#nobody is allowed to talk about the gun. I drew it without a reference

[beigetiger]

Took a break from comic drawing to study Dead Eye, loose fabric is my mortal enemy

[thefinalcinderella]

Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru Chapter 9 - To Beyond (Part 1)

We’re finally here folks. After two years we’re finally at Hakone and boy is it long

Full list of translations here

Translation Notes

1. JR stands for Japan Railway and refers to the trains operated by the company

Previous | Next

January 2nd, 7:45 a.m.

The start of the Tokyo-Hakone Round-Trip College Ekiden Race was fifteen minutes away.

After the roll call twenty minutes before the start, Prince tried to go down the subway’s pathway again. Earlier in the morning, he had been able to run on the sidewalks above ground to loosen up, but now that was impossible—there was a large crowd of people in front of the Yomiuri Shimbun’s Tokyo headquarters in Otemachi, waiting to watch the start of the Hakone Ekiden.

From the Yomiuri Shimbun’s headquarters to the Wadakura Gate along the inner moat of the Imperial Palace, the sidewalks were lined with walls of people which consisted of cheering squads from each school, staff, and Ekiden fans who were celebrating the New Year with cheerful faces. The echoing sound of drums and the school songs of each school. The colorful flags and banners in the cold wind that eddied around the buildings. The rising noise and excitement.

“Where are you going?” Kiyose, who was accompanying Prince, stopped him. “Your body’s already warmed up. What will you do if you get tired before the race starts?”

“I know, but I feel sort of uneasy when I’m not running.” Prince paced on the spot. “I didn’t think there would be so many people here.”

Kiyose never thought the day would come when he would hear the phrase “I feel uneasy when I’m not running” come out of Prince's mouth. He smiled reassuringly.

“You’ve had plenty of practice. You’ll be fine. Did you go to the bathroom?”

“Many times,” The Yomiuri Shimbun’s staff entrance was open for athletes and officials to use the restroom and change clothes in the waiting room. “It’s always crowded with the runners running in the first leg.”

“You’re not the only one who’s nervous. Don’t worry.”

He couldn't let his body be chilled by the wind. Kiyose took Prince to the back of the newspaper building. There were not many people there, and Kiyose and Prince ran lightly side by side.

The final entries, announced at 7 a.m., were posted on the wall of the building.

“Rikudou didn’t assign Fujioka-san to the second leg.”

Prince tilted his head curiously. Rikudou had put Fujioka as an alternate for the leg entry. Fujioka was the captain of his team and the best runner in Rikudou, but he hadn’t heard any rumors about him getting injured, so he wondered if he wasn’t feeling well. Each school had been paying attention, but Fujioka still wasn't announced in the final entries for the outward journey that morning.

“They probably plan on putting him in the ninth or tenth leg,” Kiyose said.

It seemed that Rikudou was trying to assess the situation carefully; it was thought that if anybody could stop them from winning again this time, it would be Bousou University. In the leg entries, Bousou had made it clear that they were taking the fight to the outward journey.

If Rikudou were to only face the elites of Bousou, the outward journey would be quite a tough battle, even for Rikudou. Perhaps the plan was to hand over the victory for the outward journey to Bousou and take the return trip and the overall victory, which was determined by the total time of the round trip. There was no doubt that Rikudou was trying to decide which leg of the return trip to put Fujioka in depending on their ranking when they reached Lake Ashi and the time difference with Bousou.

“But don’t think about Rikudou right now.” Kiyose lightly pushed Prince’s shoulder. “It’s almost time to go back to the starting point. Do you remember what I told you?”

“Yeah.” Prince nodded vigorously and took off the thick bench coat that reached his knees. The gathered spectators made way for Prince then, who was wearing Kansei’s black and silver uniform.

The cold didn’t bother him anymore. As the first runner, Prince had a sash hanging from his left shoulder—it was black with the words “Kansei University” embroidered in silver thread. The plasterer’s wife had been steadily working on it since they passed the qualifiers.

Prince gently touched the precious sash. It would connect the ten of them and return to this place tomorrow. He definitely wouldn’t let the sash be interrupted midway.

Kiyose adjusted the length of the sash and tucked the extra parts into the waistband of Prince’s shorts so that it wouldn’t get in his way when he was running.

“Prince, sorry for making you go along with us until now,” Kiyose said.

The music being played by the cheering sections grew louder. “Athletes to the starting line!” A staff member called out.

“Haiji-san, I don’t want to hear those kinds of words,” Prince laughed. “Wait for me at Tsurumi.”

Prince entrusted his coat to Kiyose and stood at the starting line along with the nineteen other people running the first leg.

It was 8 a.m. in Otemachi, Tokyo. Clear skies. 1.3 degrees Celsius. 88 percent humidity. Wind from the northwest at 1.1 meters.

For a moment, the area was completely silent, and then the starting gun sounded.

Prince started to run. There was no need to look back. Because Kansei University’s first Hakone Ekiden was only created by advancing down this road.

---

As Kiyose had predicted, the race unfolded at a leisurely pace. With Tokyo Station on the left hand side, they passed Wadakura Gate. The cheers of the spectators and the wind around the buildings tore away at their backs. As the group spread out horizontally, they moved forward along the damp road at a pace of 3 minutes and 7 seconds per kilometer. Even Prince could keep up with this.

Perhaps it was because of the wide road, but it didn’t seem like they were making much progress no matter how much they ran. Around him, he could sense people checking and restraining each other, wondering who would be the first to break out.

“Keep going slowly,” Prince recited in his mind.

The wind blowing through the gap in the buildings made the temperature feel cooler than it was. Remembering Kiyose’s advice, Prince got behind a slightly larger runner from Teitou University; it would be bad for Prince, who had a speed disadvantage, if he had to use his extra strength to secure a place. Having secured a good spot to guard against the wind, Prince concentrated on keeping up with the group.

The pace remained almost the same even after they entered the Daichi Keihin highway from the intersection at Shiba 5-chome. They passed the five kilometer mark at 15 minutes and 30 seconds.

The coaches from each school were following the runners in their coach cars. The coaches were allowed to talk to their runners over a speaker connected to a microphone at the beginning of the race, during the last kilometer, and every five kilometers. However, no coach gave instructions before the five kilometer mark; there was so much tension in the group that it was impossible to speak out carelessly.

Rikudou and Bousou were battling for the lead, but every time they tried to put on a spurt, they repeatedly got swallowed up by the group. The first leg was 21.3 kilometers long and it was only the start of the Hakone Ekiden. If you failed in putting on a spurt and got worn out here, it would trouble the runners in the following legs, and the mentality of not being able to take the plunge was swirling through the group.

Forgetting about the presence of the lead car and the TV cameras, Prince moved forward desperately, but with a composed expression on his face.

At the same time, Kiyose had just transferred to the Keihin Express after having arrived in Shinagawa from Tokyo Station on the JR line. (1) Holding Prince’s bench coat, he put the radio earphones in his ears. Picking up the sound from the TV and learning that the group hadn’t broken up yet, Kiyose let out a small shout of “Yes!” He drew attention from the passengers around him, but he couldn’t care less.

The TV announcer and commentator spoke as though they were bewildered by the slow pace.

“There has been no change in the race at all.”

“I think the stronger runners can be more aggressive and go for the record.”

“You don’t have to say unnecessary things,” Kiyose snapped without thinking. The slow pace is fine. Nobody make any moves. Run as a group for as long as you can.

His phone rang. He looked at the display and saw that it was the landlord in the coach car. Kiyose hurriedly pressed the button, wondering if Prince had begun to drop out.

“I don’t know what to do, Haiji,” the landlord said easily.

“What’s wrong?”

“They’ll be at ten kilometers soon. Should I shout something at Prince?”

“Does it look like he’s having trouble?”

Kiyose gripped his phone.

“No? He just passed Yatsuyama Bridge, but he’s holding on well. The group is still staying in a horizontal line.”

“Then you don’t have to say anything.”

The Yatsuyama Bridge was just before the eight-kilometer mark. There were gentle ups and downs as they crossed the railroad tracks on an elevated level. If they were still in a horizontal line after that, they should be able to stay like that until they reached Rokugo Bridge, the most difficult point in the first leg. Endure it, Prince. Kiyose called out in his mind.

“But what kind of coach would I be if I just sat in the car and stayed silent?” The landlord seemed bored. “It’s like I’m just driving to Hakone.”

“All you have to do is to be at the ready. If Prince is having a hard time, encourage him.”

“How? I can’t sing the school song, I’m tone deaf.”

“No coach would encourage their runners with the school song nowadays,” Kiyose sighed. “In that case, I want you to give him a message from me: ‘I have something I want to tell you. So come to Tsurumi even if you have to crawl.’”

Prince heard that message at the fifteen-kilometer mark. The landlord in the coach car, with a microphone in his hand, shouted that at him in a hoarse voice.

What do you want to tell me? Let me hear it.

His breathing was becoming more and more labored, but Prince felt inspired again. He had also been successful in receiving water, at which point he was informed by a member of the short-distance track and field team that “this kilometer was exactly three minutes.” The pace was speeding up. As expected, victory would be decided at Rokugo Bridge, which was the 17.8-kilometer mark.

After twelve kilometers, there had been a situation where the race seemed likely to move—the runner from Eurasia University had made a move and the group had stretched out vertically. However, Rikudou and Bousou had quickly followed, and the others had chased after them like they were being dragged along. Ultimately, no one dropped out of the group.

In this situation, the Rokugo Bridge would decide everything. Prince could tell that everyone tacitly understood that.

Rokugo Bridge was a large bridge over the Tama River, and it was 446.2 meters long. There was an uphill climb to reach the bridge and a downhill climb to get off the bridge. The ups and downs were physically demanding after running nearly twenty kilometers.

When he finally started to climb the slope of the Rokugo Bridge, Prince's legs suddenly became heavy; he couldn’t believe how steep the slope felt. Prince gasped and swung his arms to try to move his body forward.

At that moment, there was a change in the rhythm of the group. The breathing of the strongest runners suddenly became quiet, and right at the moment Prince realized “it's coming,” the Yokohama University runner put on a spurt. Bousou and Rikudou followed suit.

The group quickly broke apart and stretched out vertically. What stamina these guys have! Prince couldn’t do anything but stare in amazement at the growing distance between him and the rest of the group. He wanted to keep up with them, but it was impossible; as they descended Rokugo Bridge, the top group was getting faster and faster.

“Don’t rush. If you can keep up with them until Rokugo Bridge, there won’t be much of a time difference. Besides that, just think about running at your own pace.”

Kiyose’s instructions before the start of the race came back to mind.

That’s right, I just started doing track. No matter what kind of spurts other people do, I can only run with all my might.

He was already about a hundred meters away from the head of the group, but Prince didn’t give up—didn’t get pessimistic—and ran patiently.

Just started, huh? So, am I going to continue doing track? Even though I’m in so much pain because I got dragged into it.

Prince opened his mouth for oxygen and a small laugh slipped through as he exhaled.

The gentle and warm morning sun shone down on him from the front.

---

At the Tsurumi relay station, Kakeru and Musa were huddled together, looking at the screen of a portable TV—an electronics store in the shopping district had lent it to them for free.

“Oh, Prince-san has been outstripped,” Musa said sadly, staring at the TV in Kakeru’s hand like he wanted to see Prince disappearing from the screen for as long as he could.

“But there shouldn't be much time difference from the top runners.” With Prince’s heroic figure properly burned into his eyes, Kakeru looked up. “Musa-san, let’s catch up in the second leg.”

“Yes. I will do my best.”

It was about time for the first leg runners to arrive at the Tsurumi relay station. Musa took off his woolen hat and scarf. The temperature was 3.3 degrees Celsius. There was almost no wind, and it was clear, but it was still bitterly cold for Musa. He had consulted with Kakeru and decided to wear arm covers that would cover everything from his wrist to his elbow; this way, if it got too hot, he could take them off and just wear his running uniform.

“Did you drink enough water? Even if you think it’s cold, you don’t want to get dehydrated while you’re running.”

“If I drink any more water, I would have to urinate standing up while I run.”

Musa laughed. This was the first time he had used words like “urinate standing up.” “It doesn’t suit you,” Kakeru also laughed.

The voices of the announcer and commentator came from the portable TV Kakeru was holding.

“In the second leg, each school is fielding their ace or ace-level runner. Eleven out of the twenty runners can run ten-thousand meters in twenty-eight minutes. Four international students are also making their appearance here.”

“Manas from Bousou University, Iwanki from Koufu Gakuin University, Jomo from Saikyou University, and Musa from Kansei University.”

When his name was spoken, Musa and Kakeru looked at the TV. They saw themselves on the screen. They looked around in surprise and saw a TV crew approaching them from behind. Musa smiled awkwardly at the TV camera.

“Kansei’s Musa is a bit unique: he is a government-sponsored engineering student and it seems that until last year, he had no experience in track and field. Kansei is taking on Hakone with only ten runners, but most of them have no experience with track.”

“I can’t believe they were able to make it this far. It’s quite a feat.”

The screen cut to the studio, where the commentator was nodding in agreement. “They must have put a lot of effort into their training.”

“The Kansei team is rich with individuality. I am looking forward to seeing how they will perform in their first ever Hakone.”

The screen cut to a commercial and the TV crew left. Oh no, Musa seems to be getting nervous again now that he got introduced on TV, Kakeru thought.

Kakeru’s phone rang. It was from Shindou, who was at the Odawara relay station to run the fifth leg. As soon as he pressed the answer button, Kakeru passed the phone to Musa.

“Musa, you were on TV!” Shindou said. He sounded very muffled.

“How is your cold?” Musa asked worriedly, and Kakeru also leaned in to listen. Shindou had gotten a fever on New Year’s Eve and still hadn't been feeling well that morning.

“I’m fine. Are you okay, Musa? You’re probably nervous right now.”

“Yes, a little bit,” Musa answered. Could Shindou see what was going on at the Tsurumi relay station? Kakeru was stunned at the depth of the bond between Musa and Shindou.

“Hey, Musa. Think about something fun,” Shindou said in a nasal voice. “Once this is over, it’s finally New Year’s for us. I’m thinking of going home to my parents’ house during winter break. Do you want to come with me, Musa?”

“Is that okay? You’ll be spending time with your family, won’t you?”

“My parents are waiting for you to come and visit. We live in the boonies where there’s nothing, so there’s nothing to do there except building snowmen.”

 “What is a ‘snowman’?”

“That’s right, you've never made one. Then, it’s settled. Let’s go back to my home together.”

“Yes,” Musa nodded. “Thank you very much, Shindou-san.”

After hanging up, Musa’s eyes showed no more hesitation or fear. The cheering along the road grew even louder—they could probably see the runners now. Kakeru and Musa approached the road.

Kiyose came running from Keikyu Tsurumi-Ichiba Station carrying a bench coat. He saw Kakeru and Musa and exhaled loudly, saying, “I made it in time?”

“Musa, how are you feeling?”

“I am feeling good,” Musa assured them strongly. Kiyose checked his expression and his shoelaces, and made sure there was nothing out of place.

“Good. Prince will probably come here in last place. But don’t get shaken by that and just run as usual.”

“If we are in last place, then I will feel better, because we cannot get any worse than that,” Musa joked. “Besides, I am more comfortable chasing than being chased.”

“That’s the spirit,” Kakeru said, accepting Musa’s bench coat.

The Rikudou runner arrived at the Tsurumi relay station in the lead. The relay station was set up in front of a police box along Route 1—it was a nondescript tree-lined street, and since it was straight and level, one could clearly see the runners arriving one after the other.

The staff member who received the message hurriedly called out the school names. The runners of the first leg came in that order, so runners of the second leg went to the relay line to wait for their teammates.

Rikudou’s sash was relayed from the first-leg to the second-leg runner. His time was one hour four minutes and thirty-six seconds from the start at Otemachi. After him came Yokohama, Bousou, and Eurasia, handing over their sashes in that order with almost no time difference. It was a very close race, as the runners had been clustered together until the end.

Musa bent down. Kakeru leaned out into the road. One after another, the runners of the first leg came and handed over their sashes, and the runners of the second leg ran out of the Tsurumi relay station. There was still no sign of Prince. It was thirty seconds since Rikudou had passed.

“It’s Prince-san!”

In the shadow of the competition cars, they saw Prince, running with his teeth clenched. The staff member was calling out the names of the schools that were still at the relay station at the same time. “I am going,” Musa said. He stepped out onto the road and stood on the relay line.

Musa turned towards Prince and raised his hand. Prince was running desperately while swinging his arms, but when he noticed Musa’s figure, as though remembering, he removed his sash from his shoulder. The elastic waistband of his shorts snapped lightly against his side as though to scold him.

Just a little more, just a little more.

“Prince-san! Prince-san!”

Musa and Kakeru were shouting. Kiyose was standing next to Kakeru, waiting patiently for Prince to arrive.

After crossing the relay line, Prince put the sash he had been gripping in Musa’s hand as Musa began to run. The sash connected the two of them for a moment, and then it quickly slipped through Prince’s fingertips.

My heart hurts. I can’t even keep my eyes open. I wonder if this wild breathing belongs to me?

Prince stopped and pitched forward, almost falling, but then realized he was caught in someone’s arms.

“I take back what I said to you at Otemachi,” Kiyose’s voice was right next to him. “I wanted to say this to you: Thank you for coming all the way here with us.”

“You passed,” Prince muttered.

Kakeru and Kiyose took the Keihin Express to Yokohama and then the JR to Odawara. Since they were short of hands, they planned to go on ahead to Lake Ashi and meet with Shindou, who was running the fifth leg.

They were worried about leaving the exhausted Prince at the Tsurumi relay station, but Prince told them this:

“You two, just leave me behind and go to Hakone. I already finished running. When I can walk again, I’ll go to the hotel on my own.”

Prince had the role of keeping track of the race on TV in a hotel near Yokohama Station. Kiyose and Kakeru were also planning on returning from Hakone that night and staying in the same hotel to prepare for tomorrow’s race.

After rehydrating, Prince managed to get up, so Kakeru and Kiyose left the Tsurumi relay station.

The bench coat Kiyose had brought from Otemachi was once again being worn by Prince. Now, Kakeru was carrying Musa’s bench coat. Shindou would be wearing it after his climb. If they just barely had enough manpower, they also just barely had enough clothing.

On the second day of January, the seats on the Tokaido Line were almost all filled with people running after the Hakone Ekiden and families who seemed to be going for the first shrine visit of the New Year. Kakeru spotted an empty box seat and sat Kiyose in it. Kiyose took out a notepad and ballpoint pen from the pocket of his bench coat.

“Prince’s time?”

“One hour five minutes and thirty-seven seconds,” Kakeru answered after checking with the stopwatch function on his watch. Kiyose wrote down the data on the notepad.

“The time difference with Doujidou University, which was right in front of us, is eleven seconds. The difference with Rikudou, which is in the top position, is one minute and one second. We still have plenty of chances. Prince fought bravely.”

Kansei’s sash was handed over from Prince to Musa at the Tsurumi relay station, and they were in twentieth place out of the twenty teams competing. The Kanto Athletic Union’s selected team, which was made up of runners who had participated in the qualifiers, would use the individual times of each runner as an official record, but wouldn’t enter the rankings as a team. Therefore, Kansei was ranked nineteenth, but when they finished running the first leg, they were still unmistakably in last place in both name and reality.

But Kiyose was right: it was a time difference that could be overturned. The slow-paced development was a blessing for Prince and Kansei. The race had only just begun.

Kakeru was carrying the portable TV, but reception in the train was bad. “Try this one,” Kiyose told him, and gave him the radio. Right when he was twisting the knobs to try to get sound, Kiyose’s phone got a message. It was from King in the Totsuka relay station, who was with Jouta, the one running the third leg.

“Haiji, we’ve got a big problem! Look at the TV!”

“I can’t,” Kiyose said.

Previous | Next

[woodchoc-magnum]

911:Lone Star 2x08 Hate Watch

Here we go, though I heard mixed reports that this episode was better than the OG's 4x08? So we'll see.

Diaz for strength:

And the hate is under the cut:

Things are almost instantly off to a bad start with TK as the very first person we see

Oh god SERIOUSLY WE'RE DOING THIS SOBER ANNIVERSARY FIRST FUCKING THING?

Like don't even ease us into it

We're just going right into the schmaltz INSTANTLY

"My parents got back together" oh TK you are in for a RUDE SHOCK MY MAN

No masks at this party

No social distancing

Pandemic, what pandemic?

Oh shit SHE'S MOVING OUT ALREADY

"We were right not to tell him" YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO TELL HIM AT SOME POINT YOU ASSHOLES

Just when I think Rob Lowe can't be more of an asshole, there he goes, out-assholing himself

Oh do you guys call cash registers "tills" in America? I thought that was a British/Australian thing

Please let him blow up

Please let him blow up

Oh wait does Carlos have more than 30 seconds in this episode? WHAT'S GOING ON?

Damn he didn't blow up

Uh oh TK's come home to Lisa Edelstein moving out

RELAPSE?

Wait was she just gonna fucking LEAVE? WITHOUT TELLING HIM?

Oh TK you dumb fuck

God he can't act, he is such a bad actor

Everything is in a fucking monotone

It's a complicated question? Bitch you're pregnant with someone else's baby and you're also in love with that someone else

Oh shiiit TK you're so dumb

She came down to Texas, fucked Rob Lowe's brains out, rushed back into everything and now she's pregnant and fucking back off to New York – smooth move

Who is this mysterious Enzo? I would like to meet him

Ronen can't act. I know I keep saying it but he's like a robot.

Wow Carlos has been in SO MANY SCENES WHAT IS HAPPENING

Is his dad a cop? Did I know this?

I can't remember the name of the guy who plays Carlos but here's what I'm going to say – dude is about a million times better at acting than Ronen Rubenstein. There is actual EMOTION IN HIS VOICE AND ON HIS FACE

Is his dad a lawyer? What's the deal here?

I feel like this is a conflict? Should the dad be investigating the son? Oh he's a Texas RANGER

I still feel like it's a conflict, ngl

I'm bored

Dude's dad doesn't believe him and he's gonna be proven wrong isn't he

Wow this dad is almost worse than Owen, he has no faith in Carlos whatsoever

What a dick

Hey maybe you two should've just FUCKING TOLD YOUR SON THAT YOU WEREN'T GETTING BACK TOGETHER AND THAT IT WASN'T OWEN'S BABY, THE DUDE IS IN RECOVERY

And the lack of concern from Rob Lowe about his ONLY SON IS FUCKING STUNNING

Okay so my theory is that Rob Lowe allowed Carlos to have lines in this episode of the show provided that he was the one in the scene with him

Look at Owen actually trying to do the right thing here and not be selfish for once, amazing, we love to see it

What is with everyone in this show having terrible fathers

I'm bored AGAIN

"there should be a heart behind that shield" god give me a fucking break, you're nicer to Carlos than you are to your own son you dick

No masks anywhere at the scene, no masks on anyone at the fire

It's like they remembered about the pandemic for the scene at the bank and then forgot about it again for the rest of the show

Ooh is there going to be an EXPLOSION?

What is with me and things blowing up – look I watch this show with the understanding that bonkers things are going to happen and I'm a simple person who likes when things go boom, what can I say?

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM

Good explosion

Oh now daddy dearest knows that Carlos wasn't lying and he didn't fuck up

I bet he feels like a right fuckhead

I disagree with the assessment that this was better than 4x08 of the OG, at least the OG has people who can act – at the very fucking least

And no Rob Lowe

Oooh Carlos' dad is as cold as fucking ICE

Yeah Carlos you stand up for yourself, you're getting lines in this episode and I'm so happy for you

TK is such a whiny little bitch

His voice just grates on me, god he fucking sucks so much

OOOOH IT'S A TRAP

THEY'VE BEEN ENSNARED IN A SCHEME

That dude don't look so hot

God damn Nancy with the sick burns (her name is Nancy right?)

Oh TK leaving a CLUE what a smart little cookie, someone's been reading his Nancy Drew books hasn't he? (is that reference too old?)

"In American" BITCH

"we're not surgeons, we're paramedics" – he SAYS EVERYTHING IN A MONOTONE, there is no emotion in his voice AT ALL

Oh no Carlos is waiting for his man

Wait is Carlos going to save the day?!

No I bet Owen does, I will not get my hopes up

They're gonna perform surgery in a restaurant? I mean I suppose Hen and Chim could do it but I don't know about this bunch

Oh shit TK just knocked the FUCK OUT

It's about TIME

You know, if he actually relapsed because of these two assholes, they would totally fucking deserve it

Rob Lowe does not seem worried literally AT ALL

His son is missing and he's just like, okay cool

Oh wait he was playing it cool – okay fine, I retract my previous mean statement

I love that TK is just knocked the fuck out while the women do the work

Can I marry Gina Torres or is she already married or… what's the go there? Would she want an Australian wife with two cats?

These two dumb bank robbers really think this dude is going to live?

DO NOT STRANGLE GINA TORRES YOU MOTHER FUCKER

Oh shit the one nearly dead bank robber killed the other one

Carlos is going to find TK's special little clue and HE DID

What a good boyfriend

Good thing Rob Lowe has Carlos here, we can see who the brains are

Carlos is just out here solving mysteries, maybe HE'S the one who's been reading Nancy Drew (does anyone read Nancy Drew anymore?)

Ooh Carlos with the trusting of the gut YOU GO GIRL, go GET YO MAN

Though real talk you could do better

I mean ngl if this was Eddie storming in to rescue Buck I would be ALL OVER THIS, this shit is MY JAM but it's TK and Carlos so who fucking cares

OH SHIT HERE COMES GINA TORRES HERE WE FUCKING GO

OH YES NANCY

YES THE LADIES ARE SAVING THE FUCKING DAY

WAIT

ROB LOWE FIRED THE SHOT???? WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

HE IS A FIRE CAPTAIN

WHERE DID HE GET A GUN FROM?

I think Carlos' dad is flirting with Rob Lowe

Look at him standing up for Carlos

Oh and NOW the dad is being nice, okay

How the turn tables

This Strand family drama is the most boring fucking shit ever, I legit don't care

OH GOD

WHY ARE JUDD AND GRACE DRIVING IN THE RAIN

NO

NO

WHEN DID IT START RAINING LIKE THIS?

SHE WANTS BABIES JUDD

THEY'RE GONNA HAVE A BABY

NOOOOOOOOOOO

FOR FUCKING SERIOUS IS THIS SHOW FUCKING SERIOUS DO NOT BREAK MY HEART

Look obviously they’re going to be all right because they already killed Zombie Tim this season, but still. Not Judd and Grace, the two best characters on the show!

Okay, this episode was marginally better than other episodes but it still sucked, so I’m giving it... 4 out of ten. Honestly, it does lose points because Rob Lowe is the one who shot the dude? Like actually wtf?

BUT it must be in Rob Lowe’s contract that nobody gets to do anything cool in this show but him so it does make sense.

Really not gonna miss Lone Star the next few weeks, see you after the hiatus for more hate watching!

And Eddie Diaz to cleanse our hearts and minds:

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

12. On Your Side

Decided to publish what I had worked on before my hiatus, mainly for Tina and nem, as a Xmas thing. Ion celebrate that shit, happy holidays or whatever. I was hoping to have completed the story by now, but with my break for mental health, I guess it's either pushed back or gonna be abandoned. Will know in a couple of weeks or so what, if anything I intend to do with it. Its an Apex centered chapter. I'm still on hiatus. You can leave a review if you want to, but don't message me about Simon or this story. Thanks.

*The Grace St. Catherine Playlist, featuring songs used in chapter and songs that inspired the chapter*

“Even through the darkest phase

Be it thick or thin

Always someone marches brave

Here beneath my skin…” Grace let the music play in the background as she tried to do all of the things suggested to her by her “spiritual advisor,” Sunny, whenever she moved into the place. She was doing more drawing - mostly sketches of carnage and rage. She was journaling a lot, mostly in the form of a narrative told by a hypothetical fictional character, because admitting to the things that she was doing on paper was a huge no-no, so she simply projected her life through her journaling character, The Saint, whom would never be referred to by name in any of the entries. In this particular one, The Saint was contemplating calling The Shadow. What would the conversation even be like? He would tell her how bad she was for being mad at him. She would tell him that she only hurt bad people, but he hurt a friend… he hurt her. That was different. So different. But she MISSED him.

She had began to sketch him. She was more of a doodler/drew cartoons and comics on her phone and stuff… but she was shut up in this place for hours at a time and hadn’t really used a pencil and a sketch book seriously in a while. Then, it got away from her. After a few days, she had almost filled up a sketch book with drawings of Simon. She winced when she thought of his name. She had been avoiding speaking it and thinking it. “And constant craving has always been…” She stared at the phone, then changed the track. The last thing she needed was to think about craving, of all things…

Now, that the phone was in her hand, she glanced around, feeling that paranoia that she had since she left home. Nobody was watching her here, but she felt obligated to check, anyway, and upon verifying what she already knew - that nobody was fucking watching her - she went to visit his social media. Private? Since when? She checked another. Same thing. A third, same fucking thing! “UGH!!!” She threw her phone onto the couch and went to go chop wood. She didn’t really like to chop wood, but it did make her feel better to swing a tool and see destruction come out of it.

“Old wounds

Old fights

Another day goes by

I'm not playing by the rules

They can't take me for no fool…” Her phone continued singing as she went outside.

.

Jalicia Barrett was not the same type of watch as Grace was. She obviously wasn’t as upscale as Grace, so she wound up having much to do that was necessary, unlike Grace’s schedule of playing a typical woman. Now, to say that Jalicia was typical would be a stretch of the imagination, as Simon knew that none of Grace’s people were that and she had possibly an unreasonable amount of tiger items, but she was closer to an average person than Grace was.

She went to Seattle University, but hadn't selected a major. She was still doing general studies after taking a few years to get her GED (She began trying at 16 and only successfully received it less than a year ago), so.. a freshman in college, which wasn't bad. She was 19. She worked on campus and seemed to have other odd jobs, like being a delivery driver or personal cab, and stuff at that Infinity Foundation place.

She didn’t have rich parents. From what Simon was able to find, she was never reunited with them, whoever they were. If they had lived in Seattle when she was taken, there was nothing on file to indicate that she was reported missing. Of course… he didn’t know what her real name was. The name Jalicia Barrett only became a name for her in the year after Grace left the mental institution. He knew that was likely connected.

Maybe… she wound up in the system after Grace touched base with them? At any rate… whoever the girl who was brought into trafficking had been, she was now Jalicia Barrett, a girl who began existing when she was 13 or 14 and obviously probably didn’t know her DOB either, as it was on record as the day that her name was given, her documents were created all around the same time, so she had to either have been a baby whenever she was taken, or simply never knew her personal information like birth date and full name.

BUT, she did have prints on file, so she probably had birth records that could be matched to them somewhere. He didn’t know if he wanted to get into that… or if she hadn’t done so herself and simply decided that life was easier being the person that she knew herself to be now. He certainly couldn’t imagine separating from his loved ones and then not finding them for a decade or so and then just… trying to pretend that they were family after all or something. She had the family she wanted… Well… she lost one. He felt bad for her. It wasn’t the same, but whenever he lost Grace, he felt like his world collapsed. To even pretend to understand how this woman must feel losing her life partner after years of being together, he wouldn’t insult her like that. Instead, he looked into the details surrounding that. Whatever happened to that investigation?

He’d provided an alibi for them and the police never spoke with him again. He’d done his best playing ignorant and pretending that everything was casual. Whenever they asked him about Heath, he said that he didn’t know Heath. “I’ve only met him once and he didn’t show up to the gathering… Is he alright?” They didn’t answer, just wished him a good day.

Now, he was looking through their paperwork and he was sure that he might find something interesting, if not useful. Simon had no idea what he was looking for with these other people. Something that led him back to Grace’s trail, and he had to figure out how they worked to even presume that…

Here’s the thing… Simon wasn’t going to write himself off as wrong or going too far. For crying out loud, the things that these people did, and they felt justified in their reasonings, so he wasn’t going to allow himself to feel bad. Grace might need him, and Xander was keeping her away from him. He cursed himself over that gun, though. However, IF she would have just let him explain that he only had it to keep Xander from getting it! He didn’t know what to think when he holstered it, but it wasn’t for her! Why would he hurt her? He scanned through paperwork, trying to take his mind off of Grace’s lack of faith in him and then, he was sure that he found what he needed. If not; he’d found something interesting. “Huh.”

.

Grace called Sunny for more tips. She was doing everything that she told her to, and reading all these books and articles, ordering all sorts of holistic woo woo shit, and trying SO HARD just to not lose it out there… Sunny was always a mood lifter for her though. They would talk for however long, laugh, joke, sometimes get entirely too serious and cry… they hadn’t done this in a long time, but Grace had been calling her more frequently lately and, well… it was necessary for her to be available.

“It’s like… I don’t want to use this word lightly, and I especially can’t tell Xan, but I feel like I’m like… addicted… Does that sound stupid?”

“Xander doesn’t own the word addicted, Grace. He’s struggled with a few drugs over the years, but one of the reasons is because he’s sick. Some people can try things and never really become addicted to them because those things didn’t appeal to them in that way. This dude appealed to you in a way that your body wasn’t used to. He got into your mind, and most likely changed the chemical balance. Affected your hormones and shit, only to find that he wasn’t what you thought and now your chemicals gotta try to balance back out without his influence, so no, it doesn’t sound stupid. Perhaps melodramatic, but I don’t know. You could be addicted to the way that he made you feel. Going through dick withdrawals is a struggle that people don’t give enough credence, too.”

Grace snorted. “I’m… not… going through that. We weren’t like that. I don’t even know if he ever was into me that way? It was like… I don’t know… I never got the feeling that he desired me physically.”

“What feeling did you get?”

“For the most part, that he wanted me around. I don’t know why. He never seemed to be asking anything of me but to let him be near me. He was very good about not entering my personal space, and even when I got comfortable, he still never made any move on me or anything like that. He just seemed to like to be… present.”

“Okay, but what would he be doing when he was present?”

“Sometimes nothing, really. Just looking at me, or listening to me. Sometimes, we were doing our own thing - me reading a book. Him playing video games or writing, or… Idk, working on a cosplay outfit.”

“Girl, on what?”

“He’s a fantasy fanboy before he’s a fantasy writer, so he you know… makes cosplay costumes and stuff for conventions. Whenever he’s not scheduled to be on a panel at one… This is something that I’ve observed, not something that he’s said. He… doesn’t talk about himself a lot. Not at all, come to think about it.”

“Xander makes him out to be a literal serial killer.”

“Xander hates him. What about 808? What does she say? Xan seems to think that he “got to her” or played some kind of mind games or something?”

“Well… she didn’t say anything to me about him, except that he was very talkative and apparently worships you. She was pretty thrown off guard at how comfortable he seemed with being caught and held hostage. She said that he is either the most nonchalant person ever or the craziest fucking person that she’s ever drawn a weapon on, because he acted like they were buddies just chitchatting, and we all know that he knows what we do to people.” Grace didn’t reply. Sunny offered, “Well, whenever I think about the shit that I went through with Xander and how we always seem to find each other in the dark, it's usually in terms of No Angel.”

Grace said, “Beyonce’s No Angel?”

“”Is… Is there another one? Because, if there’s anything AND a Beyonce song, just go ahead and assume that I am only speaking of the Beyonce option.” Grace laughed. Sunny recited, “ I love you even more than who I thought you were before.” Grace held her breath, unsure of what to say to this. Sunny continued, “All I mean to say is that sometimes people aren’t who we initially thought. Sometimes they’re worse. Sometimes they are seriously fucked up. Sometimes, they’re absolute trash… But… you might still love their ass.”

“Damn, Sis… Is this how you feel about Xan? Because those are some hard descriptions.”

“No. Xander is definitely a hot mess, but I was absolutely describing your… thing… over there. Jimony?”

“Simon,” Grace said, trying not to laugh.

“Right. I knew it had “mon” in it.”

.

Jalicia didn’t know what it was about that station that made her put it on all of the time, but her streaming service generally stayed on an old r&b from the 60s and 70s station, and sometimes 80s and 90s, whenever she was at work. She had a journal with a tiger on the front that she was writing down poetry in, but she could never think of titles for any of her work, and she didn’t feel like she was that artistically creative, so she’d title everything, “(Song Title) Plays in the Background,” whether or not the song had any bearing on the poem. Today’s? Let’s Groove Plays in the Background.

Work was a little bit overwhelming, these days, but only because of the things that had nothing to do with it. The fact that she wouldn’t just receive flowers sometimes and have her coworkers wonder why her boyfriend was this thoughtful, but they never saw him. Or the days where she would pout about being broke and having to pack a stupid sandwich and he would insist on having something sent to her at lunchtime, if he didn’t just make her a different, more fulfilling lunch instead. The way that she would get a text whenever he went on his own lunch break, and it would just be some hilarious video or a new thing that they just HAD to buy. Work was overwhelming, because what she had leaned on every shift was the fact that he’d interrupt it with something nice and that she would leave there and get to see him every day.

Now, she was listening to Earth Wind & Fire, in a gray pantsuit and fooling around on her computer while she waited for something to do. She heard the tone of the doorway and she got up to see if somebody needed help. It was a college bookstore and she was often far overdressed, but all she had aside from her typical attire were the pantsuits she wore when she had to do something other than be casual - like functions and interviews or whatever, so that was what she wore to work.

The O. He looked at her like they were friends or something. A polite smile and warmth in his eyes. She stared him down and reached for her phone. “Hi. Can I just have a moment?” He asked. She texted: The O is here and hit “send” to 747. “It won’t take long, I just wanted to give you something.” The O reached into his bag and Jalicia had already identified four common objects in her immediate surroundings that she would definitely use as a weapon against him if he tried something slick. He handed her an envelope, one of the big yellow ones and she frowned.

“I’m not taking whatever that is. For all I know it’s got anthrax in it.”

He laughed and opened it himself, pulled out the paperwork and handed it to her. “I figured out a better method of tracking people down than Heath had the resources for. I know that Xander is trying his hardest, God help him, but he’s not much on a computer and some of these things are hard to find.” She took the pages and glanced through them. Simon helped her find a certain page, “I’ve guessed that you maybe didn’t know much about this part of the situation that you all walked into. The… X, I suppose you’d call him, was very paranoid that he might be on your list and he hired protection.” He pointed out a few key lines that he had highlighted. “Professional protection, and yet when the time came to protect him, Heath wasn’t shot in the arm, or hell, if they didn’t want him to escape, the leg is an option as well.”

“They killed Heath on purpose,” She said, the wind knocked out of her as she did. She tried to take a seat, but just fell back onto a table and leaned against it, knocking down several books.

“They wanted to send a message and since you all slacked up since then, I’m sure that they think that they did.” She started crying angrily and wiped her face. “Flip to the next page.” Her hands were shaking and she wasn’t sure of what she might see, but she flipped to the next page anyway. “That’s your shooter. Since he was on the job, he confessed to being the one who fired and because Heath was breaking an entering and had no family to intercede for an investigation… the cops seem to be fine with what happened to him, despite the fact that our laws state that a person may not use more force than is necessary given the situation.” She shut her eyes and squeezed out tears, her fists tightly holding onto the phot0 of the man. “Next page are his personal details. Do with it whatever you think is best. I just thought that you would want to know.”

She shivered and cried, “This doesn’t mean that I owe you anything. I didn’t ask you for this and I don’t feel indebted to you for it.”

“Jalicia… I’m on your side. Whatever side Grace is on, that’s where I am. I did this because I want to help.”

“Well… This is the most help you’re getting from me - Xander’s on his way.”

“Then, I’ll be on my way.” He had that polite smile again and she was almost terrified how easily it came to him. He left quite a few minutes before Xander arrived.

She instantly fell apart as soon as she saw him, handing him the papers and explaining to him what he was looking at. She left work and was going to call Grace, but Xander snatched her phone while he was driving. “No, what if he. like, cloned your phone or something?”

“What? This ain’t Person of Interest, Boy. What the fuck are you talking about, Bro? He’s rich but it’s not like he’s Lex Luthor.”

“We can’t chance it. He’d do anything to find out where she is.”

“Give me yours, then.”

“Just hold off. I need to check this dude out. For all we know, Simon is just blowing smoke up our asses to get us to lead him to Grace.”

“The fact that you think it’s more likely that he falsified a bunch of police documents than that he simply sneaked them away is making me wonder about you .”

“I let him get too close to her before, and I’m not doing that again.”

Jalicia snatched her phone back from him and they wrestled for it but, he eventually heard Grace on speaker.

“What is happening on that end?” She asked, laughing a little bit nervously.

“We need to talk about Simon,” Jalicia said.

“I disagree with that sentiment!” Xander said in the background.

There was a pause. Grace was panicking a little bit. Did they know that she was trying to check his pages? That she was trying to see if she could make a temporary account just to try to get to them? How would they know that, Girl?

Jalicia added, “It’s about Heath.” Xander turned red in the face and he shook his head and tried to breathe. “Oh, fuck you, Xan. You left him there to die. The least you could do is chill out while I speak to Grace about this.”

“Whoa… That’s not extremely fair. The Apex protocol is that if somebody is hit, we leave and regroup. We go in with the expectation that if we’re hit, we would slow everyone down and jeopardize everything. So, Xander and I both left him,” Grace said the last statement laced with sadness and guilt.

“He pulled you out and sped away,” Jalicia said.

Xander scoffed and then burst into tears, “I’m glad that you’re telling us how you really feel.” His voice was surprisingly calm, but the ladies knew that hurt him more than anything ever had in this world.

“Tell me what you need to say,” Grace said.

“Simon found Heath’s killer.”

“Simon found a person he alleges is Heath’s killer.”

“He had all of the paperwork to corroborate it. More than Heath has ever collected on any X.”

“He had paperwork on a man who works in security who may have shot Heath dead, but as far as we know is not a bad person. He probably was just on a security job. Somebody broke into the house he was guarding and he shot!”

“WHY DID HE SHOOT HIM IN THE HEAD???” Jalicia squealed. “I’ve been over this myself, before Simon EVER said anything about it, but WHY didn’t they shoot him to survive and answer questions about what is one of the most infamous string of serial murders to ever hit the city? Why would he risk his job to kill someone that way in security, if there wasn’t a reason that Heath needed to be dead?”

“You… you think that the security dude is old Apex?”

“I think that at best, the security dude wanted to kill a person that he didn’t HAVE to kill and he used Heath as a perfect excuse, making him a shitty person, in my opinion, and at worst, he didn’t want us saying anything to anybody, because he knew why we were there!”

“But, we did release what we had on the X. The information is out there now. Nothing was done about it,” Grace added.

“Precisely! Just as nothing was done about this trigger happy buttfuck, even though our laws state that you’re not supposed to kill motherfuckers if you don’t have to!” Jalicia said. She looked at Xander, poked him in the arm and reminded him, “You were the first one to claim you’ll avenge him”

“And you told me to go fuck myself.”

“Emotions were definitely running high, but if you’re looking for the chance to make good on your word, you’ll have to suck it up and just live with the fact that Simon gave us this, like I have to live with the fact that Heath is never fucking coming home!” She got louder than she intended. Xander wiped his tears with the back of his hand, but more just poured out. He nodded, but he was still extremely upset.

“Send me what Simon sent you. I’ll let you know what I decide from there.”

“Thank you, Grace.”

Grace sighed, paused, then said, “Heath would have wanted us to get out, but even if you had driven away and left us all, we wouldn’t have faulted you… That’s the protocol. Heath knew that…”

“Does that make it easier for you?”

“No. But, we shouldn’t make it harder on each other, either…” Jalicia sighed, rolled her eyes and let more tears fall. “I’m sorry, Jalicia. Heath was the first person in the warehouse that I ever cared about. I would trade myself for him, if I could.”

“He’d never let you,” she hung up and reached out for Xander. He accepted her hand. “I was mean to you…”

“You were honest. It just fucking hurts. Heath was the backbone of this family, and everyday he isn’t here, I lose more and more respect and control. He kept me grounded.”

“Doesn’t Sunny do that too?”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Maybe you don’t let it be. Maybe the reason Heath was your rock was because you thought that you only needed one. That’s what I did, too. I didn’t even realize how much of my life revolved around him until I was just spinning in space, with nothing to pull me back. Why do you think I moved in with your ass?”

“To split rent.”

She gave a resigned shrug, but shook her head, “I thought that it would make things better, if even just to put me in a spot where I could just not think about it and not be alone. I figured I wouldn’t get over it, but that at least I would logically be able to grant myself some peace because you’re there too, and that there would be some type of comfort. Not emotionally. That’s gonna take more time than I even believe that I have left in this world. But… at least I wanted that solid ground to stand on, to be able to say, Heath would want his two favorite people to lean on each other and find some strength in his absence.” Xander sniffled. She finished, “But it didn’t matter, and I don’t even know what to do, because I thought that being around you would guarantee some balance, even if it didn’t truly help… I still have all of my grief, and I’m..” she whimpered, “So tired. And empty. And distant. My closest living friend is sitting right next to me, and I have been so alone…”

Xander pulled the van over, unlatched his seatbelt and hugged her. She wasn’t done. She was so focused on her train of thought that she hadn’t even actually noticed that Xander was hugging her. “Heath was always in my life. Before any other human that I can remember. Like, logically, I know that Grace took care of Todd and Heath took care of me… but… I don’t even remember anybody else until maybe I was 5 or 6. I know he wasn’t the only person around, but in my mind, he was. I have NO frame of reference that doesn’t involve him. He was…” She finally realized both that Xander was already holding her and that she was crying again.

She remembered something. She was 4 or 5, her brain was never good at that part. She wasn’t in school or anything. All of her special days were simply moments and occurrences. This particular occurrence. A boy with light hair, getting hurt really bad by the stewards. Heath covered her eyes and started talking about flowers. He found a new book about them. He’d help her try to read later. The noise of the boy being beaten up was in the background, but at the time, she was too young to pay any attention to it and listen to Heath. So, she listened to Heath and the beating was background noise filtered out. Afterwards, he took her to the side of the building and let her pick flowers for their new friend. The new boy was mean. He was mean to Heath and Grace had to help Heath. Then, he was nice. She looked at Xander’s face and saw that same boy, just as hurt and just as angry as the first day she recalled a memory of him.

“He wasn’t always in mine… but he was the first person who was ever just nice to me for no reason other than to be nice,” Xander said. “There’s nothing that I want more than to punish a person who would take him away from us, but to have Simon, SIMON, give us that…” He was red in the face and shaking his head. “He’s using it to get to Grace, and I just didn’t want to give him that kind of power.”

“Then why didn’t you just say, ‘Hey, lets not tell her where we got the information?’ If you had just sent it to her with X confirmed, instead of fighting me in traffic…”

“You didn’t give me a chance!”

“I just… This ONE thing, then maybe I can move on.” He nodded and buckled back in. “I’ll get to work on the logistics. In case Grace gives us the go ahead, I want to be ready to move as soon as possible.”

.

Simon pulled his hair up into a high ponytail. He was going to try to get it into a bun, but it had been getting longer and thicker, and while he’d normally just pull the top part into a pony and let the rest hang, but it was windy and he was going to be pretty active, so high ponytail, it was. He had been checking out the X that he gave Jalicia, to see if they were going to make a move on him. He wasn’t positive of the typical turnaround time on an X, so he simply went to watch every night. He wasn’t going to do the car. Dude was in security. He’d probably make him.

Instead, he parked around the block and went to a big tree across the street from the X’s home to post up. He had binoculars and an awkwardly applied hunting tree seat. It wasn’t made for him to be up this high, but he situated it only to have a seat that wasn’t tree bark. He spent the time that he wasn’t watching the house on social media, checking out Sunetra’s pages… which… apparently she went by “Sunny…” which… Simon noted to himself that he had seen a little sun tattoo on Xander, and whenever he came across Sunny’s very tasteful artistic nudes, he saw that she had a little tattoo, as well, on her chest, of an “X.”

Her photos were really nice and she seemed to… possibly be a stripper? He checked a few of her posts and captions. She hashtagged #burlesque in some of them, so maybe not a stripper, but something risque. She was in the fine arts program in college, for dance and had many posts from the Infinity Foundation of her doing dance workshops, yoga, and stuff. She had a lot of witchy posts, too. Simon rolled his eyes, but kept scrolling. Several of her posts were really funny. He noticed a yoga and meditation program that she would be doing at a community center and saved the post.

He watched the X for about a week and a half when he saw the van pull up. In the dark, he couldn’t tell who people were, but two had gotten out and through the binoculars, he could tell that Xander was one and the other was Jalicia. He checked the van. That was an unfamiliar one behind the wheel, but he presumed that it was Sunny or 808, and that he simply couldn’t see them... There was a loud noise and screaming in the house. He turned to see that Jalicia had a knife to a woman’s throat while Xander was escorting the X out, with his hands up. He got him to the van, injected something into his neck and tossed him in. Jalicia unhanded the woman, but appeared to take a bag along with her and the woman ran next door.

Jalicia had taken all the phones with her. The woman had to run next door to call the police. Simon realized that she was probably doing that, and he got out of the tree to get back to his car. If he hurried, he might be able to catch the van!

He went the direction that they had, and when he came to what he thought might be them, he put on a mask of his own, but it was a medical mask, just because that was… possibly not as weird as if he wore like a clown mask or something. They had NOT handled that in the way that he expected. Something told him that they either were rushing or desperate. He wondered why.

But, whenever they pulled the van into an old train station, he parked behind the building and got out of his car. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up. This is fucked up.  

He could hear their voices, and he followed the sound of them, but didn’t come from the shadows of the building. They were dragging the bag into a field that Simon knew that he had passed several times in his life, but never paid much attention to. Nobody really did. Was this where they buried them? He wondered. He only saw Jalicia and Xander, pulling the body bag with one hand and carrying shovels in their free hands. Where was the driver? He went around the other side of the building and the van was pulling off. Where were THEY going? He couldn’t start his car. Jalicia and Xander weren’t far enough away to not hear him. He groaned and went to look back towards the field. He couldn’t see anything beyond the tall grass, but he used his phone to try to record where they were… maybe he could find it in the daytime. Besides, they were now far enough away that he could start his car without alerting him. He felt like he had enough.

Simon drove home, wary of a van behind him for a portion of the way. He took some loops and turnarounds that he wouldn’t usually take before he was comfortable that they weren’t following him and it wasn’t the van… but after he got home, he noticed at the bottom of the hill a van, and it looked like the van that they used. It looked like the van that he was nervous might be following him. But. There was no way that the van had found him after those turns. Was it one of them, just letting him know that they knew he had followed them?

He rushed inside and looked out of the curtains. They were there for a moment. They turned the van off and he took a deep gulp and reached for one of his guns. They got out of the van and stood, staring up at the house. DEFINITELY APEX. This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.This is fucked up.

They stared, wearing a gold mask, a tam hat, and the all black outfit that he had gotten used to, but then not seen for a while. “Grace!” He said. He put his gun down and rushed out of his door. “Grace?” He called, but she rushed back into the van, tossed something out, and peeled off. “Grace…” He ran down the hill and out to the road. She was gone… He looked down to see what she had thrown down on her way off. It was a Stop sign with a red squiggly line underneath the word “Stop.” He picked it up, roared and began to smash it against the pavement, before flinging it into the middle of the road and going back into his house. He called Jalicia and she looked at her phone, not recognizing the number, so she answered it. “Hello?”

“Was that Grace?” a voice asked.

“What?”

“The person who just followed me home and told me to stop. Was that Grace?”

“No,” was all that she said. He hung up. She put her phone away.

“Who’s that?” Xander wondered.

“Non issue,” she said. It wasn’t a complete lie, and there was no way that she was about to ruin their night with… whatever that had been about. She and Xander were still digging when their third came walking up, her gold mask on her face and a shovel in hand. “Girl, where did you rush off to?”

“I knew he was gonna still be alive,” she said and pulled up the mask onto her head. Sunny. “Had to make a stop,” she said with a shrug. She and Jalicia stared at each other a moment, and Xander kept digging, oblivious to the exchange of them questioning each other with their eyes. It was short lived, because Grace was connecting for the video call. “Hey, Girl, Hey!” Sunny cheered.

“Bitch, I’m so mad that I’m not there right now.”

“Be mad at Jimona,” Sunny said.

“Simon!” Grace said, laughing. Then, more solemnly, said, “Draw a squiggle right across his face, for me.”

“Sure will,” Sunny said, pulling her knife out. “What are you listening to, Woman?”

Grace checked the info on her streaming, “Hurts by Emeli Sande.”

“That’s dope. Send me the link to that.”

.

Simon was at the apartment now, crying and sitting in front of the cameras. He wondered if she would return with them, but looking at the feeds he had placed to check the outside of their homes, he noted that the three entered Xander and Jalicia’s home at 3:47 am… and that… wasn’t Grace. It was the woman that he had initially identified as, “One who looks like Grace.” It was Sunny… He flared his nostrils and set an alert to remind him about the yoga and meditation at the community center.

His phone began to ring while it was in his hands. It was a private number. For a moment, he let his heart accelerate. “Hello?” He answered.

Silence. He sighed and almost hung up, but… he felt something. His tears stopped, he sat up erect and waited. She was silent, still. He was afraid to break it, but more afraid of her losing whatever nerve she had at the moment and hanging up. So, he dared to speak. He kept his voice soft and low. Gentle, like he knew she would remember him being. “Hey…” He said. He heard her sniffle and it tore at his heart. “Hey,” he managed to say even softer. “Are you okay?” She sniffled again. “Tell me what I can do to make you okay?”

“Why did you do that, Simon? Why did you?”

“I wanted to be close to you. I wanted to know you. I wanted you… I didn’t know what to do. I was desperate. I am desperate. Please, tell me where you are…”

“You let Xander catch you.” There was the longest pause since the conversation started. Eventually, she spoke again. “I feel like the kids walked in on me doing something dirty…”

“I feel like it’s none of ‘the kids’ damn business what we do.”

“They can’t see stuff like that. They can’t see me being followed and watched, obsessively. They can’t just move on from that. You have no idea the kind of people who… Why did you have a gun?”

“Because, I had just been attacked by somebody that I know is a murderer and I was on edge…” They were quiet again. “I can keep them out of sight from now on. I can keep them away from you, at all times…”

“If I come back into town, my crew is gonna get… difficult. It won’t be safe for you.”

“I can’t prove myself to them? To you? Did you see what I found for them? For Heath? For Jalicia?... For you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Jalicia told me right away…”

“You sound like you’re smiling,” he observed, daring to smile, himself.

“I can’t help it… but… we can’t… do this, Simon.”

“Don’t…”

“We’re both in really weird places and us coming together isn’t good… for either of us, I think…”

“Please…”

“We shouldn’t be together, see each other, anything. You should… get on with your life.”

“No!”

“Bye, Simon.”

“NO!!” She hung up. He bit into his lip so hard that he drew blood, trying to keep his composure. He couldn’t even go to the gun range right now! But.. He could… go back to that field. He knew where it was. He knew where the bodies were now… he… was running out of patience, but he reminded himself that it wasn’t her fault. The longer they kept her away from him, the more confused she would be. She just needed to understand that he was on her side. If she couldn’t… she would have to learn that there were consequences for going against him.

13. A Shot in the Dark Pt 1

[tialovestelevision]

Invasion

Crest of the Stars is based on a trilogy of Japanese science fiction novels by Hiroyuki Morioka. These novels essentially resurrected the then-dead genre of sci-fi in literature in Japan, and they’re considered very influential. This is a work of relatively-hard military science fiction, though it occasionally falls into the absurd.

Unfortunately, the anime is rather difficult to watch now - it’s been out of print on DVD for a while, with Bandai showing little interest in reissuing it, and it hasn’t been picked up by any of the streaming networks. Still, if you manage to find a copy, it’s very much worth watching. This is anime science fiction at its very best, and the visuals and drama are breathtaking while the characters are charming.

Without further ado, I present Crest of the Stars.

1. The episode opens with a scene set in the month of Closna, second day, Imperial Year 952. This scene is performed in unsubtitled Barohn, the language of the Abh Empire. A ship is entering battle, firing torpedoes into planespace. We see the sensor readout of the enemy, with three of the four torpedoes hitting and destroying targets. But they are still badly outnumbered. The captain gives an order, and the ship turns its main gun toward a hole appearing in space. They fire the main gun, and the scene ends.

2. “Long ago, when the star system known as Sol was the only home of mankind, unusual particles of great mass and energy were discovered. However, nobody knew what the source of that energy was. Maybe it was a white hole. Or perhaps something from a different dimension or space. One theory was that a hole opened in the wall that separates this universe from another. These theories were no more than superstitions, falling far short of being hypothetical. Yet research on the use of this energy continued. Eventually, this new energy sourse allowed humans to emigrate beyond the Sol system. Humanity then spread across the whole galaxy.” That bit of narration is in subtitled Barohn. We are shown the Uanon Propulsion Interstellar Immigration Vessel, Leif Erikson. It explodes in orbit of a planet. Opening theme, which is EPIC and shows images of star-forming nebulae.

3. “The Landing. Day 57, First Season, Year 172.” Crest of the Stars pays a lot of attention to places and cultures. The opening scene was aboard an Imperial ship, so it used the Imperial calendar; this new scene is on the planet Martine, so it uses the local calendar. Where the Leif Erikson was, there’s now a hole in space, and a ship just emerged from it. We’re looking at the system defense control room. The ship hasn’t responded to communications, so they’re sending one of their defense satellites to engage with it. The satellite fires a few laser blasts and does no damage, then the ship fires back and destroys it easily. A bureaucrat in the control room drops his coffee mug to the floor, and it shatters. These people are fucked.

4. There’s somebody looking out a window and giving orders on the phone. This is the President. He tells them not to mention the failure of the planetary defense system until after the investigation.

5. A child is outside, looking up at the hole in space. He’s narrating for us, telling us the name of the planet and asking if he ever missed it. A woman tells him not to open the window, because he’s letting the wind in. A fleet is coming out of the hole in space. As each ship emerges, a bubble of energy fades from around it. That’s hundreds of ships. We’re now on the bridge of the command ship, where a blue-haired man is being told that they are entering the sord - the hole in space. His attache says that he looks troubled; he says that this is work that is far short on glory. The ship enters the sord and emerges in normal space in orbit of Martine.

6. I’ll get the physics of FTL flight in this setting out of the way now so I can talk about them without explaining things bit by bit as I go. The uanon particles that produced the energy were, in fact, gateways to another dimension, and drew their power from that dimension. When left idle for long enough - when nobody used their energy - they would explode, forming a sord. So when early starfaring humanity used uanon-powered ships to colonize the galaxy, they brough with them the key to creating FTL travel among colonized worlds. The uanon-powered ships were either generational ships or sleeper ships. The universe the uanons drew power from is called planespace, and it’s two-dimensional. To enter planespace, a ship projects a space-time bubble around itself. Within this bubble, physics work the same way they do in normal space, and the bubble itself can “roll” along the surface of planespace. Since planespace is “smaller” than normal space, a ship can cross vast distances quickly, but if its space-time bubble were to fail, it would immediately be subjected to the physics of planespace and destroyed, because normal matter can’t exist in planespace. Now that’s out of the way.

7. “The Landing. Day 81, First Season, Year 172.” So 24 days after Martine was discovered by the scout ship, the Imperial fleet has arrived. There is an evacuation order in place for the capital, and people are running and being told to follow instructions from officials. Evacuations are… hectic… things, especially when it’s a whole major urban area being evacuated. They’re being sent to shelters. The woman from before is looking for the boy, Jinto, who has gotten lost in the crowd. The government is deciding what to do about the fleet, which has identified itself as coming from the Humankind Empire Abh.  Its name is more grandiose in Japanese, and even more grandiose than that in Baronh, so I’ll be saying “Abh Empire” or just “Empire” most of the times I refer to it. The government is trying to negotiate with the Abh, but the Abh have rejected the offer and will be making an announcement. Jinto is running through the streets, and he looks up to see the lights of the Abh fleet.

8. A bureaucrat has entered the Presidential residence. He’s pretty senior. He has a top secret briefing book, “The Report on Former Transmission Record: The Mankind Reich ‘Abh.’” That’s printed on the book in English. Given the attention paid to language in this show, that makes me think the people of Martine speak English. The use of “Reich” as the translation for “Empire” is an interesting choice, don’t you think? Someone else points out that the commander of the Abh fleet is a diplomat as well, and the Crown Prince of the Empire. The senior bureaucrat asks what he’s like; the guy speaking says not to be surprised when you see him. A woman says he’s nothing to be concerned about, because he looks like a harmless elf. And the commander calls.

9. Elf, yes. Harmless, no. This is a face that means business. The woman says that the Abh never get old, are all beautiful, and claim to be descended from people from Earth. They just adjust their genes. The Abh commander says that his will and that of the Empire are the same, as far as the people of Martine are concerned. The system will be surveyed by the nobility, with the Emperor being their lord until a noble is chosen. The Emperor is busy, though, so a magistrate will be appointed. A magistrate who will also have little interest in the planet. “In any case, a ruler or magistrate normally does not get involved in the details. The reason for this is that we feel that governing your world is the furthest thing from being elegant.” The senior bureaucrat is understandably angry about this - after all, not only are they being conquered by an invader they can’t touch; they’re being conquered by an invader they can’t touch and who doesn’t actually give a fuck. They’re mobilizing the military, but the Abh say they won’t hesitate to destroy the planet. The Empire spans more than 20,000 systems. People don’t believe that the Abh are as powerful as they say they are, but the fleet in orbit has more ships than Martine has missiles. The President remembers how easily the Abh destroyed the defense satellite. Everyone is looking at him. He is President Rock Lin, and he has made a decision.

10. But first we go back to Jinto, who’s trying to get into his house. He has to use the override on the door, which involves climbing on a trash can to reach the override handle. No, wait… not in. Out. He’s watching the Abh ships fly by overhead, streaks of light above the atmosphere, energy erupting from the sord. Very pretty image. The whole Abh invasion has a beauty to it that’s hard to describe. Admiral Abriel orders his ship into a lower orbit. “I had no idea, back then, on that day…”

11. “The Landing, Day 87, First Season, Year 172.” Almost a week since the Imperial fleet arrived. President Lin has surrendered to the Abh Empire. Seven years later… Jinto, now a teenager, is on a space station. He’s riding an elevator, while a shuttle arrives. He’s in Abh clothes. People are looking at him like he’s terrifying, but around him, life is happening. He’s been on the station for seven years. We flash back to him as a child on Martine.

12. The senior bureaucrat from before is Teal Clint, and he just found Jinto staring at the Abh fleet. He’s been looking for Jinto. Jinto apologizes, but Teal yells at him and tells him to come. They’re going to the President’s palace, which Jinto refers to as “My father’s place.” So he’s the President’s son. Jinto runs after Teal, who is angry. Jinto asks if Teal is angry at him. They’re in an elevator now, going to a car. Jinto asks if they can beat the Abh, but Teal says there’s no war. Jinto asks if they’re surrendering; Teal punches the wall and says yes, Rock decided to surrender. Or sold the planet out. He made a deal with the Abh, a bad deal. Teal is very angry about the deal, in spite of being in favor of surrender. He apologizes for taking his anger out on Jinto.

13. They’re in a car now. There’s going to be an announcement about the deal, and everyone will find out about Rock’s deal and how he betrayed Martine. That’s why Jinto has to hide in the Presidential residence. People are going to be angry, and might throw rocks at Jinto, or beat him up. Or bomb his window. Jinto is worried about Rinna - Teal’s wife - because lots of people know he lives with Teal and Rinna. Teal says he contacted Rinna and she’ll be able to take care of herself. She’s already evacuated, but was worried about Jinto. Nobody can know about the deal until the announcement. “Not even me?” Jinto asks. “Well, well, already acting like a member of the privileged class,” Teal says. Jinto asks what Teal means; Teal tells him to turn on the holo. It’s a news broadcast. The announcement is in one minute. “It was a very long minute.”

14. Teenage Jinto on the space station, trying to smile nicely to an old woman. The old woman is having none of it. She’s staring daggers at him. The shuttle docks. Its docking port opens, and a very pretty Abh woman in a military uniform emerges.

15. It’s the announcement! We get the full name of the Abh commander, “Lord Dusanyu, Prince Abriel Nei Limzale Balke.” The deal was to allow the citizens of Martine to use the Abh star lanes for trade and travel, and to promote someone from Martine to the nobility as the ruler of the planet instead of bringing in an Abh noble from outside. They also handed over the codes to the space defense system. Teal thinks that means the Abh were worried about their defenses. People are asking who the new ruler is. Teal says everyone already knows, but they want it spelled out. Jinto asks if it could possibly be true. “All right. It’s who you think it is. Rock Lin will rule our star system” Rock didn’t even consult Teal, his executive secretary and best friend, about the deal. People are angry and demanding to know where Lord Lin is; they are told that Rock is on an Imperial ship heading for the capital to be granted his title formally. Teal says that’s why the announcement was delayed. Jinto wonders if Rock will return; Teal says he couldn’t return if he wanted to. He thinks the Empire will have him killed, and that it serves him right. So that makes Jinto next in line as lord. Now he’s being mean because he’s angry and betrayed and the actual target of his feelings isn’t there but a small child connected to that target is so he can feel better but also guilty by taking his feelings out on the child. Jinto is crying, and Teal apologizes and says he’s having a hard time keeping control of himself. Jinto asks if, when Teal told Rinna to evacuate, he told her about the deal. Teal didn’t, because it was a secret. “That day, I lost my home. My home, and perhaps my family as well.”

16. Teenage Jinto on the deck of the starbase. He came to this place t o learn about the Abh - their language, their culture. He’s now on his way to the capital to attend military school, but he’s never met an Abh. This will be his first time. Episode end; closing credits with pictures of Jinto growing up. It’s clear that Jinto was far closer to Teal and Rinna than to his own father… all his family shots are of the Clints.

Overall: There’s so much I love about this show, but I think for now I’ll talk about the visuals. It’s actively beautiful - maybe not in the quiet almost-watercolored way Sweet Blue Flowers is beautiful, but beautiful nonetheless. It’s grand, and sharp, and hard in most places. Hard enough that, when it’s soft - Jinto’s face, Rinna’s posture, the Abh girl’s economical grace - that really stands out. And the Abh fleet shots - both from space, where we can see the dark ships against the blackness of space, and from the ground, where the ships and their shifting formations look almost like dancing meteors in the night, show just how lovely hardness can be.

Martine, meanwhile, is such a… mundane… place. They have planetary defense satellites and laser cannons, but they also drive cars that would have, apart from the holo terminal and windshield HUD, looked at home in the 1960s. To give Martine those visuals while putting them opposite the Abh drives home just what the Abh are. We know little about their culture, this early, but we know that they are both wondrous and monstrous.

Which is driven home by the way people on the space station regard Jinto, in his Abh clothing. He looks a bit odd in it, like a toad one day donned a suit and went to work at Goldman, but simply dressing like an Abh marks him as one of them. As one of those genetic gods who bring disaster wherever they go.

But that’s worldbuilding! I’ll talk about worldbuilding on another entry.

[thecoroutfitters]

In 1972 Watergate, one of the biggest scandals in American political history hit Washington.

President Nixon had ordered wiretapping of his political opponents, for what turned out to be purely political reasons. His operatives, who weren’t government employees were caught, and accused the president as part of a plea bargain.

The result of this boondoggle was Richard Nixon resigning from the presidency, in order to avoid being the second president to be impeached.

Of course, the media had a real hay day with Nixon’s scandal, giving birth to what then became known as “investigative journalism.”

Every reporter who graduated from college wanted to be the next one to break the story on a major scandal. For a few decades our politicians had to walk a narrow line, keeping any unsavory activities from coming to the attention of the media.

But the times, as they say, have changed. Today’s media is mostly part of the progressive-liberal movement, pushing our nation’s politics more and more into socialism and a one-world government.

As such, they’ve become the de facto propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, even if they aren’t listed as the propaganda arm de jure.

Mainstream Media and the Progressives 

The mainstream media sees it as their job to help progressives accomplish their agenda. As such, they are probably the group most responsible for dividing the nation. Rather than being the conveyors of truth and information that they used to be, they have redefined “truth” to mean the liberal agenda and anything that doesn’t agree with it as being “fake news.”

They’ve done this on climate change, they did it during Obama’s presidency, they did it during the 2016 elections and now they’re working overtime to do it in Trump’s presidency.

There are two ways in which the mainstream media lies to us. The first is by telling us an untruth; something they have made up or which they are party to someone else making up. Such has been the case of their reporting of mass shootings. Every time there is a mass shooting, they immediately begin the narrative of how some nut-job conservative went nuts again. Yet once the facts come out, it is found that it was a liberal who pulled the trigger.

Of course, this goes far beyond gun control, hitting every area that affects our nation. One of their favorite weapons is the classic liberal weapon of name calling.

Throughout the presidential campaign, they characterized Donald Trump as a racist, sexist, homophobe, islamophobe who was going to take the rights away from women, minorities and the LGBT community.

The other way they lie to us is by concealing the truth. They focus huge amounts of airtime on outrageous stories that really don’t matter, in order to hide what’s really going on. During Obama’s tenure, this would most likely be hiding something bad that Obama was doing, in which case they were protecting Obama.

Now that Trump is in office, they are making sure not to report anything good that is happening, so that they can avoid having anything to do with making Trump look good.

So now we have the latest chapter in the story of media misreporting. On one side, they’ve been hammering the fake news story of Trump’s supposed ties to Russia, while ignoring Hillary Clinton’s very clear ties to them.

The Russian Story

The whole Russian story started out of two things. Trump made a joking comment in one of his campaign speeches, asking the Russians to release Hillary’s 30,000 missing e-mails, if they had them. Shortly thereafter, Wikileaks started posting Hillary’s e-mails, as well as those of her campaign manager and top Democrat Party officials.

Those e-mails gave us a true and accurate picture of the inner workings of the Democrat Party, showing the corruption that is a daily part of Democrat political life. Yet somehow, that story never really broke. The e-mails are still sitting there, but nobody is really talking about them. In this case, nobody includes the main conservative news sites too.

The second root goes back to the Cold War. For decades, starting just after the end of World War II, the Russians were the bogeymen of the world. Countless books and movies portrayed them as the bad guys.

While that image has faded some, Vladimir Putin’s charming way of threatening his neighbors, such as attacking Ukraine and taking back the Crimea, has brought the bogeyman image back out of the closet. Coupled with Trump’s statement about the Russians, the media had their story and they ran with it.

For almost a year now, we’ve been being told by the mainstream media that Trump was in collusion with the Russian bogeyman. That escalated with the various Wikileaks dumps, increased as the campaign drew near and went right over the top with Trump’s win.

Since the election, the progressive-liberal left, along with their media lapdogs, have been pushing the narrative that the Russians hacked the election, all to spoil Hillary’s campaign and allow their best friend, Donald Trump, to win the election.

Let’s get a couple of things straight here.

First of all, Trump isn’t best buddies with Putin. About the closest thing he’s said that even sounds anything like that was that he wanted to work together with Russia for world peace. That’s something he should have said. Two of the world’s most powerful countries should work together for peace, as well as for defeating terrorism. As president, if he refused to speak with them, he would be remiss in his duties.

Secondly, Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, has come out clearly stating that the e-mails that were posted on his organization’s website didn’t come from the Russians, but rather from leaks in the Clinton campaign office and the offices of the Democrat Party.

So, it’s clear that what the Democrats are claiming didn’t happen. Even so, Democrats are sticking to their story, refusing to accept that Trump won the election honestly.

But the narrative that Democrats are pushing is much more sinister than the reality would be, even if the reality they claim were true. By saying that the Russian’s “hacked the election,” they’re clearly implying that the Russians somehow changed the outcome of the elections by getting into the election computers. In other words, the implication they are pushing is that the Russians committed voter fraud, even though they didn’t.

This is a tricky bit of misinformation that the Democrats and their medial allies are pushing. Their only factual point of reference is the e-mails that were given to Wikileaks. So the claim is that Russia hacked into the necessary computers to gain access to those e-mails and then turned them over to Wikileaks.

The way they are stating the story makes it out to be a much bigger and more nefarious Russian involvement than that.

Even if the Russians did what the Democrats claim they did, all they would be doing is exposing the Democrat’s own words. Why should they be bothered by that? They love to jump on Republican words and twist them out of recognition in an effort to make the speaker out to be bad.

But nobody has changed one word of their own e-mails, just laid them out for all to see.

Everything Changed on March 4th

On March 4th Trump tweeted that Obama had wiretapped his phone lines. No longer could the media run around slandering Donald Trump, they had to circle their wagons and protect Obama. Their fair-haired boy was in trouble and so they rushed to his defense.

Video first seen on New York Daily News.  

I’ll have to say, this was a masterful tweet by Trump. In one short message, he changed the entire narrative, putting his enemies on the defense. If one was writing a book on warfare, this could serve as a prime example of taking the initiative away from the enemy.

Obama’s spokesperson quickly came out with a response, saying that Obama didn’t wiretap Trump’s phone lines, nor did anyone else in the White House. It was the standard denial one would expect, but masterfully written nonetheless. Without denying that the event had happened, he declared before America and the world, that Trump was lying. It was the classic effective lie, one with just enough truth in it, so as to seem truthful.

But while Obama and the White House didn’t actually attach wires to Trump’s phone lines, it’s clear that someone had been listening in on Trump’s team, specifically listening in on conversations between Trump team members and people who were in the employ of the Russians.

Herein is something else I need to clarify. The term “wiretapping” has changed through the years. Originally, it referred to physical wires, attached to physical phone lines, allowing others to listen in on what were supposed to be private conversations.

But things have changed. Our technology has increased by several orders of magnitude since that time. So today, wiretapping doesn’t mean the same thing that it did back then. Today, if the FBI or some other law-enforcement agency wants to listen in on those conversations, and can get a warrant allowing them to do so, it’s all handled at the phone company.

Of course, they could just go to the NSA, who records every bit of electronic communications in the world. But for some reason, the FBI doesn’t do that. Instead, they go to the FISA court for a warrant and then do the wiretap themselves, probably with the aid of the local phone company.

That’s what happened in Trump Tower. The FBI first went to the FISA Court for a warrant, naming four members of Trump’s team. That warrant was rightly denied. So they went back with a fresh request, leaving the names of Trump’s team members off the request. That time the court granted them the warrant, as there was no reason not to do so.

So, the electronic surveillance in Trump towers was at least marginally legal. The pretext involved a Russian bank, which had offices in the tower. Whether or not their lines were actually wiretapped is irrelevant, it seems that they weren’t the real target anyway. The target was team Trump.

Up to this point, everything the FBI did was legal. They were following orders given to them by superior authority. They got the warrant they needed, to make their actions legal. It’s what happened after that which became illegal.

Video first seen on ANN Portal. 

On January 12th, Obama issued Executive Order 12333, which amongst other things, changed the dissemination of intelligence information containing the names of American citizens. Before that, the names of Americans had to be eliminated in intelligence information, before it was disseminated.

The new E.O. which came out the month before Obama’s term ended, allows dissemination of American names picked up in electronic surveillance to be shared with all 16 intelligence agencies.

What that means is that if we assume that the FBI followed the law and only wiretapped the Russian bank that they got the warrant to surveil, picking up the names or the voices of Trump team members was merely incidental. In other words, it wasn’t part of their investigation. Yet that information, which could be highly damaging to the Americans in question, was widely disseminated throughout our nation’s intelligence agencies.

Chances are extremely high that the information made its way into the hands of at least a few Obama supporters; either people who were his political appointees or simply Democrats who voted for him. Either way, it made it into the hands of people who had the ability and the opportunity to use it for political purposes, rather than what it was supposed to be for.

And so, information about conversations between Trump team members and Russians made it into the hands of the Democrat’s lapdogs, the mainstream media. They reported gleefully about Trump’s ties to Russia and more specifically about his National Security Advisor, General Flynn, having lied to Congress about his contacts with Russians. Their source for all these accusations? An anonymous source. Not exactly the most reliable source to use, I’d say.

Of course, the media is now denying that they got any classified information from the intelligence community, even though they themselves reported that they did, just a few months ago. Not only that, but they reported that they knew that Obama’s administration had spied on Trump. They themselves made the case to back up what Trump said in his Twitter post of March 4th.

Here is where we find the true scandal. Whoever gave that information to the media, broke the law. While we can’t at this time say that they did so at the orders of the former president, they certainly did so to please him.

Whether Obama himself knew that it was done or whether he said it should be done is something we will probably never know. But it was clearly done for his benefit, not for Trump’s.

For that matter, it wasn’t done for the benefit of the country. If anything, it was done to harm the country, more than just to harm Trump and his team. At a minimum, that borders on treason, if it can’t be proven to truly be a treasonous act.

If we ever needed proof of the corruption in the Democrat Party and in Obama’s Administration, we now have it. The question is, what is going to be done about it?

This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia. 

References:

http://nypost.com/2017/04/02/the-watergate-sized-scandals-rocking-the-trump-and-obama-administration/

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/03/04/donald-trump-wire-tap-barack-obama-tweet-trump-tower

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446415/susan-rice-unmasking-trump-campaign-members-obama-administration-fbi-cia-nsa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12333

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