inspectorspacetimerevisited · 9 months ago
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The fact that the BOOTH really does have a self-destruct mechanism is pointed out when the Inspector threatens to use it in ‘Sojourn to the Heart of the BOOTH’,
but the Inspector has used it as a gambit against the Blorgons before, even though they didn’t believe he’d destroy his beloved spacetime ship.
‘All I need do is press this “button” and the BOOTH is no more!’
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foxofthedesert · 6 years ago
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Arrow FanFic | Dinah x Laurel | A Christmas Miracle
Part 4 – The Miracle (AO3 Link)
A vicious chill threads through the alleyway outside the Carmine Kanigher Shelter, sending waste detritus of modern civilization skittering in every direction.  Mice and rats flee for cover as fat flakes of snow begin to fall.  Soon the entire area will be blanketed in a carpet of fluffy white powder.  A Christmas Miracle for Star City courtesy of a recently reunited father and daughter duo of certain...arctic talents who are in town for the first of what will become the annual Team Flarrowgirl – a universally reviled portmanteau courtesy of one Ralph Dibney – Christmas extravaganza.  
Pushing off the cinder block he’s occupied for the second time tonight over the past few minutes, Marv adopts a toothy grin.  He already worked his seasonal miracle, which if his best friend Nora’s spotty accounting of history unrelated to her dad can be trusted is taking place right about...now.  Nervously, he lifts the sleeve of his jacket to check the vitals monitor on the modular biometrically keyed device wrapped around his wrist, finding all readings back within ideal parameters whereas only hours before they were fluctuating wildly.  Just to be sure his efforts were indeed successful, he pinches himself in several places to ensure his central nervous system is still functioning correctly that he is still corporeal and has not disintegrated due to a seismic shift within the causal domino chain that will eventually result in his birth less than six years from his present location in spacetime.  
As a reward for a mission accomplished, he sifts through the menus on what Nora calls their Vibe-rators – bless the innocent, adorable, perpetual child that she is, Nora has yet to grasp why nicknaming the gadgets that in honor of their esteemed inventor, their beloved Uncle Cisco, was not quite the honor she thought it was – and quickly deactivates the artificial aging matrix produced by some seriously shway tech that, savvy as he is, even he doesn’t fully understand.  He also unilaterally decides to never adopt the pseudonym Marv ever again.  
Honestly, what was I thinking going with that? Quen shakes his head, chuckling ruefully as the answer dawns on him. There is a longstanding Christmas Eve tradition in his house of watching Christmas movies all evening until everyone is too tired to keep going, and this year they are breaking out amongst other titles both of Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone films.  Double-dipping those gems before bed is, in his opinion, just about the perfect way to cap off a perfect Christmas Day with his family.  Which is why he has to get a move on or he’ll be late and his Moms will not be happy.  Nor will Aunt Sara and Aunt Ava, who are actually supposed to drop by this year instead of ducking his Mom’s invite with some lame explanation of a temporal anomaly that needed fixing like, pronto.  Come to think of it, Maya, his older sister by a year and a half, is coming back home from a work thing in National City for the annual Lance family Christmas and will almost certainly use his tardiness as another excuse to hit him.  And Quen can’t have that.  She has enough reasons as is without adding valid cause. Plus, his damn shoulder has been abused enough by his sibling’s iron fists, thank you very much!
Glancing back toward the street he’d watched a younger, more hardened version of his softer mother approach him from, the familiar tug of welcome memory pulls him under its sway. His Ma is still a knock-out according to all his friends, who often break out an ancient acronym he chooses to ignore so as to not require a bleaching of his brain, so the age difference was not that jarring.  But it was beyond weird to see her so restrained and world weary.  
Of his parents, his Ma is the positive one, the tactile huggy, kissy, slightly smothery mom who sings while she cooks, dances as she cleans, and who cried – on camera! – at his graduation...every last one of the four so far.  So many wonderful memories of her flash by that he can hardly sort through them all. Her singing him to sleep while he was little and really, really sick while his Mom cradled him close to her chest and rocked him in her favorite rocking chair.  The absurd, bonkers, overboard, birthday bashes she organized for both him and his sister every friggin’ year until they were old enough to insist she dial back the adorable insanity.  The way she would stand to the side giggling uncontrollably at his ultra-competitive Mom once he got old enough to regularly beat her at basketball or soccer or video games.  How a few stern words from her spoke volumes more than a profuse tirade from his Mom ever could amongst one of the many lectures he endured regarding the vital importance of taking responsibility for one’s own actions.  How she always smells like an amazing blend of vanilla and cinnamon and can with a single enveloping hug and a lingering forehead kiss banish every iota of hurt, confusion, pain, and fear plaguing her children, even when they are fully grown adults.  His Ma is a lionhearted woman who loves with every last ounce of her strength, and it was more than a little disconcerting to witness her holding that ferociousness ransom in the obviously fading hope that a rescuer might appear to set it free.  Thankfully, he is a devoted son who is willing to brave her wrath to secure her happiness, which he did by pushing her toward a certain irritatingly complicated blonde.  
The various images of his Ma, heartwarming as they are, mingle with one of his other mom as he watched her first set foot in the shelter.  Looking for all the world like she didn’t know what the hell she was doing there, all the while unwilling to surrender an inch to fear or doubt, she was yet so fragile he was afraid to even breath in her general direction lest she shatter into a million pieces.  He had to get to know her first before he risked ingratiating himself to the point she would grant him permission for one stilted hug.  
He’d like to say that it shocked him to see her so walled off, the woman who carried and nourished him inside her body for nine months and then endured unspeakable pain to deliver him safely into the world, but it didn’t.  His Mom has always had trouble letting people in, which in combination with her frightening dark side could make her a foreboding person to approach.  From his first memories, he can recall glimpsing fleeting specters of what he’d witnessed in earnest while on this escapade in the past: a simmering rage and innate cynicism fueled by pain that only his Ma can assuage.  Once or twice he was the unlucky target to bear the brunt of an outburst that scared him witless, and scared his Mom even more – so much so that she would sequester herself in the bedroom or the spare bathroom until she calmed down or his Ma intervened to soothe the offended beast back into her thick iron mental cage.  He never really understood why his Mom got that way sometimes until just last year, about five months after his eighteenth birthday, when he learned about Black Siren.  That wasn’t a happy time for him, or for his Mom.  He had always known she had a troubled past, but that...that shook the foundations of his essential being, made him doubt his own moral and ethic core, and worst of all caused him to doubt his Mom’s ability to love.  It took both his Ma and his Uncle Ollie teaming up to knock some sense into him for him to get his head out of his ass and to stop avoiding and start talking to his Mom again.  
And now?  Well, now he’s glad he knows about Black Siren, because if nothing else, this trip into the past has given him a reality check as to just how awful his Mom’s life was to have molded her into the hateful person she was before his Grandpa took a chance on her that his Ma later picked up and ran with.  Once, and fortuitously, she got to the shelter early enough to join in a group session with the therapist that visits the facility once per week.  He had to sit there silently and listen as she got roped into sharing, then grit his teeth through the empathetic agony of her divulging a lot more than she had originally intended.  The things she went through before she met his Ma...Quen shudders at the very thought.  The silver lining to that intolerable experience is that at least he has a reference to work with dealing with her occasional mood swings.  
Also, this foray has given him a new, unique perspective into how much his parents love each other.  To have overcome so much adversity just to be together is, quite frankly, astonishing.  Nora has told him so many times that his Moms’ love story rivals that of any epic parental romance within the group of kids belonging to the venerated members of the Justice League, but he never quite believed her.  How could he when they were competing with the likes of Superman and Lois Lane, the Green Arrow and his Overwatch, the Flash and Iris West, and Supergirl and her mysteriously broody governmental handler all the kids simply know as their favorite Aunt Alex.  But those precious hours surreptitiously watching them interact in the kitchen and during the post-dinner clean up operation afforded him a view that, while slightly biased, was able to recognize that same divine spark between them that he sensed whenever he was around his friends’ folks.  It was nice, so nice that his heart is still soaring high in the clouds above, to be given the immense privilege of bearing witness to the event that will begin an inevitable spiral into his – and his sister’s – future conception upon a recovered Kryptonian Genesis ship.  And come what may, be it unavoidable tragedy like Nora’s Uncle Wally getting imprisoned outside the timeline by Abra Kadabra, or some catastrophic event like Darkseid himself descending upon his Earth tomorrow, he won’t be forgetting this adventure any time soon.  It has ignited in him a flame of hope that cannot be quenched and solidified a belief that will endure until his death that love really can conquer all.
“Well, I guess you guys will see me in five years and twelve months on the dot” he says, his gaze turning instinctively to the apartment in which he knows his parents to be making the first baby steps toward a future they have both risked life and limb to protect multiple times.  “Good thing it’ll be sooner for me.  Just hope you guys don’t kill me when I tell you where I’ve been for the past month...”
And with the press of a button upon his Vibe-rator – he snickers at the thought of the name – Quentin Nicholas Lance disappears from view to join his best friend for their return trip to the future.  He is not seen again until many years later. Twenty-four years,  ten days, seven hours, and thirteen minutes to be precise, which is two minutes late and of no consequence to anyone but Maya, who uses that as an excuse to hit him.  
Damn that punchy brat.  
Quen rubs his sore arm, but the smile on his face remains until he is engulfed by two pairs of arms that officially ring in another Merry Christmas for the Lances.  To his unending delight, in addition to a new Quantum Tablet, his Moms pulled some really big strings to get him into the Air Force Academy.  He can’t wait to tell Nora!  And as he rushes to dial his bestie up on his Vibe-device, he gives them both the biggest hugs he can muster up.  He doesn’t see how their eyes catch over his shoulder, glowing with love for each other and pride for their child and happiness over his happiness, but then again he doesn’t really need to.  He sees it every single day.  Nor would it have registered even if he had caught it.  He is far too excited to think of little else than realizing his dream of becoming a pilot.
Merry Christmas to me! He thinks as he hears Nora’s voice chime through the tiny, nearly impervious subdermal implants designed by his Uncle Cisco that were wired into his ears after a childhood accident his Mom still hasn’t forgiven herself for rendered him deaf.
“Hey!  You’ll never guess what I got for Christmas!”
Nora does guess, the know-it-all brat, but his enthusiasm doesn’t diminish one iota. This is, after all, the best Christmas ever.  And not just because he got everything he wanted, but because he got to watch his parents take the final steps in their journey falling in love.  How many kids get to make that boast?  Not any he knows of besides Nora.  
Quen has an extended family that loves him, a bright future ahead of him, a sister that would fight the world for him, and Moms who love him – and each other – more than he could ever begin to describe.  And that makes him the luckiest kid alive.
THE END 
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queenwinry · 7 years ago
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Into the Galaxies-FMA Secret Santa
A very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! Specifically I’d like to dedicate this one to @avatarmerida who I got for Secret Santa this year! She mentioned liking edwin and royai as well as au’s so I decided to do one I’ve always loved the thought of but never delved deeper into: Star Wars au! It’s got a little sprinkling of both pairings as well as Ed and Roy being general idiots ;) I hope you like it!
Captain Roy Mustang, trained star wing fighter pilot, resident First Order hater, and the quintessential example of the phrase “Rebel scum” was about ready to turn over to the dark side if the little golden-haired prodigy didn’t shut up.
And he wasn’t even Force sensitive.
“What’s the matter, Captain,” said his commanding officer’s smug little pet, his arms crossed in a self-satisfied gesture that made Mustang want to find the nearest light saber and end it all. “Afraid of a teeny tiny little patrol ship? And here I thought you were General Grumman’s greatest weapon. Ohhh no, wait...that’s me.”
“Elric,” Mustang bit out, his hands fisting atop the control board inside the main command center of their remote base. “I understand that you’re the Resistance’s ‘only hope’ or whatever-”
“Do you? Because it sounds like you’re just a tad bit jealous.”
“But,” Mustang spoke through gritted teeth, having to use immense restraint to blow over that jab without a rebuttal. “You would be putting our entire group at risk by even attempting to sneak by the First Order. I hate those jackasses as much as anyone, but there are other things to think about here.”
Finally, Ed’s face hardened from genial teasing to a more serious look of anger. “I get that Captain Assface, but if you or Grumman or the entire Resistance want me to do anything we need to get to my mechanic in the Rush Valley system. We can take on the First Order’s patrol.”
Roy rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Elric, alerting them to our presence right now is not a good idea. Even if it is one tiny patrol, they’re all linked back to Father and the entire First Order. They’ll alert the top leaders and then we’ve got their whole army and a Death Star hunting down our asses.”
“They’re always hunting down our asses. Honestly, Mustang, when did you get so complacent with hiding? I figured out of everyone you’d be the one most on my side about this.”
Roy scoffed. “I am, to a certain degree. But as much as I want to torch every ship in their fleet, I understand a little thing called timing, unlike you. We need to lay low for now.”
Mustang could tell Ed was angry. No, angry wasn’t the right word. Frustrated was probably more appropriate. The elder Elric had been antsy ever since he and his brother had stumbled upon their base. It hadn’t been the Resistance leaders’ plan to host the brothers here, but in their quest across the galaxies looking for a way to restore the younger brother’s ‘soul’ to his original body (or whatever other Jedi nonsense Roy didn’t understand), they’d come upon the majority of the Rebels’ hiding spot. Grumman had been beside himself when he realized who they’d found.
Or rather, who found them.
But the headache of dealing with the stubborn Edward Elric, Force sensitive prodigy extraordinaire, was beginning to drain Mustang in a way he hadn’t ever experienced. They butted heads constantly. His weapons expert claimed it was because they were so similar (a thought Roy didn’t like entertaining for too long), but he was sure it was because the younger man didn’t like the idea of authority.
Granted, Roy had his moments when he didn’t either (a fact Grumman continuously liked to remind him of), but he knew when to shut up and accept orders that were important.
Their current tiff came about because of Ed’s recent pressing desire to see his mechanic in the Rush Valley system. He claimed it was because she was the only one who could adequately fix his busted mechanical arm (broken because of one too many unnecessary engagements with First Order patrols), but Roy knew it was because he wanted to check up on her. They’d gotten reports that the Order was intensifying its command on the area because of suspected Rebel outpockets. Ever since Ed had gotten wind of it, he’d been pleading with whoever would listen to take him to see her. They’d grown up together, so of course she was important to him, but Roy could tell by the desperation in his eyes that it went deeper than that.
Problem was, they had to get past the First Order to get to her. Ed thought it was a mere stumbling block in the road that could be easily passed. Captain Mustang knew better.
“Mustang,” Ed began after a lull in their conversation. Roy had to keep his surprise contained at the shift in tone of the younger man’s voice. He really was getting desperate, and if there was anything Captain Roy Mustang knew about, it was the gnawing panic and fear that came when someone that close to him was being threatened.
The blaster burn across his weapons expert’s back came to mind with a sickening clarity.
“I have to get to Winry. Rush Valley isn’t ready for a full blown First Order assault. They’re just engineers. If she stays there, she could be in danger.”
“Edward,” Roy spoke, reverting to the use of his first name given the gravity of their conversation. “If we go, we could all be in danger. It’s not a fun decision to make, but one mechanic doesn’t outweigh the entirety of the Resistance.”
Immediately, Ed’s golden eyes narrowed dangerously, a dark glint appearing in their swirling depths. Roy didn’t like the look of it one bit. “That mechanic is right up there with my brother as one of the most important people in my life. I already screwed things up with Al and put him in danger. I won’t do the same for Winry. If you don’t help me get to her, your little Resistance loses my help.”
And with one final glare, Ed shoved past Roy and exited the command center in an angry flurry just as Roy’s right-hand woman was entering. She watched the golden-haired blur brush past her without a word and immediately lifted an eyebrow before looking skeptically back at her commanding officer. “What was that about?” she calmly asked, noticing the tension in Roy’s shoulders and the dark look on his face.
Mustang merely shook his head at her. “That kid is too stubborn for his own good,” he spoke gravely.
A soft and knowing smile crossed Riza’s face as she walked up to where he stood, the silence of the empty command center nearly deafening. As she approached him, she placed a reassuring hand on his arm, though it did nothing to abate the thoughts passing at hyper speed through his mind. “Sounds familiar,” she quipped before leaning into his side. Roy, despite everything, couldn’t help but be grateful for the late hour that allowed her to feel relaxed enough to take such liberties.
“He’s in love with his mechanic, which means he’s not going to listen to anyone’s advice. He’d just as soon hop in an escape pod and take on the First Order’s entire star fleet himself.”
Riza smiled knowingly as her hand ran up the front of Roy’s chest, underneath his usual brown jacket. “Men do crazy things when they’re in love.”
Finally, Mustang turned his head toward her and their lips lightly brushed. He pulled back slightly with a resigned look on his face. “I’m going to have to do this, aren’t I?”
Riza couldn’t help the small laugh she let out. “Seems so, Captain.”
Roy let out a groan. “Ugh, fine. Grumman’s going to have my ass for this one,” he spoke before placing a small peck on Riza’s lips. “Alright, let’s get the Phoenix ready.” ---- Roy’s hands clutched the controls of his beloved ship as it darted through spacetime at hyper speed. The strategy he and Riza had discussed late into the previous night was to come in to the system (and specifically the planet they knew Winry was on) at hyper speed. A dangerous decision, but it was their only hope of averting attention from the First Order. They’d probably still have to deal with a patrol or two, but Ed (of course) was confident they’d manage to get through before any of the higher-ups were alerted. Captain Mustang wasn’t so sure.
“What are we even supposed to say when we get there, Brother?” Al’s distinctly mechanical voice called from the droid his soul had been attached to.
“What are you talking about, Al?” Ed spoke, lazily enjoying a game of virtual chess. He was still positively glowing from his victory over Mustang. While Roy knew the entirety of the Resistance leaders would be pissed as hell at him for going against orders the minute they saw the Phoenix making a hasty exit from the base, Ed didn’t seem to give a single shit. He had gotten his way, Mustang would get the wrap for it, and he’d be seeing Winry for the first time in forever. She’d probably smack him upside the head the minute she realized his arm was busted, but that didn’t bare thinking about at the moment.
“Well...it’s probably unlikely we won’t attract some attention. And if we just stop in for a quick visit and repair and then leave, Winry’s going to be the first one the Order goes after. We’ll have to move her or at the very least take her with us,” Al said, taking a little bit of the air out of Ed’s balloon.
“Yeah...I guess so. But there are plenty of secure places she can go. Granny’s been wanting her back on Resembool anyway and the First Order doesn’t know to find her there.”
A mechanical groan sounded. “Something tells me she’s not going to be happy about it.”
Ed sighed. “She’ll deal with it. It’s better than her being interrogated or worse by the First Order. Once we explain everything...she’ll be on board.”
“You know, Elric, I have a feeling you’re not used to involving her in your plans. That seems a little cruel, don’t you think?” Roy commented from the pilot seat. Beside him, Riza eyed her captain with a skeptical look, knowing he was delving into dangerous territory questioning Ed’s relationship like this. Roy was pissed off enough not to care.
“Shut the hell up, Captain Bastard. You don’t know anything about us.”
“I know enough to realize you’re usually keeping this ‘friend’ of yours in the dark about these things. Force sensitive Rebels are the First Order’s least favorite, believe it or not. She’s in danger from simply knowing who you are. Why not tell her the important stuff?”
Roy could practically see Ed seething from behind him, but he simply kept his eyes on the passing lights of the galaxy.
“Winry doesn’t need to be involved in what we’ve done,” Ed eventually said in a low and dark voice. “She’s safer when we don’t tell her things.”
“And yet, here you are putting her entire system on the radar of the First Order, pissing off all the Resistance leaders, and making my life miserable just to see her again. Doesn’t sound very safe to me.”
“Captain,” Riza finally admonished, knowing that he was being just a touch too real for a young man who was a touch too naive about these kinds of things.
There was silence from behind them, as Roy continued piloting his ship, waiting for Ed’s blustering rebuttal. It never came, though. Eventually, the captain sighed and spoke. “Trust me on this one, kid. You’re not doing her any favors keeping this stuff from her. If your feelings are as deep as I think they are, you’ll realize what her role is in all of this.”
Mustang waited for that one to sink in before he heard Ed abruptly rise to his feet and walk away from the cockpit of the ship, his brother following after him questioningly.
Riza heaved a sigh to match his own and shot him a reprimanding look.
“What? I’m right,” he defended.
“Maybe so, but I don’t think your approach is what he needs right now. If anything, this Winry Rockbell should be the one setting him straight about that.”
“Not like he’d listen to either of us. He does whatever the hell he wants whenever the hell he wants to do it.”
Riza scoffed. “And you say you’re nothing alike.”
Just as Roy was shooting her a disbelieving look at her slight, one of the displays went off, indicating their approach to the Rush Valley system. Roy groaned when he noticed it.
“Great, we’re almost to the hornet’s nest. Better hop into the gunner position.”
Riza calmly removed her headset and rose from the co-pilot seat at her superior’s direction, feeling just as apprehensive as he was. Still, she could never help himself from teasing him. “Yes, I suppose we might need someone who knows how to operate a blaster cannon. May the force be with you, sir,” she said with a small, almost imperceptible smirk as she descended into the gunner seat.
Roy shot her an annoyed look as she left.
“Very funny,” he mumbled to himself, having heard enough about the Force and the Jedi’s for a lifetime. If Edward Elric was anything to go off of, budding Jedi’s were the most insufferably arrogant people who tended to do whatever they hell they wanted.
Who knows? Maybe he did have a bit of Force sensitivity in him after all.
He shook away that disconcerting thought as he got to work preparing the ship to exit hyper speed. He knew they’d be coming in hot if his calculations were accurate, so he strapped himself in and asked Riza to call for the brothers to do the same. Not half a minute had passed before Ed was running back into the cockpit, strapping himself into the co-pilot seat, much to Roy’s chagrin. He didn’t have time to argue, however, as he had to immediately pull the ship out of hyper-speed.
Only to narrowly avoid slamming into a skyscraper.
“Fucking hell, Mustang, did you have to come in that low?”
Roy’s hands gripped the controls as he maneuvered the ship around the high-reaching buildings with expert skill. “Couldn’t take any chances. You want to see your girl? This is the way we’re doing it.”
Ed growled from beside him, but held on and said nothing as they flew away. It took quite a bit of twisting and turning to be able to get them out of the danger zone, but he eventually got the ship around the outside of the city they had made their approach into.
“So where are we supposed to meet this mechanic of yours?” Roy asked once the ship stabilized.
“She said she’d be-,” Ed began, but was quickly interrupted by a screeching alarm on the control panel. The pair both looked down to see what was going off.
Proximity alarm.
“We got company, Captain,” Riza called desperately from down below and Roy cursed under his breath.
“Dammit, and here I thought we’d gotten past them. Hope you’re ready for a fight, kid,” he said to Ed, gunning the engines up as two First Order fighter ships appeared on the radar from behind.
Ed scoffed. “I’m always ready for a fight.”
Roy smirked at that. “Yeah, no shit,” he spoke cheekily before quickly swiveling the ship to the side, leading the two fighters outside of the city to avoid unnecessary damage. Not that most residents of Rush Valley weren’t always itching for something to fix.
The fighters began shooting at them and Roy had to quickly dip from side to side to avoid a direct strike. The Phoenix had seen better days, so the less blaster rays to the hull, the better. He could hear Riza attempting to shoot them down as best she could, but the constant maneuvering made it difficult.
“I need a better shot on them, Captain,” she shouted, already sounding frustrated.
“I’m working on it!” he called back, sweat beading down his forward as he took the two fighters around and into a rocky canyon. The two men in the cockpit watched warily as they just managed to squeeze through the crevices provided by the towering rocks, but whatever they could fit through, the much smaller fighter ships could as well.
“Flip us around!” came Riza’s voice again.
Roy lifted an eyebrow as he raised them back up to ground level. “You sure?” he asked.
“Yeah, just do it!”
“Alright, your wish is my command, Hawkeye,” he let out slyly as he slowed the engines down and completely inverted the ship. Not anticipating the change, the two fighter ships dashed on by. Roy and Ed heard their canon go off before there was an explosion in the distance and one of the blips on the radar disappeared.
“Nice!” Ed shouted victoriously.
Roy shook his head. “Damn, I sure am lucky to have the best shot in the galaxy on my ship.”
“And don’t forget it!” she shouted and he could practically hear her smirk.
“Think you can do it again?” he challenged, watching as the remaining fighter looped around to follow after them again.
“Line me up.”
Roy did as she directed, attempting a new strategy to throw their pursuer off and get Riza in the right position to deal the final blow. They worked like clockwork, the pair of them, so it didn’t take much for Roy to pilot the ship so she could get the shot she wanted and for her to quickly take it down.
Roy righted the ship back up once she had finished her business and they dashed outside the city limits in an attempt to regroup. It didn’t seem as though the First Order had sent anyone else to get them, but Roy had to remain cautious. He doubted either of the two fighters would simply forget to alert their superiors, so laying low for now would be the easiest option. Still, there was something that didn’t feel right.
“That was surprisingly easy,” Mustang commented as he dipped into another canyon for cover.
Ed shrugged from beside him. “Well, what do you expect? Those fighter pilots are lousy shots.”
Roy mulled this over. “Yeah, but their strength comes in numbers,” he pondered. “With a ship as recognizable as mine, it’s suspicious that they only sent two guys after us.”
Ed didn’t offer up another idea, merely brushing the possibility of danger aside before telling Roy where to meet Winry. Immediately the captain questioned the safety of stopping to pick her up, but Ed only smiled slyly and reassured his companion they would be alright.
Following Ed’s directions, Roy flew them into the mountains outside the docking city, and the captain couldn’t help but wonder how the hell he was supposed to land their ship in this kind of terrain. Still Ed offered no more than a sadistically satisfied smile as they approached what looked to be nothing more than a hut at the top of a mountain. Just as Roy was about ready to strangle Ed for leading them into absolute nothingness, the mountain mysteriously began to part to reveal a completely cloaked hanger. Ed delighted a bit too much in Captain Mustang’s completely astonished expression as he carefully landed the Phoenix inside and the doors closed behind them.
The golden-haired almost-Jedi nearly burst through the exit door of the ship, his brother not far behind him. After waiting for Riza to come up from the gunner seat, they approached the Elric brothers just as Ed was enveloping a pretty blonde woman in his arms. Al wrapped his metal arms around the both of them and the trio laughed and cried at having been finally reunited.
“Oh, I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve seen you both. You guys keep running across the galaxy and yet you never end up in the Rush Valley system.”
Ed sheepishly let her go and rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, sorry about that. Things have been kind of crazy lately.”
At these words, Winry’s eyes immediately narrowed and she crossed her arms. “Yeah, so I’ve heard. You guys just can’t keep to yourselves, can you? Of all the enemies to have, you had to choose the First Order?”
Both Ed and Al gaped at her, floundering for words at her accusations. Mustang and Hawkeye watched on in amusement.
“H-How do you know about all that?” Ed asked, completely aghast.
“Oh please, why wouldn’t I know about all that? Did you think I would just sit here and do nothing while you guys are out getting into trouble? Please, I’ve been doing my research. And making some friends,” she spoke, a sly note to her tone. Finally, she turned toward Mustang. “Sorry about the trouble coming in, Captain. We were supposed to make it so that no one followed you, but those two fighters slipped through.”
This caught his immediate attention, as he stepped forward to address the spritely young blonde himself. “Wait, is that why there were only two of them? How did you manage that?”
“Oh, we may or may not have put up a cloaking shield around the entire city without the First Order knowing about it,” Winry replied, looking awfully proud of herself as she placed her hands casually behind her back and rocked back and forth on her heels.
Roy’s mouth practically dropped to the floor. “H-how is that even possible?”
“It’s a city of engineers, Captain. We have our ways,” she answered with a small wink. “Only trouble was that we were just a touch too late. The two guys that went after you managed to slip under before we were able to finish it, but you shouldn’t have any trouble leaving provided you go straight into hyper speed. Now come on down to the base. You all must be starving.”
“B-base!?” Ed exclaimed, his eyes bugging out of his head. Roy didn’t look much different.
“Yeah, silly, the underground Rebel base that’s been operating out of Rush Valley and that I’ve been working with ever since you guys left. Honestly Ed, what did you think I was doing all this time? Patching up landspeeders every day?”
With a twinkle in her eye, the mechanic-turned-Rebel-engineer swiveled and began to walk away, directing them to follow after her. Ed and Al did so still positively beside themselves at all this new groundbreaking information while Roy and Riza followed behind them, shaking their heads.
If there was one thing Captain Roy Mustang had learned since joining the Resistance, it was that allies could be found in every single grimey, no-name corner of the galaxy. That night he ate with other Resistance friends while Winry berated Ed constantly for busting up his arm, Alphonse laughed happily at all his new friends, and Riza shot him satisfied, delightfully meaningful looks as the two moons rose in the Rush Valley sky.
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componentplanet · 5 years ago
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Ann Druyan Talks ‘Cosmos’ and Being an Informed, Inspired Citizen
Host Neil deGrasse Tyson is silhouetted against the birth of the cosmos - the Big Bang - at the inception of the Cosmic Calendar and its vast 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution. COSMOS: POSSIBLE WORLDS premieres March 9, 2020 on National Geographic. (Cosmos Studios)
Today, Cosmos: Possible Worlds, a new 13-episode series building on 2014’s Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and 1980’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, debuts on National Geographic. The creation of Ann Druyan, who served again as writer, executive producer, and director, and hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos: Possible Worlds covers new avenues of exploration and discovery both in the vastness of space and within ourselves. We spoke with Druyan about how she crafted the new series and how we once again find ourselves in a particularly perilous time for science and reason.
Before I even get started, just thank you so far for a lifetime of wonderful books and television.
Thank you. Oh, my God, that makes me feel so good.
How did you approach this new series? What was different this time for you?
Well, I was sitting in my house for about six months. I’m a collector of stories, and I had a big fat file of stories I wanted to tell. But I was also stressed by the fact that in popular culture, every depiction of our future is so horrifying. We’re living in shipping containers. The natural world around us has been effectively destroyed. And having explored climate change in season two, and I believe, having made a very compelling argument for our need to change and for the reality of climate change.
And then seeing how in the years since, we’ve, if anything, been sliding backward. It was my dream to tell the stories of our ancestors and their courage, and how they had their back to the world countless times, to tell the stories of the searchers, who courageously fought for a deeper and more accurate understanding of nature here at home and elsewhere in the cosmos.
Think of their struggles, their sacrifices. I wanted to create a season that would enhance human self-esteem, which is for good reason at a low ebb. And also, to depict a future that I believe we can still have if we get our act together and begin to set things right in our own house, that there’s a future, a great future, which is inspiring. And I don’t think enough [people] have seen what that could be.
And so, that was my primary motivation, and that’s how this season began, was to try to be totally science-based and historically based, and not promise things that cannot be, but to depict just how that future can be if we start taking what science is telling us to heart.
Watching these episodes, like the story with Vavilov, with the Russian rocket designer–I can’t pronounce his name, but–
Yes!
These stories are heart-wrenching, and yet, you still come away with inspiration at the end.
I’m so thrilled to hear that.
And I find that remarkable.
Well, these stories inspire me and my co-writer, Brannon Braga. These stories inspired us, and we are a story-driven species. And so, the first thing that has to happen in order for it to be eligible for inclusion in Cosmos is it has to be a story that works on many different levels, the emotional and dramatic levels, as well as … Each story is a way into an idea that has been said to be too complicated for an audience. I don’t believe that, having worked with the great Carl Sagan and having been inspired by his humility. Never talking to anyone to prove how smart he was, how much he knew, but only talking to communicate, to spread his sense of joy, that keeping his understanding. That’s his secret, and it still inspires me more than I can tell you.
Executive Producers Ann Druyan and Brannon Braga on the set of Cosmos: Possible Worlds. Credit: Lewis Jacobs/FOX
And there’s also your new book, Cosmos: Possible Worlds.
Yes, I’m bursting with enthusiasm to tell you about the book, because it was in the book that I was given the space to tell more of the details of these stories and to really … There was so much that we wanted to put in the episodes, but it’s sort of … In less than an hour, you have to pick and choose the things you can tell and those things that also you can tell and show in such a way.
So the book was for me an opportunity to really take a little more time with each of these stories. And it was written for the most part at 4:00 in the morning, because I was writing it while I was producing and directing. And so, I had to be on set 6:00 AM, 7:00 AM. And so, it’s remarkable to me that it’s coherent. But it was done at a very intense and during a period of such intense work on the show.
Alan Silvestri’s score throughout the show is beautiful, but there’s one particular moment where he develops a beautiful music theme right as the Cassini craft plunges to its death on Saturn’s surface, after 20 years.
Yes, I really felt something not only for the spacecraft but for the Cassini’s mission scientists, whom we had the privilege of filming just as the spacecraft … in that period when the spacecraft was being commanded to commit suicide. And these are people who are multi-talented and have worked on many projects. But for the most part, the people we showed were people who had devoted their adult lives, their scientific careers, to this spacecraft, and then, think of it, commanding it to dash itself to pieces. I wanted to catch that on camera, and that was …
I’m really glad that you … I love that moment when we have the conceit of a person’s whole life flashing before their eyes in the last moment before death. And to do that for a robot was really exciting and moving, so moving.
Alan Silvestri is not only a great composer. He did the music for Contact, so we go way back. But he’s also just one of the most beloved human beings. And so, everyone we worked with on this project, all 986 other people, were bringing a level of dedication and unselfishness to making this season. And I’m really in awe of how everybody stood up for Cosmos and did such great work.
What would you want viewers to come away with this time?
I would love for every viewer to come away feeling that much more powerful. Because I feel powerless, and I know how powerless most of us feel. But that much more powerful, inspired maybe to dig more deeply into some of the subjects and disciplines that we cover. But also, to be a more powerful decision-maker, a more informed decision-maker as a citizen.
This is a show that’s being seen in 172 countries next week. And for me, that’s a platform of potential power, so that we begin to use our dreams as maps, to take more seriously our role as links in the chain of generations, to act in defense of our civilization, to not be manipulated so easily, to reject those leaders who have contempt for science and contempt for reality. That’s what has to happen in order for us to endure and flourish and to get at that future, to get to the future depicted in the series, both the near one, or 2039 at the New York World’s Fair, and the more distant one of the time when humans may populate many worlds throughout the Milky Way galaxy.
Albert Einstein is persuaded by Leo Szilard to sign a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt alerting him to the potential weaponizing of our scientific understanding of physics. Credit: Cosmos Studios
We need to act now. You know? Scientists, they did their job, they predicted all of us 70 years ago. And as you’ll see towards the end of the season, the remarkable work that was done for instance in 1967, with what was then a supercomputer, but is now, something that doesn’t even have the power that we have in our phones. And I think of the great scientist, Manabe, and his colleague, Wetherald, who charted out the change of the global mean temperature around the world from 1967 and even beyond our own present, and how close to the actual unfolding of that temperature they were.
These are processes that no one has ever demonstrated before. They got it right.
They got it right.
But as long as we’re insulated from science, and science is something compartmentalized, I don’t think that we are going to act as diligently and as forcefully as every one of us must have to.
Yeah. I think of Sagan talking in the context of nuclear annihilation, which never really went away, but that was the context in 1980, and it just still feels relevant to some of the despair that we feel now about what’s happening.
I’m so grateful to you for bringing that up, because when we were writing the first season of Cosmos with Steven Soter, the astrophysicist, our concern was that there were 60,000 nuclear weapons on a hair-trigger around the planet. And during the years that followed, those arsenals were reduced tenfold.
Now, as you said, we’re not out of the woods yet, and the chance of even one nuclear detonation is something that keeps me awake at night. Still, it’s very different from 60,000 to get down to 6,000, or less, or fewer. And that is a sign that when there’s a worldwide outcry as there was about the nuclear arms race. For example, nuclear testing in the atmosphere. That was happening all through my childhood many times a month, and it was the mothers of the world who once the scientists pointed out that there was Strontium-90 in their nursing milk for their infant, we stood up and said, “No. No, this has to stop.” And it did stop.
We can do this. We are powerful if we’re allied in a common goal to protect our future.
Despite recent attempts to reverse the progress made in the nuclear arms race and start it up again, the hope is that cooler heads will soon prevail.
Well, I have no fonder hope myself, and the steps backward that we have taken in the United States in the last three years are very disheartening. I mean, it makes me … it really makes me heartsick. Most days I worry about this, but I really believe in democracy, and I believe in its power to right itself when it goes horribly awry. And if we can protect our means of registering our will as voters, then I really believe and hope that this nightmare will end.
Is there anything else you want to add about the new episodes that I didn’t get to?
Yes, the screen CAPS (computer animation production system). I want to say that the capabilities that we have at our disposal to virtual effects are growing by leaps and bounds. And so, we had the opportunity in this new season to simulate physical natural reality in a way that as you observed were not even available six years ago when we were doing season two.
The rate of change in this ability to create verisimilitude, to create, to simulate reality, is so exciting. And I would just hope that it would be used more to convey the revelations of modern science and the beauty, the magnificence of the universe and our part of it on Earth.
And it is [used instead] to blow things up! It seems to me that you get these blockbusters, with such enormous budgets. And yet, so much of it is just … it’s just destroying life. It’s destroying cities, destroying civilization. And it’s my hope that there will be a trend to using these powers to convey the magnificence of the universe revealed by science.
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.
Now read:
Neil deGrasse Tyson on Cosmos: Possible Worlds and the Future of Our Own
Cosmos: Possible Worlds TV Review: The Unsung Heroes of Science and Exploration
Neil deGrasse Tyson says it’s ‘very likely’ the universe is a simulation
from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/307220-ann-druyan-talks-cosmos-and-being-an-informed-inspired-citizen from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/03/ann-druyan-talks-cosmos-and-being.html
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