... Or, failing that, plan B: mug somebody.

Written to an anon’s prompt: "Hello! If ye be currently accepting ghid/gigan prompts rn (honestly love the ship too), how about the destructive duo crashing an opera performance or something like that? Love your work!" and to @soundwavereporting‘s prompt “Something for either rodorah or Ghidorah/Gigan? :D” from ko-fi.

This is part of an ongoing series of KOTM-verse one-shots. If you don’t wanna read the others, all you need to know is: Ghidorah was originally three dorats (small winged feline/lizard pets) who were turned into a monster by Xilien aliens; after Ghidorah escaped the Xiliens and before they arrived on Earth, they worked as world-destroying mercenaries and occasionally teamed up with Gigan; Ghidorah objects to being named so Gigan mercilessly nicknames them; and Ghidorah and Gigan have mutual semi-secret crushes. Links to the other fics are in the source at the bottom of this post.

###

"Where are the lines?" the triple threat asked. Gigan watched as they stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to peer at the ground around their feet, and then toward the opera hall. "We can never remember our seating footprint," they said, a tad more irritably, "how are we supposed to calculate it?"

Every planet that served as an interstellar hub eventually had to deal with the fact that intelligent aliens came in as many different sizes as planets themselves did. Some planets carefully planned separate neighborhoods and business districts to cater to different sizes ranges, segregating aliens out by height; some catered only to aliens their own size, leaving any aliens too large or small to fit in to fend for themselves.

Stellae Binariae XI's entertainment venues took full advantage of easily-retractable furniture to provide seating for as wide a variety of sizes as possible. A standard bench was designed to hold ten aliens of the most average size in the local interstellar community. Benches were retracted into the ground to provide a seating space for aliens too big to fit on one, their seats assigned based on height—tallest in the back to avoid obstructing each other's views—while seats for standard-sized and smaller aliens were set up into bleachers in the front. The large aliens had their ticket prices calculated based on the number of benches one of their seats would take up—their "footprint"—while smaller aliens' ticket prices were calculated based on the number of standard seats they took up. The very smallest could pack together ten to one seat and see a show on a single ticket, as long as they didn't mind sitting in the front.  

Gigan and his buddies, however, shelled out hundreds of times more than the average customer for the honor of sitting on the floor in the back.

"This isn't some cheap second-run theater, they don't have lines," Gigan said. The three of them were used to that theater chain that printed rectangles on the lobby floor you could stand inside to guesstimate your footprint. "Stop looking so cranky, someone's gonna think we're here to burn the opera house down."

"We are cranky, it's late. We're tired."

By their standards, "late" was "any time past sundown." Gigan sent a ripple of brighter red light from one side of his optical visor to the other in an attempt to imitate eyes rolling. "It's barely nighttime," he said. "Anyway, you suck at using the lines, you always buy twice as much space as you need."

"We do not. We get the smallest space we can stand inside."

"You always include your wings! You tuck your wings under you when you sit, you don't need that much space."

"We don't want to be crowded. What do we do if we get to our seat and it's not enough space?"

"You could stretch out on my lap?" Gigan said, the absolute picture of innocence.

They smacked his leg with the side of a tail. "Be serious."

He kind of was, but he wasn't going to tell them that now.

The Eburnean Opera House was, Gigan suspected, the only venue on Stellae Binariae XI that not only accommodated aliens their size but also was fancy enough to mandate a minimal dress code even for aliens with a license proving nudity was the cultural norm for their species—which, of course, having no ties to their home worlds, neither Gigan nor the trio had a license for anyway.

(Gigan—after what felt like an eon's worth of wheedling and a mountain's worth of gold bribery—had gradually persuaded the trio to give him enough of their shed skins to patch together a snazzy-looking vest and pouched belt. The three of them, for the sake of not getting any more dirty looks than they were already bound to just because of their size, had elected for the evening to conform to the cultural mores of one of the more influential species in this solar system, which considered any body parts in excess of a standard bipedal plan to be signs of an impending budding and therefore taboo to expose in public. They'd wrapped up in sheer red shawls—stolen tents—and draped two as veils over Front-And-Center and Righty's faces, leaving Lefty unobstructed and thus in charge of observing the world on their behalf. They all looked very fancy and felt very uncomfortable. Although Gigan was digging the belt pouches.)

Most facilities that prided themselves on their exclusivity tended to exclude bodies that didn't fit in the local cultural limits for normalcy, size included. But this two-thousand-year-old structure, from what Gigan had heard, had been sponsored by and named for some big patron of the arts—with "big" meaning both "famous" and "huge." That was probably only the reason they'd be let in the door at all.

No discounts for being the size of the guy they named this place for, though. An average seat in this place probably costed as much as one movie usually did for Gigan and friends. He was about to drop a small fortune on seats.

Worth it though, if he got to take the triple threat to their first opera.

"Don't worry about your footprint," Gigan told them. "I know what size you are, I'll buy your ticket."

"If you don't give us enough space, we will sit on you." They paused. "Don't look so happy about it."

"Happy? You're seeing your own reflection off my beak. You wish you had an excuse to take a seat on this." He gestured at himself.

He wasn't sure which head scoffed, but he'd put money on Righty.

As usual, they skipped most of the line to the tickets by casually pretending they didn't notice it as they stepped over it. Gigan crouched down to smirk at the knee-height ticket seller. "Hey!"

The ticket seller looked up at him disapprovingly, clicked a button at his desk, and waited while the entire box office slowly elevated to eye level with Gigan. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah, we're here to get tickets for, uh, The Devil in Love?" In his peripheral vision, he could see all three heads perk up. Yeah, he thought so. He hadn't told them which opera he was going to take them to. This one, as far as he could tell, was their favorite—certainly, he constantly caught them singing songs from it.

"What name are your tickets being held under?"

"No no, we don't have them yet," Gigan said. "We're here to purchase."

The ticket seller's look of disapproval deepened. "We don't have spare seating for guests of your stature the day of a performance," he said. "Nor usually the month of a performance."

"Oh, no worries, you've got room for us. We're VIPs, see," Gigan said. "Here. Our credentials." He rummaged in a hip pouch on his belt until the magnetic back of his tablet stuck to his scythe, pulled it out and tapped with the tip of his other scythe on the screen, and held it out for the ticket seller to inspect.

He looked skeptically at the page Gigan had pulled up. "This is a news article about a planet being destroyed?"

"It sure is," Gigan said, leaning in with a faux conspiratorial hush to his voice. "And we're the monsters that destroyed it. Like I said, pal—we're VIPs. And we're willing to make ourselves very immense problems if we don't get to see this show."

Getting the picture, his buddies raised their chest and arced their necks to surround the ticket seller's box, doing their best to loom threateningly. "Threatening" didn't take much effort for them.

The ticket seller looked between them and Gigan. "Ah. Yes. I understand. Shall I call someone to escort you? He gestured with a flourish toward one of the larger stickers mounted on the box office window. It said "Zone Family Security."

Gigan's back went straight "Oh! Y—y'know what? You guys look like you've got a pretty busy night, we can... we'll come back when it's less crowded."

The ticket seller nodded smugly.

The trio stared at Gigan in disbelief. "What?"

"Come on!" Gigan leaned against Righty, slung an arm around their shoulders, and didn't make any efforts to be gentle as he dug his scythe into Lefty's neck. "C'mon, c'mon, it's fine. Let's go."

"What is it?" Lefty tried to peer at the sticker as Gigan tugged them away. Front-And-Center ducked around Righty to give Gigan a baffled look through his veil. "We're not running from security guards?"

"It's not just security, it's Peacelanders," Gigan hissed. "We don't mess with Peacelanders."

"Why?" "How tough can they be, they're called Peacelanders." "We wanna fight 'em." They tried to turn back around.

Gigan dug his scythe in harder. "Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh. No. We are not fighting the Zone family."

"So we're just going to leave without seeing the show?!" "After we got all dressed up?"

Gigan grabbed for the nearest head—Righty, as it happened—and tugged him over so he could whisper to him quietly enough that the sound couldn't carry to the ground. "Of course we're not leaving," he hissed. "I promised you an opera, didn't I?" He nodded toward a narrow alleyway—well, to them it was a narrow alleyway; to most other aliens it was a broad empty street that was blocked off with a sign that said Opera Access For Gigantic Patrons. "We're just not going in the front door."

###

"Seriously, why are you so tired?" Gigan asked, leaning away as Front-And-Center let out a massive fang-exposing yawn. "It's only a couple hours past sunset, you should be fine." And they'd only been waiting on the rooftop of the warehouse neighboring the alleyway for about half an hour.

"Ih's cloudy," Lefty said through a yawn of his own; Gigan elbowed him to get him to turn his face away. Now Lefty was gonna set off Righty and Righty was gonna set off Front-And-Center again. "We're always sleepy when it's been cloudy a few days." (And there was Righty's yawn.)

Gigan shook his head. "I swear that's the biggest irony of your lives," he said.

"Hmm?"

"The Golden Demise! Superpower number one: automatically summons hurricanes with every flap of their dread wings. Superpower number two: solar powered." (He noted, smugly, that Front-And-Center had just yawned again.)

"'The golden demise,' what is that?" "Did you just make that up?"

"I'm trying to think up a title for you guys to market yourselves under. Not a name," he knew how tetchy they were about the idea of being named, "just—something customers can look up if they wanna find you."

"Customers already find us."

"More would find you if they had a name they could search for instead of 'hey, we want this merc that's really good at flattening planets, no idea what they're called, ring any bells?'"

That earned Gigan a double snort. Fronty said, "'Golden demise' sounds pretentious as hell."

Gigan leaned away and gave them an exaggerated up and down. "You are pretentious!"

"We're sophisticated," they said pretentiously. Gigan hooted.

"Anyway," Righty said, weaving between the other two to lean closer to Gigan, "that's not the biggest irony of our lives."

"What, you've got a bigger one?"

"Yes," Righty said, mischief glimmering in his eyes.

"Okay." Gigan waited. "You gonna tell me what it is?"

"No," Righty said.

Gigan waved Righty off in a way that very nearly decapitated him, and leaned against Lefty. "So what's Righty's big irony."

"I dunno," he said cheerfully.

"What?"

"He won't tell us."

"What?!" Gigan flung up his arms in disbelief. "You can hide things from each other?"

"He can." Front-And-Center tapped his horns against Righty's. "We're not so good at it."

"Why do you even have that ability?"

Righty said, "Solely and exclusively to torment you."

"I'd believe it," Gigan grumbled. His attention was caught by the gate at the alleyway's entrance as it slowly rolled open. "Oh," he elbowed them, "here we go." A luminous ivory-colored slug riding on what looked like a parade float progressed down the alleyway, accompanied by practically an army of small quadrupeds wearing glowing jewelry that matched the slug's off-white glow. "Between slimy here and its entourage, they've gotta have a big enough seating footprint for the four of us, right?"

They leaned forward, their heads tilting thoughtfully. "If it plans on sitting on its big skateboard," Fronty finally said.

"I can't imagine it'd get off, where would they stow it?" Gigan stood. "Okay, showtime. Get your battle faces on."

Lefty shook his head to loosen up his neck, Front-And-Center stretched his jaw with a hiss that made his veil flutter, and Righty snapped his fangs a couple of times. "After you."

Gigan slammed down in front of the little parade, clashing his scythes together. "Good evening!" The triple threat hit the ground behind the parade, hissing static and sparks. Between them, the tiny bipeds clustered up around their slug, who rippled fearfully. Cheerily, Gigan said, "Wonderful night for an opera, isn't it? My friends here and I were hoping to go, in fact, but they didn't have spare seats for us. Imagine!"

He pointed at the slug, the tip of his scythe almost near enough to slash its quivering throat. "I don't suppose you have spare tickets, do you?"

###

Gigan pulled the curtain aside. "Nice! A private box!" He pulled down a cushion scaled to his size from the wall, dropped it on the floor, and plopped down. "Now this is real luxury. We wouldn't get this with orchestra section tickets." He pulled up the drinks and snacks menu on the touch screen at the front of the box. "Concessions too! Do you think they deliver or do we have to pick them up?"

They sat on the floor with their legs folded under them, crossed their wings on the box railing, and Lefty got to work scoping out the facility while Front-And-Center and Righty peered curiously at the stage. "Were concessions covered in their ticket price?" Fronty asked. "Or are they purchased à la carte?"

"À la carte, listen to you. You're almost starting to talk like people." Gigan elbowed them. They whapped him from behind with a tail. He must be on thin ice; the spikes almost got him that time. "No prices listed, so who knows. But we didn't have to buy tickets, so we can cover it."

With his mandatory survey of the room finished, Lefty twisted around to inspect the menu too. Righty asked, "Any fossil fuels?"

"Didn't see any in the snacks, but I haven't gotten to the drinks menu yet."

"Any samplers?" Fronty asked. Lefty butted Gigan's shoulder, "I want tapas."

"You'll just lick everything."

"You can eat what we don't like."

"What, after you lick it?" But despite his protests, Gigan scooted over to let Lefty take over the touch screen. He uncurled one wing to poke at the screen with the tip.

If there was a way to order, they couldn't figure it out from the touch screen. They decided someone was probably supposed to come around to take their order. By the time they started wondering where their waiter was, the lights dimmed, and so they settled in for the show.

###

For the first fifteen minutes, the trio was enthralled. Front-And-Center and Rightly flipped up their veils and all three stretched out of the box, watching with rapt attention as the performers on stage sang the opening numbers, quietly rattling their tails to the beat of the music.

Then Righty's attention drifted, followed by Lefty's. By the half hour mark, Fronty's attention was wandering as well.

At about forty minutes, Gigan gave; for all that he appreciated operas as one of the finer things life could offer, he didn't go to them for the entertainment so much as he did for the social cachet. This one sure wasn't doing anything for him, and if it wasn't doing anything for his friends then he could skip the rest. He elbowed them and scrolled a single word across his optical visor: "BORING?" One of them clicked his tongue in the affirmative. Gigan jerked his beak toward the curtain. The next time there was applause, they took the opportunity to cover the noise of their exiting the box.

"They just stood there singing at each other." "We at least expected dancing!" "And where did they get the lead contralto, she's clearly got her wings tuned to sing at equal temperament when the whole orchestra is using just intonation."

"Okay, I was with you but then you lost me."

They offered a triple sneer. "We could sing in tune with the marimba section better than her if we were using a tesla coil."

Gigan held back a squawk of laughter.

The right two shook their veils back down in place. "Let's raid the concessions stand, come back for the ingénue's solo, and blow this place."

"Blow like leave it or destroy it?"

They tilted their heads, considering the question. "Leave it," Front-And-Center decreed. "We can see a better show later."

Here Gigan had been afraid he'd turned them off to opera forever. "Hey, at least we saw this one free." They started down the spiral ramp to the ground level. "It'll be easier to afford the next one."

"We've got to find a cheaper way to get tickets. Think they'll notice if we keep mugging people for seats?"

"Maybe we can slap leashes on you and claim you're my support animal," Gigan joked.

They looked thoughtful.

"Oh no."

"Is this one of the states where support pets get their seating footprint for free?" "It's about half of Stellae Binariae XI now, right?"

For a moment, Gigan allowed himself to bask in the fantasy of locking three collars around the willing throats of a monster that could slaughter him without a second thought. It was a very nice fantasy.

But no. Playing at being a pet was one thing. He could get into it if it was just playing. Under the circumstances, though, he was pretty sure that would just go further to convince the trio that they were pets. How many centuries had he spent now trying to get them to treat themselves like people?

"Not gonna work," Gigan said. "We'd have to get documentation to prove your species is used as support animals."

"We were support animals," Lefty said, and Righty quickly clarified, "We weren't, we weren't trained for that. Our species was." Fronty said, "We're not about to call home for proof, though."

"Well, there goes that idea."

As they reached the bottom of the ramp, they slowed down. The way off the ramp was blocked by a small party standing in the lobby talking together: the giant slug they'd robbed earlier and its entourage, and several bipeds of wildly varying heights with matching silver armor and glowing eyes... Oh. Oh. Hoo boy. That was the Zone family. Gigan froze and held out an arm to block the trio from walking forward. They walked into it with a clang of metallic scales on metallic scythe.

The whole party in the lobby turned to look at Gigan and friends.

They stared back.

Gigan croaked, "Hey! Funny running into you, we just, uh... wanted to ask if you wanted to switch for the rest of the show? We're heading out early." In his peripheral vision, he could see flickers of yellow electricity as lightning slowly worked its way up two of the trio's throats. Gigan elbowed them.

The tallest of the Zones turned to the slug and said, "Are these the muggers who stole your tickets, Madam Goddess Eburnea?"

"Eburnea!" Gigan said, his voice going even higher. "As—as in the Eburnea that the Eburnean Opera Hall was named after?"

The Zone nodded slowly.

Gigan slowly nodded back. Then turned to the trio and said, very calmly, "Fly for your lives."

###

They made it out in one piece.

And the opera hall almost did too.

(And Gigan accidentally cut off his own belt with his abdominal buzzsaw. Now he had to drape it around his shoulders like a scarf.)

Eburnea's devout worshippers agreed to drop charges, if they agreed never to set foot in the state again and each prostrated themselves before Eburnea a thousand times.

Gigan wasn't sure how the triple threat managed to convince Eburnea that each one of their bows counted for three; but as they wandered around loudly griping about how long Gigan's was taking and debating (out loud, which meant they were only doing it because they wanted him to hear it) whether they should just fly off and leave him behind, he kind of hated them for it.

But not really.

###

The four of them retreated a couple of states away, found a neighborhood with some buildings built to accommodate their size, and grabbed seats at an outdoor table in front of a closed cafe as they pondered what to do with the rest of their night.

Fronty and Righty tossed their veils back to wear like scarves, no longer concerned about who they offended if they didn't have a fancy show to go to. Fronty scrolled through the tablet Gigan had loaned them looking for somewhere interesting that was still open and could accommodate their size, Lefty took in the street around them, and Righty leaned in toward the other two, gaze vacant, mentally withdrawn inward.

Gigan used to think that when their attention went three different directions like that, it meant only one of them was focused on the task at hand; but over time it had dawned on him that they did that because there was no reason all three of them should have to stare together at the same object when each of them already saw what the other two saw.  Fronty went through the tablet, and because of that Lefty and Righty could consider the available options. Lefty looked around, and because of that Fronty and Righty knew what the street looked like. Whatever Righty was pondering, the other two were no doubt tuned in to.

And meanwhile, the outsider tagging along on this little committee meeting, Gigan sat backwards on a chair at the next table and watched them.

Sometimes, when they were in motion, looking at them was like looking at three marionettes someone had spray painted the same color, snipped apart at the joints, and tossed into a washing machine with a window in front: an anarchic tumble of shapes and body parts that never quite seemed to connect to each other in any logical way.

But then, sometimes when they were still like this—sitting on a chair turned sideways, leaning one side against the back, their feet curled up in the seat, their wings crossed on a table and taking up the entire surface, a single street lamp illuminating them in orangish light from the side—he saw them all as one continuous, sinuous, glorious shape.

Sitting behind them, the light shining straight through the sheer fabric delicately wrapped around their shoulders and back, he could trace the entire length of their left and right spines with his optic: from their napes nearly hidden beneath their crowns of horns, down the centers of their necks, over the curves of their upper back where their spines crossed through two sets of powerful muscles, down to the point where their spines narrowed toward each other along the small of their back, over their hips, along the length of their tails to their twin barbed rattles... He could see the slightest asymmetries around their spines, the evidence of ancient surgeries: the way their right upper back was a little bit wider and their left upper back hunched a little bit higher; the scarred lump near the base of the right tail where part of one spine had been grafted to another; the cleft between the vestigial shoulder muscles in the middle of their back where their middle spine dipped in and vanished from view. Their dull gold glowed in this light.

Gigan couldn't remember what his body had looked like before he'd been a cyborg—if he'd ever known what it had looked like. But he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that before he'd had scythes, he must have had some sort of—of fins, or vestigial wings, hell, maybe even tentacles—something like that at the end of his arms. Something that tapered to a soft point that could feel. And he knew that because when he looked at them like this, he craved so badly to run his whatever-he'd-had-down their back, tracing alongside each row of barbs that ran down their spines, all the way from the napes of their necks to the tips of their tails. But all he had was scythes.

"There's karaoke a short flight away. Open all night," Lefty reported without glancing at the tablet. Righty added, in that slightly dazed voice he sometimes got when he was exiting the triple threat's inner mental landscape and reconnecting with the real world, "We'll have to duck to get through the doorways, but we should fit."

"What're the drinks like?" Gigan asked.

"Let us check." After a moment, they grumbled, "Overpriced."

"For us, or in general?"

"In general."

He made an annoyed buzz. "We'll jack some rocket fuel on the way over."

"That works." They stretched their wings, slid off the chair, and waited for Gigan to retrieve his tablet.

"So, what's tonight's playlist going to be?" Gigan asked as he checked the map to the karaoke bar. "The opera we missed?"

They considered it. "No." "We're feeling more like cheesy war songs."

"Ooh, haven't heard the death growls in a while. Better get a private room."

He stowed the tablet in a pouch and they took off.

###

(Replies/reblogs are welcome & encouraged! Check the “source” link below for my masterlist of KOTM fics in this verse, as well as my AO3 and Ko-fi links.)

[bethhxrmon]

All I Ask of You Pt. 33

“There is something due any day, I will know right away soon as it shows”- “Something’s Coming” from West Side Story

Pairing: Peter Parker x Female OC

Word Count: 2.1k

Summary: Kind of a filler and kind of a setup

Warnings: Fillery writing, probably not my best but go off ig

A/N: Hey!!!! So I went on kind of a long hiatus because of school and stuff. It lasted longer than I meant for it to, but I needed the time off. I hope you guys all understand! As always, the masterlist is in my bio!

“I can’t believe it took us a whole month to talk Mr. Iron Dad over here to let us get ice cream,” Harper said with a light smirk.

Tony sighed, “You better watch it, we can go back home still.”

“Oh, come on, Mr. Stark! We’ve been doing nothing but working hard all this time, we need a break," Peter insisted as his eyes darted over to the pickup for ice cream.

Annie nodded eagerly, "I agree. Besides, the fluid is coming along great and my suit's nearly ready so I'm not wearing an over-glorified jumpsuit anymore."

"Hey! It was a good over-glorified jumpsuit that got you a long ways," Harper defended, waving her ice cream cone like a weapon.

Annie grinned, "Oh, I know. Just imagine how powerful I'll be with a decent suit... you know, I think that I could totally out-do Spider-Man if given half the chance."

"Yeah, right. In your dreams. I've been web-slinging around New York for way longer than you."

"And I've been a superhero for longer. Your point?" Annie asked, licking her ice cream.

Pepper shook her head slightly, "I'm just so proud of you guys. I never doubted any of you, but I always thought that it was insane you were all working so hard on something like this."

"It's because they're super cool heroes. Come on, they're basically Avengers!" Ned exclaimed.

Tony shushed them, "Could you guys keep your voices down? You know, it would be great to get you guys all hiding out across the country only for your identities to be revealed because you feel the need to yell out everything."

"Oh, calm down, we're only having fun. Besides, why isn't the Avengers dealing with this sort of thing? I mean, a big monster dude who probably wants people dead and can do so by mimicking powers seems like your kind of job. Just putting it out there," Annie claimed with a small shrug.

Tony sighed, "The Avengers are kind of complicated at the moment."

"You mean that you guys all broke up because of those Accords."

"That's not what I said."

"It's what you meant. I may just be some theater kid, but I'm not an idiot."

"Never said you were."

"Then admit it! You guys broke up because you couldn't agree over some pieces of paper that technically make what we're doing illegal. That's the real reason the Avengers aren't taking care of this. Because it's not a well-known enough threat for you guys to get the government on our side. This all has to be secret because it's so illegal," Annie responded, sighing.

Tony rolled his eyes, "Fine, it's illegal."

"I mean, let's be real here, legality isn't really morality," Harper pointed out.

Everyone looked at them, seeming a little surprised at Harper's input.

"What? I took a legal class for an elective one year. It was fun! I know how to get away with murder!"

Annie smirked, "That sounds more like you."

"And I wanted to see if I could change my parents' inheritance."

Ned tilted his head, "I thought you said that you didn't want any of their money."

"I don't! Trust me, it's not worth it. But it might be worth my other family members getting some money. Just, I don't want it going to that damn lizard!"

Annie nodded, "Yeah, that's fair enough. That lizard's a really weird thing to invest money into anyways."

"If you called it a lizard to their faces, they'd only say that it was a priceless heirloom of sorts and that it isn't a real lizard."

Annie sighed a little bit, "I still think it's complete bull that people are allowed to do that with money in the first place."

"Oh I know! People like them shouldn't even be allowed to have money, but here we are I guess," Harper said, taking another lick of their chocolate ice cream.

Peter sighed, "You know, it's taking them a while to get that ice cream..."

"Well, some of us didn't order the freaking suicide sundae thing that they have here," Annie pointed out teasingly.

Ned pouted, "Hey! We're sharing it and it's gonna be freaking great. You're just jealous that you didn't think to join in on our ice cream escapade."

"Actually, I'm relieved. I just wanted my cotton candy ice cream and that's what I got," Annie claimed.

Peter shook his head, "I don't know how you can eat that. It's like diabetes in a cone!"

"Because a ten scoop sundae has way less sugar than a cone."

Peter huffed, "I have a killer metabolism. And I have Ned on my side. We're gonna kill it and you're probably not even gonna finish your ice cream."

"That's a total lie!"

"Bet!"

"Fine, what happens if I win?"

"Um... I don't know. But I know that if I win, you have to kiss me?" Peter offered.

"Okay... now you're making me start to root for you," Annie replied with a wink.

Harper scoffed, "You two are so disgusting with your PDA and constant flirting! I think we should just let those two go out on a date on their own already. Just so I don't have to deal with this."

"Agreed, it's even worse than when they first started liking each other. It's so cute i think I could throw up from it," Ned said.

The teens ended up laughing, and that was when they saw the large sundae Peter and Ned were going to try to eat. It was several scoops and those scoops were enormous in and of themselves. They all looked at the ice cream with wide eyes.

"Well, I was rooting for you. Until I saw you guys got the Godzilla of sundaes. Good luck," Annie said, eyeing the ice cream.

Ned grinned, "Come on, Peter, we've totally got this! We'll show them for sure."

"Yeah, maybe you won't get a kiss if I win," Peter remarked.

"Oh, you're being full of it, Spidey!"

Tony shushed them again, "Remember what I said about not revealing identities?"

"Come on, Mr. Stark, no one's listening. You're just being paranoid about it. We're gonna be fine. Everyone's thinking Spider-Man's just on some sort of summer holiday or something probably. But I doubt anyone thinks he's here," Peter assured.

Annie and Harper went back to talking about Seattle, which mostly entailed Harper complaining about their parents and how everything had been going downhill ever since Harper had insisted on going to NYU for college.

"It's like they don't even think fashion design's a real major!" Harper exclaimed.

Annie shrugged, "I mean, some people don't think musical theatre is a real major either."

“Well, be realistic, is it a real major?” Tony asked.

Annie blinked, “It is.”

“How is it useful?”

“The skills you get from acting and a good stage presence are actually really beneficial. Not all of us want to be lawyers and professors. Some of us wanna win Best Actress at the Tony Awards after getting a Bachelor’s from Julliard.”

Pepper grinned, “You know what? I think that’s a good plan. Do you enjoy acting?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of my thing. You know, everyone has something they’re super good at. Like Harper has fashion, Stark’s got the whole leading superheroes thing, you have being a phenomenal CEO down to an art, Ned is a freaking wiz at random trivia facts which is beautiful, Peter is a science genius, and I have my acting,” Annie explained.

Peter beamed, “You think I’m a genius?”

“Well, yeah… hey, don’t look too cocky or I’ll take it back,” she said with a huff.

After a lot of talking and eating ice cream, there was still a few scoops of ice cream leftover from the sundae. Not wanting to waste any perfectly good ice cream, they decided to get to-go cups. It left Harper and Tony questioning what in the world the others were thinking.

"Oh come on, you and I both know that you'll be grateful once it's midnight and you're starving and you can just binge eat some ice cream," Annie pointed out, nudging her friend.

Harper sighed, "Okay, fine, I'll take it, but I'm not sure how accurate that is."

"Okay, you're just not used to not having your parents and everyone else around. You'll understand later," she said.

Once they were back at the cabins, Tony pulled Annie to the side.

"Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?" Tony asked.

Annie shrugged, "Depends. What're we talking about and is it gonna actually be a minute?"

"I think it's pretty important. And it might take more than a minute," Tony admitted.

She sighed, "Okay, what is it?"

Annie leaned against an evergreen tree, looking at Tony. What in the world he was about to talk to her about seemed to be wearing on him for around an hour. He looked like he was ready to start pacing back and forth for the next day.

"Do you know who your biological parents are?"

"No... why?"

"Have you ever been curious about it?"

"Um I guess. I mean, wouldn't anyone be? My current parents all that great. I don't really expect any better from parents who let me be experimented on, but I guess I think about it now and then. But again, why?" Annie asked, frowning.

Tony ran a hand through his hair, "Okay, this might be a little bit much. And keep in mind I may be totally wrong about this. You see, I was in Brazil around sixteen or seventeen years before. I might have fooled around. At the time I was a lot more thoughtless than I am now. And-"

"You think you're my biological dad, don't you?"

Tony nodded, pursing his lips together.

Annie sighed, "Okay, this is definitely a lot to process. But you might not even be my real dad. It's, like, a one in a million shot, right? But... if I think about it, we have similar hair colors and eye colors. But dark brown is such a common color too! It's totally impossible. Come on, Stark, be real here."

"But it could also be very possible. Don't tell me you haven't thought about it before."

"Okay, I've definitely thought about it before, but in all fairness I look at many adults that bear any kind of potential resemblance to me and look at them. And I can't help but wonder. You know better than to think that this would happen."

"But it's likely. And it's not totally beyond the realm of possibility, you do realize that, right?" Tony asked.

Annie bit her lip in thought, "So what you're saying is that you definitely want me to go and get a DNA test and try to find out which scumbag let me become some abandoned science experiment."

"It could be a good idea. You don't have to, but it might give both of us peace of mind."

"And what if you're actually my biological dad?"

"Well, I don't have any real rights towards you. Technically I never did since i didn't bother to track down the mom. But we would both know, and even if I can't take you in-"

"I wouldn't want any of your money, Stark. You better hope that you're not my biological father. There's no way you'd be able to make up for all the years I've spent wondering about where I come from. And more important than that, you can't make up for letting me become someone's science project," Annie insisted, crossing her arms.

Tony ran a hand through his hair, "I know, trust me, I know. My dad wasn't too great either, I know how it goes."

“Except you don’t. With all due respect, at this rate, I won’t have one good for nothing dad, but two.”

Tony paused for a moment and looked like he was about to say something, but his mouth stayed closed. That was when Annie fully realized what she said.

“Hey, wait, I um… I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“No, it’s okay, if that’s how things turn out, you’re kind of right.”

“No, it was uncalled for. You didn’t have any real way to know. And besides, it’s still up in the air. It’s both true and untrue… so I guess we could call it Schrodinger’s father?” Annie suggested.

“That’s not quite how it works,” Tony said with a slight laugh.

“Hey guys! I just realized something that’s super important! And we gotta get it sorted out asap!” Harper yelled, sprinting right up to them.

Annie frowned, “What is it?”

“Good news or bad news?”

“Bad news first,” Annie said.

“Right, so, a lot of my original concept art for the White Swan design is still in Seattle with my parents… so we really need to go back there, like, yesterday.”

“And the good news?” Tony prompted.

“Oh, yeah! I think the new suit’s done! You’ll love it, it’s a freaking masterpiece if I do say so myself.”

Annie nodded, “Well, if there’s any place that’s good for me to test it out, it’s Seattle. I’m feeling like we need a field trip.”

Taglist (ask if you wanna be added): @flushings-here / @gaypanda / @twilightparker / @parkerpuff / @ganseysblues / @lionsfandomsandbearsohmy / @ijustdontknowsometimes / @dolphinsarecuteandstuff / @lcy-thot / @moonstruckholland

[kootenaygoon]

So,

Cold tears lingered on my cheeks as we hiked downhill through ankle-deep snow, icy wind gusting up from Kootenay Lake and flowing full in our faces. We trudged from one streetlight to the next, squinting into the swirling darkness, lurching unsteadily. There were four or five of us migrating from a house party further up the hill, and none of us were dressed for this sudden blizzard. Paisley had me around my hips as she took careful steps down the sidewalk, and I pulled my coat tighter around my face. I’ve always been a wuss when it comes to winter, having grown up on the west coast, and I was contemplating a U-turn towards home—it was almost midnight and I knew Muppet and Buster were waiting to be cuddled. 

Since the beginning of our relationship neither Paisley or I had done much partying, as we’d settled into an increasingly cozy home life, but over Christmas we found ourselves navigating increasingly bombastic social scenarios that left us feeling like clueless ancients. Before we’d been feeling bored and under-stimulated, staying home all the time to order takeout and re-watch the Harry Potter series, but now we had the opposite problem—we were scrambling to keep up. As we crossed through the final intersection and rounded down to Front Street I wondered if there was anything at this upcoming party that could compare to luxuriating in a hot bath.

“I’m starting to ponder the nature of suffering here,” I said. “I’m like one minute away from dying in a snowbank.”      

“We’re almost there,” yelled back our friend Caelynn. “It’s right up in that building, the Hall Street Emporium. Like only two blocks further.”

“The party’s in that building? The one with the new pot dispensary?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s the one that’s putting it on.”

“Who?”

“The main grower, Niles. Apparently he’s handing out a bunch of free weed.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“That’s what my friend texted. She said there’s like 50 people there.”

I’d been keeping a close eye on the cannabis scene since the municipal election, but hadn’t actually pulled the trigger on any Star stories after the pushback I received from management over the Sensible BC thing. I didn’t want to come off to the community as overzealous, too pot-friendly, but marijuana seemed like the main Nelson story that wasn’t being told. There was a long-standing culture of silence around the controversial plant, of secrecy, but with legalization coming I felt like it wasn’t necessary for everyone to hide anymore. Paisley and I had checked out the new place a few weeks earlier, when gossip reached us, and we’d been surprised by how amateur the operation was. It was being run by a 24-year-old former forest fire fighter named Marv, and he’d essentially dragged a glass countertop into an empty room devoid of decorations and proceeded to sell weed and a variety of edibles to whoever walked through the door—he didn’t even check for ID. 

I figured it was only a matter of time before the police intervened.

“That guy Marv is such a heat score,” I said. “It’s like he’s daring the police to raid him.”

“What are they gonna do?” Caelynn asked, defiant. “It’s gonna be legal in like a year anyways, right? Fuck those pigs.”

“They may not be able to do anything right now, but he’s still going about this the wrong way.”

“What’s the right way, then?”

“People appreciate some professionalism. I mean, once legalization comes everything’s going to be so different, above board, and there’s not going to be room for people like him.”

“You wanna put money on that?”

I thought about it for a second. “I bet you 50 bucks he’s shut down within three months.”

Caelynn smiled. “Three months from today? 50 bucks? I’ll shake on that.”

A few minutes later we reached the party, and noisily banged the snow off our boots as we entered the building. The first thing I saw was a baby, unattended, crawling across the floor. Mounted speakers blared Shambhala-style EDM, there was a table crowded with ravaged grocery store appetizers, and a whole variety of bongs and smoking apparatuses surrounding a trio of leather couches. In the corner was a pile of air filtration tubing, attached to a heavy-looking appliance the size of a dishwasher, but none of it was turned on. Marv was drunkenly circling the party, taking pictures, and wasn’t wearing a shirt. He was scrawny to the point of looking emaciated, and his thin moustache was dusted with white powder. He careened across the room to embrace Caelynn, then fished a joint out from his toque and held it out in my direction. 

We lit it.

“Newspaper dude,” he said, taking a toke. “You’ve got a pretty fucking cool job.”

“It’s Will, and this is my partner Paisley.”

“Your partner?”

“I always hated the term ‘girlfriend’, and we’re not married, so…”

“You are fucking beautiful,” Marv said, as he shook her hand. “Don’t mind me, I’m really fucking high right now. I’m actually totally harmless.”

Paisley laughed uncomfortably. “It’s all good. Thanks for having us.”

“It’s not me, man. It’s all Niles. Have you guys met Niles yet?” he asked, his eyes darting. “He organized this whole shindig, he’s the guy. Hey Niles, Niles! Come here, man.”

Niles shook his head apologetically to the people he was standing with, then sauntered over. He was in his early fifties, with a Swayze-esque mane of golden hair, wearing a baby blue suit. His walnut brown tan made his eyes seem supernaturally white, his golden bowtie was comically oversized, and he even kept a chained watch in his side pocket. It almost looked like he was in costume, like he could be tea partying with the Mad Hatter himself.

“The Kootenay Goon,” Niles said. “It’s an honour. I’ve been reading your stuff for months now, wondering when I would get the chance to meet the new shit disturber in town.”

I shook his hand, half-standing from the couch. “Yeah, shit disturber’s about right.”

“And here we have your lady love—Paisley, right?” he said, turning to her. “That was one of the first articles I read by you, Goon, the column you wrote about her. I remember thinking: ‘people should write about love in the newspaper more often’! I thought ‘when was the last time you saw someone fill two pages of a community newspaper with an ode to his girlfriend?’ I find kids think it’s cool to be nonchalant these days, to never emotionally commit to anybody or anything, and I ask you: what ever happened to true romance?”

Niles sunk down on the couch beside us, crossed his legs and began bouncing his foot in the air. Paisley and I shared a quick glance, acknowledging his Shakespearean flamboyance with secret smirks. He took a few tokes from the joint and passed it to Paisley, then draped his elbow on my shoulder. There was an instant familiarity there, a comfort level I wouldn’t typically have with a stranger, and pretty soon our conversation had veered into philosophical territory. He asked me if I believe in pure, unadulterated love. Did it really exist?

I sat forward, tugging at my beard thoughtfully. “For me, there’s just so many things I’ve lost faith in — like I used to be a hyper-Christian teenager and then I ditched on the whole God thing — and love, like human love, is one of the last things I actually believe in, you know?”

“You were a Christian kid?”

“Totally. Worked at a Bible camp in the summers, did missionary trips, the whole deal.”

“And what ended things for you?”

“My youth pastor was arrested for molesting a teenage boy down in Mexico, summer of 2005, during a missions trip. He was a father figure to me, so I started questioning: if I can’t trust him, and he taught me about God, then how can I trust what I know about God?”

“What a funny word, God.”

“I thought you guys would get along,” said Marv, stumbling off. Niles whipped over to a nearby fridge and returned with three beers. We clinked them together and took long pulls as a handful of party-goers began to dance around us. I felt a pleasant heat in my eyeballs. It was starting to get crowded, and loud.

“The vision I have for this place, Goon,” Niles said. “This wouldn’t just be a dispensary. It would be a smoking lounge, a social club … I was thinking maybe massages too, like a spa. Maybe a counsellor, mental health coach, that sort of thing.”

“I’ve heard that there are multiple new ones getting ready to open. The Green Rush, they’re calling it.”

“Yeah, but everyone’s too chickenshit to pull the trigger because they don’t know which way city hall will swing. They let Phil run his club because he keeps things below the radar, but nobody’s really tried strutting out into the light with their balls out yet.”

“Well, except for you.”

He smiled humbly.

“Well, Deb Kozak’s supposed to be more pot-friendly than Dooley,” I said. “That could make a difference in how things go down.”

He sighed. “They’re all the same. All three of them. There was no real choice there. It’s not about their opinions on cannabis, or their public stances or whatever. At the end of the day it’s about the money, and when the time comes they’re going to want their cut. Doesn’t matter who’s sitting in the big seat. They’re all so full of shit.”

He paused for a moment to take a thoughtful pull from his beer, then continued.

“I mean I’ve lived here since 1976, and there’s never been an honest politician in this town. Not once. They’re all lizard-fucking slime bags, all of them dirty in one way or another. You can’t trust a single word they say, remember that. It’s all the same pablum bullshit they’re force-feeding everybody. They say they’re going to act, they have all kinds of pretty words, but what do they actually do? What do they actually accomplish?” he asked. 

“Nothing.”

After chatting intensely for twenty minutes, Niles circulated off to the rest of the party and Paisley and I found ourselves awkwardly clutching our half-finished beers. Caelynn pulled up a chair, sat down on it backwards, and we re-started an earlier debate on the moral standing of Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer. I engaged hard. Paisley put her head on my shoulder and we accepted another joint that was being passed around, sitting comfortable in the rolling fog of bong smoke. My consciousness began to fuzz.

“Oh, I love him,” I heard Paisley say. “What’s his name?”

I tried to locate my partner, distinct amidst the chaos of bodies around me. There were lots of colours. She was down on one knee, laughing, as a German shepherd took happy tongue swipes at her face. Brutus. I looked beyond her to where Snapper stood, leash in hand, wearing a sleeveless jersey that nearly reached his knees. He said something to Paisley, and she said something back, while I tried to maneuver into a standing position. I tried to take a swig of my beer but found it empty. When did that happen?

“Oh, that was tragic,” said Blayne, appearing beside me. She was wearing a bright red jumper, and had her hair braided into pigtails. “You should’ve seen the look of disappointment on your face.”

I smiled. “All these beers keep ending up empty.”

“Funny how that works.”

“I was just heading over to rescue my partner from Snapper before you showed up.”

“Oh, come on. He’s not that bad.”

“Not that bad?” I laughed, and then I doubled over and laughed some more. “Not that bad! Not that bad!” I knew my reaction was disproportionate, maybe nonsensical, but it was just one of those evenings. Blayne had her hand on my shoulder, trying to pull me back under control, and she was laughing now too — but she was laughing at me, laughing.

“You can be kind of an asshole, huh?” she said.

“I’ve made peace with that, yeah.”

“What’s Snapper ever done to you?”

I looked over to where he was chatting with Paisley. I didn’t like how close he was standing to her. She glanced over and made eye contact with me, then looked away again. I’ve never been a particularly possessive boyfriend, but something told me I needed to keep her away from him specifically. I turned to find Blayne blinking up into my face, because I’d failed to answer her.

“He hasn’t done anything to me, I just don’t like his energy.”

“He’s actually a really generous person. You guys could be friends, if you gave him a chance. You’d just have to stop being such a fucking snob.”

“I’m not a snob.”

“No? What are you then?”

Blayne and I sat back down on the couch, still bickering. Dru and Cy were sitting on the couch opposite from us, hand-rolling cigarettes on the coffee table. The music had a pulse, like a heartbeat, and I felt time melt. What was this sensation? I lifted my hands and marvelled at how the blood pulsed into my fingertips. My gaze settled on a dude wearing a psychedelic hoodie, on the sunburst erupting from his armpit. Wow. A woman walked by with a toddler on her hip, her billowing brown hair interlaced with red highlights, beads and little scraps of leather. I wondered what was going on in the minds of these strangers, if they were experiencing a fraction of what I was. This was one more moment, in this interminable line of moments, and who could say if it was any more special than any other? I wondered if anyone else were to tell a story about this moment, would it be different? What were they feeling, what did they see?

The Kootenay Goon

[lyndonpeejohnson]

hey guys remember lizard election 

[thatishogwash]

Chocolate Saves Lifes

Description: Tendou is positive that Semi is being possessed by a demon and he convinces Yamagata to call in his soulmate, someone who everyone is surprised by.

Warnings: None.

AO3

Yamagata isn’t sure how he was elected to help all the first years study but here he is, in the library on a rare day off from volleyball, surrounded by first years.  They had been nervous around him at first but Hayato considered himself good with people.  Plus he knew what it was like for them, being back benchers on a prestigious school, hoping for that one shot to prove themselves.

It was hard getting a bunch of volleyball headed idiots to concentrate on anything else besides the game for more than a few moments at a time.  Yamagata understood that also.  He would much rather be talking, or playing, volleyball or doing pretty much anything other than going over material he had already done three years prior.

“Goshiki,” Yamagata put as much disapproval in his voice as he could, watching as Goshiki popped up from where he had been shoving a chocolate bar in his mouth underneath the table.  “Pay attention.  I know you got this wrong on the practice test.”  Goshiki wilted and Hayato almost felt bad.  Almost being the keyword.  He wasn’t going to waste his time off by letting anyone slack off.  Not even Goshiki, who was kind of like a giant puppy.

“Hey Yamagata.”  Oohira came around a bookcase with Ushijima by his side.  Many of the first years stuttered out greetings and goodbyes before quickly packing their things and running.  Ohira looked a bit sheepish as he took one of the many vacated seats.  “Sorry about that.”

“It’s not your fault!”  Goshiki, one of the few first years who stayed seated, said with enthusiasm.  Though there wasn’t much Goshiki did without enthusiasm.

“Are you done with that maths worksheet?”  Yamagata asked, watching as Goshiki visibly jumped before furiously writing on his previously empty sheet.  Yamagata shook his head as he looked over at Ohira and Ushijima once more.

“I was wondering if you could go over my paper for me?”  Ohira asked Yamagata, even though the other teen was in a higher class than him.  Yamagata wasn’t in the habit of turning people down so he held out his hand for the paper before going over it with painstaking care.  It was a pain because Ohira tended to be quite precise in his papers, which was probably why he was in a higher class that Yamagata.

“Here you all are!”  Yamagata ignored Tendou as he started to pat his pockets, looking for his phone to look up the name of one of the emperors Ohira had written about, wondering about the correct spelling.  Tendou slid into the empty seat on Yamagata’s left, which was an oddity in itself.  Mostly Tendou zeroed in on Ushijima, Semi, Goshiki, and then Shirabu.  Yamagata ranked pretty low on Tendou’s ‘To Bother’ list.  “Looking for something?”  Yamagata looked up finally to see Tendou holding his phone.  His new phone since his last one had been permanently lost.  His parents had made him swear up and down that he would be more careful with the new one.

“You should be more careful with your possessions.”  Ushijima always sounded so grave when he spoke with that deep gravelly voice, but it was something he always said when Yamagata inevitably lost his phone.

“I will of course give it back, but I need a little favor.”  Tendou twisted in his seat, head tilting far back and almost unnaturally.  Yamagata thought about what it would mean being indebted to Tendou.  He was mostly harmless, Yamagata had learned that throughout the years.  He could even be given to small acts of kindness when he thought others weren’t looking, or if he could annoy someone else by being kind to someone.  Tendou praised Goshiki the loudest when Shirabu was around to hear.

“What is it?”  Yamagata asked.  He wondered if, now that they had lost their last chance to Nationals the school would kick them out before they graduated.

“You said once that your soulmate owned a shrine?”  Tendou pressed his face almost uncomfortably close to Yamagata’s.  Yamagata was too surprised Tendou remembered that bit of information, something he must have said years ago since he hardly talked about his soulmate, to be distracted by Tendou’s close proximity.  “So he’s a priest?”

“No, he’s 17.”  Yamagata corrected before pushing Tendou’s face back and snatching his phone out of his loose grip.  “What do you need a priest for?”

“Tendou, you are not listening to the locals again are you?”  Ushijima asked, looking up from his work with a slight frown on his face.  Only years of knowing Ushijima let Yamagata know that the other teen was actually upset by the thought.  Sometimes, or most of the time if Yamagata is being completely honest, when the team does roadwork the local teens like to call out to them.  Sometimes it’s nice, but most of it is about them attending a wealthy school.  Tendou is a memorable character though and everyone knows the name Guess Monster.  Sometimes they say rather nasty things as he runs past.

“No no, of course not ‘toshi.”  Tendou waves off the concern.  “It’s about Semisemi.”  The fact that Tendou and Semi are soulmates was a big surprise to everyone.  It had been three years and Yamagata was still surprised when either mentioned it, mostly because up until rather recently they had mutually agreed to ignore it.

“Why would Semi need a priest?”  Ohira asked, also caught up in the conversation even though he was usually pretty studious.  Tendou could run around the library naked and Ohira wouldn’t look up from his notes once.

“Haven’t any of you noticed?”  Tendou looked around the table in confusion.  “Toshi doesn’t notice anything so that’s understandable and Hayato is completely absorbed with taking care of his little ducklings but you too Reon?”

“It has been a rough week for many of us.”  Ohira said with a shrug, though he did look a bit guilty.  Ushijima didn’t look phased but Yamagata was trying to figure out what Tendou meant by ducklings.  Did he mean the first years?

“Exactly!”  Tendou slammed his fist on the table, making Goshiki jump.

“Tendou!”  Goshiki announced happily.  Yamagata rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling an oncoming headache as Tendou chatted happily at Goshiki, making sure to get a few good compliments in about Goshiki’s hair and attitude.

Yamagata glanced down at his phone, wondering about his soulmate now that he’d been brought up.  They hadn’t talked since before Shiratorizawa’s match against Karasuno.  It’s not as if Yamagata didn’t care about his soulmate, he did.  They had known each other since they were five and Yamagata and his sister found a runaway dog with a name and a number on his tags.  Their parents had put them together for playdates but allowed them to make their own decisions as they got older.  They even attended the same elementary, though they separated in middle school.  They kept in contact but they both agreed that they were too young to think about the long term just yet.  Mostly they were just worried about class work and school clubs and troublemaker underclassmen to give soulmates too much thought.

“So will you do it?”  Tendou asked, shoving his face into Yamagata’s once again.

“First of all, he’s not a priest and secondly I don’t know what you think a priest could do about a little sadness.”  They were all upset about not making it to nationals but they still had to carry on.  Semi had come up against hardships in his short life, he would get over this one the same way he got over being benched for a first year.  Even after hours of helping Semi practice his serving, Yamagata still had trouble receiving them.

Yamagata looked up at Tendou as he thought about how Semi handled difficult situations.  Semi wasn’t really the type to get sad about things.  Upset?  Yes.  But mostly Semi got mad.  Tendou stared unblinkingly at Yamagata, too large eyes and a long face did make him look like a bit of a lizard.

“When is the last time you got a full night's rest?”  Yamagata asked.  Ushijima looked up from his study material and frowned over at Tendou.

“Are you having trouble sleeping again?”  Ushijima asked, as if Tendou had anything resembling a healthy sleeping habit.

“This isn’t about me Wakatoshi.”  Tendou whined, drapping himself over the table and looking up at Yamagata with those too-large eyes.  Yamagata pulled his notebook out from under Tendou’s bony elbow.  “You’ll see.”  Tendou whispered hoarsely, ominously.

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

Yamagata shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, partially wishing he had invited his soulmate to his school on a school day so he could just wear his uniform.  Even better he wished they had practice earlier so he could just wear his volleyball kit but that wasn’t his luck.  It was the weekend, Saturday classes were well over and there was no practice for the day.  Semi had once said Yamagata dressed like a tool.  Yamagata was pretty sure he only said it as a way to deflect since Tendou had announced, tactlessly and loudly as they were in line for the movies, that Semi’s clothes were uncool.

Tendou, oddly enough, seemed to have impeccable style.

Yamagata had opted for a white shirt, an army jacket, relatively clean jeans and his converse, which had seen better days.  The shirt was a throw back from his first year and Yamagata hadn’t realized he had grown in both height and width.  The shirt, which had been a little loose when he was 15, was now a little snug.  But it was the only clean thing in his closet.

A bus pulled up and Yamagata felt himself straighten up despite telling himself this was normal, everything was fine.

But then Sawamura Daichi walked off the bus covering his mouth as he yawned in the late afternoon light and everything was not fine.  Because as much as Yamagata told himself this was a normal situation, it wasn’t.  Sawamura was his soulmate and for a long time that didn’t matter much.  Their parents set them up on playdates and Yamagata had always been happy to go to Sawamura’s house, to get away from his many sisters.  Sawamura had three dogs and Yamagata had always thought that was better than having multiple sisters.

They grew older and only saw each other during breaks in school.  But they had other friends, homework, and school activities.  By the time high school came around they were mostly resorting to texting back and forth, and even that had been dwindling as the years went by.  Yamagata hadn’t even known Sawamura was the captain of his team until they saw each other during the tournament.

Being soulmates hadn’t really mattered when they were little.  It hadn’t mattered when they were in middle school or even most of high school but it seemed to matter now.  At least to Yamagata.  And that scared him a bit.

“Hey, sorry again for making you come all this way.”  Yamagata greeted Sawamura, who smiled warmly as he shrugged his shoulders.  Yamagata wondered when the slightly shy boy who had hid behind his large dogs had turned into a sturdy young man.  Someone who had taken an infamous team and led them to Nationals.

“It sounded like it could be serious.”  Sawamura followed Yamagata’s led, back towards his school.  “Also potentially fun.”  Sawamura grinned, giving Yamagata a peek into the mischievous and cunning teen he was.  Yamagata had texted Sawamura, asking if he was free over the weekend and describing the odd behavior of his friend Semi.  Yamagata wasn’t sure if it was a real possession or anything Sawamura could actually help with, but even Shirabu had noticed Semi was acting off.

“How is your new puppy?”  Yamagata asked, figuring that was the safest topic of conversation.  Yamagata was curious about the team that had beat them out of their spot for Nationals and he also knew he had to go into greater detail about Semi but he didn’t know how to broach either topic.

“He’s growing so quickly.”  Sawamura pulled his phone out, turning it so Yamagata could see the background where Sawamura was holding up a puppy the size of his torso.  The puppy looked ecstatic at being held and Sawamura himself had a huge grin on his face.  The phone beeped with a new message, Yamagata saw the name Captain Kitty-Cat but nothing more than that.

“Ah sorry,” Sawamura grinned sheepishly as he glanced at the text before shoving it in his pocket.

“Captain Kitty-Cat?”  Yamagata couldn’t help but ask.  He didn’t see Sawamura as the type to use nicknames for people.

“Not my idea, trust me.”  Sawamura rubbed the back of his neck.  “We’ve been doing some training camps in Tokyo and I somehow got pulled into a group text with all the captains from there.”  Yamagata wasn’t all that surprised, even Oikawa Tooru couldn’t find anything bad to say about Sawamura and that guy was biting when he wanted to be.

“You trained with some of the Tokyo team's?”  Yamagata asked.  Sometimes they trained with the college teams but mostly they stuck to a strict training regime that was highly secretive.

“Yeah, honestly we wouldn’t have improved so much if it wasn’t for them.”  Sawamura then went onto explain the Battle of the Trash Heap.  Yamagata couldn’t help but laugh.

“I’ll be sure to cheer you on.”  Yamagata promised and Sawamura looked surprised but before Yamagata could question it he heard his team shouting out to him.  “Ah, sorry about this.”  Yamagata felt instantly bad.  He should have told his teammates who his soulmate was or at least warned Sawamura that he had never gotten around to telling them about him.  He didn’t want to make it seem like he was somehow embarrassed or ashamed of Sawamura in any way, it’s just that they lived two separate lives.  Since they had become teenagers they saw each other infrequently and they didn’t talk to each other much.

“Is this the priest?”  Tendou asked bluntly, looking Sawamura up and down like he was disappointed.  Most likely he really was.  Tendou read a lot of manga and he found reality mostly disappointing in comparison.

“I told you before he’s not a priest.” Yamagata said, even though he knew Tendou wasn’t listening to him.

“How is he suppose to exorcise a demon from Semisemi?  Can he even reach his head?”  Tendou went to press close to Sawamura but was stopped by Ohira grabbing his collar.  Sawamura’s perfectly polite smile went a little hard around the edges and Yamagata felt the sting of an insult not even meant for him.  The only reason Yamagata appeared taller than Sawamura was because of his hair.  He remembered when they were little he had been taller than Sawamura, who now had the extra centimeters and added musculature that made Yamagata feel smaller than he was.

“That is rude to say to someone who came all this way to help you.”  Ushijima spoke up, deep voice rumbling like he was reading out of a How to be a Polite Human book.  They had all been trying to teach Ushijima not to be so blunt, worried that he would offend the wrong person in college where he wouldn’t have Ohira or Soekawa to smooth things over for him.

They bickered and it clicked for Yamagata that none of them recognized who Sawamura was.  Sawamura seemed to understand at the same moment, his sharp smile turning to something truly bemused.  Yamagata would have felt insulted, though he was often times overlooked also.  It was only to be expected, being on a team with someone like Ushijima Wakatoshi meant the spotlight was always on him.  But Sawamura had played all five sets and he was Karasuno’s captain.

Yamagata thought it might be better this way.  Sawamura was handling it decently and Yamagata wouldn’t have to explain anything.

“You’re kidding, right?”  Kawanishi’s usual bored tone cut through the argument.  Yamagata shot him a glare but as usual, the tall beanpole ignored it.  “He’s Karasuno’s captain.”  Everyone turned suddenly sharp eyes on Sawamura, who only grinned in response before bowing formally.

“It’s nice to meet you all.”  Sawamura stood up straight and Yamagata wasn’t sure why he got the feeling that the other teen was messing with them all, but he was sure he was.

“It must be difficult,” Shirabu suddenly spoke up.  Yamagata wasn’t even sure why the two second years were there, they certainly didn’t believe Tendou.  “Having to depend on first years to get you to Nationals.”  Before Yamagata could move Tendou had his arm wrapped around Shirabu’s neck, a one armed hug that could be called friendly but was more a strangle hold than anything else.

“Cute little underclassmen, why are you even here?”  Tendou asked, rubbing hard at Shirabu’s neatly kept hair.  Shirabu struggled out of his grasp, looking angry as he pushed down his staticky hair.

“I want to see the look on Semi’s face when he realizes you’re trying to exorcise a demon out of him.”  Shirabu answered flatly.

“I’m sorry for our rudeness.”  Ohira stepped forward, holding out his hand for Sawamura to shake.  Sawamura laughed easily.

“It’s fine.”  Sawamura shrugged as he pulled back his hand, looking over at Shirabu.  “We are certainly lucky to have first years who are so skilled.  I can’t imagine the monsters they’ll be by next year.”  Usually unshakable Shirabu took a step back from Sawamura, who was someone vaguely threatening behind his good manners and soft smile.  Yamagata couldn’t help but laugh.

“You gave them a solid foundation to stand on, they will find it much more difficult next year to beat Shiratorizawa with you gone.”  Ushijima spoke up, cutting off all further arguments.  Sawamura looked surprised before he laughed, bowing once more in gratitude.

“That was very nice ‘toshi but the Karasuno captain has a demon to get rid of from my boyfriend.”  Tendou pulled on the sleeve of Sawamura’s sweater, leading him towards the dorms.  “Follow me, this way please.”  Yamagata was already regretting his decision to ask for Sawamura’s help.

“His name is Sawamura.”  Yamagata said as he followed behind Tendou, knocking his hand away before placing himself between his soulmate and the Guess Monster.

“Please don’t get your hopes up, I’m not even sure I can do anything.”  Sawamura admitted.

“Then why did you come?”  Tendou asked, wide eyes turning towards Sawamura, trying to lean over Yamagata to intimidate the captain.

“Because Yamagata asked.”  Sawamura answered with a shrug, adjusting his shoulder bag and missing Yamagata’s burning face.  Tendou, unfortunately, did not miss it and poked at Yamagata’s red cheeks until he pretended to bite Tendou.

“What happened to your face?”  Goshiki, as clueless and innocent as ever asked.  Kawanishi snorted as Ohira gently chided Goshiki.  It was useless, like scolding a puppy.  It just made you feel worse.  Yamagata had been curious about the rather nasty looking, and large bruise that covered Sawamura’s whole cheek.

“It’s fine, it was a volleyball accident.  I lost a tooth too.”  Sawamura pulled at his lip, showing the missing space where a tooth had been.  Shirabu looked a little green.

“You should be more careful.”  Ushijima stated gravelly.  Sawamura grinned over at Yamagata, flashing that missing tooth.

“You’re right.”  Sawamura got a bit side tracked by the horses and then the large fields each for a different sport.

“It’s like he’s never seen a school before.”  Shirabu said quietly to Kawanishi, but it was still loud enough for Sawamura to hear.  The teen turned red and rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment.  Yamagata turned to Shirabu and was glad the younger boy wasn’t taller than him as he glared.

“Maybe I should tell Coach that you’re getting a little restless with so many rest days.”  Yamagata threatened.  Shirabu went stiff before dropping his eyes.  Mostly Shirabu was pretty respectful, except perhaps to Semi.  But the kid wasn’t use to losing and having someone who had soundly beaten him was chafing him in all the wrong ways.  Yamagata didn’t mind Shirabu acting out because of the loss that still affected all of them, but he wouldn’t let him be disrespectful towards Sawamura.

Tendou watched the exchange with clear interest.  Mostly Yamagata didn’t bother with disciplining the younger students.  He left that job to Soekawa, but their vice captain had decided this was another one of Tendou’s schemes and had promptly gone to take a nap.

“Hinata and his friend were distracted by the horses too.”  Ushijima spoke up, breaking the tension as they walked into the third years dorm.  Sawamura rubbed his face as everyone else looked confused.

“I’m sorry about that.”  Sawamura said with an apologetic grin before laughing.  “I’ve got to tell Suga you called Kageyama, Hinata’s friend.”  Yamagata wasn’t sure who any of those names belonged to or when exactly Ushijima had apparently shown the Karasuno players around the school grounds.

“Toshi are you making friends without us?”  Tendou asked with widening eyes.

“No.”  Ushijima answered simply.

“Hinata said that you told him he had baseless confidence and didn’t deserve to live.”  It did sound vaguely like something Ushijima might say.  Sawamura was smiling so he must not have taken much stock in it.  “He’s afraid to go to the bathroom now before matches.”

“What?”  Yamagata couldn’t help but ask, nudging Sawamura when he just laughed in response.

“Hinata is our number 10, the little guy with the orange hair.”  Sawamura explained.  “Apparently he’s meet several people outside the bathroom.  He’s a bit nervous, Karasuno is his real first volleyball club.”  Goshiki let out an indignant squawk, pushing forward to stare at Sawamura in disbelief.

“How?”  It was apparently the only thing Goshiki could let out.

“His middle school didn’t have a boys volleyball club so he made one himself, it wasn’t until his third year he could even get into a tournament and they only played one game.”  Sawamura smiled with a shrug.  “I warned you there were some real monsters on my team.”  Goshiki jumped up and down excitedly.  He had two more years to possibly play against Karasuno.

“Prepare yourself for something truly terrible.”  Someone mumbled something about Semi’s wardrobe, which Yamagata had to laugh at.  The guy was a little hopeless, constantly dressing like a grandpa on their first vacation.  They all piled into Semi’s room.  It was a tight fit but it wasn’t the first time they had all squeezed into one room.

Semi, who was sitting at his desk, turned slowly to look at them all.  Undoubtedly Tendou had been trying to force a reaction.  There really was no logical reason this became a team activity.  But Semi just stared at them all blankly, which even Yamagata had to admit was a little odd.  Semi hated people in his room.  For the past three years he had been in constant arguments with whatever poor guy happened to share the dorm with him.

“Hey Semi, this is Sawamura.”  Tendou stated, drawl firmly in place.  The same drawl that usually made the muscle under Semi’s left eye twitch in annoyance.  “He’s the captain of Karasuno.  Ya know, the team that stopped us from going to nationals in our final high school tournament.  Maybe even cost you that scholarship you’ve had your eye on.”

If Ohira and Sawamura weren’t between them then Yamagata would have smacked Tendou upside the head for that comment.  He understand Tendou was trying to illicit a response from Semi, but he didn’t have to use Sawamura to get it.

“Oh.”  Semi stood up, movements almost agonizingly slow.  “Hello.”  Semi frowned slightly at Sawamura, which was just about the first true emotion he had shown since they all came into his room.

“Hello, it’s nice to meet you.”  Sawamura said formally.  Semi frowned a little more.  He was slightly hunched over, his left shoulder quite lower than the right which was strange.  Unlike Tendou who sometimes appeared bent like a question mark, Semi tended to have perfect posture.  Especially around people he didn’t know he tended to draw himself to his fullest height, which was a rather impressive feat.

“I-” Semi licked his lips.  “I think you should leave.”  He didn’t sound too sure but his eyes darted around the room, as if noticing for the first time that there were multiple people in it.

“Hey Semisemi-” Tendou tried, stepping forward but Semi backed up.

“No no, you should leave.”  Semi said firmly.  Tendou looked hurt but he quickly covered it up.

“Semi, Sawamura has come along way-” Ushijima spoke up but it was surprisngly Sawamura who cut him off.

“No he’s right, it was wrong to just barge in like this.”  Sawamura began fiddling with his messenger bag, pushing things around.  Semi watched the movements as he backed up into his desk.

“You should go.  You shouldn’t be here.”  Semi said, almost frantically.

“What is wrong with him?”  Shirabu whispered, partially hiding behind Kawanishi.  Yamagata slipped past Ohira and Tendou to stand next to Sawamura.  He wasn’t sure why, just that he felt like he needed to be nearer.

“I know I’m sorry, just let me get one thing- oh shoot, sorry.”  Sawamura dropped several pens and pencils out onto the floor and bent down to collect them.  Yamagata kneeled down to help as Semi continually insisted that they leave.  “Okay, I’m leaving.”  Sawamura shoved the last pencil in his bag, standing up to his full height before pulling out his hand.

Several things happened at once.  Semi tried to back up further, but he was already pushed against his desk and in the already crowded room there was nowhere for him to go.  Tendou and Ohira stepped forward to try and calm their teammate down.  Shirabu tried to pull both Kawanishi and Goshiki out of the room.  And finally, Sawamura opened up his hand, left to his face and blew black dust off of it.  The dust hovered in the air for what seemed like several minutes and no time at all before the dust and Semi fell to the floor.

“What did he do!”  Goshiki yelled, alarmed and too loud.

“What is that thing?”  Kawanishi asked, showing real emotion for the first time in the two years Yamagata had known him.

“Tendou was right, he was possessed.”  Ushijima said in his usual flat tone, no one bothered to look at him but if they had they would have seen the whites all around his green eyes as he widened his stance to protect his underclassmen.

“Please nobody move.”  Sawamura requested as he dug around in his bag once more.  Yamagata hadn’t realized he had grabbed Sawamura’s arm, but his fingers were clenched around the other teens forearm.  In any other moment Yamagata would have admired the strength in the muscles beneath his hand but most moments didn’t include demons.

“Should we squish it?”  Tendou asked.  He had caught Semi before he hit the ground and was carefully clutching his soulmate to his chest.  Ohira stood in front of his teammates, looking terrified but ready to fight.

“Mebbe I squash you.”  The demon garbled, clinging to the wall upside down.  Or perhaps its head was just on it’s bottom, Yamagata wasn’t well versed in demons.

“There will be no squishing or squashing.”  Sawamura said in a tone that let Yamagata believe that this was just any other day to the other teen.  Sawamura pulled out a jar from his bag, average in size and shape except there seemed to be a tiny tree spreading wide branches and lush green grass, even a winding creek.  “Get in please.”  Sawamura requested, holding up the jar to the demon.

“It must have been something in the water, we’re all sharing a hallucination.”  Shirabu whispered frantically.

“No.”  The demon replied petutantly, twisting it’s head 180 degrees without moving it’s body.

“What if I give you chocolate?”  Sawamura offered, holding up a piece of homemade chocolate.

“Cho-ca-let?”  The demon swayed once before bouncing, grabbing the chocolate from Sawamura’s outstretched hand before being sucked into the jar.  Sawamura twisted the top on before turning back to the room.

“Everyone should sit down.” A combination of the authority in Sawamura’s voice and everyone’s general shock led them all to taking a seat.  Sawamura placed the jar on the ground, near his opened bag before pulling out a bag full of chocolate.  “Here, eat some of this, you’ll feel better.”  He passed out a piece to everyone, including Yamagata, who couldn’t take his eyes off the miniature demon hanging upside down from the tiny tree, nibbling away at the chocolate which seemed to be the only thing that remained the same size.

“Is this demon chocolate?”  Goshiki whispered fearfully.

“No, it’s just normal kind.”  Sawamura laughed before kneeling next to where Tendou was holding Semi.  “He’ll probably be a little tired for a day or two but should return back to normal after that.  I don’t need to tell you to keep an eye on him since you’ve clearly been doing a good job of that.”  Sawamura smiled warmly and Tendou actually looked embarrassed.  Yamagata knew from years of knowing the other teen that Tendou wasn’t awarded the type of compliments most of the others were.  His always seemed to be backhanded compliments, things shaped like a compliment but hurt like an insult.

“Why don’t you kill it?”  Kawanishi asked from his perch on the bed, Goshiki and Shirabu pressed up against both of his sides.  He had regained his cool but his face was a shade paler than normal.

“Because they didn’t mean any harm, they were just lonely.”  Sawamura glanced back at the jar.  “They aren’t a true demon.  Several like them exist in places like this.  They are created from human emotion but they usually don’t have a physical form.  Whatever your friend Semi had been feeling must have been strong enough to pull it into a physical form.  It’s probably taken them years.”

“But they hurt Eita.”  Tendou said, staring down hard at the jar.

“Not purposely.”  Sawamura put the jar back into his bag, apparently not worried about it breaking.  “You can’t think of it in human terms.  They were born from negative feelings, it’s all they know.”

“What are you going to do with them?”  Ushijima asked, dutifully finishing off his chocolate.

“Take them home where they can be amongst their own kind and they won’t do any damage to humans.”  Sawamura put his bag back on and Yamagata stood up.  “It was nice meeting all of you.  If it makes it easier for you, you can pretend this never happened.”  Sawamura grinned but was stopped from walking out by Ushijima, who stood and bowed deeply.

“Thank you.”  Ushijima intoned deeply.  Everyone stood up, even Tendou who carefully placed Semi on the ground, and bowed before echoing Ushijima’s gratitude.  Sawamura’s cheeks turned red as he rubbed the back of his head and bowed back.

Yamagata followed his soulmate out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him before looking down at the chocolate he hadn’t eaten yet.

“You brought all that for a demon?”  Yamagata asked, looking up into deep brown eyes.

“No,” Sawamura answered with a small, shy smile.  “They were for you.  Asahi- one of my teammates helped me make the chocolates so I didn’t accidentally poison you and my mom helped make the jar, actually she did most of it but they are- they is two of them, they’re connected.  If you add something to one it appears in the other.  I was going to give you one and I have the other.”  Sawamura took the jar out and Yamagata noted that the demon was gone.  It worried him a little but Sawamura didn’t look alarmed.

“You brought me gifts?”  Yamagata asked.  “And the dust?”

“It’s ash from a thousand year old yew tree, it’s suppose to be good luck.”  Sawamura ducked his head.  “For your exams and everything.”

Yamagata wasn’t sure what he was feeling.  His heart felt like it was beating too hard against his chest and he felt a little light headed.  It wasn’t pleasant but it was, well it was kind of amazing.  Sawamura was amazing and Yamagata regretted that he had wasted so many years not realizing that.

“There’s a really good ramen place down the road.”  Yamagata carefully took the jar.  He loved it, even if there was a demon living in it that tried to suck the life out of his friend.  “I don’t know if ramen is still your favorite but maybe you can tell me about your teammates and your family, and your dogs.”  Sawamura flashed him a blinding smile and nodded.

“I’d like that.”  Yamagata smiled back at him, feeling embarrassed and happy all at once.

[leaving-beach-city]

To Let Go part 3: Memory of What Was

“Sometimes you have to learn to let go of person you love, and just hold on to the Memory of what was” -Mark Amend

“Show me Steven, again”

“……”

“Show me Steven….please”

“……..”

“Show me Steven…. I’m begging you”

“Hey Pearl, Look! My fingers are Cats!…..Meow. Hahaha see aren’t they cute?“  

Pearl simply smiled as the mirror finally complied with her wishes. She was, for the first in a long time, happy. Perhaps it was being able hear and see her precious little “baby”, or perhaps this mirror is giving her what she asked for as a brief relief from the reality: that Steven will never be found.

“Alright Find me Steven when he was a-”

Before she had a chance to finish her sentence, the Crystal gate opened suddenly, quickly hid the mirror in her gem not wanting the new arrival to see it. She turned around to see who was entering, her eyes were met with the familiar form of Amethyst standing on the warp-pad staring back at her. Neither one willing to break eye contact or daring to break the silence for fear of breaking an illusion. They stayed this way until almost an hour had passed until one of them decided to break the silence.

“So P, are we to just keep awkwardly staring at each or are we going to do something?” Amethyst said.

Pearl responded

“Yeah, sorry about that…. So….”

“So?”

“Umm…. how are you Amethyst?”

“Fine and you?”

“Oh fine… Fine.”

“…..”

The silence had returned once more, as the pair continued to stare at each other. Neither again wanting to speak.

“Amethyst”

“Yes?”

“You want to hang out?”

“…..”

Amethyst paused, not expecting Pearl to ask her such a question, and for a moment she thought to say no, and yet part of her wanted to know what had happened to the the pale gem during her search of Steven.

“Hmmmm sure why not”

“Great!” Pearl’s voice boomed enthusiastically. And before Amythest could even react, she was dragged out towards Pearl’s motorcycle.

“Wooh Pearl, Slow down I’m not going anywhere,”

“I know, I know it’s just….” Pearl’s voice seemed to cut off, as though she silenced herself before mentioning something that hurt her..or perhaps reminds of her of the past.

Without a word both of them got on Pearl’s motorcycle and drove towards the Beach City’s boardwalk.

They saw many attractions on the boardwalk, mainly restaurants and the amusement park, trying to regain the connection of commadrie that was lost long ago. Though there was one thing that caught Amethyst’s eye, it was the Mayor Dewey’s van. She could even hear the Van’s speakers repetitious motto. She looked at it with bemusement before looking back at Pearl.

“Hey Pearl in any of the places you went, did any of the people try to pull anything this outrageous”

Pearl looking at the same van before replying “For a matter fact yes, in fact some even tried something even more outlandish, it was a small truck with two large animatronics of different monsters on it, one a large Mantis, the other some kind of Lizard, both in some battle… though it was more for an upcoming movie and not something important such as re-election for an official in some local government”

“So.. you’re telling me that mayor Dewey is the only..mayor to..”

“Place his head on an van to get re-elected and chant his name in a annoying melody of his name?  Then yes.” Pearl joked

“…”

There was a silent pause, before both of them laughed awkwardly.

“You wanna to go play Skee Ball, at the arcade, P?”

Pearl eyes widened upon hearing her old nickname, she could feel her mouth forming a smile, before nodding her head. And with that, both of them went to the arcade.

  As they played the games together, both could feel their old friendship being rekindled.  Pearl could feel some of the stress that plagued her over the time she searched for Steven beginning to lift away. They continued to play the other attractions, until the arcade closed late in the evening.

“So remember when I was thrown at the  Red Eye repeatedly?” inquired Amethyst shyly.

“Yeah, what were we even thinking? That repeated minimal force would damage it, that’s silly.” Pearl replied, while trying to take out a cigarette carton, with one hand picking up a single cigarette and guiding it towards her lips. Amethyst watched from afar, frowning at what was Pearl what was doing.

“Say P… I’ve been wondering when did you start smoking?”

“hmmm … I don’t know… I think it happened around the couple days I’ve been at Empire City….”

“Wait you been to Empire City? What did you do over there… well you know besides looking for Steven”

“Huh, Amethyst I really don’t like to talk about it… can you please not push this any deeper.”

“Alright… I’ll stop P.”

“It’s fine Amethyst, it’s just there are some memories that I’d rather no-” but Pearl’s reply was cut short, as she felt a small tug on her arm.

“Excuse me… Miss, but can you spare some change for me?” a frail voice asked her. Her eyes widened as she saw the person who tugged at her; it was young sickly child wearing worn clothing, their face reminded her of the many children in the similar circumstances, the many she tried to help… the many she failed to save.

“O-Of course… Here you go” she stammered as her hands quickly searched in each of her pockets trying to find any cash on her and give it to the frail child. And yet before the child left, she pulled the child into a hug.

“Listen… child if you need any help or need a place to stay, please come to the beach house at the outskirts of this city… it’s near the giant statue at the cliff.” She told the child as she let go. The child simply nodded and went on hisway. Getting up, Pearl simply lit her cigarette, before turning towards Amethyst, who was perplexed by the scene unfolding towards her

“Let’s go back home” Pearl whispered in a broken tone, as she began walking towards the motorcycle, her shoulder’s slumped and her eyes down as she tried to conceal a sudden wave of sadness.

Amethyst simply frowned.  “What was That?!”  she wondered as she followed after her old friend.  A dozen other questions arose but she dared not give them voice for fear of Pearl reverting back to her previous state of avoiding them at all costs.

The ride back to their house was completely silent, neither of them daring to speak a single word. As they arrived at the beach house, Pearl simply walked towards the Crystal Gate, and opened the portal leading towards her room. Yet before she could enter her room, she felt Amethyst arms curling around her halting her mid stride.  She could feel Amethyst hugging her tightly as if Pearl would vanish again if she let go.

“I know that look when you’re upset… but P if there is anything bothering you please…. I’m here.”  Amethyst said trying comfort Pearl, her voice a mix of fear and sadness.

Seconds ticked by as Pearl struggled with what to say, part of her wanted to vent her sorrows while another, stronger voice, urged her to keep it inside, to simply bury the pain deeper. “There is nothing to talk about Amethyst, Nothing at all.” She said in a broken tone, before entering her room, but before the Gate closed she heard Amethyst call out to her in a last desperate attempt to get through to her friend. “What happened to you P?”

  “…………. A lot of things, a lot of things” She replied to no one as the door slid closed behind her.  Pearl took one last look at the door, before laying on the watery floor and staring at the ceiling. The memories of her travels and experiences of searching for Steven had filled her thoughts, most importantly her experience with the abandoned children out there in the town. She recalled some of the faces that haunted her, and of course the condition of living they were in, how could a society let those youth be abandoned, while others get to live in abundance? Didn’t they even care about their youths? Then again, she too abandoned most of them to look for Steven… Yes she helped some of them to find some place better than they were, but most of them that needed her… she failed or left behind. But she needed to find Steven…

Sighing She waved those thoughts away and reached within her gem for the Mirror. She took a moment to look upon her own reflection and the face of an emotionally exhausted woman staring back at her with eyes full of pain and sadness..

“Show Me Steven.” she commanded in a pained voice just barely above a whisper.

“…….”

“Show me Steven” she ordered more forcefully when the mirror didn’t respond.

“……..”

“Come on you did it before” she growled in building frustration, her emotional walls starting to crack.

“……….”

“Please….Please……I beg of you I’ll give anything to see him again.” cried Pearl in defeat as the tears she’d been holding back began to fall as she crumpled to her knees as great heaving sobs wracked her body.

“…………Anything” The Mirror repeated, as though questioning her on her plea.

The unexpected reply served to jerk her back to the present, her pain momentarily forgotten as she sat up and wiped away the tears with her jacket sleeve.

“Wha….”  She was awe-struck did this mirror really asked her this…. Was it sentient? No impossible, maybe it was broken, yes broken.

“Did-You-Said-Anything-If-So-Help-Me-And-I-WILL-Help-You” The Mirror said using various recordings of herself, Steven, Amethyst, and Garnet.

“w-what ….Are you sentient?”  gasped Pearl as she held the mirror at arms length as if it might bite her.

“Yes-I-Am-Sentient” replied the now surprisingly talkative mirror.

“Impossible, I need to show this to Garnet” Pearl said frantically as she stood up to walk towards the temple gate.

“NOOOOOOO! “ The Mirror screeched causing her to flinch and stop walking.

“Remember-what-She-Did!’ The mirror continued as it showed Pearl of the incident of the last confrontation of her and Garnet’s argument which resulted in her getting punched by Garnet’s gauntleted fist. All due to her being to focused on finding Steven.

“If- You- Tell- Her- She- Will- Demand- Why- Didn’t- You- Tell- Her- Sooner- Your- Response- Will- Get- Her- Angry.” The Mirror told her, she knew that the mirror was correct. That if she let garnet know about the Mirror, Garnet will be angry with her for not telling her sooner and Garnet’s anger was…. not wanted.

“Alright you got a point… What do you want me to do?’ asked Pearl with a bit of suspicion.

“Set-Me-Free-From-This-Prison-Please” The Mirror requested her.

“How do I do that?” She asked as her worries began to give way to curiosity.

“…….” The Mirror then showed her a visual guide of pulling the gem out of the mirror.

She bit her lower lip, she knew this was wrong she knew she should ignore the mirror and show it to Garnet, becau-

“Please-I-Need-Your-Help-You’re-My-Only-Salvation-PLEASE-PEARL.” The Mirror  pleaded, though the differences were that the voices it used were of the children she helped… This Gem needed her, it needed her like the children she met… and did not help.

Without thinking she grasped the gemstone and began to pull with all her strength, desperately trying to pull the  free from its prison.

All around her an intricate woven pattern began to form in water of the rooms varied pools as she struggled, all the while the mirror creaked and cracked under the strain.  At last with her energy fading Pearl put all of her remaining strength into one final tug; the ancient mirror could take no more as it finally shattered into dozens of peaces. The gemstone imprisoned on its back was finally free at last. Immediately the deep blue colored gem with the shape of a teardrop floated free from her hands as the Gem within began to reform and reshape herself.

  As the the gem began to take shape, she could see the gem’s chosen form, a female figure, the outfit was something similar to an old fashioned summer dress, and the girls skin a light blue like a clear ocean’s surface. As the girls form finally took shape, her eyes begin to open as the Gem simply extend their hand out towards Pearl in a gesture of friendly greating common to humans.

“Hello, I’m Lapis.”

[kinetic-elaboration]

June 8: Comey’s Senate Testimony

Today, I spent two hours in the TS workroom, watching the entirety of Comey’s testimony on live stream with some of my coworkers and like Comey himself, I was afterward moved to write down my unfiltered reactions. That was quite possibly the wildest experience of recent memory.

* Favorite moments:

--Every mention of Comey feeling awkward around Trump or Trump's behavior creating an awkward situation; special mention to "I just said it so I could get off the phone."

--"I've talked to a lot of humans."

--Sen. Risch's obsession with the word HOPE. "No one has ever been prosecuted for hoping something." I'm sorry dude but I went to law school too so I know for an absolute fact that you are being purposefully intellectually dishonest here. Did you not take Admin? Contracts? Hell, forget law school, have you like actually interacted with real people, ever, in your whole life, or like just lizard people?? You KNOW that things like tone, context, and setting matter, and you know that people can imply things without stating them outright. The law, not to mention morality broadly, doesn't just police the literal, the forthrightly said. But hey way to waste your seven minutes.

--On a related note, thank you to Sen. Harris and to that other fellow whose name I'm forgetting, who mentioned the "Who will rid me of that troublesome priest?" quote, for calling bullshit.

--Senator McCain. "There seems to be a double standard at play here" in the FBI investigating the Trump team more than Clinton. Um excuse me, could it possibly be that there's more evidence of wrongdoing around one of these people than the other? Also way to conflate an investigation into the use of Secretary Clinton's email server with a hypothetical "just to be fair" investigation into Candidate Clinton and the Russians, because that didn't confuse anyone at all. (As the New Republic said: "It was, to say the least, completely bonkers.")

--"One time I was asked to call the White House switchboard to talk to the President but I never initiated contact." IDK why this is funny to me, but like, I'm just imagining Trump telling a lackey to call Comey to ask Comey to call Trump...it sounds like something middle schoolers would do.

--"He called me when I was about to get on a helicopter just to tell me I was doing a good job."

--"[Having dinner with the President] is the best possible excuse for cancelling a date with your wife."

--"I woke up in the middle of the night and thought: there MIGHT BE tapes!...Lordy I hope there are tapes, I give my permission to make them public." Looks like that thinly veiled threat backfired there Mr. Nixon--I mean Trump.

General observations:

--We should have played a drinking game, where you drink every time Comey says "I can't answer that question in open session," "I don't know," or "I may be wrong."

--You can tell who's a Democrat and who's a Republican because the Democrats are actually looking to find out information about the investigation, about Russia, and about possible Trump campaign/administration collusion and Republicans just want to assure everyone that TRUMP THE INDIVIDUAL IS NOT UNDER INVESTIGATION. (Or at least he wasn't as of a month ago.) Honestly at least 50% of their questions were about that.

--It is incredibly obvious to me that, among all of the other problems with the Republican harping on the not-personally-under-investigation thing, there is this: that at least one of the occasions where Comey promised Trump that he was not under investigation had to do specifically with the Russian hookers story, and thus it really, really has nothing to do with any of this other actually important shit. Trump was concerned about that particular "salacious story," Comey told him not to sweat it because the FBI wasn't investigating it. How does that in any assuage anyone's fears about American-Russian collusion in election tampering? It doesn't, but let's go on ahead and keep repeating it over and over as if this were case closed.

--I really liked listening to Comey. He came across as honest and...very human, lol. I trusted his sense of people because I understood exactly what he meant when he was describing those senses. For example, his list of the three factors that lead him to memorialize his first Trump meeting in memo form, and how that was overlaid with his general bad feeling. Like honestly the Republicans were trying to get him to admit to being an incompetent fool or worse for not telling Trump off for the secret meeting, but, would any of us have? I think it's MORE damning for Trump that Comey didn't say anything because it was SO shocking that even this man with years of experience is so completely floored by the impropriety of it that he can't even speak. Also, his silence emphasized his intimidation, which emphasizes the power disparity between POTUS (as in, whoever occupies that office) and literally anyone he talks to, and thus, again, the impropriety and general sketchiness of all of Trump's communications re: Flynn etc. I also liked Comey's descriptions of his own words, why he chose the phrases he did ("I said 'I agree he's a good guy,' implying I didn't agree with the rest of it."). He clearly has both an understanding of the subtlety of human interaction and an ability to describe that subtlety, which I appreciated. Too bad he's primarily talking about his dealings with a grown toddler.

--What the fuck was that stuff with the Columbia law professor? Did Comey like admit to leaking stuff to the press?* And, just to add to the bizarreness...did someone suggest that the Senate get a copy of the memo from the friend as if there were no other way to get it? Could you not, idk, ask the Justice Department? It was surreal.

--I can't remember who, but someone actually brought up the 2004 phone-data-collection kerfluffle which was a reaaaal blast from the past.

*No, not technically, given the precise definition of a “leak.” I still thought he mentioned something so explosive really casually.

[lorajackson]

‘Slipping and Sliding down the Polls’

This is an excerpt from episode 233 of The Editors.Rich: So Jim Geraghty, I have the RealClearPolitics Biden versus Trump polling page up right here. I’m just going to read you some numbers going back to … This is a CNBC poll from the 10th and 12th of June. And I’m just going to run through to the latest poll. Biden plus ten. Biden plus eight. Biden plus twelve. Biden plus nine. Biden plus twelve. Biden plus 14. Biden plus nine. Biden plus eight. Biden plus four. Biden plus eight. Let’s look at Wisconsin, Jim. Wisconsin. Biden plus twelve. Biden plus 14. Biden plus nine. Biden plus eight. Biden plus four. Biden plus eight. Sorry, that was the general election again. Florida, Biden eleven. Biden plus seven. Biden plus six. Biden plus nine. These are the real Wisconsin numbers. Whoops, now I’m on Florida. I’m back on Florida 2016 for some reason. Wisconsin, here it is. Biden plus nine. Biden plus eleven. Biden plus four. Biden plus eight. Trump plus one. Let’s do Pennsylvania just for fun. Pennsylvania, Biden plus ten. Biden plus three. Biden plus five. Jim Geraghty, what do you make of it?Jim: Well, for all the listeners who lost track of all those numbers in there, let me summarize what Rich just laid out over the last couple of minutes. Everything is bad. The polls are bad.Rich: There was a Trump plus one in one of these states. Florida maybe. Was it Florida or Wisconsin?Charlie: Wisconsin. It was the Trafalgar poll in Wisconsin.Rich: Trafalgar. I think Trafalgar has him up in one of these other states, too. I won’t bore our listeners by trying to find where it is.Jim: Broadly speaking, the big three swing states up in the upper Midwest, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, they all look pretty bad. Florida, maybe not looking bad but still not looking great. Every now and then Arizona, which everybody kind of thinks of as a Trump state, not looking that great. Iowa and Ohio, two states that Trump won by pretty sizable margins last time, not looking great. Well actually, there’s a fairly consistent movement across all the polls, across all the country of anywhere I would say from two to five to ten points against Trump towards Biden. Now, when you have this discussion with Trump supporters, they’ll jump up, and they’ll say, “Hey, there are some people out there who don’t want to tell a pollster that they’re voting for Donald Trump, but they’re going to vote for him anyway.” I think that’s true. I think that’s probably … I don’t know what percentage of the population that is. I don’t know what percentage of the electorate that is. I think it’s probably worth one or two points easily. Five points? Not so sure. The idea that it’s going to overcome a ten-point deficit we’re seeing in these polls, I’m rather skeptical of it. And I certainly would not want the Trump campaign to walk around saying, “Oh don’t worry; we’re totally doing fine.”And I think probably what might have been a particularly useful canary in the coal mine, for weeks and months we’ve been hearing, “Oh, don’t worry; don’t worry about these polls. Polls were wrong in 2016.” Brad Parscale is building the Death Star. By the way, if you’re going to compare your campaign to some sort of science fiction device or instrument, please don’t pick one that blew up twice when a small underfunded band decided to go after it. Probably what I think was the steam coming out of the engine for the Trump campaign was the Tulsa rally last week. The turnout was nowhere near what the Trump campaign expected. Parscale himself was saying a million tickets had been requested. And yeah, maybe some people were afraid of the protesters. No doubt I think some people were understandably worried about catching coronavirus at a large indoor event with crowds. Maybe some of the factor was people who ordered tickets who had no intention of showing up. But let’s face it; it’s Tulsa, Okla. It’s Trump, it’s a Saturday. There’s really no good reason for him to not be able to put a decent crowd together. And the fact that this was so much lower than they expected, I think that convinced even the skeptics on the Trump campaign that no, they’re not winning this race. Everything is not fine.The interesting thing is, I actually think one of the most encouraging headlines I saw, even articles that I saw in the past week was by Politico, June 27th, “Trump Knows He’s Losing.” Trump admits that he’s losing and the story begins, “The president has privately come to a grim realization in recent days. People told Politico, amid a mountain of bad polling and warnings from some of his staunchest allies that he’s on course to be a one-term president.” You can’t solve a problem unless you see a problem and unless you recognize it’s a problem. And I think the worst possible thing for the Trump campaign between now and November would be to walk around saying, “We don’t have to worry about any of these polls. These polls are meaningless. We’re still doing fine. We’re still doing great.” Look, there’s a very simple way to explain why Trump would be in lousy shape up against Joe Biden at this point. When in fact, at the beginning of the year, he was not in that rough shape.For a long time the idea is: Okay, these Democrats have taken over the suburbs. There’re a whole bunch of white soccer moms and minivan-driving dads out there who abhor what the president does. They just don’t like what they see. They can’t stand what he’s saying on his Twitter feed. But that’s okay because we’re going to make up for it amongst blue-collar whites in those key swing states. Well, that works when unemployment is between 3 percent and 4 percent. That doesn’t work when unemployment is in double digits, and it’s easy to see some white blue-collar workers saying, oh, you know what, I’m pretty disappointed with this presidency; maybe I should give this guy Biden a try. I don’t think the cake is fully baked yet. I don’t think that Trump is actually defeated yet. He just needs to run a very different campaign from here on out. And I thought your observation on the Corner the other day, Rich, where you know, asked by Sean Hannity this ultimate softball, what do you want to do in your second term? And Trump gives this meandering Mississippi River of an answer that talks about how experience is good and I didn’t think experience was good before. John Bolton’s a real SOB.If I had the chance to talk to the president, I would say, “Mr. President, you need to start talking to people about what will happen in your second term and what you can deliver. People need a sense of what will happen. You need to lay out an extensive second-term agenda.” I think this argument you’ve seen from … I don’t often agree with Sohrab Ahmari about all these other guys who are saying, you got to put up a forthright defense of the American Founding, the American principles. You need to say, this is a good country. We have laws, and we’re not perfect, but we are seeing this violent anarchist movement that wants to tear down everything we have, and I will not stand for it. That’s a message that can win. But you can’t wake up every morning, watch the TV and complain on what you see on cable news. And you’ve got to get rid of … Anyway, so I’ll stop for my usual … I think the polls are that bad. I think he is on course to lose. I think there’s time to fix it, but he’s got to get focused, and time is ticking away right now.Rich: It’s kind of funny. Some of Trump’s worst moments have been on Hannity. And they’re so bad exactly because Hannity has zero intention of making them bad. It involves whiffing on a softball. But Charlie, what do you make of the general terrain?Charlie: I really like that the impression that Jim did of Trump was actually of Chris Mathews. They have similar hair maybe. That’s such a good Chris Mathews impression, Jim. What do I think? I think Biden is winning and is likely to win. I don’t think that Biden will win by ten points when it comes to Election Day. There’s a small part of me that wonders if we’ve been here before, but that’s not based on any intelligent analysis. It’s just the lizard part of my brain remembering how sure I was that Hillary Clinton was going to win and also remembering seeing some similar—Rich: You weren’t 100 percent. In your defense, you weren’t 100 percent sure. There’s that moment I starkly remember we were sitting in your office. We might have been recording a podcast. We were recording a podcast. You had the sizable office back in the old NR world headquarters, and you were playing around with 270 to win or the RealClear electoral map. And I remember you pointing to 270 on the Trump side. And it involved those blue wall states. Playing around with those blue wall states.Charlie: Yeah, so I should probably separate out the year because at this point in the summer of 2016 I was absolutely convinced that Hillary was going to win. And we were seeing similar polling at the state and the national level, and we were also being told that Republicans were going to lose the House and the Senate. I would need to look up the numbers, but I distinctly remember them being down by about seven on the generic ballot in the House. As it got closer to it, yeah, I started to play around with the map and to wonder. And then there was one incident which I think I texted you about, Rich, where I went to get a haircut in Connecticut, and all of the people who worked in this old-fashioned barber shop were either second- or third-generation Hispanic immigrants or Italian Americans. And all of them were for Trump. Every single one. And it made me wonder. Not that he won Connecticut, but there’s just something about the way they were talking about Trump and Hillary that made me wonder. But I didn’t think that Trump was going to win even on Election Day.And I’m not saying that this is the same. I don’t think it is. But there’s a part of my brain that’s just been humbled by that experience. I also remember Romney being up seven points in the Gallup poll a lot in 2012. And I look at these Florida polls and sure, maybe Biden’s up eight. Entirely possible. It’s also true that Andrew Gillum was up over Ron DeSantis by seven points on Election Day in 2018. And that’s partly because of who votes in Florida. So there’s a part of me that is of the view that this is a bit early and that we don’t know. And the other contrarian view that I have is that Donald Trump is losing the people he is best suited to win back. If Biden were 80 to 15 or 80 to 20 with Hispanic voters, I would think, game over. But he’s not. Trump’s actually not doing as badly with Hispanic voters as you would assume. He seems to have kept about the same amount of black support, which is very low. But he hasn’t gone to a 1 or 2 percent. He’s at 8 or 9, and enthusiasm for Biden seems to be lower than usual. Where he’s really suffering is with seniors. Especially white seniors and white working-class women.Now, I don’t think he’s going to, but if the election becomes an actual election, those are the people you would assume he would be best placed to win back. My problem in seeing him winning and the reason I think Biden is winning and will win, is that as Jim says, I’m not really sure what he can do. The economy’s not going to go back to where it was by the end of the year. He’s not going to gain a reputation for having guided us through the coronavirus storm by the end of the year. He is unable to articulate why he wants to be president for four more years. He’s very easily distracted. And although I understand why he’s criticizing the Supreme Court for its decisions over the last two weeks, “vote for me and I’ll appoint different justices than the ones I already appointed” is less likely than not to be a winning message. So I can’t quite see how he gets on track. I am nonetheless a little bit hesitant at this stage, both because of what happened last time but also because of who it is that he seems to be losing.Rich: Yeah, so Jim, my problem is given what happened in 2016, I just don’t think I could ever count Trump out again. If these were the polls a week out, yeah. I guess I’d count him out. But we’ve got four months to go. The difference though is the nature of the opponent. Biden is not as hateable as Hillary Clinton. There was a stark number I believe in the last New York Times/Siena poll that had Trump down 14, which kind of seems like a lot. But just had Biden’s very unfavorable number. And it’s 20 something. I don’t know, 23 something. And Hillary’s at this point, I believe it said it was like at 46. And Trump is about 46 very unfavorable. So he’s where Hillary was. Now he was also where Hillary was in 2016 with a very a … But still managed to win. And the other thing that’s going on now is Trump’s a known quantity. He’s not the change candidate anymore. And he’s had these two crises that people have a really negative view of his handling of them. And absent having some other crisis that he handles in an unquestionably confident and deft manner that people really approve of, it’s hard to see how he can unring the bell of his numbers on the coronavirus and on police/race relations.Jim: Yeah. Look, you’re not running on potential and promise anymore. You are a known quantity. I have a suspicion that a key ingredient of that unexpected 2016 victory came from the sense of, people who were not thrilled about the course of the country under the two terms of Obama, including quite a few Obama voters. People forget, the year heading into Election Day 2016, we had the San Bernardino shootings, we had the Orlando shootings. We had the shooting of the cops in Dallas right before the convention in Cleveland. I remember heading out to that Republican convention in Cleveland and being really afraid there’s going to be some mass shooting or some sort of terrible terror attack. There was a sense … If you look in the right places, there was a sense that the country was coming apart at the seams in 2016. Of course now it looks like the good old days. This is where the president has to govern where he is, and he cannot keep running this sort outsider insurgent campaign because you’re the president now. You’re in charge. You are the status quo whether you like it or not.You need to make the case either that things are going well, which is going to be very, very tough considering the circumstances or probably the better argument is, I had things going really, really well and then this terrible virus came over here from China. And it’s a challenge like we’ve never seen before and haven’t seen in 100 years. And it forced us to shut down the economy that was the goose that was laying the golden egg. If you keep me in charge, once we get this virus under control, I can keep government policy in a direction to restore the golden goose. I can get us back, and you know the Democrats don’t do that. You know the Democrats are going to want to raise taxes. You know they’re going to want to do the crazy New Deal. Sooner or later, Joe Biden will succumb to the Bernie Sanders side. Joe Biden was not put on this earth to stand up to the left wing of the Democratic Party. Joe Biden is a back slapper. Joe Biden wants everybody to get along. Joe Biden will not stand up for you. He couldn’t even stand up for the businesses that were being trashed by rioters.There’s an argument to be made. Except the president needs to focus and do that, and he can’t run on his own personal grievances. I think it was Ramesh who made this very good point. The Trump campaign of 2016 was about doing things. Building the wall, immigration security. We’re going to bring back U.S. domestic production. Just on the issue of China alone there was an enormous potential for the president to get on this. But he’s got to stop thinking about like, China is merely a—Rich: I can’t believe you did this, Jim. I was just about to steal Ramesh’s point, and you stole it before I could get to it. I would express Ramesh’s point a little differently, or maybe this is a different point. Some of my best punditry is based on stealing Ramesh’s points, Jim.Jim: Here you go.Rich: Don’t hone in on my territory here.Jim: I’ll spike the volleyball over to you.Rich: I don’t know whether Ramesh has written this or just said it. But the thing about the 2016 campaign is Trump was hitting on issues that were under-discussed in our politics, underappreciated among the political elite. Fears of terrorism, concerns about illegal immigration, concerns about de-industrialization. Whereas this time around, very often his obsessions are just totally his obsessions or the obsessions of a very small group of people that might include us on this podcast. Probably includes a lot of our listeners. But Obamagate and Section 230 and these are not things that hit people where they live, and what I wonder about, Charlie, going back to Jim’s point in his first answer, that’d be great if Trump gave a speech about how this is a good country. You know, we have this wonderful Constitution. We need to defend our heritage. I certainly think he should give that speech. Any president should give that speech at any given point in time. But I just wonder if the toppling of the statues and all the rest of it infuriating and appalling to us, whether the average voter cares about it so much.I’ve basically been on board Jim’s theory. There’s going to be some sort of backlash to what’s been going on. But I wonder if it’s just not top of mind enough for the average voter.Charlie: So we have the opinion of the cause delivered by a Ponnuru, R. and joined in concurrence with Geraghty, J. and Lowry, R. I feel I should dissent just to make it a proper case. I think Ramesh is right, and I think that there is something to what you just said, Rich, but I think that that is only the case if you look at this narrowly. One of Trump’s problems is that he’s not eloquent. He is incapable of developing an argument, and he is incapable of nuance. And this is a moment that requires both. Now, four years ago just by talking about, just by mentioning topics that had been swept under the rug for so long, he had people sitting at home for better or for worse and saying, “I think that. I want to talk about that.” You could distill the entire immigration question, which is a complicated topic, down to “build the wall.” And people would hear, he cares about this. You could distill the question of China into a few soundbites. You can’t do that when you’ve been in charge for four years. Because you have to defend your record and explain why it’s different than the aspirant’s. But also this is a moment which calls for Trump to thread needles. The coronavirus question is complicated. You can’t just say, open up our businesses. You have to acknowledge this is a real threat. People have died.And the same is true of these protests. You have to acknowledge that what happened to George Floyd was terrible, and historically African Americans have been persecuted legally, systematically. But also to defend some of America’s great figures and to defend America’s virtue. And Trump’s contributions thus far are to tweet three- or four-word sentences in all caps. LAW AND ORDER. KEEP THE STATUES. I think that there is a real appetite out there for a defense of America. But he hasn’t made it. He’s been oddly silent. For all of the worry about Tom Cotton, and for all the, in many cases, correct anger at what happened in the park outside the White House, Trump’s been fairly hands-off. There’s been no real moment where he has become the avatar of a movement that doesn’t think America is rotten to the core. At least not beyond his usual platitudes. And one of the problems with being so effusive as he is, is it loses its currency. If you say all the time, this is the best, this is the greatest, this is the most influential, this is the … People say, “all right, whatever."You look back to presidents that have capitalized on this, you look back to Ronald Reagan when he first ran for governor of California, and he ran against the students at Berkeley and indeed the faculty at Berkeley. Find the video on YouTube of him telling them that they were in charge of spoiled children. If you look at Richard Nixon in 1968. They were pretty clear. They weren’t battering rams, and they weren’t just mouthing platitudes or shouting three-word slogans. They were clear about what it is that they thought. I do think maybe the statues per se aren’t American’s No. 1 concern. But I do think that the sort of sentiment that was expressed by Drew Brees about the importance of the flag, what it meant to him, what he thought about when he looked at it. The generational argument. The Burkean argument for America. I think that is extremely poignant and extremely poignant for a majority and extremely poignant for what it’s worth, for an awful lot of minorities. I don’t like this narrative that we’re seeing. The white person’s country. That’s absolute nonsense.It’s very important that we acknowledge disparities and historical persecution. But let’s not pretend that there aren’t lots and lots and lots of non-white people in this country who love it very dearly and who are glad to be here. Trump has an opportunity to be that guy. Joe Biden is not going to be a caricature. He’s not going to be a stereotype. He’s not going to burn the flag. So Trump if anything has to do it more than he would otherwise. But he’s not. He hasn’t sent in the authorities to shut down what’s happened to these statues. He hasn’t made a big speech about it. He hasn’t had a great sister–soldier moment where he just says no. He’s absent. And for all the talk about Joe Biden being in his basement, so is the president. And without that sort of action there’s just really no rationale for him beyond people saying, well we need him as a bulwark against Joe Biden. But that just doesn’t sell in the way that it did against, say, a Hillary Clinton.Rich: Yeah Jim, there are, I’m going to say it, things that I don’t understand about Trump’s view of the presidency. But I think I do understand them. But rhetorically I don’t understand why given the opportunity to give a national speech about American history and our heritage and our heroes, I’d love to do that. I wouldn’t want to do any other presidential duty, but I want to do that. And by the way, our listeners are wondering, we’re going to talk about the Russian intelligence thing probably later in the week when we have a firmer bead on it. But I’d love to read the presidential daily brief every day. The best gossip basically around the world gathered by the most adept spies in world history and surveillance techniques served up in a binder on your desk every morning. Who wouldn’t want to read that? And the president of the United States, you can have dinner with anyone you want, you can reach out to anyone you want. Any historian. Any issue expert at your beck and call. And instead of sitting and watching Fox News, which I can do as an ordinary American every night not being president of the United States.But these things don’t appeal to him because what he’s really … He’s in the job for the show. He wants to be the center of attention every day and to vent and say whatever he’s feeling at any given moment, no matter how reckless or heedless like that villages thing he retweeted. And be the center of attention and watch people talk about him every morning and every night and during a lot of the day on cable TV.Jim: Yeah. Maybe we’ll talk about this a bit later in the podcast when we start talking about the coronavirus stuff, but there’s considerable evidence that Donald Trump doesn’t actually enjoy the job part of being president. He likes all the pomp and circumstance. He likes the title. He likes being the center of attention. But it’s not like you see him spending a lot of time hashing things out with legislators and trying to put together some sort of majority to pass a bill. He clearly has very little interest in the details of policy. At one point you had said something about all the different things he could talk about, and Charlie mentioned the tweets of three or four words all in caps that he does. Do you know what’d probably be helpful, guys? If he’d stop retweeting videos of his supporters shouting “white power.” That’s probably not helpful at a point of a national conversation about racial inequities and stuff like that. That’s probably not helping. Yeah, I know the other guy said you’re not supporting him, you’re not black. Somehow we’ve managed to pick the two least self-aware, sensitive, erudite septuagenarians to run for president this cycle. But there is a …At the end when Trump couldn’t articulate that second-term agenda … Basically what is the cause? What does America get if it reelects Trump? More Trump. Him. Him being in the White House is the victory. So you’ve had some very interesting arguments of what does Trump really want to do in a second term? I think the first attack against Barack Obama from the John McCain campaign that drew blood was the celebrity ad. And Barack Obama was not merely a celebrity president, but he definitely leaned into it. Doing the picks on ESPN and doing the wacky videos with BuzzFeed and all the appearances on late-night talk shows and slow-jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon. Barack Obama was a full-spectrum celebrity for a good portion of his eight years. And I have a suspicion that’s part of the job. That may have been how Trump thought the job was. And guess what? Being president involves a heck of a lot more than that. Particularly when you’re facing major crises of urban unrest and this terrible pandemic going around.And if Trump doesn’t win reelection, I think a big chunk of the reason will be, he never really understood the job and never really wanted to do the parts of the job that are necessary to succeed in the job.Charlie: I have never wanted to be president, which is good because I can’t be. But watching Trump gives me that strange instinct. You know when you’re watching sports and you just sort of kick your leg out to try and kick the ball in soccer or if you’re watching baseball and you see they’re just going to miss catching it, you sort of put your arm out? I just sit there watching Trump so often and sort of just wish I could substitute myself—Rich: Yeah. I can do that better.Jim: You just got this yearning for mind control. Just for a short period of time.Charlie: I never felt like that before.Rich: I can see as Charlie’s striding boldly in a black and white picture from the White House to St. John’s Church after the protesters had been tear-gassed. You’re like, I could have done that better.Charlie: Yeah. I mean for a start, I think I would have said, if anyone is liable to get hurt or moved in order for me to do this, let’s not do it. It is a different feeling because with Barack Obama, I opposed almost everything he did. He was built in a laboratory to annoy me politically. But I never thought, “well I would do it better.” I thought, you have an ideology that I don’t share and I really wish you weren’t there. But with Trump it’s like watching someone drop the ball all the time. You just want to stand up and say, oh no, don’t say that. Oh no, don’t do that. Here’s … It’s just genuinely frustrating.Rich: Jim Geraghty exit question to you. At this juncture, which is more likely in November, a Joe Biden landslide or another Donald Trump narrow Electoral College victory without winning the popular vote?Jim: Joe Biden landslide. Didn’t take me very long to make that decision.Charlie: Yeah. I think it’s more likely that there’ll be a Joe Biden landslide.Rich: I’m going to say more likely narrow Trump victory because I think the race will close up, and I don’t see the landslide happening at this juncture. But I don’t totally discount the possibility that ten days out this race could really flip and could be an utter catastrophe for Republicans. But at the moment I’m more likely a Trump narrow victory, but obviously the most likely scenario is just a solid, non-landslide Joe Biden victory.

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[atombooks]

Anonymous

The Big Bad Blog ~ Monday 26 September

There’s an empty chair in Form 4, Year 13 today.

The news has spread like wildfire: Eva Pieachowski is missing.

Our school is in shock.

Eva. The star girl at St Martin’s. She’s taking five A levels in English, Economics, History, Geography and Art, and she’s top in every subject, yet Eva’s no square – anyone who has ever partied with her knows that. With her long blonde hair and bewitching brown eyes, it’s no wonder that she was scouted by a modelling agency on a trip to Paris. She only did one contract – for Topshop – before dropping it in favour of her studies. She’s captain of the netball and tennis teams, tipped to be voted head girl in our elections next week, and at the end of Year 12 she was awarded the trophy for Star Pupil. The prom is still nine months away but it’s pretty obvious who will be chosen as queen.

She was last seen on Friday night at a party held at Rob Pennington’s house. Rob’s parties are notorious. So what happened? Did Eva run away? Is she lost? Is she playing a game? Or has something terrible happened to her? We all know that Eva’s recently started to hang out with the wrong crowd . . .

Hopefully all is well and Eva’s gone to stay with a friend and forgotten to tell her parents. Let’s hope that tomorrow her empty chair is filled.

COMMENTS (2) Lisa – ‘with her blonde hair and bewitching eyes’ – what is this, a Mills & Boon? *cringe*. Tristan – hey, I like this blog. I want to know what’s happened to Eva. Thnx for keeping us up to date.

Chapter 3

Luke

‘Tell me about you and Eva,’ DI Jackson says. ‘She’s your girlfriend?’ We’re sitting in a cramped interview room. A videocam squats in the corner, recording us. Jackson has the most intimidating stare. My hands itch for a pencil. If I was going to draw him, I’d capture his lizard eyes, which laser me for minutes at a time without blinking. Drawing always makes me feel better when I’m tense. ‘What’s happened to her?’ I ask. ‘Or maybe Eva was just a friend,’ he goes on, ignoring me. ‘A friend you have a crush on?’ ‘Yes, she is my girlfriend,’ I assert, my cheeks warming. Why do people always assume a girl like her wouldn’t go for a guy like me? ‘It’s serious between us, we’ve been dating nearly nine months. We’re in love.’ ‘Really?’ He looks surprised and I swear there’s a sarcastic flicker in his eyes, as if all teens ever do is play Spin the Bottle and snog and lack the depth to ever feel anything deeper than that. At least my anger smoothes away my stutter. ‘We have something really special.’ More surprise. His pen hovers above the page for about a minute, until I’m ready to grab it and fling it across the room. Then he writes something down. He’s left- handed and his handwriting is loopy and slanted; impossible to read. ‘Are you writing a greetings card?’ I ask. ‘I’m sorry?’ ‘You’re writing down that we have something really special?’ Once I say the words, I know they sound bad. I have such a big mouth. Mum’s always warning me: ‘You always speak and then think and it’s too late once you’ve said it!’ ‘Sorry,’ I say quickly. Detective Jackson folds his arms. ‘You think this is funny?’ ‘No! I don’t!’ My voice is too loud and I try to turn down the volume. My fists are clenched in my lap. ‘I just don’t get what’s going on. Where’s Eva?’ ‘You tell me,’ he says. ‘I haven’t seen her all weekend,’ I say. ‘I last saw her on Friday night at a party and then I was helping my mum with family stuff on Saturday and on Sunday I went over to see Rob.’ ‘Rob?’ His pen scratches another note. ‘The guy you were beating up in the toilets?’ ‘We were play- fighting,’ I correct him. ‘We were just messing around! We were pretending to be superheroes. I was Batman and Rob was the Green Lantern – well, he wanted to be Spider- Man, but you know.’ ‘I’m sorry?’ ‘You know, the Green Lantern. He’s the lame hero nobody likes.’ I figure that Jackson isn’t the type to ever go to the movies; it would be far too much fun for him. ‘I see.’ Jackson makes another enigmatic note and I swallow. I wish I could be like Rob. He’d know just what to say. If he was here, he’d already know what Eva’s been up to, and would be shaking the policeman’s hand and arranging a game of bloody golf or something. I’m no good at dealing with adults, especially ones in positions of authority. ‘And you’ve had no contact with Miss Pieachowski since Friday?’ ‘Well, I did call her but she didn’t pick up, so I figured she was mad at me.’ His eyes flicker. Oh. I shouldn’t have said that. ‘Can I have a drink of water?’ My tongue feels thick in my mouth. ‘In a minute. First, tell me why Eva would be angry with you.’ ‘I . . . She . . . it was just . . . ’ ‘Let’s begin with Friday. Did something happen that might make her angry with you?’ ‘Well, a bit. Kind of. I mean, we were getting on really well to begin with. We went to Rob’s house as he was giving a party. He wanted me there cos we’re good friends.’ ‘Except when you’re attempting to break his nose,’ DI Jackson says drily. Before I can defend myself, he goes on: ‘So, did Rob’s parents know about this soirée?’ ‘They were away for the weekend, so . . . ’ ‘What time did you get to the party?’ Time? I don’t own a watch. I use my mobile sometimes tocheck the time – and usually find that wherever I’m meant to be, I’m late.

‘I think I picked her up around eight- thirty.’ I don’t add that I had to collect Eva at the bottom of her road, so that her parents didn’t see me. That might sound odd. ‘So it would’ve been soon after that.’ ‘Did you drink at the party?’ ‘Ah, just a bit. I had a beer, maybe. I know you got me for reckless driving earlier this year, so of course, I was being careful. Eva drank more.’ ‘I haven’t forgotten the reckless driving. So, you and Eva fell out? She got upset?’ ‘I don’t know about that . . . anyhow, I left the party at, I don’t know, eleven – no, maybe ten thirty. I’m not sure about the time. I left before she did.’ ‘You didn’t drive her home?’ ‘No – she wanted to stay and I didn’t.’ ‘And you weren’t worried about her?’ I stare at the desk, chewing on my lip, when there’s a knock at the door. The female sergeant is standing there. She gives me the strangest of looks – a kind of moon- eyed double take. Then she beckons Jackson over and whispers in his ear. Jackson nods. He turns to the camera, announces the time and says that the interview has been suspended, before switching it off. Then he tells me to wait here and leaves the room, slamming the door behind him so hard that the vibrations shiver and echo through my plastic chair. ‘Fuck,’ I say out loud. I’m starting to worry that this is more serious than a silly Dare or one of Eva’s wind- ups. I wonder if I need a lawyer. Then I remind myself that me and the detective are basically on the same side, right? We both want to make sure that Eva is okay. I resist the urge to fold my arms over the desk, bury my head in their nest and nap. I’m scared I’m still being watched through that glass window, even secretly recorded; I try to force an expression of calm neutrality. It’s hard to think straight because I’m so bloody hungry. This morning I opened the bread bin to find a loaf so green with mould that I couldn’t face scraping it off. Matt and Freya, who are three and eight, started to cry for their breakfast. Mum was already at work, cleaning down at the church, so it was my turn to sort them out. I said they could have Coco Pops, but when I opened the packet, there was nothing but brown crumbs. They cried all the way to school, until I went into the newsagents and bought a Twix, making them swear to share. That was the last of my paper- round money, so I had nothing left to buy my own breakfast. Fighting Rob took the last of my energy. Breakfast seems like it happened days ago, not hours. I should be in English right now, discussing Robert Frost’s poem about the silent woods. But here I am, in a police station, wondering what my girlfriend is playing at. Maybe it’s Eva’s idea of revenge. Recently her games have started getting more and more out of control, even cruel. The door swings open. DI Jackson comes striding back in and sets my Nokia mobile down on the table. ‘On Friday night, you have ten missed calls from Eva, between eleven- thirty and one- thirty,’ he says sternly. ‘Ten? I didn’t think it was that many.’ ‘She also left some messages which you haven’t listened to. I think you should listen to them now.’ What? How the hell has he got access to my messages? I know all you have to do on a Nokia is press 121, but surely that’s not even legal without a warrant? I forget everything when I hear Eva’s voice, tinny on the loudspeaker, raw with rage: ‘I hope you’re happy now Luke. Thanks to you, I’m out here in the cold, again – not the first bloody time, is it? I need your help, please, please, help me, please . . . ’ I freeze in horror. And then DI Jackson plays the next. Eva’s voice is a shrill scream and it goes right through me: ‘Luke – you can’t do this to me! I have to get out of here! Please, please, stop hurting me, stop . . . Help, help me!’ Silence. ‘Oh my God! Did someone hurt her?’ I cry. ‘I don’t know, Luke, that’s why you’re here. Were you the one who hurt her? It’s not clear who she’s referring to. It sounds as though you’re the one she’s mad at.’ ‘God no, it must’ve been someone else.’ ‘Are you sure about that? Why didn’t you listen to these messages? Why didn’t you call her back?’ ‘Like I said, I did call her!’ I protest. ‘You haven’t checked properly. I did call her – it was Saturday, or maybe Sunday morning. I – I felt bad and I called at some point. I can’t remember when. But it just went to voicemail and I – I didn’t want to listen to her messages because I couldn’t face them. She wanted to break up, okay? I thought she was just leaving them to tell me to f—, I mean, to go away.’ I stare at the phone again, Eva’s voice echoing inside me: Please, please, please . . . ‘I’m really worried,’ I say. ‘She sounds terrible – is she okay?’ But DI Jackson just looks at me as though I have all the answers.

Chapter 4

Rob

I stand outside the police station, listening to Mozart’s

Symphony No. 40 on my iPhone, wondering why the hell

Luke is taking so long. In the last period before lunch, I was

disturbed to find Luke still hadn’t been released from questioning,

so I decided to come and find him. He’s been in there

a good three hours . . .

Finally, he emerges, hurrying down the steps. I’m unnerved

by the expression on his face: he looks as though he’s just sat

three exams in a row.

When he spots me, he jumps in surprise. He looks so

touched that I feel a flash of guilt: Luke thinks I’m here just

for moral support.

He gives me a huge hug. I can feel him trembling and I pull

away sharply. Just what the hell went on in there?

‘Luke,’ I say, ‘we need to talk.’

We spot a Starbucks down the road and head towards it.

Luke’s silent for about a minute and then he spills everything.

As I hear him describing Eva’s messages, my stomach clenches.

I don’t have a good feeling about this.

‘I’m pretty freaked that she might have been kidnapped or

something,’ Luke concludes. He’s blinking hard, and surreptitiously

rubs a tear from his eye.

We sit down with our lattes and Luke makes a flippant

remark that it’s unlike me to cut class. I can tell he’s trying to

lighten the atmosphere, but I have to tell him that this is no

laughing matter.

This is serious.

Luke’s right: I’m a grade- A student. I never skip school.

Next month I have an interview at Trinity College,

Cambridge to read History. After that, I’m going to work in

the banking industry for ten years. I’ll stand as a Tory MP at

the age of thirty for the Wimbledon constituency. By the age

of forty, I’ll be prime minister. I’ve got it all mapped out, and

if you think I’m crazy to decide all this at the age of seventeen,

then remember: Maggie Thatcher went to Oxford knowing

that she was destined to be PM, and look how far she went.

Luke’s biting his nails savagely and I gently swat his hand.

So then he takes a napkin, spreads it over his knee and starts

sketching caricatures of people in the café. For a moment I’m

distracted, marvelling at his talent. Most of the time, Luke

looks awkward in his body, but when he starts drawing, his

whole physique changes, becomes fluid and serene.

‘Luke,’ I say, swallowing. ‘We have to think ahead. If they’re

seriously worried about Eva, then the questions are going to

start. She’s been missing three days – if she just wanted to

scare her parents or do a Dare, she would have been gone a

day, max. So this is serious. They’re going to come after us

and they’re going to want to know what happened at my party.’

Luke’s pen pauses. He looks peevish, as though I’m being

selfish to worry about us at a time like this. I feel sorry for

him. He still hasn’t figured out how life works. Once when

I was a kid, my dad took me to the park and showed me the

ducks on the pond. ‘See how those ducks over there are

pushing the sick duck away? They don’t want to be held back

by him, so he has to leave the group. That’s nature. Survival

of the fittest.’

In some ways, Luke’s such an old soul, with his dad in

jail and the way he’s had to father his siblings, but in many

respects he’s terribly naïve. He doesn’t know how to handle

adults; that’s why he’s in so much trouble at school. And when

he’s in an intense situation, instead of playing it cool, he tends

to blow his top. He once joked to me that he’s never quite got

the hang of ‘how to bullshit like a bourgeois’. To be honest,

that’s what always drew me to Luke. St Martin’s is full of posh

toffs; I find his down- to- earth manner refreshing. But now it

could screw us both.

‘Look,’ I say, ‘what about what we all did at the party in

the – bathroom? And when we . . . you know . . . ’

‘You should be a spin doctor, not an MP.’

‘Luke, I’m serious! Don’t you get how bad this looks for us?

I still have that video on my phone.’

Luke pales. ‘Can’t you delete it?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe?’ His pen digs into his napkin, ink spreading, ruining

his sketch.

‘I’ll delete it if you just agree to work with me on this. We

have to make up a story about my party, we have to rehearse,

and we have to get that story straight.’

Chapter 5 Eva’s Diary: 1 June 2016

It’s weird – I would never have thought of writing a

diary before. It always seemed a bit last- century to

me, the sort of thing you expect girls in a Jane Austen

novel to do because they’ve got all those hours to fill

scratching out their heartfelt emotions about the latest

guy with a big *house*. But a famous writer gave a talk

at our school where he said it was good to write every

day, even if you just keep a diary. He said that writing

is like a muscle and you have to keep exercising it. And

since I want to be a famous writer, I figured I should

follow his advice.

I’m not sure where to begin. I’ve started all jokey

because laughter is sometimes the only way I get by

these days. I’m flippant all the time. I’ve made such a

mess of everything, got myself in such a tangle. I know that sooner or later I’m going to fall off this tightrope

I’m walking. In the meantime, I just keep going to

school every day and getting my ‘A’s and keeping my

dad happy and smiling at everyone.

I guess all the trouble began at the start of 2016.

That’s when I first noticed Luke.

I was walking across the playground with my best

friend, Siobhan. We were on our way to Economics and

there was all this shouting and noise. Well, I love a

good drama, so I dragged Siobhan over to the crowd.

Everyone was chanting, ‘FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!’

That’s when I saw him. Luke Jones. I’d never really

noticed before how handsome he is. He’s very tall and

well built – not in a fake, steroid, too- many- trips- tothe-

gym kind of way – he’s naturally fit and strong.

He was messing around with another guy; they’d

both pierced holes in their Evian bottles and were

shooting thin sprays of water at each other, howling

with laughter. I stood there, hugging my books to my

chest, and he looked up with his amazing blue eyes and

grinned at me. It was such a wild, dangerous, sexy grin,

like a big cat daring me to play with him. He swept his

dripping hair from his forehead. Then he blew me a kiss.

‘In your dreams, Luke,’ jeered Mark, the guy he was

play- fighting.

Siobhan put her palm to my cheek and made a

sizzling noise.

‘Don’t tell me you like Luke,’ she said. ‘He’s a bad

boy, Eva. Don’t go there.’

I’d started to get bored of going on dates with guys.

It always followed the same pattern – he’d send me a

flirty text, we’d go to see a movie, he’d make me hold

his sweaty hand, he’d try to kiss me in the last half,

and it would carry on like this for a few more dates

before I got restless. None of them had any character.

They were all so nice. Maybe a bad boy was just

what I needed.

When I started telling my girlfriends that I had

a crush on Luke I got a secret thrill from seeing the

surprise on their faces. By choosing Luke, I was finally

saying to the world, I’m not the angel you think I

am, there’s more to me than that. Because that’s the

trouble with being me. Everyone sees me but nobody

*sees me*. They only see sparkle and glitter. They can

never perceive the shades in me, because I can only be

one colour, and it’s some kind of sickly, bright pink.

Several of my friends were convinced it was some

kind of philanthropic gesture. As though I felt sorry

for Luke, that he was my project and I’d be the one to

change him.

I think I did change Luke, but not in the way

everyone thought. I knew he was a bad boy but

I underestimated him just the same as everyone

underestimated me. When I got to know him, he wasn’t what I expected at all. And by then it was too late––

I want to write more but Dad’s calling me for

dinner. Oh God. I have to go down there and pretend

everything’s fine. For once my surface glitter is handy.

OK. Deep breath. Down I go . . .

[heroofmorderan-blog]

The Four Swords, Chapter 6: The Mansion of Lord Lester

What follows is the sixth installment of the Hero of Morderan series. If you liked it, consider following me here and on Twitter @heroofmorderan. Share with friends, and let me know what you think! New chapters are released on the 1st and 15th of each month, enjoy!

We walked around the perimeter of the gate to the back of the building. The only exterior windows were on the second floor, too high for either of us to reach. We ended up getting lucky, though. At the back of the mansion, there was a small grate on the floor, leading into what was some kind of basement. The coast was clear, so we jumped the fence and approached the grate.

Breaking in turned out to be the easy part, figuring out what to do next was going to be the challenge. A creature had summoned something from fire back in the park, then came to the mansion of Lord Lester, the man in charge of the town, who conveniently went to Vastfield around the time all this started. Do you think I was suspicious? I was suspicious. Esmerelda told us earlier that leaving was a thing he did sometimes, to lend aid to the new city, but I don’t buy it. Vastfield is too big and rich for some guy from a small town to be their advisor.

So, then we were in Lord Lester’s basement. It was gross, and if you remember, I was once surrounded by humanoid lizard egg sacks, so turns out I know what gross is. It smelled terrible, all humid and moldy, like no one had come down here since it was built. Dust covered the shelves and boxes. The cold stone floor rounded out the uncomfortable and generally unpleasant basement setting. I opened a few crates sitting around, just books and plates, some tools and gardening equipment, nothing too out of the ordinary. It looked to be a storage space for things never used.

When we finished being unsatisfied with the basement, we crept up the short flight of steps to the closed door at the top. Taking a moment to listen, we only heard a silent, still air on the other side. It wasn’t a question of if something was in the house, but where. After instinctually checking for traps, I slowly pushed the door open.

The basement opened to a living room. The moonlight shining through the drawn curtains casted shadows over the furniture on top of the area rug. I felt cold, something was wrong. Then it occurred to me: nothing’s wrong, and that’s exactly what’s wrong. The rest of the town is destroyed, why is the mansion so organized and clean?

On the left wall of the living room was a painting. It was a man in full armor, posing with a sword. He had flowing blond hair, and his emerald green eyes looked off into the distance. He had a small scar under his left eye. On the bottom of the frame was a small plaque: “Lord Lester”. The front door was here, too, presumable locked. Across the room was a set of stairs leading up to the next floor.

Moving through the living room, we found what must have been the dining room. The long oak table was set with detailed china. More plates and cups filled a cupboard on the wall. With every step I took, I expected to encounter that creature. My hand never left my sword. Looking back on it, I think that was the first time I broke into someone’s house. I know it’s wrong, but it was kind of fun. I liked seeing what kind of stuff people have in their home. It’s not like I’m going to pick it up as a hobby, but if a mission calls for it, I won’t have a problem volunteering.

The last room on the ground floor was a kitchen. It had the kinds of things you would expect, a nice fireplace and cauldron, knives on the table, but there were also things I’ve never seen in a kitchen before. There were herbs and some kind of clear liquid in vials. Curtlik didn’t know what it was, but thought we shouldn’t mess with it. I took a vial when she wasn’t looking.

There was also a cupboard in the kitchen. It had more ingredients and food, so we decided it was alright to stock up for future meals. While we were searching, we found this interesting bandanna. It was leather, with yellow spirals around the circumference.

“What’s this?” I asked Curtlik.

“I don’t know, some kind of bandanna.” She answered.

“Why is in the pantry?”

“I don’t know, maybe Lester was hiding it?” She was turning it over in her hands, it was a weird thing.

“Should we take it?” I’ll admit, I was getting excited about taking stuff. I may have gotten carried away.

“Don’t you think that’s wrong?” Curtlik questioned, now untying the bandanna and wrapping it around her arm.

“I mean, it’s here. And this guy doesn’t seem that great, so why not?”

“But I mean, morally. We’re supposed to be good and helping, should we really also be stealing?” Curtlik had a point, but I really wanted it. Sure, it was probably silly that we started debating morality in the pantry of some guys mansion, but at least there wasn’t a wolf with us.

“What if we give it back if he asks for it? If he doesn’t know it’s missing, then he doesn’t really want it in the first place.” I countered.

“I guess, and it could help us. We don’t know what it does, it could be cursed.”

“I’ll put it on.” I was eager to have it.

“Sure, I don’t see why not. No one else is using it.” Curtlik handed me the bandanna.

“Exactly!” I took it and put it on. The bandanna felt cool around my head. I don’t really know how to explain it. I had seen everything in the room already, but with the bandanna on, I was able to really be aware of it all. It was like I could see it better, like there was a fog over everything that suddenly lifted when I put it on. Everything was crisper, easier to see, like a sun finally breaking through the clouds.

“This is cool.” I remarked. Looking around the room as if I was seeing it for the first time.

“Should we keep going?” Curtlik offered, growing bored of the small room.

Ascending to the top floor, the wooden steps creaked under our feet. The new bandanna gave me a boost of confidence, and so I elected to go first. That thing had to be up here, there was nowhere else for it to be. Our bows let the way to the top of the steps.

The stairs opened to a small room. In the far right corner was an armored statue standing guard. I was suspicious, but I trusted my senses and they told me it was safe. Opposite the guard on the left wall was a door, and to the left of the door was a hallway. The list of places that creature could be continued to shrink, as I grew more anxious in anticipation of our encounter.

The fear I felt was unlike that of our previous battles. I think I was more scared of not knowing. The unknown creature, the townspeople transforming, it was all so mysterious. The dark mansion didn’t help the atmosphere much either. Before, I knew what I was fighting. I knew what the situation was, and I had some expectation of what was ahead of me. Now, I’m blind. I don’t know what to do. Rather, I don’t feel like I have a choice.

That’s the worst thing: not knowing and not being able to do anything. At this point, I’ve fought some scary stuff, but this tops it all. I have to trust. I have to trust myself and my skills, and I have to trust Curtlik. I have to trust that we can get through this together, and I do. If there’s one thing I can bet on, it’s that, together, she and I can take anything.

“So, which way do we go?” I asked. I didn’t have much of an intuition.

“Let’s do the door. I’ll open it, and you can rush in.” Curtlik moved to the door, putting a hand on the handle. Quietly testing it, the handle resisted turning.

“It’s locked, I guess I’ll kick.”

Standing to her side, Curtlik kicked in the door. I rushed behind the splintered wood as Curtlik followed closely behind. We lowered our bows to the empty room. I know what you’re thinking, yes. Kicking down a door does create a lot of noise, and the creature thing probably heard us. It was our only choice. Now be quiet, you’ll find out what happens.

The room was some kind of study. There was a desk on the far side of the room and a beautiful nature painting behind it. On the left was a small bar with a fine selection of wines, which were all very good, by the way. The rest of the room was comfortably decorated, but what was interesting was the desk. On it was a map of Nas. A section of the woods on the edge of town was circled in red.

“Do you think this is where the creature when?” I asked, looking at the map.

“I don’t know, but it’s worth checking out after this.” Curlik answered, rolling up the map to take with us.

“Do you know what’s out there?” I knew there were mines around here, maybe one was at the center of the circle.

“I don’t know, I guess we’ll find out.”

I really stared to embrace snooping. I figured, if I got this cool bandanna, what else could I get? My hands tested the drawers to the desk. The ones that were opened didn’t have much in them, but there was one that Lester locked. Interesting.

“Hey, Curtlik, this one’s locked.” I called, pulling at the drawer.

“So open it.” She was too busy looking at the wine selection to be interested.

“Lock picking really isn’t my thing, can you do it?” I asked, pocking my head up from the desk.

“Nope.”

“What!? Why?” I stood up.

“If you want it opened, you do it. It’ll be good practice.” She knew she could open it, no problem. She wanted to mess with me! I was vexed.

“At least give me your lock pick, I don’t have anything.” I begged. It was either that or I smash the desk.

So, we sat. I worked on the lock and Curtlik sat on the desk. She paged through a book she found on the shelf and I continued to get frustrated.

“You think this is the best time to do this? We need to keep exploring the house.” I argued, trying to get her to do this for me.

“You’ll never learn if you don’t do it, and I’m not the one who wanted to open the drawer. I’m ready to go whenever you are.”

“You’re enjoying this.” I said, maybe trying to guilt her into helping.

“Yup.”

“You stink.”

“Okay.”

It didn’t help that she didn’t care. It only made me more frustrated. Looking back, I was probably frustrated with myself for not being able to do it. The longer I took, the more I was embarrassing myself. But also, like, what the heck! We’re trying to get through this and she thinks it’s a good time to teach me a lesson!

I kept at it, and after a few minutes, the drawer clicked open. I’ll have you know, it actually didn’t take me very long, just a few minutes.

“About time.” Curtlik said when she heard the lock. She was joking, but it didn’t help. She set the book down and hoped off the desk. “What’s in it?”

“Oh, so now you’re interested!” It wasn’t much, unfortunately. I regretted putting in all that work for a stupid letter, but a letter was better than nothing. Plus, it was a nice letter.

The letter was in an envelope with a broken seal of Vastfield. The letter read:

My love,

 We just sold the latest of the items, you can come up to retrieve your cut when you have time to get away. I also long to see you, it has been too long. I wanted to tell you that I am pregnant, and that I want to leave the Dragon Scale. I haven’t told them yet, I fear Luthmire will become violent, but I cannot do this with a child. We have made enough gold from this, we can live a good life together. I was thinking Desca if it is a girl, I think that is a pretty name. Come up what you can, I will be waiting for you.

 Always Yours,

 Bessel

 “Who are they?” I asked, after reading the letter aloud.

“Let me see.” I handed the letter to Curtlik, who re-read the letter.

“Lady Bessel is the current leader of Vastfield. She and Luthmire must have gotten romantically involved over the course of his visits. I’ve never heard of Luthmire, but it sounds like he’s part of the Dragon Scale. The Dragon Scale is a secret underground crime organization. They’re about as big as they are complicated, so I can’t get into much detail explaining it now, but they’re powerful. We’ve had spies try to get information since King Thalias and the Great War.”

“That sounds really bad, what were they doing getting involved with something like that?” I wondered. What’s going on in Vastfield? What the heck is going on in Morderan! We’ve got secret underground crime organizations, transforming towns people, dead evil kings who, turns out, aren’t really dead. It all makes me appreciate Haledine way more.

“I wouldn’t know. Maybe Esmerelda has an idea. If we ever talk to her again, let’s find out.” Curtlik answered.

Making her way to the door, she turned.

“But let’s go, we’ve spent enough time here.” I pocketed the letter and followed.

The hallway next to the door was short, and ended with another door. Stopping to listen, we found what we came for. A low chanting in a language neither of us recognized bled through the door. Listening closer, it sounded like water bubbling, like it was boiling. Readying our bows, I offered Curtlik the door, which she graciously accepted by kicking in.

There he was. That green, dry skin, lanky goblin looking things with long black hair. He was sitting cross legged, his back towards us, in the center of a pentagram drawn across the floor. A ruby, sapphire, and emerald rested on three corners of the star, and inside the triangle wedges where the gems sat were a standing flame, a ball of boiling water, and a vine growing from the ground.

Candles covered the ground, and a glaive rested behind him. The door definitely made noise when we opened it, so I was sure he heard us, but he made no action to acknowledge our entrance. Fine with me, I thought, and moved closer to the creature.

I stepped forward, into the room, and was hit back with a terrible, invisible force. Flying back, I landed hard against the wall in the hallway, falling to my knees and dropping my bow. I looked up to see Curtlik react. She let loose her arrow, sending it point blank towards the goblin creature. It wasn’t a goblin, but I don’t know what it was, and I don’t have any other way to describe it. I guess I’ll make up a name for it. This thing, was called a thrasher. It’s a cool name.

Well, Curtlik shot at the thrasher, and as soon as her arrow cleared the entrance, it froze, dead in mid-air, before it too got launched back into the hallway.

I sat on the ground, wondering what we could do against an invisible force field. Luckily, I didn’t have to think for long, because in a moment, the small flame burst to life, the flames licking the ceiling, the re-directing themselves into the ruby before disappearing entirely. The boiling water swam up into the air, curving and turning in on itself. Then it traveled across the ground to the sapphire, disappearing into the gem. Finally, the vine grew high, then dipped to retract into the emerald. The center of each gem began to glow brightly, bathing the room in red, blue, and green.

The thrasher rose and collected the three gems in a canvas bag. When he finally turned, his eyes widened and he took a step back, almost as if he was surprised to see us. This was the first time I saw his face. It was small, scrunched like he ate something sour that also smelled horribly. He lacked a nose. Instead, there were just two small slits above his mouth.

Once he was us, he took another step back. Gently, he lowered the bag of gems to the ground, then moved to his glaive on the floor. He wasn’t fast, he was taking his time, like moving any faster would spook us. Like he still had a trap for us. We were ready. I was up, and Curtlik and I both had our swords ready.

Walking to his glaive, he slowly bent down, never breaking eye contact with us. What is he doing? I thought to myself. I hope you haven’t forgotten about that epic battle music, because now’s the time to start imagining it.

The instant his hand touched the glaive, he rushed forward, closing the space between us in one brief moment. Now, I don’t know if you know what a glaive is. As far as I know, you don’t, so unless you’ve come across one wherever you’ve been, I’m going to assume you still don’t. It’s a long staff, and you use two hands to fight with it. One end has a long razor blade, like a saw, and the other has a sharp hook, like a scythe. Well the thrasher had a glaive, and both rushed through the door.

I think we were both taken off guard with his burst of speed, because we just had time to react to his attack. He was good. Even in such close quarters, he spun himself around the hall, swinging both ends of the glaive at us. Curtlik and I got separated, with the thrasher between us. Every time I swung, a different end of the glaive caught my attack, and I would only have just enough time to react before the other end swung around to hit me.

He was relentless, never missing a beat or losing his balance. What’s worse was that our only fighting style of switching out wasn’t going to work here, we were both giving this guy everything we had. We really should work on other fighting techniques.

I don’t know how she did it, but Curtlik started pushing the thrasher back down the hall towards the stairs. With her playing offense, I just had to play defense and walk back with the group.

Emerging into the small room at the top of the steps, I rotated around to join Crutlik’s side. Combining our force on one side, we were able to push the thrasher further.

“The steps.” I heard Curtlik grunt under her swings. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I had a good idea, and started directing the focus of my attacks. Between the two of us, we cornered the thrasher at the top of the steps. One mighty swing sent him falling back.

If you thought that was cool, you just wait. I’ll be honest, I had no idea what came over me, but I was in the full heat of battle. I was feeling all the rage. Seeing the thrasher on the ground at the bottom of the steps, I decided to do the only thing I thought was reasonable. I instinctually, and I mean without hesitation- Curtlik was about to run down the steps and I cut her off, I leaped off the top step. In mid-air, I pointed the tip of my sword down, and landed it clean through the chest of the thrasher. His body jerked up from the impact, the settled still on the ground, dead.

It wasn’t a clean landing, I was definitely feeling it the next day, but it was by far the coolest thing I’ve ever done, and Curtlik saw it! And guess what she did when I looked up to her in triumph? She scoffed! *scoff* That was amazing! She just did a quick cough laugh thing and walked back down the hallway. I don’t know what to do to impress this woman!

So, I rushed back up the steps to her. When I caught up, she was in the pentagram room, looking at the sack of gems.

“Um, hey! You just walked off!”

“The fight was over.” She responded flatly, focused on the gems.

“I don’t know, I did a thing.” I said, sheepishly.

“Yeah, I saw, you killed it.” She was as dry as ever, almost intentionally so.

“In a really cool way!” That got a smile out of her, but she fought it back.

“What do you think that thing wanted with those gems?” She asked, finally making eye contact for the first time in what seemed like forever. I welcomed her smile, and I knew she noticed.

“I don’t know, probably has something to do with that map. Do you know what that was?”

“Now that I got a good look at it, yeah. I don’t know the specific race, but it’s not from Morderan.”

“What do you mean? How can something not be from Morderan?” I had no idea what she was saying. Basically, things that I see aren’t real all the time.

“Well, Morderan is just one plane of existence. There are more, this thing came from one of them.”

“Galithan?” I asked.

“Maybe, but he didn’t invite demons last time, so this might be different. We’ll probably get more answers if we follow that map.” She responded.

“Sounds good, let’s figure out what’s going on, hu?”

[arianayells-blog]

Folie a Deux by Fall Out Boy

Hello internet and for one of our last posts for a while we will be analysing one of my favorite Fall Out Boy albums, Folie a Deux.

Background: Folie a Deux is Fall Out Boy’s fourth studio album and was release on December 16,2008. The album was recorded from July to September 2008 and ranked number eight on the US Billboard 200 chart. Originally the album was to be released on November 4th but was postponed to not conflict with the presidential election. Overall the album received generally positive review from music critics, however it received conflicting views and support from fans that concertgoers would “boo the band for performing number from the record in concert.” Fall Out Boy heavily toured to promote Folie a Deux and even created a fake campaign online called Citizens for Our Betterment. The campaign supposedly “hacked” Decaydance Records website and clues were left by Wentz and his wife Ashlee Simpson on their blogs. The marketing campaign eventually revealed Folie a Deux’s release date and included a mixtape titled Welcome to the Administration that included various new tracks from Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes, Cobra Starship, and Panic! At the Disco.  This was the first time that a Fall Out Boy album was not autobiographical. The songs dealt with themes of decaying relationships, moral dilemmas, trust, infidelity,responsibility, commitment, and societal shortcomings. The album’s title comes from Folie a Deux, a rare psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another. The phrase can also be said as the “madness of many” or “a madness shared by two.” Due to various conflict between the band members and negativity given by fans, Folie a Deux became Fall Out Boy’s last studio album before the band’s 2009-2013 hiatus. [Link] [Link]

The songs we will be looking at in this post are Disloyal Order of the Water Buffalos and I Don't Care.

Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes

The General Idea: Disloyal Order is mainly a song that introduces themes that are going to continue throughout the album, mainly themes of heartbreak, misfortune, and romantic ideas that are conflicted. The main theme that continues is falling in and out of a relationship and occasionally the theme of feeling out of place.

Lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/falloutboy/disloyalorderofwaterbuffaloes.html

https://youtu.be/4ci43EANAI0

I'm coming apart at the seams

Pitching myself for leads in other people's dreams now

Buzz, buzz, buzz

Doc, there's a hole where something was

Doc, there's a hole where something was

The person is falling apart because of emotional turmoil and it’s come to a point where they wish they were someone else. They call  the doctor saying that they’re missing a piece of themselves or trying to figure out what’s wrong when reality there’s nothing wrong with them.

Fell out of bed,

Butterfly bandage, but don't worry

You'll never remember, your head is far too blurry.

Butterfly bandages are used to hold skin together around a deep cut acting as makeshift stitches. This verse is mainly saying put a bandage on it and everything will be fine, you won’t remember what damage has been done in the end.

Put him in the back of a squad car restrain that man

He needs his head put through a catscan

Hey editor, I'm undeniable!

Hey doctor, I'm certifiable!

The verse continue with this person is so crazy that they need to be checked and restrained. The following lines are mainly saying what I say is always true, but I am also certifiably insane.

I'm a loose bolt of a complete machine

What a match, I'm half doomed and you're semi-sweet

The person feel out of place in the world almost as if they’re just a space part. The second line is like saying we go together because I’m insane and you’re not overly sympathetic in a way.

So boycott love

Detox just to retox

And I'd promise you anything for another shot at life

This first half of the chorus encompasses the main theme of this song. Give up on love and detox from it only to fall back in even if the relationship was toxic. It shows those times when you’ve had a terrible relationship and honestly never want to date again but fall back into it anyways because being loved and relationships are addictive. The person would give up anything to have another shot at the relationship or even just restarting life altogether.

And perfect boys with their perfect lives

Nobody wants to hear you sing about tragedy

(Wants to hear you sing about tragedy)

Nobody wants to hear celebrities and people who have a well set lives complain.

Ohh

Little girl, you got me staring odd

Oh!

Or was that just a telescopic camera nod

The person is mainly unsure if they see a girl staring at them or just another camera.

P-p-painted dolls in the highway truckstop stalls

Lot lizard scales cool your nightlife moods

All the rookies leave your badge and your gun on the desk

When you leave the room

Painted dolls plays onto the the next line of lot lizards which are prostitutes at truckstops. The following lines refer to typical police movies where the cop gets benched when he really wants to catch the guy he’s after.

[Pre-Chorus Repeat]

[Chorus Repeat]

Detox

Just to retox

Detox

Just to retox

Detox

Just to retox

Detox

Just to retox

Detox (So boycott love)

Just to retox

Detox (Boycott love)

Just to retox

Detox (Boycott love)

Just to retox

Detox (Boycott love)

Just to retox

This almost anthem and chanting part of the song helps strengthen this repeated ideas. Detox off of love so you fall back to it again like it’s an addiction.

[Chorus Repeat]

In general, Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes is a song about being in and falling out of relationships and establishing the theme of feeling out of place in the world or being unlucky or unfortunate.

I Don’t Care

The General Idea: This song can also really be referred to as the narcissists anthem as the song deals with themes of narcissism and the pros and cons of fame. This song’s themes is literally its title of just being so full of yourself that you don’t care about what others think of you.

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Fall-out-boy-i-dont-care-lyrics

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/falloutboy/idontcare.html

Say my name and his in the same breath

I dare you to say they taste the same

Let the leaves fall off in the summer

And let December glow in flames

The singer is so overly confident that they were so much better than their lover’s ex.

Erase myself and let go

Start it over again in Mexico

These friends, they don't love you

They just love the hotel suites, now

Forget about the heartbreak, get over it, and move on. Start over your life and line of failed relationships completely. Their friends don’t care about who he is as a person and only care about him because of his fame and money.

I don't care what you think as long as it's about me

The best of us can find happiness in misery

Said,

I don't care what you think as long as it's about me

The best of us can find happiness in misery

The chorus is mainly the point of narcissism and a viewpoint all attention is good attention especially with fame and media, love me or hate me you’re still thinking about me. The last part is just the best can find happiness in the worst of situations even if it means convincing yourself otherwise in such situations.

Oh take a chance, let your body get a tolerance

I'm not a chance, put a heat wave in your pants

Pull a breath like another cigarette

Pawnshop heart trading up (trading up)

The first half of this verse is the singer saying give him a chance and have sex with them, they’ll learn to enjoy it. It’s not really a risk because they’re already “turned on” by them. The other part is mainly trading hearts and love in exchange for others.

On the oracle in my chest,

Let the guitar scream like a fascist

Sweat it out, shut your mouth

Free love on the streets but

In the alley it ain't that cheap, now

The singer can predict his own future and let the guitar play as loud as the haters and fascist leaders. Shut up and just deal with it because nobody cares about what you’re saying. Finally let people love who they want, but remember prostitution isn’t cheap. This verse is seems very out of place but still goes with the theme of the song.

[Chorus Repeat]

Said,

I don't care just what you think

As long as it's about me, you said

I don't care just what you think

As long as it's about me, I said

I don't care (I don't care)

Said, I don't care (I don't care)

Said, I (I) don't (don't) care (care)

I (I) don't (don't) care (no I don't)

I don't care, (I said)

I don't care, (I said)

I (I) don't (don't) care (care)

Remember kids, what people say about you doesn’t matter and all press is good press when you’re famous.

[Chorus Repeat]

In general, both songs demonstrate and introduce themes that continue through the album and just the conflicts of having fame. I often call this the “the album for when you’re angry” simply because of just the loud “I dislike love and society and myself” themes that are prevalent in the songs. Folie a Deux was ahead of its time as it is now well loved by most fans and is just a piece of art created in a bad period of time between the band member and just personal lives in general. Overall Disloyal Order and I Don’t Care are definitely prominent songs for the album and give a more straightforward view or message to various themes.