#its called uranium rush

[geoledgy]

"When can I see you again?"

This was inspired by some brba scenes cuz I really loved the composition of them, so I painted the San Francisco Peaks amidst some cinder cones. This is what I imagine Sandstone Springs (fictional Arizona town) looking like, where the land itself is flat, and sparsely forested but it's surrounded by cinder cone volcanoes on almost all its sides, and you could see the San Francisco Peaks in the backdrop.

[simplyundeniable98]

I need you now *Bradley Bradshaw*

Pairing - Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Female!reader

Warnings - angst angst angst, arguing, explicit language, Reader has a hard time expressing her emotions, yearning, smutttttttt, mdni or so help me, makeup sex ofc, breeding kink 😏, Bradley LOVES his wife, lots of petnames, brief mention of pregnancy (rooster is so dad sue me), talk of death, mentions of the uranium mission, this timeline isn’t the most accurate, prob some incorrect navy talk, also bradley’s a captain in this instead of a lieutenant commander because captain just rolls off the tongue a little better yk.

Word Count - 5.2k

-This is LOOSELY based around the song "I need you now" by Lady Antebellum.

First Rooster fic, kinda nervous.

Mornings in the Bradshaw house when he was home were your favorite part of the day. Nothing beat waking up next to Bradley clinging to you like a koala. All six foot and then some clinging to every inch of skin that was left uncovered.

Usually, you were woken up to kisses being pressed to every surface he could reach. Your body was his canvas and he vowed to not let any of it stay untouched. The course hairs of his mustache raking across your soft skin rousing you from your slumber. Sleepy smiles and tender touches shared in the intimate moments of the morning before having to begrudgingly start the days activities.

This morning had been different. Bradley had gotten a call in the early spouts of the morning for an emergency briefing that had him rushing out of bed and onto base with nothing other then a note that read

"Be back later, love you sweetheart"- Roo

The bed was cold. That was the first thing you noticed as you blinked awake. Your human heater was nowhere to be found and tender kisses had yet to be given.

The note on the counter had etched a frown on your face the moment you picked it up. Bradley had gotten back from a three month deployment only four weeks ago and you missed him. God you missed him.

Although he had been home for four weeks your time with him still felt limited. He was so busy now that he had jumped rank and started as an instructor back at Top Gun. The added stress of making sure his pilots were safe in the air as well as himself had taken a toll on your husband.

Bradley loved you. You knew that. The picture of the two of you at your wedding had stayed put in the cockpit of his plane. The now frayed edges of the picture from being stashed in his helmet, clutched in nervous palms, and pinned to the instrument panel of his cockpit were a constant reminder that he had you to come home to.

You were his life. You were his sun. The force of gravity pulling him towards you had never faltered. His love for you ran deep in his bones and had since the first day he saw you.

But he is only human. And as expected, he makes mistakes. He forgets to kiss you before he leaves in a hurry. He forgets to do the sink of dishes that you had asked him to do two days ago. He is passionate and feels so much all at once. His determination and dedication to his career is a quality you love about Bradley. His commitment to the Navy was one of the things that drew you to him in the first place.

"Bradley you just got back, tell me you are joking" You say exasperated as you throw your head back.

Bradley had been ordered an emergency deployment for tomorrow morning. It was non-negotiable. Uncle Sam doesnt like to wait and you knew that. It didnt make things easier of course.

"Im sorry honey. Its an important mission and Warlock doesnt trust anyone else to do it." His voice was quiet yet so loud in the silence of your living room.

You could feel the tears start to burn your eyelids. The deep ache in your chest that always manifested when he had to leave like this. You just got him back.

"I never get to see you anymore Roo. I feel like im living on borrowed time." Your voice was starting to raise an octave. The emotions you were feeling were quickly transpiring into anger despite feeling the exact opposite.

" Im alone!" You threw your hand up in the air " I know its your career and I love you for how passionate you are about your career but this is ridiculous." You were yelling now.

Bradley shook his head and raised his palms to cover his eyes.

"Baby please not tonight." He sounded stressed. This was the last thing he wanted the night before he left. He was set to be gone for 3 weeks.

"Then when Bradley? Because its getting old. Im tired of having to love you from afar." You were crying now. A steady stream of tears now running down your face that set alarms off in Bradleys head. You were crying because of him. His girl.

"Sweetheart its three weeks, its not that big of a deal" He closed in on you grabbing your face between two calloused palms. The rough pads of his thumbs carelessly wiping away calculated tears in their path.

You scoffed and step out of his hold shrugging him off. You ignored the pang in your chest as his face dropped slightly.

"Babe seriously calm down" He was starting to get frustrated now. When he got the news earlier today he had expected the night to go a completely different direction.

He wanted to press you into the sheets and draw out those pretty noises he loves. He wanted to show you how much he loved you. Give you a proper goodbye before he was out on boat in the middle of the pacific.

"Calm down? Dont tell me to calm down Bradley. I cant do this" You were overreacting now. You could feel it. You were in too deep. The worry you felt in your chest had blossomed into something ugly and it was too late to back down now.

"Cant do what? This is ridiculous honey can we please just go to bed." His voice was raised now. The temper the two of you had shared was rearing its ugly head as you teeter on saying things you know you both dont mean.

"I need time Bradley." and that was the truth. You needed time to understand the emotions that were rushing through your body. You had finally got him back. Your Bradley. And now he was being shipped off again except this was another dangerous mission.The close call from the uranium mission had planted something ugly deep inside you. There was a chance you weren’t getting him back this time.Your Bradley. Just the thought had the blood rushing to your skull and your vision going blurry.

He was the love of your life. Losing him was out of the question. You had gotten so lucky when he came back in one piece on that F-14. How could you ever live peacefully knowing that the luck may not find him again?

"Time? You need time? I hate to break it to you but thats all your about to have." Bradley winced as soon as it left his mouth. He didnt mean to sound so mean. He knows exactly whats going on in that pretty little head of yours.

He knows you. His girl. He knows that the anger you’re feeling comes from a place of love and worry for him. Knowing it however doesn't ease the irritation thats starting to pool at the base of his spine.

You let out a sound thats halfway a laugh and halfway a sob as you tread towards your shared bedroom. How did the night end like this? How did you manage to let your emotions take over and ruin the last night you will have together in a month.

Bradley followed behind you as he leaned against the doorframe to watch you slam open his drawers in a haste. You may be mad at him but hes still your husband that you love endlessly, you had always helped him pack and nothing would change tonight.

He would give you your space. If thats what you needed then thats what youll get. If you asked Bradley to jump he would ask how high. Thats just how he was.

The two of you silently worked your way through the bedroom getting together everything he would need in his three weeks away. You were too stubborn to back down and Bradley knew you well enough to know to let you work it out on your own.

You had always been supportive of his career. There was never a moment where you thought that your husband being a naval aviator was anything less then a blessing. You were only human. You have human emotions and worries. It just so happens that you have a hard time regulating those emotions into words. Even though you hadnt comprehended it yet, this argument truly did stem from a place of love.

Bradley was your bestfriend. Being away from him on its own set your heart on fire and the added anxiety of knowing he could be in danger set your emotions into overdrive.

The two of you still had not said a word as you mindlessly got ready for bed and slipped under the covers. He said nothing as he pulled you to his chest and buried his face into your hair.

You said nothing as the tears you had been holding back finally fell as he handled you with so much tenderness. He was always so gentle with you. Even after you blew up on him about something you know he cannot help.

You fell in love with an aviator pilot. Deployments were part of the contract. In the six years that you had been with Bradley he had been deployed seven times. You were by no means a stranger to the game. It just felt different now. He had barely come back last time.

He pressed tender kisses to the top of your hair as you drifted off in his arms. Careful whispers of apologies and praise spoken into the silence of your shared bedroom because he would never understand what it would be like to be in your shoes. It would crush him if he knew you were in danger and away for weeks at a time.

Bradley had given you everything. He had given you every ounce of love he could possibly manage. He had given you every ounce of his attention that wasnt directed towards his career. But more importantly Bradley had given you grace. You were human. And it was times like these that he had learned to love the flaws you carried.

The hurt and fear that transpired into anger tonight was only an indication that you loved him. Your clipped words and hushed tears were only an indication that you worried for him. So yes, he would give you time. He would give you all the time in the world if that what you needed. His girl.

Bradley had slipped out that morning with a kiss on your head goodbye and a whisper of an I love you before he headed to the docks. Leaving was the last thing he wanted to do. He wanted to turn around and crawl back into bed and kiss your worries away. His heart was heavy as he stood on the deck watching the boat pull farther away from the dock.

-

The days without Bradley home seemed to be even harder this go around. Maybe it was the fact that he had little to no service this time or maybe it was the disruption you had caused before you left.

You hadnt been able to call him. There wasnt much service in the middle of the ocean anyways but Bradley had been working almost every second that he was there.

Rooster was worked to the bone. When it wasn’t one thing it was another. Every second he was in the air his mind was on you. Every close call the only thing he saw was your face. Every time his fist slammed down on the red button to his left he heard your sweet voice telling him you loved him. He couldn’t wait until he could hear it again.

The photobook weighed heavy in your hands as you sat down on your bed. This had become routine now. Looking at photos and memories helped ease the ache of him not being home.

You smiled to yourself after turning the first page. It was a picture of you and Bradley not long after you had met. He had just finished his second year at topgun and the two of you were at another aviators new year’s eve party.

The pictured had captured you leaning your head back as Bradley held the shooter of tequila between his teeth to pour into your open mouth. His hand cradled the back of your head supporting you from falling.

You turned the page again and this time the picture was much sweeter. You sat perched on Roosters lap as he sat on the piano bench at the Hard Deck. The veins in his neck were prominent as he sang and your head was tilted back in a laugh.

You sucked in a deep breath closing the book. You turned to look at the clock that resided on Bradleys bedside table. A quarter after one. It was rounding about evening time for Rooster right now as you debated calling him. There was a chance he was too busy to answer. You wanted to hear his voice so bad. You chewed your thumbnail as you stared at the phone laying in front of you.

You huffed and reached for it unable to fight it any longer. You hastily pressed his contact and nervously brought the phone to your ear.

Every ring of the phone felt like a stab in the chest. What if he didnt want to talk to you? What if he finally decided that he had had enough?

"Hey sweetheart" His gravely voice rang through your speaker effectively causing all of your worries to cease.

"Bradley" You gasped in relief. Relief that he was okay. That he wanted to talk to you.

"Baby" He cooed. You could feel the adoration through the phone. You could cry.

"I need you Roo. Im all alone and I need you now" You were crying now. Rushed gasps of breath and choked sobs that you fought to keep down.

"Take a deep breath honey. I know, I know." Bradley fought to keep the hurt from showing through his voice but it was nearly impossible when you sound so desperate for him.

"Im so sorry Bradley. I was so mean. I didnt-" You fought for a breath as you try to calm yourself.

"I didnt mean it. I was just so worried about you and I miss you so much all the time." You cry to him. Hearing his voice opened the floodgates and this next week until he came home couldnt come faster.

"I know baby. Its okay, I know." He cleared his throat pushing back tears that were fighting to surface. "I love you. I love everything that comes with you. Im not mad honey, I miss you" He reassured you. Just like he always did. Your Bradley.

"Tell me about your week honey" He spoke softly. Bradley always had a way of making everything better. All of your worries and doubts simply melted away at the hands of your husband.

-

The west coast sun had done nothing to ease your nerves as it blared down onto the smooth stretch of concrete that held hundreds of families and spouses eagerly waiting for their loved one to return.

He was coming home today. After three weeks of waiting, today was the day. Realistically you knew that this deployment was one of the easier ones. You and Rooster had been separated for six months at a time, so what’s three weeks?

The pale blue sundress you were wearing (with the knowledge that it was Bradley’s favorite of course) helped to ease the feeling of being suffocated in the California heat. Your insides were practically buzzing. You couldn’t wait to get ahold of him. The past week was spent with limited phone calls and promises whispered into the other end of the phone.

The sound of clapping startled you out of your thoughts as you looked towards the water from inside the car. The carrier was barely in view as it inched toward the dock

At the sight of the carrier, you put Bradley’s bronco in park, locked it up and made your way closer. After all this time, Rooster always knew how to find you through the crowd.

It took awhile to find him in the sea of flight suits and reuniting families but when you did he was unmistakable. His long legs carried him quicker and he reached you in about 4 strides.

Wasting no time you threw yourself at him. His bag dropped to the ground to catch you and he didn’t even budge from the force of your weight. He inhaled a sharp breath now that he finally had you back in his arms.

Bradley had missed you. The argument the two of you left on weighed heavy on his mind. Countless nights spent on his navy issued mattress worried about you. What if you didn’t want to be with him anymore? What if the time away made you realize you deserve more?

You turned your head to press kisses against his warm cheek. Bradley was sunkissed before but after being against the pacific for weeks he was especially tan.

“I missed you so much” and you did. More than he could imagine.

Bradley could barely keep his hands off you as you walked to the bronco. They were everywhere he could reach. You were far from complaining though, you could barely keep your hands from lingering as well.

Rooster pressed a kiss to your lips before opening the passenger door for you before getting into the drivers seat himself.

He hummed and tapped the steering wheel before settling in with his hand on your thigh.

The ten minute drive to yours and Bradleys shared condo had never felt farther as his hand drug up and down your exposed thigh. Your skin felt like it was on fire as you drug your fingertips up and down his forearm that was reached out towards you.

Energy was buzzing through the both of you. Unsaid words and hushed promises were transpiring into so much more. The tension between the two of you was thick enough to cut with a knife.

Bradley said nothing as he pulled onto the street you lived on. He missed this. His neighbors tire swing hanging from the oak that hes pretty sure has been there since before he was born. Your throughly decorated porch covered in flowers and the porch swing he made you two summer's ago.

"Cmere" He mumbled after the car was in park. In seconds his strong hands were grabbing and pulling you onto his lap. His hands were on you immedietly. Both of them coming to rest on top of your thighs.

You immedietly feel at home on his lap. That peice of you that felt missing had found home when you wrap your arms around his shoulders to bring the two of you impossibly closer.

His lips were on yours in an instant and immediately you felt like you could breathe again. His kiss was gentle and unforgiving all at the same time. It was almost difficult to keep up.

Noticing your reaction he couldn’t help but smirk into the kiss. He always knew exactly how to play his cards. Every spot and trick to make you putty in his hands. He grabbed at your thighs and pulled you towards him.

The rough bulge of his flight suit was rubbing you oh so deliciously and if he wasn’t careful the two of you were going to get a public indecency charge here soon if you didn’t move from the driveway.

Reluctantly, you pulled away. Still cautious of the steering wheel pressing against your spine you climbed off of him. The last thing you needed was to honk the horn and alert the neighbors of yours and Bradley’s less then decent escapades.

-

Fuck. You missed him.

He pushed you onto the bed, crawling on all fours as he hovered over your body with that wide grin you love so much plastered to his face.

His lips began trailing down your abdomen sending chills running up and down your spine with every breathy kiss, every drag of his mustache against your skin. With a skillful hand, he reached behind you to untie the bow that sat in the middle of your back, sitting up as he pulled it off of you. He hooked two fingers into the crotch of your underwear, shoving them out of the way as he ducked his head between your thighs. Feather-light kisses dotted your inner thighs before his mouth finally found you. He flattened his tongue against your slit, running it up your folds slowly as he savoured everything he’d missed out on for the last three and a half weeks.

“God, I missed you so much honey. Fuck”

His fingers spread your folds apart, giving him better access to your clit. The tip of his tongue traced shapes along it, the tip of his nose pressing into your puffy cunt, swollen from how badly you’d been wanting him. He mumbled something against your skin, his lips vibrating against your clit as he pressed another kiss to you.

For the next few minutes, the only sounds that could be heard in the room were your loud moans and the lewd sounds coming from between your legs. Bradley’s tongue was now prodding against your entrance, teasing you relentlessly. You found it hard to breathe as cry after cry left you. Slowly, your high began building. When two of your husband’s thick fingers pushed inside your weeping cunt, your back arched so hard off the bed, Bradley had to pause to make sure you were okay. He cooed at you pressing a kiss to your thigh before returning to the task at hand. The smirk on his face told you that his sympathy was anything but.

Bradley was relentless. His thick fingers stretched you open deliciously, making a scissoring motion as he licked around your greedy hole. Crying out, your heels dug further into Bradley’s back and you pulled hard at the brown curls that resided on the top of his head. You were pulling so hard you could have swore it was hurting him. Instead, he groaned and began slurping harder. Within seconds, you were gushing around his fingers. Your ears were ringing and you could feel your heartbeat everywhere.

He kissed the skin of your stomach as he slowly fucked you through your high, breathy praises leaving his lips as he stared up at you. “Good girl,” he murmured, placing an open mouthed kiss to your ribcage before hovering back over you. “So pretty honey”.

You moan against his mouth when he kisses you hard, his mustache pricking the skin above your upper lip in the best way. “Bradley, please,” you beg against his lips. “Please, fuck me. I need it. I miss you.”

The groan he let out shot straight to your core as pulls away to unzip his flight suit. He practically throws it to the floor along with the rest of his clothes before he’s back on top of you pressing in between your spread thighs, his mouth is pressing open mouthed kisses all over your collarbones and shoulders leaving goosebumps in his wake. “I need it, too,” he confessed, settling in between your legs and pushing his tip to slide against your swollen clit. “I need you all the time. Think about you every second i’m gone baby”

Your lips were puffy as his met them in a searing kiss before slipping inside you with a sharp thrust. Moaning against his mouth, you wrap your legs tightly around him digging your heels into the base of his spine and grip either side of his ribcage to pull him impossible closer to you.

He wasn’t in a rush, wasn’t fucking you quick and hard like you usually liked it. He was taking his time,pushing into you with such passion it left you breathless, aching for more but feeling overwhelmed all at the same time. He was loving on you in all the ways he could have been , should have been the last three weeks. Hell, in the last four months. He had taken this for granted.

Your velvety walls noisily suck him in deeper with each deep thrust he gives you, your previous orgasm providing him with all he needed to fuck into you hard and slow. The noises the two of you had come together to make were border lining pornographic.

Bradley’s eyes make their way downwards so he can watch the way your pussy sucked in his cock every time his hips met yours. “Fuck, look at you,” he said, more to himself than to you. “Taking me so well baby, aren’t you?”

“I love you. Fuck Bradley I love you” You finally manage to gasp out. Bradley fucked you good every time but you were damn near speechless as you rocked into you. He wasn’t just fucking you this time. No he was making love to you. He was showing you just how much he loves you with every piston of his hips into yours. Every glide of his cock against your greedy walls was a promise.

You whimpered underneath him, whimpered as you forced yourself to hold back for him. You knew you were close already. It was dancing around the borders of your perception, melting in your blood, burning in your gut, and you could feel it, had been feeling it.

"God, pretty girl, you're so tight. Missed you so much." Bradley was babbling now as he pressed his swollen lips to yours.

"Missed you too, Bradley. So much", you moaned against his lips, breathless and desperate for him. "Want to be good for you. So good."

"God, baby, you are", he groaned. "So good for me. Perfect. My girl."

“Bradley god-“ you gasped out. White was starting to flood your vision with each slow drag of his cock against your velvety walls. His cock grazed past that spongy part of you and he knew he found what he was looking for when you gasped and clenched down on him.

“I’m so close don’t stop” You whined high and breathy. There it was. Those pretty noises Bradley loved so much.

“Yeah? Me too baby.” He finished his sentence with another sharp thrust. “Gonna fill you up hmm?”

His pace never faltered “Gonna get you pregnant. Give you a baby to keep you company while i’m away. Is that what you want pretty girl?”

“Yes. God yes.” His words making you tip over the edge. You felt like you were on fire as a breathless pleasepleaseplease tumbled out of your gasping lips.

Bradley’s hips stuttered as you clenched down on him. Your pussy was gripping him like a vice. He was a vision with his head thrown back and mouth hung open in a guttural groan.

“Fuck” He rasped as he painted your insides keeping himself in the deepest part of you.

You winced as he slowly pulled out, not letting any of it go to waste. He was serious about his promise. There was nothing he wanted more than seeing you carry his baby. Bradley pressed chaste kisses along your neck before reaching your lips and pressing one there.

The slow drag of his tongue along yours had you whimpering before he got up to fetch a towel leaving you absolutely spent and tangled in the sheets.

He was gentle as he carefully wiped you down before pressing a kiss to the spot above your pubic bone. He quickly got comfortable and pulled you close tangling your legs together.

“I love you” He hummed into your hair pressing kisses to the top of your head. You smiled and pressed yourself closer to him.

“I love you Bradley” You replied before putting distance between the two of you to look him in the eyes.

“I’m sorry about the way I acted” You truly were. Your emotions got the best of you and instead of talking about it, you took it out on him. Your Bradley. He was the last person you should worry about not understanding. He always treated you with so much respect. So much tenderness.

“I think I just got overwhelmed. Usually it doesn’t bother me but this time with your deployments so close together and after what had happened to you…I didn’t know how to react” Your voice was quiet as you finally let him in. It’s what you should have done a long time ago.

“Honey, why didn’t you tell me?” Bradley questioned. You were his girl. You were supposed to be able to tell him anything.

“I didn’t want you to be worried.” You glanced up at him shyly with a small smile on your face. “You’ve just got so much going on at work and the last thing I want is for you to think I don’t support you. Because I do. I really do” You place a kiss to his lips.

“I love that you are so passionate about your job and i trust your abilities as a pilot to come home to me. It’s just that sometimes I get worried you won’t come home from something that you can’t control.” There were tears streaming down your face now that Bradley was steadily wiping away.

“After that uranium mission, it’s just been different ya know?” You sniffled as Bradley nodded along.

“It made it so much more real. The thought of you not coming home…” You paused squeezing your eyes shut and inhaling sharply.

“Baby…” Bradley cooed. He propped himself up on his elbow to look down at you and brought his hand up to cup your cheek.

“I can’t promise you I’m gonna come home every time” He wiped away the tears that fell at his words.

“But I can promise you I’m gonna fight like hell to come back to you every time.” He pressed a kiss to your lips.

“I can promise you that every time i’m in the air, I’m thinking of you.” You let out another choked sob at his confession and he silenced you with another kiss.

“I need you to tell me when you feel like this baby. So i can be there for you. I don’t know what it’s like to be you honey but I can sure as hell do my best to make it better.” God he was perfect. You truly believed Bradley Bradshaw was sent down from the angels himself. You silently thanked Carol in Heaven for her god sent parenting.

“I love you.” You finally spoke after some time. You pressed a kiss to the scar on his shoulder, and another one to the scar that went across his neck, making your way up to the one that adorned his cheek, and finally one to his kiss swollen lips.

“So you’re tryna knock me up huh?” You questioned with a laugh lightening the mood. You felt Bradley twitch against your thigh as he groaned and pressed his face in your neck.

“Yeah but i’m not sure this one stuck, I think I need to try again.” You giggled as he rolled on top of you making it hard to breathe as you support his weight.

“I think you’re right Captain, let’s try again for good measures”

[fatehbaz]

“The freedom to piss on the cement of Empire [...].”

---

The dry semi-desert that is South Africa’s Karoo began as an ice cap on the supercontinent Pangea [...]. The Karoo ice cap was kilometers deep and peaked between 359 and 299 million years ago. [...] Another hundred million years after Pangea split [...], the Karoo became home and then graveyard to dinosaurs of the Jurassic Era [...]. [Then] volcanic extrusions and kimberlite pipes threw skywards the purest form of carbon: diamonds. [...]

The discovery of diamond-bearing rock in the northern Karoo in 1869 propelled the [British] Empire into inventing new aspects of the technosphere, in which metal mining structures, wooden beams, steam engines, long guns, and the muscles and bones and guts of migrant laborers were employed to reconnect the volcanic residues of the Late Cretaceous with the economic and political landscapes of South Africa and Britain. At the time, 90 percent of the world's industrial diamonds on the market came from the region, giving [...] [the British Empire] mastery over geological matter [...]. Profits from the sale of Late Cretaceous diamonds from ninety-one million years ago fed the formation of cities, corporations, and institutions in England and her Cape. [...] [T]he entrepreneur Cecil John Rhodes amassed a personal fortune from the diamond rush, taking control [...] [of] the Big Hole of Kimberley, where the largest kimberlite volcanic pipe extrudes. Appointed prime minister of the Cape Colony in 1890, Rhodes set about establishing a legal infrastructure that favored mining and a social infrastructure that established race-based disenfranchisement, creating a class of black laborers [...]. Black South African land rights were stripped in 1913; black economic activity became largely confined to physical labor, much of which was in the mines.

In the 1900s, the Carboniferous Era from around three hundred million years ago entered South African politics via South African’s coal-fired power stations. In the 1960s, the newly independent Republic of South Africa, [...] [controlled by] an embittered [white] minority, sought [...] to pursue formal policies of race-based segregation [apartheid], and [in order to fund its projects, then] commissioned geological surveys for coal, oil, and uranium. [...]

---

“Colonization=‘thingification’” wrote the postcolonial philosopher Aime Cesaire.

For Cecil John Rhodes, nature was a spectacle that could be kept in a zoo; the university was a project to be “funded from the stomachs of k*firs”; migrant laborers in the diamond mines were required to wait two weeks before leaving, while the contents of their colons were collected and painstakingly searched for ingested gems. Under colonial regimes of extraction of labor and minerals, Africa became a laboratory for the necropolitical: relations of life for relationships of ownership and death. [...] 

His estate set up the University of Cape Town and his statue was erected in 1934: a two-ton bronze effigy of the man set on a concrete plinth in a pose that calls to mind Rodin’s The Thinker. In the view of the statue’s gaze there was Rhodes Highway, Rhodes Drive, Rhodes High School; to the statue's right was Rhodes Memorial, and to its left his zoo; on the far side of the old Cape Colony would be built Rhodes University.

Memorialized thus as the archetypal Reasonable Man, the aura of his realism must have been surreal to those who had suffered under his rule. [...] [I]n 2015, academics, students [...] in and alongside the University of Cape Town found themselves confronting a performance of the execrable on March 9, 2015, when [a] student [...] threw excrement - nightsoil from a shack settlement - over Rhodes’s statue to call for the university’s decolonization. Rhodes’s statue was removed on a flat-bed truck exactly one month later [...].

---

Geologies of morals and morals of geology: the Karoo Ice Age, frozen and global, and Rhodes’s Karoo Age, an era of extractive economy that sacrificed life and created sacrifice zones. One lasted a hundred million years, the other a hundred and fifty. Both changed the relations between geology and life. [...]

Amid the Rhodes statue’s formal removal on April 9, 2015, a construction worker - a deconstruction worker, really - took a moment to piss [...] on the stairs leading up to Rhodes. It was his own moment in a month-long protest [...]. A moment to seize the possibility of vulgarity that breaks the lines of authority, the fountain of piss flagrantly rejoins the flow of water through all bodies and all spheres. The freedom to piss on the cement of Empire asserts that the body of the construction worker and the body of the shack-dweller inhabit the same earth as the Empire, and that cement, ultimately, is a political subject. As is diamond-bearing kimberlite, and gas-bearing shale. [...]

Colonization made predatory claims on the earth’s geological flows and processes without regard to the reciprocities through which they were formed in the earth’s spheres.

---

All text above by: Lesley Green. “The Changing of the Gods of Reason: Cecil John Rhodes, Karoo Fracking, and the Decolonizing of the Anthropocene.” e-flux Journal Issue #65. May 2015. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Italicized first line/heading in this post added by me, quoting Green. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism.]

[callmemana]

Arms Wide Open, Catch Me If I Fall:

Chapter 5: Home In The Sky

Word Count: 3k+

Dual POV story (Birdie & Bob {please message me if the POV switch isn’t detectable and I’ll figure out a way to show that its switched between the characters})

🚨Warnings: inaccurate Naval descriptions, angst and floof. Mentions of Depression, suicide, drunkards, abuse, and religious views. Please if you suffer from depression talk to someone. I’m always here if you need an ear! 💛

A/N: dividers by @sligheach-sidhe , cover by me ( @callmemana ).

A/N 2: This is very personal to me and something that my family has gone through. I know that not very many people have the support system I had growing up and had people to talk to about the importance of mental health. It’s not something to joke about or not take seriously.

A/N 3: this is part 1 of 2, the next chapter will be a continuation. 💛 check out LP for more info on ‘Katie’!

It had been a couple of weeks and Amanda had finally settled into the Dagger Squad and San Diego and met the rest of the ‘Chaos Squad’ and the Daggers’ Aviator Mamas, Rachael Dragon Kazansky and Jade Whiskey Kerner.

Birdie met Whiskey when one day after Bird had just got home from walking Ozzy. Mickey and Baylie forgot that they had a guest and were being loud in the bedroom.

She didn’t stay long after the loud moans could be heard around the house.

So, with wanting to get away and let the newly-weds have their alonetime Bird went to the library. She was in the romance books when she literally ran into Commander Jade Whiskey Kerner.

“I’m so sorry Commander, I didn’t mean to run into you.” she rushed as she moved aside.

The older woman just laughed and they both sat down together and talked for hours until Bay called and asked where she’d gone.

Bird had gotten to know the other squad members and formed a good bond with all of them. Bo and her started to mend the relationship slowly but surely.

We were laughing and joking every once in a while and Bird started to call him Bo instead of Robert again here and there, which she could tell made his smile wider if possible.

She wanted to be able to trust him full-heartily, but he betrayed that in Lemoore and it would take work and effort on both sides to see this be mended to what it was.

Bird was willing and she could tell he was too, but how long will it last before he loses his temper or decides that he can’t go through it again.

They were on a team now and from what she’s been told, Bay and Mickey were on the Uranium mission and are better than ever, so why did he push her away?

Robert and her could be half way done with the wedding planning by now, she could’ve sent the ‘Save The Date’ cards to their families and friends and she’d have her dress already.

She’d have a dress, a wedding dress that would take his breath away and make him cry from Birdie’s beauty and her father would walk her down the aisle, tears in his eyes as he gives his only daughter to the man she loved.

Hailey and Heather would be Maid of Honor and a Bride’s Maid, standing by her side as Bo and her said their vows and exchanged rings.

Bird had this imagine in her mind since she said “Yes!” all those months ago when everything was happy and great.  

After the first week of being in the Dagger Squad and already tired of Hangman and Rooster’s constant bitching and competitiveness, Birdie went to the closest Walmart and bought a Disney Princess kids’ dress up set.

The next day, Birdie went onto base and put the tiara in her locker and as soon as either of the boys started to bitch about who was the best of the group.

She asked for them to wait as she grabbed it and hid the plastic crown behind her back as she walked back in.

When she revealed the tiara, everyone was confused, but the looks on their faces quickly turned into smiles and laughter as Bird placed it on Roos’ head and said, “You have been crowned the Bitch of the Day. As you see fit My Majesty.” and bowed.  

All the aviators, except Bob, took turns slamming their hands and fists onto the top of her helmet.

Most of them were nice, but Baylie was the most ruthless, always making sure that Birdie could feel the vibrations through the helmet.

Birdie new that once Bo got comfortable again, he’d be the nicest one, but until then, Mickey was.

Fanboy saw her as a little sister and always made sure that Bird was treated nicely when he was around.

After a month of being a guest in the Garcia’s house, seeing, learning, and hearing things that new friends shouldn’t, Birdie had put in a request for a on-base house and is currently waiting for an opening.

She had been to the Hard Deck and met Penny, Amelia, and Grace, but preferred to be called her honorary callsign; Spicy.

The girls of the Dagger Squad, Grace and Alana, and Rachael and Jade became a squad of their own, known around the base and off as the Chaos Squad.

This little grouping of chaotic women didn’t help Bird’s nonexistent relationship with Cyclone, especially after meeting with his wife, Robyn Venom Simpson.

She also had been introduced to Roos’ step-mother, Grace O’Mally Bradshaw. Both women were lovely and so much fun to be around.

Birdie didn’t want the six months to go by too quickly so she had enough time to really get to know the group and form a tight friendship with each of them.

She was going to be sad when the time period was up and she was deployed to another base, but this is what she signed up for years ago.

Bird just wanted to mend one relationship when she first arrived and now was lucky enough to walk away with more friendships than she though she would.

She also would walk away with a family. A father and mother, aunt and uncle, sisters and brothers that will always be in her life no matter what.

Even if Bo and her don't bury the hatchet, the others have told her so many times when she’d voiced her concern over the subject.

Ozzy was happier too, he had more people to love and care for him now and was loving every bit of attention that the others were giving him.

It had been more than once that Ozzy had kicked Mickey out of the bed so he could snuggle Baylie.

Bird knew when Ozzy was with Bay when Mickey is getting comfy on the couch, she’d always offer to get Oz and he could be with his wife.

He always waved her off and said that Bay’s been wanting a dog for a while and if this is keeping her mind off of one for them, he’d happily give up his bed.

We were also briefed on another upcoming mission and the team started training and had been doing good.

There was more time to complete the training this time too, which Birdie was thankful for, she’d just joined the squad.

It was crazy to think that these few weeks together had felt like a lifetime already and Bird wouldn’t change anything if it meant that she’d never met them.

Don’t get her wrong, Bird was beyond sad when Bo broke her heart, but it kinda feels worth it now.

Because without that lost, she wouldn’t have gained a family, a very chaotic family, but one none the less.

Bird felt as if she was home. Bo helped with that, he had been her home for four years prior and Bird couldn’t stop thinking as him as that.

Robert Floyd has had her heart since that day on the trail for training in bootcamp and he gave Birdie that rock after telling her that he would keep the little mushroom she had picked just for him.

Bird knows that it's stupid to say that was the moment he took her heart, over a silly little thing as a mushroom, but it was.

Bo took the little fungus and while others would’ve thrown it over their shoulders when I wasn’t looking, he kept it, and later in the recreational room, he gifted me a rock.

Even if he didn’t realize it, he spoke my love language, sentimental gifts that make no sense to anyone else but us.

I was grateful to have a friend that finally understood me and embraced my quirks.

Not that Athena didn’t, she did, but she got tired of it sometimes.

Bird doesn’t blame her though, having a neurodivergent friend can be exhausting when they have hyper-activity and can’t focus on anything and everything most days.

Bo took the randomness of me as if it was an exciting adventure and had the patience of a Saint to wait for me when it was harder to keep on tasks.

He was considerate when I said I was overwhelmed and noticed the signs when I was too scared of ruining his night by leaving early.

Bo never got upset or argued, he’d just say an excuse for us to leave and then we’re in his car and going home.

Bird’s family never really got why she had a harder time on some of the subjects at school, but after a teacher had spotted the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD, she recomended that Birdie gets tested.

When the results came back positive and they started her on some medication to help, her grades went up and she was focusing better on tasks, but her family still sometimes treated her as before.

The family she had in San Diego though, they understood and also took the time to help her, just like they do for Mouse.

The squads watch for certain behaviors and try to soothe the others’ emotions.

Just like when Roos noticed Bird was nervous and overwhelmed before flying on her first day back at Top Gun and knew that she needed to do a pre-flight ritual.

He was there for Bird even if he didn’t know exactly what she needed.

Amanda finally found a group of friends that understand and are willing to help and she couldn’t be more thankful for them.

Not that she’d let Hangman know that she’s appreciative of him, his egos big enough.

It had been a month in San Diego when Bird got the phone call from her mother that a friend back home had died, she immediately drew back from the squad.

Baylie and Mickey saw the happy-go-lucky woman turn distant and quiet in the matter of seconds. Bird didn’t waste any time in running to her room and bursting into tears.

They had known each other since they were children. The two women were cousins, best friends, and practically inseparable. Bird had known about Hailey’s depression for years.

No one really took her seriously when she’d lay in bed for days, no energy or motivation to get up and eat and take care of herself.

But Bird did, she took the mental health of others very seriously. As did her parents, especially after what her mother experienced at eighteen.

Jackson, her grandfather, was something that the Wheeler side of the family didn’t talk about and when they did, it wasn’t a lot.

They saw him as a disgrace, for suicide is the highest Sin that one could commit in they eyes of God.

The Wheeler family might not always be the most religious but they do follow His word. From the brief stories that her mother told, Jackson was a mean alcoholic. Everyday he’d drink until he was good and drunk.

That’s how he coped with being depressed, but it was the early 80’s and not a lot of people sought out for help, they turned to drink or drugs or whatever tickled their fancy.  

Bird will never forget the day that her mother had pulled out that damned bullwhip from her Hope Chest and told all three of her children the story of it.

Then after the story was done, Kathleen Hallet took in her children’s faces and said, “If you ever feel like you’re not yourself, please tell your dad or me ok?”

All the siblings nodded their heads as Kathleen tried to make sure they understood what she was talking about. And even as the children grew, Nick and Kat reminded them and gave more encouragement to talk to them if needed.

Birdie was 8 when she was first introduced to her grandfather’s memory and every blue moon she’d learn something new.

She was 17 when she learned that Jackson was his name, had a fraternal twin brother named John, that he liked Lions, and was fortunate enough to be given his old wool jacket and a small lion figurine.

Bird was 20 when she was told that Mamaw and Papaw Wheeler owned a bar and he and his buddies would stay there and drink all day playing cards.

The Hallet siblings might not have had a maternal grandfather, but they did have a maternal great grandpa.

He was a big part of their childhood, he taught all of them life lessons and other important things as they grew.

Birdie was the closest to both her Mamaw and Grandpa Wheeler, always watching old westerns and doing puzzles with them.

It broke her heart when her Great Grandfather died at the age of 96.

The hardest part being that she was in boot camp and couldn’t be excused to attend. Bo was her biggest shoulder to cry on and stayed with her until she wasn’t grieving as much. Heather and Phillip were there for her too when Bo couldn’t.

She didn’t know if she could go through the same thing again, but this time would be different, with someone she actually knew and saw and loved and grew up together.

Hailey was someone that Bird never thought that she’d have to out-live, with her being in the Navy, her life was constantly in danger.

It was beyond hard for her to think of a world where Hailey wasn’t just one phone call away if Bird had a bad day and needed her best friend to talk to or vice versa.

She’d never hear her voice again, never feel her warmth from a hug. What if Bird forgets Hailey’s voice or laugh? What if she hears a song or smell or memory that reminds her of Hailey and starts to cry?

Bird for weeks would just do nothing but lay in her bed after work, sobbing and cuddling Ozzy until she had cried herself to sleep.

This worried Bay and Mickey, they had no idea what had happened in that phone call and started to fret over their friend’s health.

Mickey begged Bay to let him call Bob, he’d most likely be able to get her to open the door and talk, but Bay would shake her head and take Ozzy for his evening walk.

Every member of the squads came to the Garcia’s shack, talking through the wooden door as they sat on the ground.

Bay and Mickey talked to her the most, about what they did after work, how Ozzy did that day if he wasn’t in her room, and how much they miss seeing her bright and shiny smile.

What they didn’t know, was the hurt she felt in hearing them plead with her to come out. She just didn’t want to smile or do anything knowing that her best friend was gone.

Everything felt numb, lungs heavy and crushed, her friends’ voices sounded as if she was underwater. And all she wanted to do was breathe.

“Hey Angel,” he started breathlessly and searching for the right words, “I know. I got a text from your Ma, she’s worried about you. I am too, you’ve never been like this.”

There was a soft thud on the door where he put his forehead, “You’re the most happiest girl I know and I hate to see you like this. Hailey had been battling with her depression for years and I know that you did everything you could to help her, and you did, help her I mean. It might not seem like it right now, but…”

A long breath escaped his lungs, “You did what you were supposed to do, you were there for her when she needed you most and made sure she knew that you would listen to anything and everything she wanted to say.”

“Then why does it feel like I did nothing,” she whispered, voice scratchy from disuse as Bird laid her forehead against the door where she thought his was.

“Because you think you could’ve done more, could’ve saved her. Angel, babe, without you she probably would’ve lost that battle sooner than later. You showed her that you cared, that she mattered, that she had someone in her corner when it felt like no one else was.”

Birdie sniffled and took her head off of the door and for a minute or two it was completely silent.

“If I open this door, I just want you and Ozzy to come inside. I’m overwhelmed and need my boys. I’ll talk to the squads and Mama and Papa later.”

“If that's what you want Angel, I’ll go get Oz now.”

“Yes please.”

It took a few minutes for Bo to come back, but once he did, he knocked on the door with Ozzy right beside him.

“Thank you Robert.”

“For you, I’d do anything.” and a happy bark followed after by the fur baby sitting on her bed.

All the members of the squads came over and talked to her through the closed door, all except for Bob.

He didn’t think that he’d have the right to comfort her right now, but after a text message from Birdie’s mama, he quickly understood what he had to do.

“Robert, please tell us our baby is okay?” “Mana’s not doin’ so good. What happened?” “Hailey.”

That one name and Bob knew, how couldn’t he. Robert didn’t tell the others, they had other worries and commitments to attend to.

He had kept it secret for a few days before Bay had finally had enough and cornered him in the hallway. “Robert James Floyd, I know that you know what’s up with Birdie, spill.”

“I can’t, it’s personal.”

“If it’s personal, then we should know so we can help!”

“That’s not how this works ok? You can’t just demand to know what everyone’s going through when it’s not your business, so butt out Baylie.”

Bo pushed through her and continued his way to the hangers where the others were, leaving Lucky stunned and slacked jawed by the balls he showed for calling her out as she stood in the empty hallway.

Maybe it was time that the real Robert showed his face and met the squad, but he’ll save that for another day. His Birdie needs him.

He came over to the Garcia’s little cottage after work and as Hangman walked out of the hallway where Bird’s room was, Bo pushed his way to the guest room.

Robert sat on the floor in silence for a minute or two, trying to come up with a plan to talk to her before he shook his head and started.

He knew that the squads were just down the hall and could listen in anytime they wanted, and would, because Birdie was family now.

Bo kept his voice just above a whisper and forehead glued to the sturdy wood door that was between them. Every answer he gave was unclear to anyone but the two.

The conversation went on for a while before he came back into the livingroom and stopped right in front of Ozzy.  

“Hey Buddy, you miss me?” Bo chirps as he pets Ozzy’s head. Ozzy in return gives him some kisses, making Bo laugh.

“Yeah, I missed you too. Wanna go see your mama, she needs cuddles from her boys.”

Ozzy stretches as he gets up off of the couch and then jumps off and races towards Birdie’s bedroom door. Bo starts to get back up from kneeling position but is stopped by Baylie.

“She lost someone close to her, didn’t she?” Lucky had tears in her eyes at seeing her friend’s pain, just like she felt all those years ago when she lost her childhood friend Katie.

Bo didn’t answer, just nodded and before he turned into the hall, “I hope it’s okay if I stay the night. I don’t wanna leave her alone if I can.”

Bay nodded, “Stay as long as it takes to make Birdie happy again, if she needs anyone to talk to, tell her I’m here and I know her pain right now.”

Robert offered a small smile and continued to Bird’s room, once there Ozzy let out a happy bark as Bob opened the door and Oz jumped onto the bed and curled up next to his Mama’s torso.

Bo laid down next to her aswell, brushing away the new tears before they could fall. “I’ll be with you til the end of the line, Angel.”

she snuggled up to him and put her head on his chest, right above his heart so she could hear the beat and Bo ran his fingers through her knotted hair to calm her down.

Birdie’s Basket: @dragon-kazansky @mrsjaderogers @bayisdying @starlit-epiphany @gracespicybradshaw

🏷️ list: @luckyladycreator2 @interstellarloneliness

[rabbitcruiser]

Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day

Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day commemorates the start of the  California Gold Rush, which began on January 24, 1848, when James  Marshall discovered gold while building a saw mill for John Sutter, near  what is now Coloma, California. The day has its roots in International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and was inspired by Prospectors Day, which was once held at Knott's Berry Farm each year on January 24. It also was inspired by an episode of the Simpsons with the following exchange:

Bart: That ain't been popular since aught-six, dagnabbit. Homer: Bart, what did I tell you? Bart: No talking like a grizzled 1890's prospector, consarn it.

Common examples of characters talking like grizzled prospectors in popular culture include Dallas McKennon narrating Disneyland's Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland and Big Thunder Mountain, Gabby Hayes—both drunk and sober—in many Western films, Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles, Will Ferrell as Gus Chiggins on Saturday Night Live, and Walter Huston in The Treasure of Sierra Madre.

Prospectors first came to the Sacramento Valley after Marshall found  flakes of gold in the American River near Sutter's Mill, at the base of  the Sierra Nevada Mountains. At the time there were less than 1,000  non-native inhabitants in California. Newspapers began reporting the  discovery of gold, and by August, 4,000 miners had descended on the  area. The first people that came from outside of the territory came by  boat, and arrived from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands—soon to be called  the Hawaiian Islands, Mexico, Peru, China, and Chili.

In December 1848, President James K. Polk announced a report by  Colonel Richard Mason which spoke of the abundance of gold in  California; this prompted more prospectors to travel to the territory.  Throughout 1849, thousands arrived, either traveling by sea or over  land, and became known as '49ers. Mining towns popped up in the area,  and with them came shops, saloons, and brothels. Many mining towns  became lawless, and San Francisco became an important city in the  territory. By the end of 1849, the non-native population had swelled to  100,000. The Gold Rush helped California gain statehood in 1850, and  gold discovery peaked in the state in 1852. In all, more than 750,000  pounds of gold were extracted during the Gold Rush.

The implication of a grizzled prospector is of one who has stayed so  long searching for gold that their hair has turned gray. Some  prospectors refused to quit the profession and continued to live in the  Western territories. So, when Bart Simpson mentioned a grizzled  prospector from the 1890s, he was referring to a prospector that had  stayed more than forty years after the Gold Rush happened, still trying  to find gold, or other commodities such as silver, oil, radium, and  uranium. Besides a gray beard, the stereotypical grizzled prospector had  faded clothes, missing teeth, a pickaxe, and a mule. They had bouts of  gold fever, and were suspicious of whoever came close to their claim.

How to Observe Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day

Celebrate the day talking like a grizzled prospector. Here are a few words prospectors commonly used, that you could use today:

Dadburn: to curse; e.g.: "Dadburned boll weevil done 'et my crop!"

Hornswoggle: to embarrass, disconcert, or confuse; e.g.: "I'll be hornswaggled!"

Consarn: the entirety of something, also a curse word.

Dumbfungled: all used up; e.g.: "This claim is dumbfungled! There's no gold left!"

Bonanza: a mine with lots of gold.

Borrasca: a mine with no gold.

Baby buggy: wheel barrow.

Muck: to dig with a shovel.

Powder monkey: a miner who used dynamite to make holes.

Johnny Newcome: a miner new to camp.

Blackjack and saw bosom: coffee and bacon.

Paydirt: land rich in gold.

Panned out: if they had found gold while sifting through dirt with a mining pan, then things had "panned out."

Flash in the pan: something shiny in pan that turned out to be nothing, or just a small piece of gold.

Stake a claim: claim a piece of land as your own as a place to  search for gold, must stake the land with wooden stakes when you arrive.

The day could also be spent watching films such as The Treasure of Sierra Madre, or old Western films starring Gabby Hayes. A visit to the Sutter's Mill replica and the Gold Discovery and Visitor Center in Marshall Gold Discovery State Park could also be planned. The days' Facebook page could also be explored.

Source

[yourbestpalpercy]

Quickly! Take some rushed angst! Story beloooowww!! Also, I wrote this while listening to California Gurls *goofy ah clown laugh*

It had been at least 2 months after the event. A destroyed room laid in the dark, only being illuminated by small traces of a strange green substance that decorated the carpet and hardwood floors. A person slugged through the halls, dragging his hand across the wall; leaving behind a trail. After his mech exploded on him, Pal’s body began to show effects of..something. Pal had no idea what it was. He didn’t use uranium as fuel for his machine..what was this substance dripping from his eyes..?

Green…

Ghh..

Green sludge dominated his eyes, making it near impossible for him to see. Every day was the same, get up, trudge..trudge through his house, trying not to collapse and lose himself to whatever this substance was..

Green..

Burning sludge..

I..I can’t see…!

Pal held his chest, spitting up more of the substance in his sink. It tasted awful..sour and dripping with bitter pain.. Pal heaved before looking over at his phone. It could barely see. Green filled its eyes. The phone glowed with a green light.

What have I become..?

N-Nick…?

Nick is that you…?

I..miss you..

Pal reached for its phone, slowly accepting the call, dripping more of the substance onto it. “Niiiick…please..it burns so much..” “Pal..?”

This isn’t Nick.

Who are you…?!

“Pal..you..you sound awful. What happened to you since the explosion?”

DON’T MENTION THAT! It NEVER HAPPENED!!

“R-Right..I’m sorry. Are you alright?”

I-I’m a monster…

Green…dripping sludge from my eyes…it won’t stop…! Ghh..Khh…I can’t remember…anything. I feel dead..!

“Pal, I’m comi-.”

NO! Don’t LOOK AT ME! It keeps happening..! This stuff-! What is it..! Parasites..! Why does it keep happening-?! Why it stop..?! Aacc.. yyhhh…

“How…bad is it..?”

It burns…! A million parasites invading my body!! Taking it over like a host..! I want them out…! Please..I can’t take it anymore…!

“…Sit there Pal. I..I..I’m calling the ho….”

Words began to blur, sound began to become meaningless…Pal was..crashing. It..was nothing but a machine..

“Pal..? Pal! Pa—…”

[Shutting down in process…]

No…No…please..

Pal hit the ground, hallucinating heavily. Before it was his animatronic. “How sad…you’re already dying. I expected longer from such a brilliant engineer..”

Don’t…

“Don’t what..? I’m not doing anything y’know. Just watching..honestly didn’t expect you to collapse so easily. That explosion truly did a number on you. Your Tamas will miss you..”

No..don’t mention them..I-I’ll be safe…just like them..don’t you touch them..don’t touch any of my creations..! Nick..I-I’m sorry…

“Apologizing now…? You do realize there’s no point, right? He can’t hear you. No one will come for you y’know. Your obsession got you here. You have no one to blame besides yourself..”

Shut up..shut up..! Kaa…

“You don’t even remember her name..! Why do you even try? It’s not like she’s come save you after what you did to Nick.”

Stop…stop..!!

“Hmp…heh..alright…”

[Shutdown complete…]

Pal laid on the ground, surrounded by the sludge..unconscious…

[jamietukpahwriting]

It was radium— “my beautiful radium” as Marie called it—that seemed the most promising of these new materials. Polonium was too intensely active, burning itself away within a year. Uranium was more stable but less energized, dribbling its radiation comparatively slowly away. Radium, on the other hand, glowed with promise. It decayed slowly; its half-life was sixteen hundred years, yet it spat and sparked with a steady release of energy. The Curies had measured radium’s intensity at some three thousand times that of uranium. It was rather like finding a tiny star buried in the dirt. A very tiny star—the Curies had isolated only 100 milligrams of pure radium from some three tons of uranium ore. But that gave it the allure of something truly rare. Within two years physicians had learned that the application of radium salts to a tumor would shrink the cancer. “Radium therapy” was introduced into hospitals shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. Physicians reported healing effects that seemed miraculous, especially compared to the therapies of old. The newspapers compared radium’s magic to the golden healthful rays of the sun. Everyone wanted to stand in what seemed a naturally healing light.  Radium use spread quickly into consumer products. There were bottles of radium water (guaranteed to make the drinker sparkle with energy), radium soda, radium candy, radium-laced facial creams (to rejuvenate the skin), radium-sprinkled face powder (in four clearly labeled tints: white, natural, tan, and African), soaps and pain-relieving liniments and lotions. Researches discovered that the European hot springs, famed for their healing powers, contained radon, a gas greated by the decay of radium, released as water dissolved in minerals in the rocks that lay beneath the springs. Perhaps, scientists suggested, the health effects of the mineral hot springs came from radioactive elements in the ground. Spas in upstate New York rushed to compete by dropping uranium ores into their swimming pools. A New Jersey company grew rich selling hundreds of thousands of bottles of Radithor: Certified Radioactive Water as a tonic that guaranteed new vigor and energy. Radiant health, the ads proclaimed—beautiful skin, endless vigor, and eternal health—ingesting radium seemed the next best thing to drinking sunlight.

—The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

[back-and-totheleft]

While in New York City promoting the release of Nuclear Now, Oliver Stone and screenwriter Joshua S. Goldstein (who is a PhD professor) sat down with Screen Rant to discuss their film, its themes, and the virtues of nuclear energy. They spoke about how companies like Shell and Exxon knew about climate change back in the 1960s but did nothing to stop it, placing their profits before the future of the planet. They also discussed overblown fears regarding nuclear power plants and their supposed environmental dangers.

Screen Rant: I'm thinking back to try and remember when I first heard of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Warren Smith had a song called "Uranium Rock," which is about mining for Uranium like the next gold rush. There was this brief window where nuclear power was absolutely going to be the future.

Oliver Stone: I love that. We should have kept going on that path, and we'd be out of the woods now.

Screen Rant: Had things turned out differently, what would carbon emissions be today?

Joshua S. Goldstein: Pretty close to zero. The heart of the problem is the fossil fuel economy, globally. And the emissions from that. We wouldn't have that problem. The United States was planning to have no carbon for electricity by the turn of the century, and we think the rest of the world would have followed suit.

Oliver Stone: Historically, this was a big deal. The fact that America detoured away from it is shocking. I think, to historians of the future, I don't think it's going to be overlooked.

Screen Rant: I think we'll look at this fossil fuel era as the dark ages.

Oliver Stone: [Laughs] If we get out of it.

Screen Rant: There was a perfect storm of circumstances that conspired to take down nuclear energy. I don't like to use the word "conspired," but it just crushed nuclear power.

Oliver Stone: It seemed like God's destiny or something. But you're right. In the beginning, in the 40s, it was horribly conflated with nuclear war. Nuclear power is not like nuclear war at all. Different origins. Different. At the beginning, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that was a shame and a real disgrace, that we dropped those bombs, may Harry Truman be damned…

Screen Rant: As documented in your show, The Untold History of the United States.

Oliver Stone: Oh, you saw that? Bravo! I wasn't knowledgeable on that growing up. I should have been. It was my generation that screwed it up. It was guys like me and women like Jane Fonda who came along and we were mis-educated.

Joshua S. Goldstein: And there were all the films in the 50s…

Oliver Stone: That was a little before me. I'm not responsible for that! The radioactive monsters… So many of them. Great films, too! All those creatures, what the fuck were they? It was all scary shit, right? Then the United States embraced war, in Vietnam. In response, that generation brought into the idea of peace at any price. But they didn't get their information correct, and I don't know why that is. I don't know why there was no Einstein to emerge and go, "Hey guys, wake up!" I'd love to research that more. Why wasn't there somebody to question all this, when The China Syndrome came out.

Screen Rant: Your film doesn't lean into the idea of the fossil fuel and oil industries doing what we expect them to do.

Oliver Stone: We take the point of view of Rod Adams, who said it wasn't conspiracy. It was simply business. Have you read the recent reports about Shell Oil? They knew all about this back in the 70s and buried it. There's a whole court case coming up. It's a big one. They're suing the sh** out of them. They are responsible. They knew climate change was coming, but they wanted to make money. Now, can oil help us? Yeah! I think they still can help us. They make all kinds of products. Like sweaters, clothing, plastics, and they can be cooperative in this. They won't go out of business. They'll find a new way of doing it!

Joshua S. Goldstein: The next thing for oil companies to do is deep geothermal wells. They're good at digging underground for geothermal power. But there's a whole attitude about finding what's underground, and part of it is storing carbon down there and part of it is finding heat for geothermal, and part of it fossil fuel. I heard another thing where they take nuclear power to process kelp. Lots of kelp. Seaweed, into something that looks like crude oil to a refinery. And you feed that into the refinery.

After that, all the products you produce are carbon neutral because you used seaweed! And oil companies can still refine and sell that, instead of trying to switch it all over, it's just making gas differently, making diesel differently. There's a number of technologies… You use nuclear energy for a big shot at the start of the process, but you end up something that looks like diesel that you put in your pick up truck, or aviation fuel for planes. We don't know which of these may pan out in the future.

Screen Rant: The industry was stunted before it could be applied to fueling alternatives, even alternatives to itself. I think we talk about wind and solar being the future, but nuclear was the future 70 years ago. Can you talk about whether wind or solar have the capacity to sustain us?

Joshua S. Goldstein: You can't run a grid them alone. People say, "Well, batteries are getting cheaper," and that's true, but the scale doesn't add up for trying to run the world on batteries charged by wind and solar. They're great as part of the grid, and you can fill in around them when they're not producing. But if you've got a grid powered by wind and solar and it's not sunny and windy that day, you have nothing, and sometimes that can last for weeks. How are you going to run the entire grid for weeks? Batteries are orders of magnitude off from what we can build and afford now, since mining is very intensive for batteries.

Hydro-electric is great from a climate point of view, but it does flood valleys and destroy ecosystems. Then there's natural gas hovering in the background. The oil companies are like, "Yeah, it's a renewable future" and they have wind and solar all over the front of their websites, but then behind it, when they're not producing, they'll burn natural gas. "Clean" natural gas. It's not clean. It's producing carbon and methane. It's a very powerful greenhouse gas, but not as long-lived as carbon dioxide. I see so much natural gas advertising, how it's part of a "clean" solution, but it isn't. If you're sitting in Pennsylvania, on top of all the frakking fields, then natural gas is pretty cheap. But in South Korea or Japan, they have to import the LNG (liquefied natural gas), and that's pretty expensive.

Oliver Stone: Who's making the most money in America from shipping the LNG? Do you know?

Joshua S. Goldstein: I'm not sure. But the big oil companies. That industry is fragmented with companies you've never heard of that are making piles of money. There's independent producers, then there's the big ones. There's a big company that runs an LNG import terminal in Massachusetts, where we've phased out nuclear power. It's where I live. So, I look up, who owns this big solar array near where I live. It's the biggest one in Massachusetts. Who owns this? It's a big LNG import company. Why would they be building a solar field?

Screen Rant: The front door says "solar," but they're letting all the natural gas in through a side door when no one's looking.

Joshua S. Goldstein: When solar isn't producing, which is most of the time… Actually, in Massachusetts, our capacity factor, the percent of the theoretical capacity that's produced on average is 13%. So most of the time, it's not producing. And when it's not producing, that's when natural gas comes in. It makes sense for them. Put solar out there, and it's cheap when it produces, but most of the time it doesn't. So now we're 3/4 methane. A few decades ago, Massachusetts was 1/4 coal, 1/4 nuclear, 1/4 natural gas, and then 1/4 everything else. They phased out coal and nuclear entirely, the dirtiest thing and the cleanest thing. Now it's just 3/4 natural gas. We haven't de-carbonized at all.

Screen Rant: Right now there's a whole thing about the waste water at Indian Point, where the local protests stopped them from dumping water into the Hudson. Is that water dangerous?

Joshua S. Goldstein: I would drink that water. It's the most ridiculously tiny amount of radioactivity. People think radioactivity is a 'yes or no' thing. Like, one bite from a radioactive spider will turn you into Spider-Man. But it doesn't work that way. We're bathed in radiation all the time. This room is full of it. Nuclear power doesn't add much. Background radiation varies a lot from one place to another. In Denver, Colorado, it's twice what it is here at sea level in New York. And yet there's no health effects from that variation.

This tritium that they want to dump, they want to dump water that has tiny amounts of tritium, is a tiny fraction of that difference between Denver and New York. We know that it's not an amount that can have any effect. Tritium is in EXIT signs, like that one over there. The total amount they want to dump from Indian Point is greatly diluted and gets safer every day from radioactive decay. The total amount is about equal to one of those EXIT signs, roughly. We're around tritium all the time. It's something that can be written as, "Radioactive water dumped into our natural sources!"

Oliver Stone: These websites turn out these articles, like CounterPunch, they turn out everything anti-nuclear. They believe this sh** because they give you so many numbers they can convince you.

Joshua S. Goldstein: Tritium is so weakly radioactive. It produces low-energy electrons. Yes, it's radioactive, it throws off electrons, but the electrons won't go through a couple inches of air. It won't penetrate skin. It's just like a version of hydrogen. It passes through the body like any water does. It doesn't accumulate in the body. If they put it in the Hudson River, it will be so diluted, it will have no effect.

Screen Rant: So, it's not a case where as soon as they dump it, the fish will all rise to the surface with Xs over their eyes.

Joshua S. Goldstein: Right. It's just fear. We have fears of radioactivity from movies in the 50s, and then from Silkwood and those kinds of films. If they can ping those fears, they can raise money on it, politicians can get votes off it, but I'd drink it.

Screen Rant: What about stuff like spent fuel and more immediate byproducts? They bury that, right?

Joshua S. Goldstein: Well, they were going to bury it in Yucca Mountain. Finland is actually building a repository similar to Yucca Mountain to bury it. We put it in "dry casks." Concrete casks, 18 feet high. Concrete. It stops the radiation. I've stood right next to them with no protective gear at all. They don't leak. They're safe for 100 years in that form. While we go about solving Climate Change…

Oliver Stone: [Laughs] Then we can worry about it.

Joshua S. Goldstein: After we solve Climate Change, either bury them like Finland is doing, or turn them into fuel for new reactors.

Screen Rant: They can be recycled?

Joshua S. Goldstein: Yeah.

Oliver Stone: Waste is very carefully managed because there's a small amount of it. It's watched. There's not one piece of waste that's out there. Whereas oil and coal, there's a lot of waste. A lot of waste. And solar batteries.

Joshua S. Goldstein: Cadmium, mercury. Solar Panels have all these minerals that are mined. It's very difficult to mine. And they're turned into solar panels in China, in Xinjiang, where the genocide is going on.

Oliver Stone: What genocide? Oh, you're going with that? Okay. But listen, you understand, as a filmmaker, how can you resist this story? It's important! With this turnaround that's happened. If there was no turnaround, if we just became nuclear-powered, we would be rather passive about all of it. It would become uneventful. In France, when I was shooting there, there's lots of people who don't even know there's a nuclear plant there, but they're happy it works. But it doesn't cross their consciousness.

Screen Rant: A great scene in your film is the Three Mile Island incident. There was a meltdown tragedy averted because it was evidence that the safety precautions worked.

Oliver Stone: Key is the guy who says, "They never tell us the truth, it's worse than they're telling you."

Screen Rant: We look at coal and natural gas as the devil we know, even though it's so much more destructive than nuclear. Young people don't have a whole lot to look forward to in this world, but we won't have a planet at that point if we don't change things now.

Oliver Stone: We'll have a planet, but it will be ruined. Or close to ruined. I wonder where we'll go. Maybe the South Seas. I'm not sure. I don't know where to go.

Joshua S. Goldstein: Oliver, maybe you can go to South Pacific ahead of time and check and see if it's safe for the rest of us.

Oliver Stone: The scientist in the film says, "It's a shame Nuclear didn't come along until later, in the 80s, because it wouldn't have been so resisted. It's important to have more accidents, actually. (Laughs) We'd understand that it's like a plane crash. Planes have to develop into better planes. There's a need for accidents, for any industry to grow.

Screen Rant: I wrote that in my notes before it came up in the film. We hear about every plane crash, but flying is still the safest way to travel. Yes, Chernobyl was a terribly mismanaged incident, and that mismanagement was what led to the massive loss of life. The thing I'm worried about with regard to nuclear power is Material Unaccounted For.

Oliver Stone: Yeah, that senator, what was his name… From Georgia… Sam Nunn. When the Soviet Union went down, they had to account for all the nuclear material. There was a rush. For example, Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet Union and had a load of material, so George Bush or whoever ran over there and said, "Hey, give it to us!" Ya know

Joshua S. Goldstein: When the Soviet Union fell apart, there were weapons all over the place.

Oliver Stone: Ukraine gave theirs back to the Soviet Union. They had a good leader at that time, Kuchma.

Joshua S. Goldstein: There was a rush to scoop up all the nuclear material and the weapons and bring them back.

Oliver Stone: What about the missing stuff that he's scared of? The stuff that's gonna fall into Iranian hands or something?

Joshua S. Goldstein: They collected all this stuff and it culminates when they take megatons of Soviet weapons, downblend the fuel, and run American reactors on them for about 15 years. Half of all the nuclear power in the USA was running off these Soviet warheads.

Oliver Stone: What do they do to the fuel?

Joshua S. Goldstein: They downblend it, so instead of "highly enriched" uranium, it goes all the way down to 5%. You take something and turn it from one into twenty. It's downgraded that way. We ran our reactors for 15 years on it. Nobody really knew about it. It's called 'megatons to megawatts.' The downside of it was, it discouraged the US fro making more of our own nuclear fuel. After that, we just kept on buying nuclear fuel from the Russians. Sam Nunn was all involved with that. As for the Materials Unaccounted For, the idea that this low-enriched Uranium would get out and someone could make it into a bomb, it hasn't been an issue. If you want to make a bomb, you have to enrich Uranium.

Screen Rant: Which not a lot of people have the capacity to do.

Joshua S. Goldstein: Right. Iran is a major country with a big program, all those centrifuges enriching uranium. You can do it. You can get there. Pakistan and India have civilian nuclear power, and it's separate from their military program for weapons. A civilian nuclear power plant is not useful for making weapons.

Oliver Stone: It's never happened. You can't say that it's ever happened.

Joshua S. Goldstein: Then Israel and North Korea, big proliferators, creating nuclear weapons…

Oliver Stone: I'm curious, why did Israel develop nuclear weapons but not nuclear power plants?

Joshua S. Goldstein: I think they wanted to keep their nuclear technology for their weapons program, which they were keeping secret, so they didn't want a public facing…

Oliver Stone: But it would be two different departments.

Joshua S. Goldstein: That's how it is in India and Pakistan. I can't answer you on Israeli policy. South Korea was going to build nuclear weapons, but they chose civilian nuclear power because they couldn't do both over the international framework. Israel dropped out of the framework and made weapons, but South Korea… Sweden, too, they were pursuing nuclear weapons, but decided, they're not really much use, let's build power plants instead.

Screen Rant: Regarding how you can't weaponize a nuclear plant, we saw Russia occupy Chernobyl. What, if anything, could they have done? It felt, at the time, like nuclear blackmail.

Joshua S. Goldstein: Chernobyl is on the road straight into Kyiv, so that's why they went through there. There were all these stories about Russian soldiers digging through the Chernobyl dirt and how it's going to irradiate them and all this terrible stuff, but nothing ever materialized. It was just a lot of fear. Anytime Chernobyl's back in the picture. And the same thing is with the Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine, which Russia is currently occupying. But they had shut the plant down

Oliver Stone: And it's encased in concrete, right?

Joshua S. Goldstein: Yes. The safest place to be in a warzone is in a nuclear plant!

You can conjure up scenarios where a bunker-buster bomb could breach containment and you'd end up with some low-level radioactivity spreading around. It's easy to map because you can measure very small measures of radioactivity, but that doesn't mean it's having any harmful effects.

Oliver Stone: Is that the one-in-a-million shot?

Joshua S. Goldstein: Yes. My parents were biological scientists, and they used radioactive tracers to follow molecules around the body and see where they end up. Just low-level radiation.

Screen Rant: I can't tell if you're just exploring the science or if you have a storytelling idea.

Joshua S. Goldstein: This is beyond the movie, but I've been thinking about the topic we broach in the movie briefly about what happened in the 1940s and 50s when there was this scientific fraud to make people afraid of radiation. That's a story about finding the lie. The Rockefeller Foundation was the main funder of science, not the government. They put all their money into creating the idea that low-level radiation is dangerous.

Oliver Stone: As Rod Adams says, he doesn't think it was conspiracy, he thinks it was business. The interesting thing, now, is that we discovered the Shell oil papers from those days. They knew in the 1960s that Climate Change was here, but they kept doing what they were doing, which makes them possibly liable in this new mentality we have of courtroom legal warfare. Lawfare. Maybe they can go after Shell or Exxon, because they knew. They explored the future.

-Zak Wojnar, ScreenRant, May 3 2023 [x]

[writing-and-wondering]

You’re a Wonder

Part 4

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Rooster x Kazansky!Reader

Warnings: Swearing, Mentions of death, Character death, Flashbacks in italics

Request: Nahh

Word Count: 10.9k

Synopsis: Training continues for the Uranium Mission, but Y/n “Wonder” Kazansky still has to face the past before truly becoming apart of the team that is being built for this so called “Miracle Mission”. 

A/n: Hello !! Wow, it's been a bit since the last one, sorry about that. But all your support and feedback has just been so awesome and so appreciated, thank you !!! You all are phenomenal <3

Your head slips off of your hand and just about slams into the table before you jerk back upright. Blinking a couple of times, you sniff as you stare at the table in front of you that is littered with the notebooks you were meant to be studying. Rubbing at your face, you groan as your fingers run across the indent your pencil had left from where it was clasped in the hand you were leaning on. 

A chuckle from across the table brings your eyes over to Comet, who is trying, and failing, to hide his laugh behind his hand. You glare at him half heartedly before rubbing at your eyes. 

“Enjoy your rest, sleeping beauty?” Comet asks once he recovers from his giggle fest. 

“I didn’t mean to do that.” You mutter as you stifle a yawn. 

Comet rolls his eyes before closing his textbook, “I think we should call it.”

“What? But-” You start but Comet is already shaking his head at you, “Dude, it’s like four in the morning. Plus, you just about gave yourself a concussion from almost slamming head first into the table because you fell asleep on your goddamn pencil.”

You lean back in your seat with a groan as he continues, “It’s bedtime, Wonder.”

“You sound like my dad.” You state, but you move to pack up your array of books and highlighters anyway. Comet shrugs as he does the same, “Someone here should.”

“You idolize him too much.”

Comet sighs, “Isn’t that the dream.”

“Shut up.” You laugh as you throw a crumpled up piece of paper at him. He just smiles and swats it off its path towards his face before adjusting his glasses. 

The two of you are just about finished shoving your things into your bags when your stomach growls, at the same time as Comet’s. You look up and share a wide eyed look with your friend before the two of you burst out laughing. 

“You think we should make a stop at the mess hall?” You ask as you sling your bag over your shoulder. Comet nods quickly, “Mhm, good idea.”

Neither of you waste anytime rushing down the hall in the direction of some late night snacks. There’s a moment of silence where you both are just grabbing whatever catches your eye. 

As you settle down at a table by the window, Comet lets out a sigh, “Bless whoever’s idea it was to leave the hall open all the time.”

You nod, “Our savior, whoever it was.” Comet chuckles before digging into his selection, you doing the same. 

After a moment, you look up and notice Comet fiddling with his class ring as he chews on the twizzler hanging from his mouth. He catches you staring and bites off on the candy, “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot recently...”

“That’s dangerous.” You comment, eyebrows raised. He flicks you a glare, to which you toss a fruit snack at him, “What about, Coms?” 

Comet leans back in his seat, “About graduation, I guess.”

Nodding, you sip on the straw of your juice box, watching as he frowns and fidgets with his granola bar wrapper, “I just don’t want things to change, you know?”

You stare at him for a second, before sitting up straight and quickly saying, “They won’t.”

He smiles a little at you, “They will and you know it.”

“Well...” You start, pausing to think for a moment, “Not that much. We’ll all still be a team.”

Comet hums in agreement, “Do you think we’ll still be able to fly with Ace and Ghost?”

“Of course! We’re inseparable and everyone knows how well we work together.” You lean forward and place your hand over his to get it to stop tapping the table nervously, “Like I said, we’re a team.”

He shrugs, “Still worries me that we’ll drift apart.”

“Unlikely. This isn’t high school, Coms.” You scoff slightly, “I don’t even think we could, at this point. Not after everything we’ve done together, it’s just not possible.” 

Looking up at you, Comet grins a little, “You sound so sure.”

“That’s because I am.” You squeeze his hand reassuringly, “But seriously, It’ll be fine.”

You lean back in your seat and pop another fruit snack into your mouth, “Besides, you’ll always have me.”

You watch as his eyebrows draw together as he blinks at you, “Promise?”

“Promise. You can’t get rid of me that easily.” 

He laughs, “Yeah, and why would I want to get rid of the pilot who has made my heart fall to my ass more times than I can count because of her flying.”

You gasp at him, “Well by all means if you want a different pilot then I’m sure the admiral would happily make a switch-”

“No, no, I didn’t say that-” He starts but you’re still going, “I mean it would certainly save them a lot of trouble, considering what we put them through-”

“No! No, you’re mine.” Comet is waving his hand sporadically to get you to stop, “We fly together, it’s what we do. You and me.”

You grab his raised hand and squeeze it, “Damn right.”

Comet’s shoulder slump with relief as he squeezes your hand too before dropping it. Clearing his throat, he smiles, “I am excited, though. For what’s to come, that is.”

“Me too!” You agree, bouncing in your seat a little. 

“Like shit, it’s crazy to think that graduation is right around the corner. I still feel like we’re a bunch of first year cadets.” Comet is staring at the ceiling, his hand waving around as he speaks. 

“God, don’t I know it.” You say, shaking your head in disbelief. 

He laughs, “We really walked in here having no clue what was going to happen.”

“Nope, just a bunch of babies.” 

“And now we’re graduating! What the hell, where did the time go?” Comet asks, looking at you with wide eyes.

Chuckling, you let out a gasp as you point at his hand, “And you’re getting married!” Comet beams at the fact as he looks down at his ring. 

You hold your hand out, “Lemme see the ring.”

“You’ve seen it like fifty times already.” He says to you, twisting the band on his finger. You groan, “I don’t care, it’s gorgeous. Let me see.”

Comet rolls his eyes but still dramatically holds his hand out towards you, to which you gladly take and stare at the ring, “Wow, it’s still so pretty every time.” You gush, “Toby did such a good job.”

“He did, didn’t he? It’s made of sea glass too, like dude, I didn’t even know rings could be made out of that.” Comet says excitedly, his face quite literally glowing from just talking about his fiancé. 

You squeeze his hand before giving it back to him, “No kidding.” 

Comet admires his ring for a second longer before smiling at you, “Oh my gosh, I can’t wait for you to be my best man at my wedding.”

Your eyes go wide, “Is Toby okay with that?”

“Are you serious? The man adores you.” He says it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “If I weren’t marrying him, I’d be worried about which one of us he’d pick.” Then a smug grin grows on his face as he leans back in his seat, motioning to himself, “Good think he likes this di-”

“Dude, he’s not even my type.” You interrupt him, your voice flat. 

Comet looks at you knowingly, “Oh yes, I’m quite aware of your type.” 

You give him a confused look, “I haven’t dated since before I met you, how would you even know my type?”

“Because I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” Comet says, pointing two fingers at his face. 

Leaning forward on your arms, you cock your head to the side, “Really? And what would it be then?” 

Comet mirrors you, “Oh, you know... Tan skin, curly brown hair, whiskey eyes...” He fans his fingers across his upper lip, “A mustache...”

You choke on air, “Bradshaw?” 

Nodding, Comet wags his finger at you, “Don’t act so surprised, you’re literally in love with the man!” 

“I am not-”

“Oh, have pity on my poor heart.” Comet groans as he clasps his hands over his chest dramatically, “I know what love is, and baby you are deep in it.” 

Your mouth falls open, “No. Not with Rooster, no way.” 

“Denial is bad for your health.” 

“It’s not denial! It’s the truth, I have no feelings for him.” You state, slamming your hand on the table. 

Comet stares at your hand for a second before leaning forwards, “You sit on a throne of lies.” 

“There are no lies!” You shout exasperatedly, crossing your arms. Leaning back, Comet shakes his head, “Boo, you whore.”

You point your finger at him, “Don’t you quote Mean Girls at me, I’m serious. There’s nothing going on- how could there be?”

“Uh, maybe because when you two are together it’s like you’re the only ones in the room?” Comet deadpans. 

“Well, yeah! That’s bound to happen, I’ve known him since-” You pause to think, “Since forever!”

“And you’ve been in love with him for how long?” Comet asks, eyes wide. 

“Never!” 

Rolling his eyes, Comet waves you off, “Mhm, sure. Well, I’ll be sure to put in how much I had to endure before you two finally got together in my speech at your wedding.” 

You just stare at him with your mouth hanging open in shock, “There won’t be a wedding.”

“Not yet.” He winks at you. 

“Comet, I swear.-”

“Hey!” He stops you, “They didn’t name me the best matchmaker in high school and dedicate a whole page in the year book to show all the couples I got together for nothing!” 

“I don’t- wait. You were named best matchmaker?” You ask, curiosity throwing off from your annoyed confusion at Comet’s proclamations. 

Comet nods, “Yeah, they gave me a whole cupid’s bow and everything.”

“Oh, cool.”

“It was yeah, came with heart arrows even.” He agrees, mimicking the motion of firing off a bow and arrow. 

“Aw, that’s really nice.” You hum, “Maybe they should’ve given you the callsign Cupid.” 

Comet’s head bobs up and down excitedly, “That’s what I’ve been saying!” 

“But, that doesn’t mean you’re right about me and Bradley.” You say sternly, arms crossed atop the table. 

With a sigh, Comet holds his hands up in surrender, “Alright, but I know a love match when I see one.” He points at you, “And I am never wrong.” 

“Well there’s a first for everything, my friend.” You say sweetly. 

“I’m never wrong.” He repeats quickly. 

You just shake your head, “Fine, keep your suspicions, but if you even think about mentioning this again I will throw up on you.”

Comet makes a face of disgust, “Ew, no. No, you know I can’t do vomit.”

“Neither can I, but that’s just how far I’ll go because of how revolting it is.” Your voice is quiet and firm as you speak, complete certainty drenching your words.

Blinking at you with almost a look of pity, Comet shakes his head, “You’re going to feel a whole hurting wave of shock when you realize how wrong you are.”

“Oh, I’m gonna-” 

Comet shoots backwards, his hands out in front of him, “No, no! No, I was kidding- don’t do the thing!” 

You just fall back in your chair laughing, your hands clutching your stomach. Comet’s mouth falls open, “Oh, you bitch.”

Still laughing, you lean forward and hold your hand out for him, “Okay, okay. Truce?”

He eyes it for a second before shaking it, “Truce.”

You smile before glancing out the window and gasping, the sound making Comet jump a little, “What?” There’s panic in his voice but once he follows your gaze he lets out an, “Ohhhh.”

Looking out the window, you stare at the changing colors of the sky as the sun rises. Snapping back to Comet, you tap your hands excitedly on the table, “Oh, you know what we should do?”

Looking at you with confusion, Comet shakes his head. 

“We should go to the roof and watch the sunrise.” You say simply, pointing to the sky. 

He gives you a look, “It’s freezing out!”

“Wear a coat!” You’re already standing and grabbing your bag, “C’mon, it’ll be fun!”

Comet looks out the window again before giving in, “Okay, okay- but we gotta bring the others too.”

You beam, “Yes! I’ll get Ace, you get the boys- oh, and bring your camera!”

“Already ahead of you, hurry before we miss it!” Comet yells as he takes off running towards the men’s dorms. You do the same towards the women’s. 

Mere minutes later you’re shaking Ace’s shoulder, who grumbles at being woken up. 

“Come on, come on!” You whisper-yell at her as you shrug on your coat and grab you hat. She groans, squinting at you, “Dude, it’s like 5am?”

You toss her coat to her, “I know, but you gotta come see the sunrise.” 

At her look of “Seriously?” You sigh, “The boys are coming. It’ll be fun!”

Due to your very obvious excitement and how much Ace loves you, she eventually obliges. Now the two of you are hurrying up the stairs to the roof, clad in your coats and fuzzy hats. 

You hear clattering behind you and bend over the railing to see the boys not too far below. Cupping your hand over your mouth, you yell down to them, “Hurry up or we’ll miss it!” 

You can’t help but laugh as they begin running, tripping over each other in their haste. Ace grabs your arm and pulls you away from the railing and towards the doors. 

The second you two bust through them you’re met with the icy chill of the air, the sudden coldness practically smacking you in the face. 

“Oh, shit. That’ll wake you up.” Ace says with a chuckle, her breath coming out in a little cloud. You just grin and pull your hat down over your ears. 

“We made it!” You turn towards the doors and hurry out of the way as Ghost just about falls onto the roof. Ace catches him and they both stumble off to the side a bit. 

You laugh at them trying to regain their balance but then your smile grows even wider when Rooster appears behind Comet. His curls are pressed against his forehead because of his hat and his cheeks are already pink from the cold. 

You hate how utterly adorable you find it, yet you can’t bring yourself to look away. Rooster flashes you a smile, and well... maybe now you don’t hate it so much. 

You're waving at him and then Comet is in your ear with an, “I saw thaaat.” Before he’s skipping out of your reach towards Ace and Ghost. You right yourself from trying to hit Comet and turn to find Rooster much closer than he was a moment ago. 

“Was this your idea?” He asks, a smile on his lips as he shoves his hands into his pockets. You nod, “We were already awake so we thought, why not?”

Rooster grins, “Good thinking. I mean, how many more mornings will we have like this?” He drapes his arm over your shoulders and turns you towards the sunrise. 

You just stare at it with wide eyes, not being able to get enough of all of the oranges and pinks that are dancing across the sky. Faint purples blend into the deep blues on the horizon that are still hanging on from the night. 

Leaning into Rooster, you find his warmth comforting. 

“Question.” His breath tickles your ear.

“What’s up?” You ask, turning to look at him. 

A smile tugs at his mouth, “Why were you already awake?”

You laugh a little, “Oooh. We were studying.”

His mouth falls open, “Why? You’re literally the smartest person I know.”

Brushing him off with a wave of your hand, you drop your gaze to your feet, “Psh, no I’m not.”

“You are! Don’t deny your genius, Wonder. It hurts my heart.” Rooster says, his hand slapping dramatically over his chest. You laugh at his expression, your closed eyes causing you to miss the way his smile grows at the sound. 

You pat his hand over his heart, “Oh, I don’t wanna do that.”

He only smiles more, “Good. Besides, you’re already pretty much perfect at everything.” 

“No, I’m not-” You’re saying put then Rooster stumbles back, doubling over with his hands clasped over his chest, “Ow, my heart!”

“Rooster!” You laugh as you shove at his shoulder, which only gets him to laugh as he points at you, “Admit it! You’re crazy smart.”

You just roll your eyes at him. Rooster puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head, not taking that for an answer. Instead, he rushes forward and wraps his arms around your waist. 

You yell out in surprise as your back is pressed against his front, your feet skidding across the ground as he spins you. All you can do is laugh as he yells out an, “Admit it!” 

Holding onto his arms, you give in, “Okay, okay! I’m smart!”

Rooster lets you go and in one swift movement has you turned towards him, “How smart?”

You smile up at him, a little breathless, “So smart.”

He laughs, “The smartest.” The way he’s looking at you has your heart going absolutely nuts. His curls are in his eyes and his cheeks are so red, along with his nose now, too. 

You can’t help but admit how utterly handsome he looks right now. Looking away, you try to steady your rapidly beating heart. To keep your mouth from saying something you don’t want it to, you quickly grab Rooster’s hat and pull it down over his eyes. 

He starts, his hands reaching up to push off yours, but you’re running away. You run towards Ace with a yell, who is already opening her arms to you. She catches you in a hug and the impact sends you two spinning a bit. 

“What happened?” She laughs as you both regain your footing, her expression nothing but slightly confused. 

You’re just out of breath and laughing too hard to answer. Ace looks over at Rooster with his hands on his hips and lets out a knowing, “Ah.” 

You blink at her and are about to ask her what she means when Ghost lets out an excited, “Guys, it’s snowing!” He’s leaning over the edge of the building, his head tilted towards the sky. 

You and Ace look up and find that there are snowflakes falling. Big, white, fluffy ones.

“Oh, wow.” Ace breathes out as she watches them fall, a couple landing on her face. You give Ace a squeeze before taking her hand and leading her over to the boys, who are all looking at the sky. 

Upon walking towards Rooster, you grin a little at him as he looks at you expectantly, “Sorry for blinding you.” 

He shrugs, “T’was only temporary, M’lady.”  

“Tis a relief to hear, my good sir.” You laugh. 

“Ooh, guys can we build a snowman later?” Comet’s voice pulls you away from Rooster, “Once the snow gets deeper?” As he finishes speaking he looks up and tries to catch a snowflake with his tongue. 

“And go sledding! I’ve always thought that the hill by the pond would be perfect for sledding.” Ghost puts in, his hands clapping together like an excited child. 

Ace gives him a questioning look, “And what would we sled on.”

Ghost pauses mid clap, his hands mere inches apart, “Uuh, the trays from the mess hall?” 

The three of you hum in agreement. 

“Yeah, that’ll work.” Ace says as she pats her WSO on his back. 

You feel a hand wrap around yours and look over to Rooster, who begins pulling you away from the ledge, “Come here.”

“What are we doing?” You ask as he takes hold of your other hand as well. 

He smiles, “I remember my mom and dad doing this whenever it snowed because the ground would get all slippery.” 

You squeeze his hands tighter as a familiar warm feeling fills your heart. Whenever Rooster would mention something about his parents, he would get this certain glint in his eyes that were hard to look away from. 

He squeezes your hands back, “Just do what I do.” 

You're confused at first but then Rooster begins to run in a circle. You both lean back, each others hold being the only thing keeping you upright. The snow is in fact making the ground slippery, which you find only causes you to move faster. 

You run faster but then feel one of your hands slip, sending both you and Rooster skidding in opposite directions. You fall onto your back laughing, tears in your eyes. Rooster hurries over, still wheezing as he holds his hand out to you, “You okay?” He asks. 

Your stomach hurts from laughing as you spin, the world moving around you in a blur. Through the blur you still catch glances of Ace, Ghost, and Comet doing the same thing, though their circle seems to be a bit more hectic. 

Or at least tries to ask. He’s laughing so hard it’s a bit difficult to understand if he actually spoke English or not. But you still just nod and take his hand. 

Once back on your feet, you try to catch your breath as you lean your side against him, a laugh still rattling through you. You watch as the others meet a very similar fate that you did as they all break apart and fall. 

Your knees feel weak as the laughing starts over again, leaving the five of you all just laughing hysterically on the roof at five in the morning. As everyone calms down and catches their breath, Ace suggests going inside for some hot cocoa. 

“Yes, please. I can’t feel my toes.” Ghost says as he loops his arm through Ace’s, who rolls her eyes, “That’s your fault for wearing slippers.”

As you walk to the doors with Rooster, Comet comes up next to you and squeezes your arm, “This is the kind of stuff that I don’t want to change.” He says quietly, his face pink but glowing with nothing but joy. 

You grab onto his hand and hold it tightly as you smile, “Me too.” 

☆

Your fight with Fritz had been dealt with. Against what you had previously thought, you didn’t break his nose, and he was completely fine. A part of you was annoyed at the fact but the better part of you was relieved. 

Nothing much came from it in the end, but you two were no longer paired together. There’s still a struggle amongst everyone and completing the training scenarios. 

No one had completed them successfully yet, and the mission date was ever impending. It loomed over the team like a dark cloud filled with lightning, ready to strike at any given moment. 

Today isn’t any different. Teams still go up in the air, and they still come back down unsuccessful. You offer Phoenix a reassuring smile as she, Bob, and Coyote are called to go up. 

The rest of you sit sprawled across the ready room, listening intently to the radio on the bar counter. Maybe this will be the one. 

You sit on the couch next to Rooster, completely exhausted. You had been paired with Payback and Fanboy, and while you all worked well together, the session still ended in an ultimate failure. 

You glanced over at the pair of them on the couch across from you, noting how tired they both looked. Frowning, you drop your gaze to the string you were messing with on the cuff of your sleeve. 

The radio crackles and it isn’t hard to miss when Coyote communicates that the missile didn't hit the target. It was almost expected at this point, as no one yet has had a direct hit. 

There’s a collective groan throughout the room with the thought that this team too will return unsuccessful. Their voices come through the radio and Maverick’s “That’s a kill.” allows you to know that Phoenix and Bob are out, meaning the mission is a complete failure. 

“Damn it.” Rooster mutters next to you, pinching the bridge of his nose. Maverick announces that it’s time to head back, they’ll try again. 

But that’s when you all hear it. You sit up on the couch, your head turning towards the radio as Phoenix’s panicked, “He’s going to burn in!” filters through the speakers.

Coyote was in G-Lock. 

Before you even register what's happening, you see Hangman rush towards the radio, turning up the volume nob. His hands grip the counter, his knuckles going white as uneasiness fills the room. 

You’re on your feet as Maverick yells, “I’m going after him!”

“Come on, Coyote. Come on...” Hangman mutters as he stares at the radio, his jaw clenched tightly. You feel your stomach drop as you watch the man’s face pale. It wasn’t hard to guess how close him and Coyote were, as the two were always by each others sides.

Maverick’s voice is all that’s heard in the dead silence of the room, each panicked yell for Coyote sending a chill down your spine. You hold your breath as the line goes silent. 

“Coyote? Coyote, you okay? You okay?” Maverick asks quickly. 

“Yeah, yeah I’m good. I’m okay.” Coyote’s voice finally responds, sending a resounding amount of relief throughout the room. You watch Hangman’s head drop, his grip on the counter lessening as he lets out a breath. 

“That was close.” Phoenix says, to which you can’t help yourself agreeing with. 

“Too close.” Maverick says, “Let’s head in. That’s enough for today.” 

You sigh deeply, glancing over to Rooster who shares your look of relief. The second of relief is gone as soon as it came however, as panic once again fills the line. 

“Bird strike! Bird strike-” Maverick’s voice is clear and full of surprise. The sound of a jet being hit crackles through the speakers. 

“We’re hit- left engine is out!” Bob yells, his tone unlike anything you’ve heard before. Your body goes rigid from where you stand next to Rooster, who is completely frozen as he stares wide eyed at the radio. 

“We’re on fire! We’re on fire!” Bob shouts, to which Phoenix responds, “Climbing!” 

“Oh my god.” Rooster’s voice is almost inaudible from next to you. So much so that you wouldn’t have heard it if the room wasn’t already stilled with silence. 

All you can hear is the panic from Phoenix and Bob as they try to regain control, but from what you’re hearing, they aren’t. They’re on fire, and they’re falling. 

“You can’t recover- eject! Eject!” Maverick yells to them, almost sounding as if he’s pleading. 

There’s no response from the pilots as the line falls silent. Your head whips towards the window as a distant explosion rattles through the air. All you can see is a growing tower of smoke on the horizon, and nothing more. 

Your hand covers your mouth in shock, your heart beating so fast that it feels like it’s in your throat, choking you. 

“Did they make it?” Fanboy asks, his hands on the back of his head as he stares out the window, his eyes wide. From next to him, Payback just runs his hand down his face and lets out a quiet, “Shit..” 

“What...” Hangman mutters from his spot next to the radio. His normal demeanor is dropped and all you can see is the genuine fear in his eyes. Your chest is so tight it feels as though you can’t breathe. 

Looking to Rooster, you find that he’s just staring out the window, his expression blank, “They’ve got to be okay.” He says quietly, almost to himself. 

You turn back towards the window and that’s when you see it, the sight making you jump slightly. 

“Parachutes!” You shout, louder than you meant to but you can’t find it in yourself to care. They made it out, they didn’t crash. 

“They ejected- oh thank god.” Fanboy sighs, running his hands down his face as he falls back onto the couch. 

Hangman walks towards the window, his hands clenched tightly, “But are they okay?” He asks no one in particular. 

“We won’t know until they're brought back in... but they’re alive.” Payback says, walking over to Hangman and placing his hand on the man’s shoulder. 

“They’re alive.” You repeat softly, your voice barely a whisper. 

All you can do now is wait. 

☆

You’re pacing the halls as you await the word on Phoenix and Bob’s condition. Everyone pretty much dissipated after seeing the parachutes. 

Rooster was kind of in a frozen state and had asked to be alone. You reluctantly obeyed his wishes, which is why you are now in the halls of the med wing with Hangman, Payback, and Fanboy. 

You look up as the doors open, revealing a very tired looking Maverick. You rush over to him and everyone else turns towards him expectantly. He just simply nods without any of you saying anything, “Phoenix and Bob are okay. They’re just keeping them overnight for observation... It’s alright.” 

“Oh, thank god.” Hangman sighs, leaning his head against the wall as he rubs his eyes with his palms. You drop your head as you let out a breath of relief, “That’s good.” 

Looking back up at Maverick, you nudge his arm a little, “Are you okay?” 

He waves you off, “Don’t worry about me.”

You shrug, “Old habit.” 

He smiles a little at you before looking around, “Where’s Rooster?”

Scratching your neck, you nod down the hall, “He’s still back in the lounge.” Your voice lowers, “Hearing everything kind of freaked him out, I think.”

Maverick looks to you, his eyebrows drawn together, so you continue, “I’ve never seen him like that... all distant. It was like he wasn’t all there.” 

Nodding, a sense of understanding crosses over Maverick’s face, “It’s not hard to guess what must’ve been going through his head.” You nod too, knowing exactly what he’s alluding to. 

“What about you?” He asks softly. 

You raise an eyebrow at him, “Hm?”

“Are you okay.. after hearing that?” 

Grinning, you shake your head, “Don’t worry about me, Mav.”

He shrugs, “Old habit.” 

You push at his arm slightly, to which he just shakes his head before pulling you into a hug. It’s tight and quick, and as he pulls back he says, “I’m going to go talk to him. You all should be good to see Phoenix and Bob if you want.”

“Alright. Thank you.” You tell him. What you’re thanking him for, you don’t have to tell him. He nods at you before heading towards the lounge to talk with Rooster. 

You turn back to the others, who are already heading through the doors. Following Hangman, you thank him as he holds the door open behind him for you. 

The group of you make it into Phoenix and Bob’s shared room, where you find them both sitting on their beds talking. They both look over as you all walk in. 

Phoenix smiles at the sight of everyone, “Is there a party, or something?” 

“Yeah, a glad you’re not dead party.” Hangman says as he moves forward and pulls her into a hug. Phoenix hugs him back tightly, her voice muffled a little by his shoulder as she speaks, “Sounds like a pretty good reason to party.” 

“Did anyone bring cake?” Bob asks, his eyebrows raises expectantly as a smile tugs at his mouth. You laugh as you rush over and hug him, “Sorry, the mess hall isn’t open 24 hours, unfortunately.” 

He hugs you back tightly before you part, “Ah, I’ll accept just the hugs then.” You give his shoulder a squeeze just as Fanboy comes over, “Good, because there will be plenty.” He says as he practically tackles Bob with a hug. 

You and Payback laugh at the two. Turning, you see that Phoenix is already opening her arms to you and you don’t waste a second in hugging her. 

“Scared the shit out of us, Phe.” You tell her. She chuckles, “Scared the shit out of myself.” 

You rub her back before pulling away with a smile, “It’s good to see you.” 

She grins, “Good to see you too.”

There’s a knock at the door and you turn to see Coyote leaning against the frame, “Is there a secret meeting I don’t know about?”

“Nah, we knew you’d show up fashionably late.” Hangman says as he hugs his friend. Coyote returns it and pats him on the back before pulling away. Hangman holds onto his arms, “How are you doing?” 

“Good.” Coyote responds with a reassuring smile, “A little shaken, but nothing I can’t handle.” 

“Atta boy.” Hangman says as he pats his arm before letting go. 

You sit down on the edge of Phoenix’s bed, leaving room for Hangman to plop down next to you. 

“Each day is something new, huh?” Payback asks as he sits down next to WSO, who hasn’t left Bob’s side. 

“No kidding. Rooster was right to question if this mission is even possible.” Fanboy agrees, leaning back on his hands. 

Bob nudges his arm, “We still have time... We’ve just hit a rough patch, that’s all.” 

“We’ll get it together. I mean, we are the best of the best, right?” Hangman says, looking around to everyone with a grin and raised eyebrows. 

You chuckle, “Take a shot every time someone says that to us.” 

Laughter fills the room, the tension fading the longer all of you talk. There’s a feeling that despite all that has happened, it’s going to be okay. Simply because of the people here. 

There’s a moment of silence before Bob looks up with a thinking expression, adjusting his glasses as he speaks, “You know... I’m pretty sure I peed myself a little up there.” 

“Oh my god.” Fanboy just about chokes on a snort from next to him, his hand coming up to cover his mouth at an attempt to hide his laughter.

Bob laughs too, “No, I’m serious, that was so scary.” 

“I mean, at this point in our careers, who hasn’t?” Coyote asks as he leans against the wall. Hangman raises his hand proudly, “I haven’t.”

“I’m not even going to try and hide the fact that I probably did too.” Phoenix says, backing up her WSO. That brings all of you to a point of laughter, the atmosphere in the room lightening. 

“Bullshit.” You say, smacking his hand down. Payback is shaking his head, “There’s no way, man.” 

Hangman holds his hands up, “Look, I don’t have to defend myself to you guys. I know what happens up there in my own jet.” 

“Do you? Do you really?” Coyote asks, leaning forward with his hands on his knees as he squints as his friend. Hangman gives him a shocked look, “Man c’mon, you’re supposed to be on my side!” 

“Says who?” Coyote laughs, reaching out to push at Hangman’s shoulder, “Just because I’m your friend does not mean I have to defend your lies.” 

Hangman’s mouth drops, “They’re not lies.”

“They’re so obviously lies, dude.” You tell him blankly. Hangman lets out a groan and leans back on his hands, “Ya’ll are rude.” 

His statement sends you all off again, laughter filling the room. Phoenix snaps her fingers, “You’ve at least thrown up in the air, that I know for certain.” 

Sighing in defeat, Hangman holds up his hand in a one armed shrug, “That... that is true, yes.” 

You’re laughing so hard now your stomach is starting to hurt. You lean forward, clutching it as Hangman shakes his head, “What a team we are... Just a bunch of idiots talking about who’s had an accident in the air.” 

“We’re just that comfortable with each other, buddy.” Coyote says, resting his arm on Hangman’s shoulder as he places his hand over his heart dramatically. Hangman shrugs him off, “Don’t buddy me, you betrayed me.” But the laughter in his voice throws off any hint of malice he may had intended. 

“Bunch of idiots, indeed.” Phoenix mutters in your ear. You nudge her arm with a laugh, the smile on your face wide. 

A gentle knock on the door brings you all towards it. Your smile falters a little as you see Warlock standing in the doorway, his features weighed down with a forlorn expression. 

He steps in, holding himself in a way that shows he’s struggling to find the words for whatever he came to say. It throws the room into an ominous feeling. 

Looking over the room, he clears his throat, “Excuse me...” He starts slowly, his voice hesitant. Warlock’s eyes land on you and your heart skips as he speaks, “Lieutenant Kazansky, may I speak with you?” 

You’ve had enough experiences in your life to have an idea of what the look in his eyes mean. It feels as though the air in your body has left as you slowly lift yourself to your feet. You feel a comforting hand squeeze at your shoulder before you walk towards the door. 

Warlock takes you out into the hall, gently closing the door behind him. He offers you a sad smile. 

“Sir?” You ask hesitantly, your voice filled with the dread you’re feeling on what he has to say. A part of you is praying and hoping with everything that you are that it isn’t what you think. 

But the more rational side of you knows that it is. Warlock proves it to you when he softly says your name. 

“He’s gone.” Your voice is hardly audible as you say it before he even gets the chance to. Warlock’s eyebrows draw together before be nods slowly, “I am terribly sorry, Lieutenant.” 

You feel yourself nodding, hot tears filling your eyes as your throat closes. You look at him, your hands clasped tightly together in front of you, “When?” You whisper. 

“We just received a call from your mother... he passed in his sleep.” Warlock tells you, his voice nothing but gentle. 

You take in a shaking breath as you look towards the ceiling. All you can do is nod. 

“I am truly sorry... he was a great man.” The admiral’s voice sounds so distant as he speaks. You can barely see through your tears that are pooling at your eyes. 

Refusing to fall. 

You look towards him, “Thank you... for coming to tell me.” You say quietly, your voice shaking. 

Warlock nods his head and gently rubs your arm in a comforting manner. You place your hand over his and squeeze it in response, not being able to speak. 

You know that Warlock as children, he’s a father. There’s not a doubt in your mind that he’s thinking of his own being in your place. You offer him a sad, watery smile before moving to go. 

There’s a sound of running feet halting to a stop behind you as you turn. You look to see both Maverick and Rooster, eyes wide and chests heaving. Maverick’s eyes are filled with unshed tears. You barely even look at Rooster before you’re turning around and brushing past Warlock. 

It almost feels as though you’re running the second you round the corner. You’re not sure where you’re going, but you need to be alone. You’re not even sure if you’re breathing as you rush down the hall, refusing to the let the tears fall. 

Refusing to even allow yourself to process anything at all. 

You come across a door to a random room and wrench it open. Slamming it behind you, you flinch a little as the impact rattles the frames on the wall. Breathing heavily, you look around and see nothing but a table and a couple of chairs. 

There’s a radio on the table, but not much else. 

With a shout, you grab onto the radio and rip the cord out of the wall before throwing it to the ground. It smashes against the floor, scattering across the hardwood. 

You stare at all the broken pieces for a moment, the tears finally falling. 

That’s when you break. 

Wrapping your arms around yourself, you slowly drop to the ground with a silent sob, your head throbbing. The silence grows into an agonizing cry as you hold yourself, your fingers digging into your arms. 

It hurts to breathe, knowing what you had been fearing has finally come true. 

Tom Kazansky is dead. 

Your father is gone, and you never truly said goodbye. 

There was so much you wanted to say. Now you’ll never get to. 

It feels as though you are completely alone, that your world is crashing down around you. The pain is burning in your chest, not allowing you to catch your breath. 

You feel arms wrap around you and fall back into them, holding onto the arms and not even registering who it is quite yet. But they’re here. 

They’re here, yet you feel so terribly empty. 

They shift and lean against the wall, holding you to them. Your head falls against their shoulder. 

“It’s okay... I’m so sorry...” A soft voice whispers in your ear. You close your eyes tightly, the tears falling down your face as you finally make out who it is. 

Bradley.

Who else?

You just hold onto him tighter, your breath coming out in pained gasps. He rocks you a little, his hold on you never wavering, “It’s alright... I’ve got you, you’re okay..” His voice is so quiet and gentle, it seems to wrap you up in this cloud of comfort and warmth. 

Bradley continues speaking softly to you, just sweet nothings of comforting words. You barely even hear half of them, but just having him there with you is enough to breathe the air back into your lungs. 

You father is gone. 

But you are not alone. 

☆

That night, you dream of your father. 

It’s the day of graduation, and you’re getting ready in the room you shared with Ace. She had left earlier to meet up with her family who had come for the ceremony. 

You’re mind is unfocused as you button your collar, taking a moment to stare at yourself in the mirror. You don’t quite recognize the person staring back at you. 

Unwelcome tears begin to pool at your eyes. You lean against your hands on your desk, your head falling back as you look up to the ceiling, just trying to breathe. 

“Pull it together, Wonder.” You whisper to yourself, closing your eyes. 

But it’s hard. Impossible, even. The one person who has been by your side since day one, who you thought would always be with you, isn’t here. 

He’s buried six feet under, and it’s your fault. 

Your hands ball into fists on the desk as you drop your head, your eyes remaining closed. 

God you wish he was here. 

Comet is supposed to be here. 

But he isn’t, and you are. 

Now you have to go walk across that damn stage and get your wings. Without him. All you can do is think about how excited he was. 

You sniff and shake out your hands as you hear a knock. “Come in.” Your voice shakes more than you’d like. You turn as the door creaks open, revealing Rooster clad in his dress whites. 

“Hey.” You say to him quietly. 

“Hey.” He responds, offering you a smile. 

It’s as if him just being here calms you slightly. Rooster notices your red rimmed eyes and steps closer, “You okay?” 

Your eyebrows draw together and you almost laugh, “No.”

“What can I do to help?” He asks gently. 

You shake your head but then feel yourself falter. “Just...” You’re cut off by the tightening of your throat and instead hold your arms out to him. 

Rooster wastes no time in closing the distance between you two and enveloping you in a hug. He rubs his hand along your back in the way he knows you find comforting. You just bury your face in his shoulder. 

“He’d be proud of you, you know.” Rooster tells you quietly. The softness to his voice surprises you almost as much as his words. 

You turn your head until it’s just your cheek resting against his shoulder, “He should be here.” Your voice cracks. 

Rooster just holds you tighter, “It isn’t your fault.” 

“I wish people would stop saying that.” 

He pulls back to look at you, “Why?”

You just shake your head. 

“Wonder.” Rooster says firmly, though he keeps his voice quiet. 

You look up at him. Into his eyes that are swimming with nothing but grief and understanding. He rubs his hands along your arms, “It isn’t your fault, and I’m going to keep saying it until you believe it.” 

“You’ll probably be saying it for the rest of your life, then.” You tell him simply, sniffing as you look away. 

“I don’t care. I’ll do whatever it takes.” There’s not an ounce of hesitation in his voice. It is filled with complete certainty. 

Your eyes drift over the wall that is covered with photos. Most of which Comet took. You smile a little at all of them, “He was so excited to graduate.” Your voice comes out as a whisper. 

Rooster tightens his hold on your arms, “I know...”

You look back to him, your chest tightening, “I don’t know if I can do this.” 

“You can.” He reassures you.

You’re shaking your head as the tears fall, “No, I can’t. Not without Comet.” 

“Wonder.” Rooster tries but you keep going, “He’s been by my side through all of this... I don’t know how to do this without him.” 

“But you do.” He says softly. 

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.” Rooster’s hands come up to cup either side of your face, thumbing away the tears, “He was with you, sure, but everything you’ve accomplished is all because of what you’ve done, not anyone else.” He pauses for a moment as his eyebrows draw together, his own eyes shining. 

“You can do so much more than you think and though it hurts like hell right now, it will get better. You’ll learn how to move on, I promise.”

All you can do is look at him as he continues, “You’re not alone, Wonder. You never will be.” 

You feel yourself crumple and fall into his embrace once more. He wraps his arms around you and holds on tightly, “You’re one of the strongest people I know... and if there’s anything you can do, it’s to come out of this.” 

Rooster rubs his hand along your back, “So, you’re going to walk across that stage... get your wings... and wear them proudly.” He pulls you back, “For Comet.” 

Him saying that brings some strength back to you. It calms you and allows you to breathe again. You nod and wipe at your tears. 

Sniffing, you cup his cheek, “You’re doing it for someone too.”

Rooster gives you a questioning look, to which you smile softly, “For Goose. He’s proud of you, too. I know it.” 

You see the tears fill his eyes as he nods, holding out his hand for you, “Ready?” 

Taking his hand, you hold it tightly, "Let’s go.” 

☆

You’re fidgeting in your seat as the names are called, each one bringing you closer and closer to the stage. Soon enough, yours is called and you hesitate for a moment before taking the steps. 

Ice is waiting for you on the stage, a look of nothing but pride and love on his face. Seeing him tightens your chest. 

As you walk up to him, you salute, to which he smiles so wide. Stepping forward, he pins your wings on your uniform and as he does he leans in close and says, “I am so proud of you, my wonder.” 

He then pulls you into a tight hug. 

“The sky is lucky to have you, Lieutenant.” Ice tells you softy. 

You smile at him as you pull away. He smiles back and there’s a slight glisten to his eyes that catches the sunlight. Ice leads you off of the stage as everyone claps. 

The rest of the names are called by in a blur, and soon enough everyone is gathered around, talking excitedly. You had finished top of your class, Rooster second to you. 

Your parents are pushing you two together to take a picture, as well as ones with Ace and Ghost. Upon seeing your friends, you pull them both into the tightest hug. 

The missing spot of your fourth held in each of your hearts. As you part, Ace whispers, “I’m so proud of you.” 

“You too.” You say back, and then look over to Ghost, “And you. I’m so proud of you.” He smiles under the praise, his eyes watering, “I love you guys.” 

You three hug once more before they’re both pulled away by their families. You watch them go, knowing you’ll see them again. 

You return to your family and are met with a chorus of how proud they are of you. Glancing over, you notice Maverick standing off to the side. Excusing yourself, you hurry over into his already open arms. 

“You made it!” You exclaim as you pull back. He laughs, “Of course I made it. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He looks down to your pin and smiles, “Wow, look at that.” 

You grin. As Maverick looks at you, he notes the familiar distant look in your eyes and nods in understanding. He squeezes your arms, “I’m so proud of you, kid.” 

“Thanks, Pops.” 

“Ah, that nickname ages me.”

“You love it.”

“I do-” He laughs, “I really do.”

“Come on.” You take his hand and lead him over to your parents and the others. Upon seeing Maverick, Ice greets him with a hug. 

“How’s my wingman?” Maverick asks as they part. Ice smiles, “About to burst with pride.” 

You laugh as your mother pulls you into a side hug and squeezes you. As Maverick and Ice talk, you look over to Rooster, who is glancing at Maverick. 

You nudge his arm, “Go talk to him.” 

He seems unsure, “I don’t know.” 

“Rooster, you just graduated practically top of your class, you’ve got to know how proud he is of you.” You tell him, treading lightly but also speaking with certainty as you are fully aware of how proud Maverick is. 

Rooster looks to Maverick again, who looks back. The second their eyes meet, Maverick smiles but Rooster looks away. 

“Practically at the top...” He chuckles, staring at you, “You could just say second.” 

You scrunch your nose at him, “Eh, didn’t want to make you feel bad for having lost to me.” 

He rolls his eyes, “I don’t feel bad.” 

“Sure you don’t.” 

“Okay... maybe a little.” 

You snap your fingers, “There it is.” 

“But you deserve to be first,” Rooster says quickly, “You’re insane.”

You do a little bow, “Why, thank you.” 

He nudges your shoulder and you nudge back, “Now are you going to go talk to him or will I have to?” 

“Please don’t, oh my god, I’m going.” Rooster groans, but there’s a slight shake of laughter to his voice. You chuckle as he rushes past you. 

You watch as he stops a little ways away from Maverick. The two speak lowly to each other for a moment before Maverick pulls Rooster into a tight hug. Rooster hesitates for a second but then hugs back. 

They still have their problems to work through, you know that, but today is a day where Bradley needs someone. His parents are not longer here, but Maverick is. 

You’re pulled away from the two as Ice walks to you and says, “Come with me.” 

He leads you away from the crowd before bringing you into a tight hug. As he pulls away, he just stares at you for a moment, “I am so proud of you.” 

You smile at him, “I couldn’t have done it without you.” Ice waves you off, “No... this is your day, you deserve all the credit.” 

“I’m serious though, I owe it all to you, dad.” You say firmly. 

His eyes shine as he reaches over an straightens your pin, “I never got the chance to ask how you were doing.” 

You swallow dryly, “I’m... trying. Doing my best.” 

He nods, “Colin is proud of you. Beyond proud, I just know he is.” 

Tears fall from your eyes as you smile at his words, your heart aching, “I was so proud of him too... I still remember how nervous he was starting out.” 

Ice laughs, “He would always talk so fast... sometimes I truly had no idea what he was saying.” You laugh as well, wiping at your eyes. 

“But you two grew together and created your own team. That’s something special.” He tells you, to which you nod. 

Clearing his throat, Ice puts his hands on your shoulders, “Hang on to your team, Wonder... You were never meant to be alone.” 

You give him a questioning look, confused as to where he’s coming from. He smiles sadly at your expression, “I can see it in you. How you’re pulling away from others... but remember, those who are by your side... they are your greatest strength.” 

He squeezes your shoulders, “Having that experience, that bond you had with Comet will only help you to grow... Though I know how badly it hurts, it will get better. You’ll see.” You nod along as he speaks, your throat tight as the tears fall. 

Ice hugs you once more, “I love you so much... and I know that you have so many great things left to do.” 

“I love you too, dad.” You say, your cheek pressed against his chest. You can feel his heart beating under your touch. You pull back, “Thank you for being here.”

He smiles, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” He wraps his arm around your shoulders as you walk back to the others, “You know what I realized?” He asks. 

“Hm?” You tilt your head towards him. 

“I’ve never flown with you.” Ice says with a smile, “I mean, I’ve flown you countless times, but you’ve never flown me.” 

You laugh at his statement, “Do you want to change that?” 

“I would love nothing more.” He says with the widest smile. 

It takes you a while after that day, but eventually Ice is the first person you fly with after Comet. 

He’s also the last. 

☆

The day of your father’s funeral you find yourself not truly feeling anything. There’s a pain in your chest and tears in your eyes that refuse to fall, but you feel nothing. 

Even while you stand beside your mother as the trumpets play, you feel as though you’re not really there. It’s as if you’re existing outside of your body, just watching everything unfold, but not actually taking part in any of it. 

Yet, you stand tall, your eyes trained forward as your mother is handed a flag. She holds it close to her chest and you can see how her shoulders shake out of the corner of your eye. 

You glance over towards Maverick, who is standing before the coffin, his eyes brimmed with tears. He looks at nothing but the casket before him, his hands shaking slightly as he places his pin on the wood. The slam of his fist pounding it in rattles through your chest. 

While the trumpet crescendos before falling silent, you bring your hand up to a salute as jets fly over the ceremony, in honor of the late admiral. 

None of this feels right to you. 

After the funeral there are words of comfort and condolences said to you and your family. It all passes by in a blur, so much so that you can’t even remember who spoke to you once everyone has said their goodbyes. 

How could it? 

You don’t leave your mother’s side throughout it all, her hand clasped tightly in yours. At the end of it all, she turns to you with a watery smile, her chin trembling as she tries to hold herself together. 

Sarah Kazansky is one of the strongest women you’ve ever met, and to see her on the brink of crumbling is enough to send you over the edge. All you can do is pull her into a tight hug, rubbing your hand along her back just like she always would for you. 

As you hold onto your mother, you feel your siblings gather around, enveloping you in one big, much needed hug. You rest your cheek against your younger brother’s hair, his face hidden in Sarah’s shoulder. 

With your family surrounding you, there is a part of you that knows all too well that your father will live on through each and every one of them. As you part, your mother cups the sides of your face, once again putting on a brave face as she smiles softly at you. 

“I love you so much, my darling.” She says, her voice no stronger than a whisper. You nod, your tears falling as you hold onto her wrists, “I love you too.” 

Wringing your hands together tightly, you slowly walk over to the newly placed headstone, the white marble perfectly pristine. As your feet slow, you find yourself reading the name engraved on it over and over again. 

Your voice is so quiet you’re not sure she even heard you, but the way her smile grows just the smallest amount tells you that she did. Holding tightly to your mother’s hands, your eyes flick towards the grave site, “I think I’m going to hang back for a bit, if that’s alright.” 

Sarah nods, thumbing away a stray tear on your cheek, “Take all the time you need, sweetheart. We’ll be at the house whenever you’re ready.” You send her a grateful smile before watching her and your siblings make their way down the hill. 

Tom Kazansky. Loving Father. Devoted Husband. Respected Admiral. 

You wipe your eyes and look towards the sky, your throat tight. Through the blur of your tears, you take a moment to watch the colors of the setting sun above you. Soft pinks and purples dance across the sky, bringing a slight smile to tug on your lips at its beauty. 

Dropping your gaze back to the headstone, you let out a deep breath as you fidget with the wings pinned onto your chest. Right over your heart, placed there by Iceman himself. 

Your mind clouds over and you have to think for a moment before you clear your throat, “I guess this is goodbye, then.” Your voice comes out scratchy, but you can’t find it in you to try and make it sound cleaner.

 “I...” You start and then pause, your hands opening and closing at your sides as you try to stay composed, “I keep thinking of everything that I wanted to tell you... but then just hoping that you knew, because I never got the chance to.” 

You let out a deep, pained breath before running your hands down your face. Your arms wrap around yourself as you stare at the headstone, “You told me that I’m strong but... but right now I feel like I could be blown over by the wind, Dad.” 

You sniff and wipe angrily at your tears with the back of your hand, “You told me you did... that you always knew, but... I still wish I could’ve said it, you know? I wish I could’ve told you myself.” Your voice cuts off as you choke on a sob, your palms digging into your eyes as your shoulders tremble. 

A dry chuckle rattles through your throat as you look to the sky once more, the colors more vibrant and louder than before. Still staring at the above, you try to keep going, “You were the stronger one, I think...” You trail off, struggling to find the right thing to say.

You drop your head in frustration. There is so much you have to tell him, but just like before, the words fail you. Hiding your eyes behind your hand, you shake your head, “God, why is it so hard to just talk.” 

Your hand falls from your face as your chest tightens, knowing that what you want to say will not be spoken today. Wiping at your eyes once more, you take a deep breath, “I love you, Dad... and I miss you.” 

That’s all your able to say before the grief takes away your voice. There is nothing in you left to keep yourself together enough to even utter another word. So instead, you reach down and pick up the bundle of flowers that you had brought with you. 

Carefully walking towards the stone, you place them at the base of his name. The bouquet is decorated with all the blue and white flowers you could find, knowing that they were Ice’s favorite. 

You kneel down and rest your forehead against the cool stone, feeling the tears slip down your cheeks as you close your eyes, “Bye, Dad.” You whisper to him. 

With nothing left to say, you brush your hands off on your pants as you stand. You take one last look at the grave before turning and walking down the hill, making you the final one to leave. 

As you walk down to the parking lot, you’re aware that close friends and family went back to your parents house, but you can’t find it in you to want to go there right now. A part of you is saying it’s selfish, but you choose to ignore it. 

Stepping off the grass and onto the pavement, you look up and find a familiar face waiting for you. He’s leaning against his bronco, fidgeting with something in his hands. 

Bradley lifts his head as your feet scuff against the concrete. At the sight of your crest fallen expression, he opens his arms to you. You gladly fall into them, thankful for the comfort of the person closest to you.  

Your hat is hanging limply in your hand as you hang onto him, your head leaning against his shoulder. Bradley presses his cheek to the top of your hair, holding you in such a way that feels as though he’ll never let go. 

You hope he doesn’t. 

The two of you stay like that for a while, you’re not sure how long. Once you pull back, the tears that fell have dried against your skin. You run your hands down your face, your eyes irritated from all the crying. 

Bradley looks at you for a moment, his hand reaching down to hold yours before his gaze drifts up towards what’s above, “The sky looks so beautiful.” 

You follow his eyes and nod, “I thought so, too.” 

He clears his throat and looks back to you, “My mom used to say that the sky was a way for those who have passed to talk with us.” 

You stare at him as he speaks, your chest aching, “That those we knew could be seen in the sunrises, the sunsets, the moon... everything.” His hand waves up towards the colors painting the sky, “If she were here she would say that this is Ice’s sky... and that he is speaking so, so beautifully.” 

Your eyes are pulled up towards the sky once more. All the colors blur together while your tears fall, but you don’t dare look away. Bradley’s hand squeezes yours as he brings you closer. You lean into him, still watching the sky. 

After a while, you slowly drop your gaze and notice the small box clasped in Bradley’s free hand. You nudge his arm with yours, “What’s that?” 

“Oh.” Bradley almost sounds surprised as he looks down at what he’s holding. A small smile tugs at his lips as he holds it towards you, “I got it for you.”

 You accept the velvet box, giving him a questioning stare before carefully opening it. Your eyes widen as you stare at the small ring placed inside, so simple and delicate. 

You gingerly take it out of the box and hold it close as you stare at it in wonder. 

“I know you already have his tags but... I thought this could be a reminder of something else.” Bradley tells you softly. As he speaks, you turn the ring over and notice the engraving on the inside. 

Never Alone it says etched into the silver. 

You slip it onto your index finger, finding that it fits perfectly. 

“I know how you feel about being on a team again... but it doesn’t make you any less to be scared or-” His words are cut off as you wrap your arms around him in a tight hug, your face buried into his neck. He’s hugging you back without a second of hesitation. 

“Thank you.” You whisper to him. He holds you impossibly tighter, “Anytime, Wonder.” 

 The two of you remain like that for a while, neither one daring to move. 

The ring on your finger serves its purpose as its mere existence proves to you that you are not alone. Especially now. 

-

A/n: In writing this I realized that I started the chapter with a sunrise and ended it with a sunset... wasn’t intention but damn, that’s poetic. I hope you all enjoyed and if you cried, so did I, it’s okay. Thank you again for all of your support, I truly can’t express how much it means to me. Take care of yourselves, until next time <3

Taglist: 

@alanadetigy @datingbtr @adorephina @luckyladycreator2 @n3ssm0nique @emptyloverofmine @jonginvlog @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy @roses-and-grasses @red-ace-in-space @kanevill @rule107 @mads-weasley @jostyriggslover96 @obsessedunicorn24 @justanothermagicalsara @wintersoldiersthings @kallielikecali @pennbii @fogle97 @ollyoxenfrees @eviesaurusrex @turningtoclown @parker-natasha @mizzy-pop @haljordangreenjedi @callalily2000 @lydiaisgeeky @littlebadariell @alana4610 @soggy-max @sugarcoated-lame @rotating-obsessions @prongs-girlfriend @terrawhitethorn @rintheemolion @that-chick212 @averyhotchner @oldnatgwenaccount @sydneejean @can-this-be-a-fanfic @mrsjobarnes

☆rest of tags in comments☆

[bakuroo-writings]

For @kenzumekodma's AUdvent Collab! Thank you @nocturnalazura for beta reading!

Tattoo Artist!Kuroo x female reader, 930 words

Summary: During the Holiday season, you get your first tattoo from one (1) Kuroo Tetsurou, who has a unique way of distracting you from the pain, leading to what could be the best present ever.

Warnings: no pronouns used for reader but one gendered (female) nickname, reader gets a tattoo*, needle mentions, cheesy pun pick-up lines, suggestive pick-up lines/comments, I think that's all?

*this does not depict readers skin tone. It is just to show the tattoo reader is getting.

“Okay, are you ready, pretty girl?”

Heat rises to your cheeks as you steel your nerves, you nod your head, “I’m ready.”

Mischief lights up Kuroo’s eyes as the sound of a needle buzzing fills the air. Black latex gloves pull your skin tight as the needle digs into your skin, starting the outline of the first flower, as your hands grip the chair arms.

“Fake a smile, but all I can see is empty boxes and trees. . . Another year not in a coffin, growing up or whatever you call it. . . Sometimes you get what you got, but it’s not what you wanted at all. . . This is not another Christmas song (Fu la la la, fu la la la)” plays from the speakers as Kuroo brings the needle against your arm.

“Relax, pretty girl. Take deep breaths for me, okay, gorgeous?”

You nod your head and focus on taking deep breaths, eyes watching as the needle pierces your skin.

You gnaw on your lip nervously as your knuckles grip the arms harder. ‘Maybe this was a bad idea. But he’s already started so it’s too late to turn back now.’

“Hope your grip isn’t that hard for everything, kitten,” he gives you a wink as he wipes away some of the link to see the lines before bringing the needle back to your skin.

A smirk finds its way to your face, “Buy me dinner first and maybe you’ll be able to find out.”

“So you’re saying you want to find our combined volume by displacing the liquid in my waterbed?”

“That’s so cheesy,” you laugh, smiling brightly.

“You didn’t lab it?” A joking pout forms on his face.

You roll your eyes as you answer, “I didn’t say that. I just said it was cheesy. But it was also kinda cute, like you.”

“Well, you must be a compound of barium and beryllium because you’re a total BaBe.”

A chuckle falls from your lips, “Are you this smooth with all your clients?”

Music and the buzzing of the needle fill the air as you wait for his answer, heart beating so fast that you’re sure he’d hear it if not for the music. He lifts the needle and moves from the first outline to the second, wiping away the ink as needed.

“On clients? Not with the chemistry pick-up lines,” he admits after a beat. “In general, when there’s someone I’m attracted to? They never land.”

You can’t keep the smile off your face at his words, “Are you made of fluorine, iodine, and neon? Cause you’re F-I-Ne.”

“Are you made of beryllium, gold, and titanium? You must be because you are BeAuTi-ful,” he replies as his heart flutters and butterflies form in his stomach, cheeks rosy from your own pick-up line.

The music changes and new lyrics play through the speakers, “Outside the carolers start to sing. I can’t describe the joy they bring cause joy is something they don’t bring me. My girlfriend is by my side. Pick her up while hanging sickles of ice. Their whiny voices get irritating. It’s Christmas time again.”

“You must be made of uranium and iodine, because I can see U and I together.”

He moves onto the third and final flower outline, brows furrowed in concentration, “Your body must be made of oxygen and neon because you are the ONe.”

“Do you have 11 protons? Cause you’re sodium fine.”

“Are you a carbon sample? Because I want to date you.”

A chuckle falls from your lips as heat rushes to your cheeks again, “Okay, I give up. I’m officially out of chemistry pick-up lines.”

“Ah-ha! Victory is mine!” He cheers as he finishes the lines before moving to add in the pale pink and violet.

Easy conversation continues between you and Kuroo as the color gets added to your tattoo until he finally turns off the machine and puts the needle down. He grabs the soap and water mixture, spraying it on the finished tattoo as he wipes a paper towel over it.

“Okay, all done. Take a look and tell me what you think.”

You lift your arm and turn it this way and that, inspecting the tattoo, “I love it!”

“Great!” He takes his phone and takes a picture of the tattoo before wrapping it in the bandage and giving you care instructions, peeling off his gloves as he does. You get up from the chair and start to head to the front desk as he cleans up his station before turning to you, calling out your name and you turn back to him.

“You’re actually my last client of the day. If you don’t mind hanging around, we could go get dinner after?” He rubs his hand on the back of his neck, nervously waiting for your answer.

Your hand grabs his, linking your fingers together as you give him a soft smile. “I’d like that a lot.” You give him a smirk, “I hear chemists do it on the table periodically so, maybe after, we can go back to my place and form a covalent bond?”

“You know, you’re the first to tell me chemistry pick-up lines back,” he chuckles as a bright smile forms on his face and red covers his cheeks again. “I think you walking into my shop for a tattoo just might be the greatest Christmas present ever.”

Giving him a soft smile as his thumb rubs the back of your hand, you’re inclined to agree and think he might actually be the one whose body must be made of oxygen and neon.

General Taglist: @chibishae34 @rosesandtoshi

© 2021 all works are the property of bakuroo-writings. Do not repost or re-upload to other sites such as wattpad, ao3, or tiktok. Do not do audio readings.

[rjzimmerman]

Some of the “projects” (or “destructions”) described in this New York Times story were also described in some of my earlier posts over the past few days. Regardless, trump and his people are pushing approvals quickly in order to maximize total damage before they all have to go back into the holes from which they came.

Excerpt:

The Trump administration is rushing to approve a final wave of large-scale mining and energy projects on federal lands, encouraged by investors who want to try to ensure the projects move ahead even after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes office.

In Arizona, the Forest Service is preparing to sign off on the transfer of federal forest land — considered sacred by a neighboring Native American tribe — to allow construction of one of the nation’s largest copper mines.

In Utah, the Interior Department may grant final approval as soon as next week to a team of energy speculators targeting a remote spot inside an iconic national wilderness area — where new energy leasing is currently banned — so they can start drilling into what they believe is a huge underground supply of helium.

In northern Nevada, the department is close to granting final approval to construct a sprawling open-pit lithium mine on federal land that sits above a prehistoric volcano site.

And in the East, the Forest Service intends to take a key step next month toward allowing a natural gas pipeline to be built through the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia and West Virginia, at one point running underneath the Appalachian Trail.

The final push on the mining and energy projects has come in part from senior Trump administration officials, including the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, a steel industry investor before joining Mr. Trump’s cabinet.

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency gave its final approval for the construction of a new uranium mine called the Dewey-Burdock project, spread over 12,613 acres near the Black Hills region of South Dakota.

The project would inject a chemical called lixiviant into more than 1,461 wells, sending the chemical into an underground water supply. The chemical would cause uranium trapped in sandstone below the surface to leach into the aquifer, contaminating the water but allowing the uranium to be captured, extracted and transformed into so-called yellow cake that can be used to fuel nuclear power plants.

[geoledgy]

OH OH OK I GOT A QUESTION. whats the youngest like, volcano in the san francisco volcanic field

Sunset Crater!!!!!!!!! My favorite volcano everrrrrr, it erupted around the year 1050 so it's very recent in geologic terms - it's about 950 years old. It also means the San Francisco volcanic field is still active (not Sunset Crater though, that is a cinder cone so they only erupt once and then it's over - we call that a monogenetic volcano). Sunset Crater National Monument is managed by the NPS near Flagstaff. The red is from oxidized basalt (contains iron). Also, the Sinagua people in the area witnessed the eruption, safely evacuated, and eventually relocated to areas like Wupatki and Walnut Canyon due to volcanic soil allowing the areas to be farmable. I am a volcanologist so I understand the in-depth geology of Sunset Crater better than the historical and cultural significance, but I do recommend doing your own reading on it if that interests you too cuz I always think it's incredibly neat how human and volcanoes are so intertwined with one another, one way or another.

btw...Sunset Crater also makes a lot of "cameos" in my story Uranium Rush cuz the fictional town of Sandstone Springs is nearby it. If you ever see me draw a reddish looking volcano cone in the desert that isn't the San Francisco Peaks (Very large, jagged, has snow) it's most likely Sunset Crater! Anyways...from my understanding, every hill in Northeast Arizona is actually a cinder cone, so I think that is super neat...and there's like 600 of them in the area.

Also, SP Crater is the 2nd youngest at about 5.5k - 6.0k years old, still seems pristine bc its crater rim is compose of resistant lava. (Sunset Crater has a tiny bit of crater collapse which you can see on the left side in the previous image)

Thank you so much for the ask!

[reading-writing-revolution]

Heather Cox Richardson:

November 28, 2020 (Saturday)

It seems as if Trump and President-Elect Joe Biden are in a contest to see who can will their vision of the future into life.

Trump continues to maintain that he won the 2020 election. Wedded to this alternative reality, his supporters are circulating articles wondering how Biden--who was ahead by significant numbers in all pre-election polls-- could possibly have won the election… against a president who, for the first time since modern polling began, never cracked a 50% approval rating.

In their fury, they are turning against election officials, including committed right-wing Republicans like Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Trump has called “an enemy of the people” for defending the actual results of the election and refusing to make up reasons to throw out Democratic ballots. Raffensperger and his wife have been getting death threats, while Republican leaders refuse to stand up for him.

Many of Trump’s supporters believe him when he downplays coronavirus, which just passed the landmark of causing at least 200,000 cases in a single day. Today NBC reporter Dasha Burns echoed the words of South Dakota nurse Jodi Doering two weeks ago, saying that three days in Appalachian hospitals had revealed a world in which “hard-hit communities still don’t believe COVID is real. Misinformation is rampant.” Burns told of patients who, according to nurses, “don’t believe they have COVID until they’re in critical condition.”

Burns goes on to say: “Ultimately, politicization and misinformation around COVID are having tragic real-world consequences.” Health care workers “are watching neighbors die because they were told by leaders they trust that this virus is a hoax.”

Trump’s vision is destroying faith in our electoral system and spreading death. It is destabilizing our democracy, an outcome that helps those who are eager to see America’s influence in the world decline.

In contrast, Biden is trying to will into existence a country in which we can accomplish anything, saving ourselves from the ravages of coronavirus, rebuilding the economy, and joining those countries eager to defend equality before the law.

To that end, his nominations for key positions are experts who believe in making the government work for ordinary Americans. Rather than tweeting frequently about conspiracy theories, he tweets sparingly words of encouragement: “I’ve always believed we can define America in one word: Possibilities. We’re going to build an America where everyone has the opportunity to go as far as their dreams and God-given ability will take them” and “We have to come together as a nation and unite around our shared goal: defeating this virus.”

These two visions are in a fight to control our government.

The reality is that Biden was elected president in 2020. He has won more votes than any president in American history, over 6 million votes more than Trump and 306 Electoral College votes to Trump's 232. This is not close. Trump has challenged this election in a number of court cases; he has lost all but one of them, giving him a record of 1-39.

Yesterday, a federal appeals court made up of Republican-appointed judges rejected Trump’s attempt to overturn Pennsylvania’s certification of its election results. Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, wrote the opinion, which said the campaign’s challenge had “no merit.” “Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” the opinion said. “Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”

But Trump continues to tell his supporters that he has been cheated.

At some level, it is clear he cannot handle the reality that he has lost the election. On Thanksgiving, Trump finally spoke to reporters for the first time since the election, sitting at a comically small desk that has become fodder for comedians. He was not in a good mood. When a reporter asked if he would concede the election if the Electoral College votes for Biden, he exploded: “Don’t talk to me that way. I’m the president of the United States, don’t ever talk to the president that way.”

But Trump is also fundraising off his insistence that the election was stolen. The small print of fundraising emails reveals that donated money goes either to Trump’s political organizations or to the Republican National Committee. Today, rumors surfaced that Trump is considering holding a 2024 election rally on Biden’s Inauguration Day, a move that would help Trump feel important while it also would bring in money.

To rebuild the government, Biden is choosing officials who are institutionalists and experts. Today, for example, he announced more members of the Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board, adding a mental health nurse, the Executive Director at Navajo Nation Department of Health, and an epidemiologist who worked as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA).

But Trump is trying to rush through regulations and pack positions with loyalists before he leaves office.

Biden has been clear that he would like to return the nation to its cooperative multilateral approach to foreign affairs. He hopes to elevate diplomacy and reduce the influence of the military in our foreign policy.

His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, centers his understanding of foreign policy on a belief that echoes that of Republican Dwight Eisenhower a half-century ago: that American strength lies in the health of its middle class, which transnational threats are undermining. His initial focus will be health policy and China. He wants to send a “very clear message to China that the United States and the rest of the world will not accept a circumstance in which we do not have an effective public health surveillance system, with an international dimension, in China and across the world going forward.”

Sullivan believes the U.S. can rally other nations to fight corruption and authoritarianism, and to set up a “rules-based system.” But observers note that the Biden team will be working against the “shattered glass” of the Trump administration, which dumped treaties and tried to take on the world alone.

In the last days of his term, Trump seems eager to limit Biden’s ability to recover multilateral agreements, especially the 2015 Iran agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which limited the amount of enriched uranium Iran could hold. Trump withdrew from that treaty in 2018, and inspectors recently reported that Iran now has many times the amount of uranium it could have held had the deal remained in force. Trump responded by asking his advisers if he could strike against Iran’s nuclear center. They talked him out of a military strike, saying that such a strike could lead to an escalating crisis.

Yesterday, gunmen likely associated with Israel assassinated the leader of Iran’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in an ambush outside Tehran. Experts note that the assassination might spark retaliation, and thus might well have destroyed Biden’s ability to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, as he has pledged to do. It seems more likely to undermine diplomacy than Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Finally, while Biden has pledged science-based policies and protection of civil rights, Trump’s Supreme Court appointees on Wednesday indicated they will defend religion. Trump-appointed Justice Amy Barrett cast the deciding vote to strike down restrictions on religious services to combat the spread of Covid-19. In two similar cases in the past, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s vote had swung the court the other way. The decision claimed that secular businesses had received preference over religious gatherings; the dissenters pointed out that the distinction was not the nature of the gathering, but rather its chances of spreading a deadly disease.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said the majority was being reckless. “Justices of this court play a deadly game,” they said, “in second-guessing the expert judgment of health officials about the environments in which a contagious virus, now infecting a million Americans each week, spreads most easily.”

While the majority on the court claimed to be speaking for religious interests, on Thursday, Pope Francis published an op-ed in the New York Times that seemed to side with Biden. He noted that most governments have tried to protect their people from the coronavirus, but “some governments… shrugged off the painful evidence of mounting deaths, with inevitable, grievous consequences.” He scoffed at those who refused to accept public health restrictions, “as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom!”

He called for a fairer economic system, a political system that gives voice to marginalized people, and protection for the environment.

According to Pope Francis, “This is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities — what we value, what we want, what we seek — and to commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed of.”

[fatehbaz]

In the neighborhood of Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee, major mining companies and the US federal government are apparently using the pandemic to strong-arm quick approval of uranium mining in the Black Hills, while Lakota organizers confront the project(s). After all of the historic gold mining at the Black Hills, and in spite of the tourism industry at Badlands National Park and Wind Cave and “Mount Rushmore” and nearby “Devil’s Tower” and Deadwood, Pine Ridge remains ignored, containing one of if not the poorest counties in the US. By the end of 2018, the contiguous US had only 5 uranium mines, and, in 2019, a lobbying group of major resource extraction companies interested in uranium asked for help from the US president’s office. In April 2020, the president’s Nuclear Fuel Working Group released a report passionately advising revival of uranium mining, and the US president announced a 2021 budget granting over $150 million to purchasing uranium mined within US borders. In April 2020, during pandemic, the major Keystone XL oil pipeline was beginning construction; carrying Alberta oil, its route crosses directly through the Rosebud Sioux reservation land immediately next to Pine Ridge. At the same time, in April 2020, worldwide stock price of uranium surged as Canadian and US corporations now discuss their targeting of the Black Hills as a coveted sit. A Canadian company plans a 10,600-acre uranium mine, expecting to extract millions of pounds of the ore, as Lakota organizers pursue legal cases under the shadow of the desecrated Six Grandfathers.

Excerpt, from Grist, 10 May 2020:

Paha Sapa, also known as the Black Hills. [...] The Lakota call Paha Sapa “the heart of everything that is.” [...]

Today, [Regina] Brave and other Lakota elders are staring down yet another encroachment on their historic lands: a 10,600-acre uranium mine proposed to be built in the Black Hills. The Dewey-Burdock mine would suck up as much as 8,500 gallons of groundwater per minute from the Inyan Kara aquifer to extract as much as 10 million pounds of ore in total. Lakota say the project violates both the 1868 U.S.-Lakota treaty and federal environmental laws by failing to take into account the sacred nature of the site. [...] A legal win for the Lakota would represent an unprecedented victory for a tribe over corporations such as Power­tech, the Canadian-owned firm behind Dewey-Burdock, that have plundered the resource-rich hills. And it could set precedents forcing federal regulators to protect indigenous sites and take tribes’ claims more seriously. The fight puts the Lakota on a collision course with the Trump administration, which has close ties to energy companies and is doubling down on nuclear power while fast-tracking new permits and slashing environmental protections — even using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to further roll back regulations. All of this makes Black Hills mineral deposits more attractive than they’ve been in decades. [...]

-----

By 1890, the Great Sioux Reservation, which had once covered about half of South Dakota, was fractured into six parcels constituting less than one-third of the area that many Lakota still consider their rightful “treaty territory.” The United States had seized the Black Hills. [...] When the gold rush petered out, mining companies pivoted to silver, tungsten, iron, and limestone. In 1951, uranium was discovered. Within 20 years, there were more than 150 uranium mines centered on a small boomtown called Edgemont, in Paha Sapa’s southern foothills, where the Oglala once made their winter camp.

The southern foothills are rocky and quiet, but just north, bikers and families in RVs clog the highways to visit abandoned gold mines, old-timey saloons, and the main attraction, Mount Rushmore, which was carved into a sacred mountain known to the Lakota as the Six Grandfathers. “We call it the Shrine of Hypocrisy,” says Tonia Stands, an Oglala Lakota who has been one of Pine Ridge’s most persistent voices against uranium mining. [...]

-------

Adding a layer of oddity to the whole situation, Powertech is so far a mining company only on paper. It has never produced an ounce of ore and can only keep litigating as long as investors remain convinced that footing its bills will eventually pay off. Powertech anticipates the mine will net about $150 million, yet it says it’s already sunk $10 million into the NRC license, not including litigation or staffing costs. Its parent company, Azarga Uranium, trades as an underregulated penny stock; investment firm Haywood Securities rates its risk factor as “very high.”

For years, it seemed like the Lakota could drag out the case long enough to make Powertech’s prospects no longer worth the fight. The price of domestic uranium was on a steady decline: The federal government already had vast stockpiles, and nuclear energy producers could import it more cheaply from places like Australia and Canada. By the end of 2018, all but five U.S. uranium mines had been shut down or suspended. Yet today, Powertech is just one of several companies applying to open new mines, anticipating that an administration bent on deregulation, and the appeal of nuclear power as a climate-friendly energy source, could increase profitability. In July 2019, after lobbying from uranium producers, President Donald Trump convened a Nuclear Fuel Working Group to devise policies that could throw a lifeline to the struggling industry. Released in April, the group’s report won applause from Powertech’s parent company by recommending renewed federal investment in uranium. Though many experts say the U.S. already has more of the mineral than it can use, Trump’s proposed 2021 budget would allocate $150 million to stock a new reserve with domestically mined uranium. The share prices of U.S. mining companies jumped after the report’s release, while factors related to COVID-19 caused the global price of uranium to surge throughout March and April.

---

In Morgan’s view, settler heritage sites are commonly protected while tribes must fight “tooth and nail every step of the way” to win minor concessions as their sites are destroyed “at an astounding rate.” [...] “We’re talking about living, breathing nations of people,” says Morgan [...]. “Their medicine people still make the trek to these areas every year. The cosmology is intact, the cultural lifeways are intact, and we practice our ceremonies by going to specific locales within that concentric area” where Powertech wants to build a mine.

At the August hearing, the NRC argued that it had gathered as much information as it could without funding an “exorbitant” survey, while Powertech’s counsel decried the many years already spent, adding, “We fully support [the] NRC staff’s position.”Sounding exasperated, Morgan jumped in. “It’s our job to save as many of these sites as possible,” she said, “because they are finite. They are a map, and they tell a story. It’s a very sensitive personal thing to us as Lakota people.”

------

After the hearing, Brave and Stands met in a nearby park with the other Lakota who’d driven from Pine Ridge. Sharing their huge pot of stew with homeless people there, most of the group concurred that their case looked strong. But the judges were unmoved: In December, they ruled that the NRC had satisfied NEPA’s requirement to take a “hard look” simply by making a “reasonable effort,” resolving the last objection to the license. “The system is set up to fail our people,” Stands says. [...]

In October, Brave spoke at Magpie Buffalo Organizing’s inaugural “No Uranium in Treaty Territory” summit, which offered a crash course on tribal sovereignty. The activists are closely tracking the various Keystone XL permits, which the Rosebud Sioux Tribe is challenging in court as a treaty vio­lation. As the threat of both uranium and gold mining looms, there’s talk of occupying land in the Black Hills [...].

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Hostile school board meetings have members calling it quits (AP) A Nevada school board member said he had thoughts of suicide before stepping down amid threats and harassment. In Virginia, a board member resigned over what she saw as politics driving decisions on masks. The vitriol at board meetings in Wisconsin had one member fearing he would find his tires slashed. School board members are largely unpaid volunteers, traditionally former educators and parents who step forward to shape school policy, choose a superintendent and review the budget. But a growing number are resigning or questioning their willingness to serve as meetings have devolved into shouting contests between deeply political constituencies over how racial issues are taught, masks in schools, and COVID-19 vaccines and testing requirements. In his letter of resignation from Wisconsin’s Oconomowoc Area School Board, Rick Grothaus said its work had become “toxic and impossible to do.” “When I got on, I knew it would be difficult,” Grothaus, a retired educator, said by phone. “But I wasn’t ready or prepared for the vitriolic response that would occur, especially now that the pandemic seemed to just bring everything out in a very, very harsh way. It made it impossible to really do any kind of meaningful work.”

California fire approaches Lake Tahoe after mass evacuation (AP) A ferocious wildfire swept toward Lake Tahoe on Tuesday just hours after roads were clogged with fleeing cars when the entire California resort city of South Lake Tahoe was ordered to evacuate and communities just across the state line in Nevada were warned to get ready to leave. The popular vacation haven normally filled with tens of thousands of summer tourists emptied out Monday as the massive Caldor Fire rapidly expanded. Vehicles loaded with bikes and camping gear and hauling boats were in gridlock traffic, stalled in hazy, brown air that smelled like a campfire. Police and other emergency vehicles whizzed by. “It’s more out of control than I thought,” evacuee Glen Naasz said of the fire that by late Monday had been pushed by strong winds across California highways 50 and 89, burning mountain cabins as it swept down slopes into the Tahoe Basin.

Hurricane Ida traps Louisianans, shatters the power grid (AP) Rescuers set out in hundreds of boats and helicopters to reach people trapped by floodwaters Monday, and utility repair crews rushed in, after a furious Hurricane Ida swamped the Louisiana coast and ravaged the electrical grid in the sticky, late-summer heat. People living amid the maze of rivers and bayous along the state’s Gulf Coast retreated desperately to their attics or roofs and posted their addresses on social media with instructions for search-and-rescue teams on where to find them. More than 1 million customers in Louisiana and Mississippi—including all of New Orleans—were left without power as Ida, one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit the U.S. mainland, pushed through on Sunday and early Monday before weakening into a tropical storm. As it continued to make its way inland with torrential rain and shrieking winds, it was blamed for at least two deaths. But with many roads impassable and cellphone service knocked out in places, the full extent of its fury was still coming into focus. The governor’s office said damage to the power grid appeared “catastrophic.” And local officials warned it could be weeks before power is fully restored, leaving multitudes without refrigeration or air conditioning during the dog days of summer, with highs forecast in the mid-80s to close to 90 by midweek.

Heavily armed criminal group ties hostages to getaway cars after storming Brazilian city (Washington Post) A heavily armed group of bank robbers wreaked havoc across a southeastern Brazilian city early Monday, striking several banks, setting fire to vehicles and tying hostages to their getaway cars, in an assault that left at least three people dead, officials say. Even in a country long accustomed to random spasms of violence, Brazilians reacted with shock and fear. The group stormed Araçatuba, a city of 200,000 in São Paulo state, around midnight to strike several city banking agencies. Gunshots punctured the early-morning quiet. Authorities asked residents to stay inside. Images on social media and local news reports showed at least 10 people clinging to getaway cars, apparently strapped there to deter fire from police. The hostages were reportedly released after the group escaped. The raid bore the characteristics of what criminologists have called a growing pattern: nighttime assaults on midsize Brazilian cities—often elaborate bank heists, intricately planned, well choreographed and executed by well-financed criminal groups equipped with the weaponry and gadgetry of war. The group flew a drone over Araçatuba during the raid, according to local reports, to track movements throughout the city.

EU travel restrictions (AP) The European Union recommended Monday that its 27 nations reinstate restrictions on tourists from the U.S. because of rising coronavirus infections there, but member countries will keep the option of allowing fully vaccinated U.S. travelers in. The EU’s decision reflects growing anxiety that the rampant spread of the virus in the U.S. could jump to Europe at a time when Americans are allowed to travel to the continent. Both the EU and the U.S. have faced rising infections this summer, driven by the more contagious delta variant. The guidance issued Monday is nonbinding, however. American tourists should expect a mishmash of travel rules across the continent since the EU has no unified COVID-19 tourism policy and national EU governments have the authority to decide whether or how they keep their borders open during the pandemic.

Italy’s record droughts (La Stampa) The earth is cracking in Italy’s northwest region of Piedmont: the crops and the animals suffer. Italy has been ravaged by fires and storms, like Greece, Turkey and much of Southern Europe. Italy has recorded 1,200 “extreme” meteorological events—a 56% increase from last year. Wildfires ravaged the southern regions of Sardinia, Calabria and Sicily. The town of Florida, in Sicily, is thought to have recorded the hottest temperature ever recorded in Europe: 48.8 °C. Meanwhile, heavy rainfall devastated other parts of the country. Coldiretti, Italy’s largest agricultural association, has just summed up the bill for this Italian summer: The damages to agriculture, it says, amount to €1 billion. Wheat yields have fallen 10%; cherries 30%, nectarines 40%. Tomato and corn crops have also suffered heavy losses. Giovanni Bedino, a 59-year-old Italian farmer, has been working the land since he was 15. “I love this job, but a year like this takes away your love,” he told Turin daily La Stampa. “We couldn’t water the fields and nothing came down from the sky. I remember, the summer of 2003 was a very difficult one—but it wasn’t even close to this year. I have never seen such a drought.”

In India, a debate over population control turns explosive (Washington Post) Yogi Adityanath, a star of India’s political right wing, stood before television cameras in his trademark saffron tunic and dramatically introduced a bill pushing for smaller families—two children at most. In previous decades, this measure by the leader of the country’s most populous state might have been uncontroversial. Over the past month, it’s been explosive. Critics saw a veiled attempt to mobilize Hindu voters by tapping into an age-old trope about India’s Muslim population ballooning out of control. As India barrels toward a pivotal election in Uttar Pradesh early next year, population bills introduced by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have become a new flash point in the national debate, vividly illustrating how the issues of religion and identity, spoken or implied, form the most powerful undercurrent in the country’s politics. Since 2011, when official census figures emerged showing Hindus dipping to 80 percent of India’s population compared to 84 percent in 1951—Muslims increased from 10 percent to 14.2 percent during that same period—the question of how to maintain “demographic balance” has gained urgency for the Hindu movement’s leaders. A 2016 national survey finding that Indian Muslim women had, on average, 2.6 children compared to 2.1 for Hindus provoked more concern.

North Korea appears to have restarted Yongbyon nuclear reactor, U.N. body says (Washington Post) North Korea appears to have restarted its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in July, a “deeply troubling” sign that the country may be on track to expand its nuclear program, according to a new report by the United Nations’ atomic agency. The finding adds another challenge to the Biden administration’s goal of denuclearizing North Korea. Although Yongbyon is not the only site where North Korea has produced highly enriched uranium, its role at the heart of Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions made the facility a bargaining chip in previous negotiations. In 2008, North Korea ceremoniously blew up the reactor’s cooling tower in a largely made-for-TV event amid nuclear talks between the United States and former leader Kim Jong Il. (A new cooling tower was built after the negotiations fell through.)

Last troops exit Afghanistan, ending America’s longest war (AP) The United States completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan late Monday, ending America’s longest war and closing a chapter in military history likely to be remembered for colossal failures, unfulfilled promises and a frantic final exit that cost the lives of more than 180 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, some barely older than the war. Hours ahead of President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline for shutting down a final airlift, and thus ending the U.S. war, Air Force transport planes carried a remaining contingent of troops from Kabul airport. Thousands of troops had spent a harrowing two weeks protecting a hurried and risky airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans, Americans and others seeking to escape a country once again ruled by Taliban militants. In announcing the completion of the evacuation and war effort. Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said the last planes took off from Kabul airport at 3:29 p.m. Washington time, or one minute before midnight in Kabul. He said a number of American citizens, likely numbering in “the very low hundreds,” were left behind, and that he believes they will still be able to leave the country. The final pullout fulfilled Biden’s pledge to end what he called a “forever war” that began in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania.

Afghanistan’s ‘Gen Z’ fears for future and hard-won freedoms (Reuters) Almost two third of Afghans are under the age of 25, and an entire generation cannot even remember the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until it was toppled by Western-backed militia in 2001. During that time they enforced a strict interpretation of Islamic law, banning girls from school, women from work and carrying out public executions. Since 2001, the militants fought an insurgency in which thousands of Afghans died. Since re-taking power, the group has been quick to reassure students that their education would not be disrupted, also saying it would respect the rights of women and urging talented professionals not to leave the country. But used to a life with cellphones, pop music and mixing of genders, Afghanistan’s “Generation Z”—born roughly in the decade around the turn of the millennium—now fears some freedoms will be taken away, according to interviews with half a dozen Afghan students and young professionals. “I made such big plans, I had all these high reaching goals for myself that stretched to the next 10 years,” said Sosan Nabi, a 21-year-old graduate. “We had a hope for life, a hope for change. But in just one week, they took over the country and in 24 hours they took all our hopes, dreams snatched from in front of our eyes. It was all for nothing.”

They made it out of Afghanistan. But their path ahead is uncertain. (Washington Post) As the United States winds down its evacuation operation in Afghanistan, the Biden administration is accelerating efforts to resettle Afghans on U.S. soil, where they will be expected to apply for visas or humanitarian protection that could put them on a path to legal residency and citizenship. But the chaotic nature of the enormous airlift means that much is unknown: Officials have not said precisely how many Afghan evacuees have made it into the United States or whether all will be allowed to stay. More than 117,000 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan on U.S. and other flights as of Saturday, and Pentagon officials said the vast majority are Afghan citizens. Thousands have arrived in the United States, while thousands more are waiting in “transit hubs” in Europe and the Middle East. They are a mix of brand-new refugees and families with existing immigration applications that have been pending for months or years. Where the evacuees will end up is “a hard question to answer,” said Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS, one of the refugee resettlement agencies operating in the United States. “I don’t really know where they stand,” Hetfield said in an interview. “It’s chaos.”

[rabbitcruiser]

Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day

Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day commemorates the start of the  California Gold Rush, which began on January 24, 1848, when James  Marshall discovered gold while building a saw mill for John Sutter, near  what is now Coloma, California. The day has its roots in International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and was inspired by Prospectors Day, which was once held at Knott's Berry Farm each year on January 24. It also was inspired by an episode of the Simpsons with the following exchange:

Bart: That ain't been popular since aught-six, dagnabbit. Homer: Bart, what did I tell you? Bart: No talking like a grizzled 1890's prospector, consarn it.

Common examples of characters talking like grizzled prospectors in popular culture include Dallas McKennon narrating Disneyland's Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland and Big Thunder Mountain, Gabby Hayes—both drunk and sober—in many Western films, Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles, Will Ferrell as Gus Chiggins on Saturday Night Live, and Walter Huston in The Treasure of Sierra Madre.

Prospectors first came to the Sacramento Valley after Marshall found  flakes of gold in the American River near Sutter's Mill, at the base of  the Sierra Nevada Mountains. At the time there were less than 1,000  non-native inhabitants in California. Newspapers began reporting the  discovery of gold, and by August, 4,000 miners had descended on the  area. The first people that came from outside of the territory came by  boat, and arrived from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands—soon to be called  the Hawaiian Islands, Mexico, Peru, China, and Chili.

In December 1848, President James K. Polk announced a report by  Colonel Richard Mason which spoke of the abundance of gold in  California; this prompted more prospectors to travel to the territory.  Throughout 1849, thousands arrived, either traveling by sea or over  land, and became known as '49ers. Mining towns popped up in the area,  and with them came shops, saloons, and brothels. Many mining towns  became lawless, and San Francisco became an important city in the  territory. By the end of 1849, the non-native population had swelled to  100,000. The Gold Rush helped California gain statehood in 1850, and  gold discovery peaked in the state in 1852. In all, more than 750,000  pounds of gold were extracted during the Gold Rush.

The implication of a grizzled prospector is of one who has stayed so  long searching for gold that their hair has turned gray. Some  prospectors refused to quit the profession and continued to live in the  Western territories. So, when Bart Simpson mentioned a grizzled  prospector from the 1890s, he was referring to a prospector that had  stayed more than forty years after the Gold Rush happened, still trying  to find gold, or other commodities such as silver, oil, radium, and  uranium. Besides a gray beard, the stereotypical grizzled prospector had  faded clothes, missing teeth, a pickaxe, and a mule. They had bouts of  gold fever, and were suspicious of whoever came close to their claim.

How to Observe Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day

Celebrate the day talking like a grizzled prospector. Here are a few words prospectors commonly used, that you could use today:

Dadburn: to curse; e.g.: "Dadburned boll weevil done 'et my crop!"

Hornswoggle: to embarrass, disconcert, or confuse; e.g.: "I'll be hornswaggled!"

Consarn: the entirety of something, also a curse word.

Dumbfungled: all used up; e.g.: "This claim is dumbfungled! There's no gold left!"

Bonanza: a mine with lots of gold.

Borrasca: a mine with no gold.

Baby buggy: wheel barrow.

Muck: to dig with a shovel.

Powder monkey: a miner who used dynamite to make holes.

Johnny Newcome: a miner new to camp.

Blackjack and saw bosom: coffee and bacon.

Paydirt: land rich in gold.

Panned out: if they had found gold while sifting through dirt with a mining pan, then things had "panned out."

Flash in the pan: something shiny in pan that turned out to be nothing, or just a small piece of gold.

Stake a claim: claim a piece of land as your own as a place to  search for gold, must stake the land with wooden stakes when you arrive.

The day could also be spent watching films such as The Treasure of Sierra Madre, or old Western films starring Gabby Hayes. A visit to the Sutter's Mill replica and the Gold Discovery and Visitor Center in Marshall Gold Discovery State Park could also be planned. The days' Facebook page could also be explored.

Source