#that they can entrench themselves and just snatch you

[exhausted-archivist]

I think my favorite demons in Dragon Age are envy and hunger. They operate like ambush predators in a way no other demon does; because they operate mostly outside of the fade.

Envy targets people that it is envious of, that will grant it more power/status/renown. You don’t have to be envious, just of enough significance that it is envious. Which means that no one is safe from this demon. And when it catches you? It will either keep you alive or kill you. But before that, it traps you in your own mind to study you, not the fade, your own mind. A place where friends and such can’t reach you to save you. It adds a whole other dimension of existence to da that is just ripe for expanding on the limits and rules. On top of that, when it takes your traits they’re used in the most extreme form of them to further its goals. Suddenly your good intentions are paving the road of others suffering thanks to the demon wearing your face, at best (in my opinion) your dead and your loved ones deal with the fallout. At worst, you have to recover from the damage, it might introduce new paranoias or repulsion, and that’s a fun little psychological horror element to me.

Hunger though, sure it can possess you. Make you a vampire. But it also doesn’t have to. It cursed you, lays in wait till someone so desperate, so hungry for something like revenge, survival, or power, that it will curse you. Fuel you on your endeavor and feed on your hunger as you infect more and more. Which brings this fun little man vs nature vs man triad that just really I want more of in media.

Nightmare would make the list…if it ever left the fade. Like truly, the fact it can erase memories, haunt you with your deepest fears, feed them? There are so many fun narrative devices that invites. But it sits in the fade, it’s restricted in a way that most won’t ever encounter the massive threat it could be.

But hunger and envy? They’re rare and seemingly stalk about Thedas freely. Picking where they hunker down and who is their victims. Envy based on its own desires and hunger by its own design. I’d like more of that honestly.

[leconcombrerit]

I keep putting off watching recent episodes of DFF not because I don't like it but because I'm legit scared. I just watch spoilers. No further emotional involvement for now.

I put a lot of faith in this show and I'm slowly starting to think that maybe I should try and snatch it back while I still can. Although "think" might be a bit of a stretch. It's more of a survival instinct at that point.

Look, I don't care what trajectory it takes for most plot points and characters and ships and twists. Whatever is fine, it's done a good job so far, I'm in for the ride. There's just one thing I want -okay, maybe one and a half.

And it's for Non to have a good ending, preferably New as well.

And no, "everyone including them gets a bad ending" isn't a valid alternative for me. My love for these characters themselves put aside, it's the message and symbol that matter to me. I'm weary of the usual way characters like them are treated. Mentally and emotionally exhausted. I think I saw some Until Dawn comparisons at some point, and what happened in Until Dawn is exactly what I fear will happen in DFF too. Because it usually does.

Non, who's mentally ill and kept rolling with the punches over and over again, and New, who lived through trauma after trauma since his brother's disappearance, would traditionally snap (Non's aborted attack during his breakdown, New's whole story arc) and die.

It doesn't have to depict them as villains ; it can be a soft, sad and respectful tale of how people get abused and cornered and go too far as a result. So far they lose sight of themselves. But how many stories have you seen where they get a good ending ? The opportunity to heal and live ? Not many. Redemption and peace can only be achieved through death. It may be "realistic", but I find it very funny that media defaults to realism about this specific matter almost all the time.

What's worse, Phee and Jin are presented (so far, I'm still holding my breath) as the more "morally right" characters. Those you could see getting a good ending more easily.

And if Non, and preferably New, don't get a good ending, Phee and Jin absolutely musn't get one either.

They both have their flaws, sure, but how many times have we been shown that Jin is the least horrible person in this friend group, if not a downright good one at heart ? He's painted in a different light, always singled out. And Phee ? He's selfless, he's not a murderer, he's brave, he's kind, he regrets, he forgives, you get it (unless my theory of choice is right, but I'll go with what is explicitly told here). They both display values that everyone else lack.

But they got it served on a plate in comparison with the others. Those values and principles were developed in an environement that let them grow. We don't know much about their financial situation, but we haven't seen them struggle -unlike Non, New, and Tee's families. Phee talks to his dad and goes to him for help ; what about Por, who gets abused and is visibly scared of his father ? What about Non and New's relationship to their parents ? What about Tee's sick father and criminal uncle ? Where's the support system ? What about Fluke, always on his guard, entrenched in the sidelines, too scared to even allow himself to even think ? I'm leaving out Top (who I think represents gratuitous, unassuming evil) and White (who doesn't fit in the same equation for now) here, they give me nothing to work with so far.

Most of them don't have the strenght to walk the "right" path. They lived through shit much harder than Phee (who, by the way, chose to be with Non knowing, or even because, he was riddled with issues, and for whom Non's fate didn't break other parts of his life) or Jin (who seemed to live in his cute bubble before shit went down with Non, unaware even of his friends' true colors). They get a boost from the start and an easier middle, so of fucking course they'd be better armed to fight for a better end. Non was fucked from start to finish. He didn't stand a chance. New didn't stand a chance. Por, Tee and Fluke probably did, but not those two.

And it's not fair. Life isn't fair either, sure, but I can't help but repeat myself : it's fiction. And if even fiction tells you that if you're too damaged, and/or if you stumbled on a bad path while running away from what kept hurting you on the righteous one, then the only peace and redemption you can hope for is death, then I don't want it. Give me hope, not another "bittersweet" catharsis where it's always the same ones getting the bitterness and the same ones getting the sweetness. I don't want to be told I can be forgiven, I want to be told I can win and heal.

On a sidenote, I'm more lenient when it happens in fantasy settings. The events that lead to the character's ultimate fall and broken mind (sometimes rebuilt completely crooked) are far removed from reality. Your whole family was killed, you fought so many wars, truly horrible things, you name it. But in DFF the trauma is painfully rooted in reality. Many viewers, me included, had trouble watching Non's bullying. His breakdown, his loneliness. This is why I'm so demanding with the show. And as the end is closing in, I get scared.

HOWEVER I still have hope. A lot of elements I noticed could point to and ending I could accept. And, you know. It's not like going along with the trope I described is bad. It can be perfectly executed. It's a fine direction to take. Hell, I used to live for this narrative as a teen. It's just not for me anymore, I guess.

... Well, it was supposed to be a short post, apologies for the long rant, but I needed it off my chest.

[dovakhiindrabbles]

Brain wont stop going feral over this but mc breaking down in front of farkas because shes tired of all this dragonborn and war shit and just wants some form of normalcy

Anon did you read my mind -- are we on the same wavelength right now cause I LOVE that type of thing. Characters who have almost a breakdown over the hero role they’ve been put into and want to stop but are so scared of stopping OOOOO yes I’m writing this

Anyhow, I am absolutely super excited and happy to write this and hope you have an amazing day !!  

Trigger warning for angst and allusions to depression

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The dragon unhinged its jaws, you can even see the flames barreling out of the beast’s throat. The heat brushed against your skin and despite the faintest call in your head to move, your feet don’t lift from the ground.  

How many times would this scenario repeat? How many times would you stand off against another monster of the old times? Each time they rear their horrible heads and each time they come crashing to the earth.  

Or perhaps your enemy would be another person. Another war to be waged for supposedly a noble reason just to truly sate some internalized idea. How would humanity prove themselves not too different from the monsters yet again?  

What a cycle you’d fallen into. A god among men -- worshipped and lauded and yet never truly able to experience what made humanity so... human.  

You couldn’t remember the last time you sat in front of a fire, warming your palms. Or when you woke early one morning and didn’t have to scramble to your feet, just laying there and soaking in the world around you. When was the last time someone looked at you and didn’t see the Dragonborn?

When was the last time you got to be human?

“I’m tired.” You whispered, too quiet for anyone but yourself to hear. Your grip loosened from your weapon, and for just a moment you welcomed the flames unfurling. Perhaps the closest you could ever get to humanity was just pretending this was a simple fire you sat before on a cold, cold night.  

But someone pushed you away just before those flames could touch you. Your back slammed into the snow and the air was snatched from your lungs. Through blurred vision, you could see him, Farkas. His eyes were wide and confused, almost horrified.  

“What was that? Why didn’t you move?” He was yelling, but you could hear the fear and worry so deeply entrenched in his voice.  

You tried to bring yourself back to reality, but all you could muster was a feigned attempt. “I’m sorry... I don’t know what came over me.”  

Farkas wanted to believe you, but the glaze in your eyes told so clearly otherwise. He furrowed his brow and placed your weapon once again in your palm, his fingers lingering over your own for just a second longer than needed. He didn’t say anything else, just rose to his feet and helped you up to face the Dragon that still prowled after you like prey. It was scared though, you knew that.

It wasn’t a difficult fight, each and every possibility had become ingrained in your head -- each move the dragon could make existed like pinpoints upon a map for you. You knew just how to make it to the end and just how to perfectly execute it. 

When the monster fell, you simply watched. The hollowness in your chest became that much more apparent when you absorbed the soul and felt only a further emptiness.  

“Hey, we need to talk about what happened back there.” Farkas came up from behind you and grabbed your shoulder. And yet when he twisted you around he paused, stunned.  

You hadn’t even realized you were crying. You hadn’t made a sound and you’d barely noticed when your sight muddled.  

“What... what’s going on?” Farkas tensed, his hand sliding down to instead reach for your hand. His grip was light, almost as if he thought you might break at the slightest pressure.  

You hesitated, but it inevitably spilled out. “How much longer... how much longer do we have to do this? How much longer do I have to be the Dragonborn?”  

“Do you not want this?” Farkas frowned, confused. “I thought you like this -- liked the fighting and the glory.”  

“This isn’t the Companions! I don’t get to stop! I don’t get to just not take the next job these are monsters! They will destroy everything if I don’t stop them!” You yelled, a sudden gnawing at your insides. Maybe it was guilt. Farkas didn’t deserve to be yelled at, but you didn't stop. “There is no glory in this! This is desperate, and I am desperate-”  

You stopped. “Oh gods, I’m awful aren’t I?”  

Farkas confusion only deepened. “No, you-”  

“But I am! I am! I am the only person who can stop these dragons -- these things and I -- I don’t even want to.” You looked at Farkas like you’d stumbled upon the most horrible thing.  

You would’ve writhed and rejected any amount of pity at any other point in time but the pity painting Farkas’s face at that moment caused you to shrink, to crumble only further beneath the weight of your truth.  

“All I want to do is just live like a normal person. For once. That shouldn’t be such a big request so why do I feel so awful asking for it?” You tore at your hair in frustration. “Why do I feel so awful for just wanting to be happy?”  

You could remember one dream you’d had where it was a wonderfully mundane day. You and Farkas had a home where the sun would pour in through the windows and wake you both up with weary, sleepy yawns. You could stay beneath the blankets for hours, there was nothing forcing you out. You chattered between one another pulled yourself out of bed to trudge drowsily together for breakfast. You didn’t do anything you didn’t want to do, by the end of the day you were sitting before the fire and falling asleep in his arms. 

And then you woke up in that cold, damp camp. The sadness that overcame you then was tangible, palpable. 

How could you move on from that? How could think of anything but the future that would forever be out of your grasp?

Farkas took a few steps forward, reaching out with wary hands that weren’t quite making contact, hovering over your arms. “If you aren’t happy like this, tell me how I can fix it -- make it better.” 

You scrunched up your nose in frustration. “You can’t!” 

Farkas finally set his palms against your arms, steadying you despite all the hurt rattling inside of you. 

“I can try.” 

Your chin quivered and then the crying became real. You felt it that time. You crashed against Farkas and sobbed into his chest. Usually, he wasn’t the best with comforting -- he did his best but wasn’t good with words. This time, he didn't need any. He just embraced you, holding on tight as the two of you slowly dropped to the snow-littered ground. 

“I’m sorry -- I shouldn’t be doing this.” 

Farkas shook his head. “No, I’m glad you told me. We can do something about it.” 

He eased you back so he could wipe the tears still dribbling down your cheeks. His hands were rough and calloused but his touch then was so gentle. He offered a small smile. “We’ll take it slow. We can try something new, something normal, every day.” 

“But... the dragons. We can’t... we can’t just stop.” 

“If they show up, we know, and we stop them. But you don’t have to spend your life fixing the world’s problems. You shouldn’t have to.” 

“But there’s so much. There’s so much I need to do-” 

“You don’t have to do it now. No one can do everything in a day. But you can rest.” 

A part of you still had that rejection tugging at your heart. You had to keep moving, you had to keep fighting and protecting. You were nothing if you weren’t the Dragonborn, weren’t you? What could you be otherwise? 

“Whatever... I want.” The realization came to you. “We can be -- we can do -- whatever we want...!” 

Farkas gave a low chuckle. “We can try.” 

Both of you quietly laughed for a moment before Farkas asked a question, the world feeling just a bit softer. 

“What’s the first thing you want to do?” 

You snorted. “I want to find a fire, and sleep.” 

That brought Farkas a crooked grin, helping you up and winding an arm around your waist as you began your trek from the battlefield. 

“We can do that.” 

[catatonic-writes]

Anguish - Marco x Reader

Title: Anguish Summary: Marco is sad, you kick his butt. Takes place after the revenge war between Whitebeard Pirates and Blackbeard. Relationship: Marco x Reader Warnings: - depression, drinking - Prompt/AU: 120 words - 120 oneshots AO3 Link

"Marco, it can't go on like this." How many times would you have to talk to him? When did he finally understand that this hiding game had to stop? "Marco, please." You put one hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off immediately. For a year now he had been getting calmer and calmer, he was almost lethargic. As calm as the former vice was, even for him it was no longer normal to talk so little - you were seriously worried about him. A little more than a year ago you had suffered the fatal defeat against Blackbeard. Since then, the commanders had scattered, some even lost contact. As usual, you had been close on the Phoenix's heels and had been able to locate him after only a few weeks. He had only had a few crew members with him and they entrenched themselves on a small, deserted island. The ruins of a village were to be found there, a destroyed country in which the remains of the Whitebeard pirates hid like cowards. First they lost their father, the captain and Ace on the same day - then this devastating defeat against Blackbeard, the traitor. An enormous burden lay on Marco's shoulders, but that was no reason to sink into this gloomy mood day after day. You were pirates, it had to go on! "We can't sit around here getting drunk any longer," you growled and sparkled at him angrily. "Marco! I am talking to you!" "And I can hear you just wonderfully." He lay in the shade of the setting sun, leaning against the wall of a ruined house with a bottle of rum in his hand. "But I'm trying to ignore you." Angrily you snorted and snatched the bottle from him, which he had almost completely emptied. "Marco..." You sat down next to him and pulled your legs up to your body, put your chin down on your knees. "I know it's hard..." "Don't pretend you know what's going on inside me," he interrupted you harshly. "You're taking a lot out of yourself." "Because I'm worried about you," you protested and leaned aside a little as he tried to grab the bottle in your hand. "You've been feeling sorry for yourself for months, instead of avenging them!" "We have tried, you can see what has come out of it," Marco rumbled annoyed. One could clearly see that he did not want to talk about the defeat of the retaliation war. Every time you tried to even remotely touch on the subject, he would get angry or just leave you standing. But you didn't want to give up hope either - after all, this was Marco the Phoenix! As former vice of Whitebeards it was his duty to continue the gang and when did Marco ever throw in the towel in defeat?

"You're getting on my nerves," he finally growled at you and gave up hunting for the bottle. He leaned back, his arms crossed behind his head and watched the sunset. Did he really want to ignore you now? What a childish behavior! "If you want these back, you should be a little nicer to me," you replied and took a sip of rum - damn, he drank the very strong liquor! The drink burned in your throat and you frowned in disgust. "What else should I fight for, huh?" he asked quietly and you turned to him. With closed eyes he sat there, motionless and thoughtful. "So more of my family can die? We have it pretty good here, believe me." "And what are you gonna do on this damn island? Grow pumpkins?" you replied sarcastically and slowly very irritated. Why did he want to hide? Why did he abandon his nakama? That was not his usual way, quite the contrary. Marco had always been there for his friends, no matter what. "Maybe," he said to your suggestion with the pumpkins, even if it was only pure defiance. It was like discussing with a teenager, terrible!

"You're a coward," you finally said, had enough of his stubbornness. You stood up and knocked the dirt off your pants, but you gave him a quick look. "I am disappointed in you." "Get in line, you're not alone." He sounded not only defiant, but sad as well. Of course he was upset about the events of the past two years, but it was time to get a grip and finally make the seas unsafe again! Whether he wanted to or not, you would not love a coward. As strong as your feelings for Marco were, he wasn't himself and alone he couldn't find his way out of this depression. In the past you rarely had the chance to be there for him, but now you could prove to him how much you really loved him. "Come on." You reached out your hand to him and your gaze softened a little. "You know very well I won't stop bitching." He opened his eyes, hesitated for a moment and seemed to weigh his options. If he turned you down, you would actually bitch until his ears bled. But if, against all expectations, he should accept your help - then it was time to seriously face the past and look ahead. It would be painful, but there was simply no other way. "If you finally stop lecturing me," he grumbled in a rough voice and grabbed your hand so that you could pull him up from the floor. For a moment you stood facing each other and your heart went up. He did not let go of your hand and you did not let go of his either. How you would love to tell him that you loved him! But it was not the right place and not the right time. There were more important things to do. "You know, I really do care about you..." you said with embarrassment. You could tell him that much, but not the whole truth. He snorted in amusement and then nodded, squeezing your hand gently "I know." he said and when you looked up to him like that you could melt away. How you would like to confess it to him, but it would be wrong to take advantage of his agony. He had been in pain for months, struggling with guilt and loss. It was inappropriate to use the word love now, because he certainly didn't have a mind for that at the moment. But still he held your hand, warm skin that touched your own. "I hate it when you kick my ass..." he sighed and rumpled your hair. Laughing, you ducked away, trying to escape the insidious attack. "I'd love to do it again!" you replied and for a moment your eyes met. You saw the pain behind it, something that would have been unthinkable two years ago. But you would help him rebuild the Whitebeard Pirates, even if they were scattered all over the place and hunted down by some notable pirates. Marco could trust you, you would always be there for the man you loved. And at some point, when everything had calmed down, you could finally confess it to him.

[devnicolee]

The Chosen Ones (4)

Word Count: 10,377

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3]

“What is going on with you? I mean... I have never known you to be this reckless," the king of Wakanda exclaimed as he wore a whole in the carpet of his sister's room, pacing back and forth endlessly. 

Asha rubbed her forehead, shame and frustration growing as her brother's lecture drew on minute by minute. 

"T'Challa, I said I was sorry. I do not need a lecture. Believe me, I feel horrible enough as it is!" She tried to say. 

First M'Baku... now him? She couldn't take this much disappointment from both of them in the same evening, her heart couldn't handle it. She felt a small, soft squeeze to her hand, knowing it was moral support from her sister. Asha smiled weakly but her eyes didn't leave their dead stare into her lap, she didn't want to look at any of them.

"Apparently you do! I asked you if you wanted out of this engagement, I gave you an out. But now, there are certain responsibilities and obligations that you can't ignore just because you feel like it. And it is just," he took a moment to catch his breath before continuing, "it is highly inappropriate as a new council member and advisor to create a potential scandal of this magnitu-"

"Yes, I am a cheater and a horrible person. The worthless trouble-making, embarrassing liability to the great Panther Tribe. I get it! I have heard it several times today and every day for most of my life, I do not need any more reminders from you!" 

Asha's voice raised to match her brother's and in anger she leapt off her bed, standing toe to toe with him. She could feel the rings on her hands working overtime to tame the beast within as her hurt from the last few hours transitioned to anger.

"Ok, ok! Asha, it is alright. No one is saying any of those things. T'Challa certainly doesn't think them," Nakia inserted quickly, walking over and placing a soothing hand on the young princess's back. 

The two siblings were no stranger to a squabble or two but this was beyond both of them. Unlike T'Challa, Nakia could see that all of this was a symptom of a deeper issue and they would not get to the bottom of it by shaming her choices. She sent a silent but reproachful glare T'Challa's way as she tried to calm Asha down enough to continue. "Perhaps you should go. We will talk to her," she added quietly, seeing the fractures the emotionally-charged evening had sent through the young princess. 

T'Challa hesitated, now understanding that he had misstepped and feeling as though an apology was due. But Nakia simply shook her head and motioned toward the door. He nodded before motioning for Okoye to follow and quickly exit the room. 

As soon as her door slammed shut, Asha felt the weight of the day heavy on her shoulders, causing her to sink down to the floor by her bed. She buried her head in her hands as she tried to stop more tears from falling.

Haven't we cried enough today?

"I would like to be alone, please," she whispered, muffled but still clear enough for the remaining two occupants of her bedroom to hear.

"No, we are not leaving you like this. Talk to us. What happened?" Nakia asked as she crouched in front of Asha. 

Asha didn't move or attempt to acknowledge her question. She knew what they really wanted and that was to unpack that kiss... the now infamous kiss. But what would Asha say? How could she explain it when she was hundreds of miles from understanding the complexity of her feelings toward M'Baku. She always thought love was supposed to be simple, easy, but this was anything but that. In two days, she and M'Baku managed to entangle themselves in a web of all those emotions and that kiss was right smack in the center. Asha did not have the capacity to unravel it all tonight.

Asha couldn't tell if she kissed him because she longed for affection, was angry at the guy she was supposed to be with, was desperate for a different life, actually loved him or because she just wanted to feel something other than sadness. Or if it was some combination of all those things? All of them came with an airplane worth of baggage that could not be reduced to the carry-on sized explanation they desired.

"Nothing happened... M'Baku was comforting me and we got caught up in the moment. That is it."

The women both knew she was lying, that she just wasn't willing to share. But still, they persisted. 

"Come on, Asha. We know you. And w-we understand what you are going through but you have to talk to us and let us in. Let us help you."

Asha scoffed, her sister's ignorance almost made a laugh escape from her lips,. 

"You don't understand. How could you possibly? Neither of you know what it is like to be despised or treated like an embarrassment. You have never spent a single moment in your lives as I have. You don't get it and you never will!" She lashed out at them. She stood up and turned her back to them, taking a deep breath to calm herself.  "Please leave. Now. I wish to be alone."

"Asha.."

"Please do not make me have Alexis forcibly remove you. Just go, please." 

The shaky begging in her voice did the trick, leading both women out of her door. Asha slid back to her spot on the floor, tears making their silent trek down her face. 

She wished she had never allowed T'Challa to convince her to leave this room in the first place, wished she had never stepped a foot in the soft snow of Jabariland, and wished her eyes had never fallen on him. Then she would be happy... or at least, as happy as she was before and that would still be enough. She would be officially engaged in a week, existing in ignorance’s bliss. She would never know what true freedom tasted like, never know what true love felt like and so she wouldn't have to mourn it as she does now.

Sadness morphed into anger and frustration at everyone who forced her out of her safe isolation but didn't warn her that once you have seen light, it is impossible to go back to darkness. 

****

Asha tried to put a smile on her face as she sat in silence in the council meeting, but it was difficult to hide sadness when it is as deeply rooted as Asha's was. Your smile can be as bright as the Sun but it always still shows through in your eyes. She just wanted to retreat back to her room, not see him or Hasani who both sat in the circle of chairs branching out from her brother's. She also just hated being in these meetings to begin with, still feeling as though she didn't belong. It did not help that half of the circle... her mother, Elder Shani and her son all gave her cold reproachful looks that basically told her she didn't belong if she dared give her opinion. And now to make it worse, she felt like there was a giant, "I am a cheater" sign glowing above her head. 

She didn't quite understand why she felt so guilty, she knew Hasani never lost sleep over cheating on her. And his indiscretions were far worse than a simple kiss. But still, as she stole glances at both men, she felt guilty: guilty for cheating and guilty for bringing M'Baku into this mess. And she supposed her life's goal was to not be as carefree and uncaring as Hasani, certainly not the marker of a good person.

But she most wanted to talk to M'Baku, wanted to apologize or explain herself or... well, she did not quite know what she wanted to say to him. They said so much last night while simultaneously leaving so much unsaid. She questioned whether words would even matter at this point. But she felt the pull and desire to say something either way, just to hear the comfort in his voice, ensure that that comfort was still there. There was a stab of regret every time she considered the fact that she may have destroyed their friendship over a kiss, a stab that felt as painful as a physical wound in her body. But those were the consequences, she supposed. A moment of weakness in exchange for one of the few positive relationships in her life. 

"We cannot accept these terms. This agreement with the Jabari is an insult to your father's legacy and all who have fought to control the spread of such a disease in our borders," Elder Shani almost shouted from her seat in front of her brother. 

 The argument ensuing around her snatched Asha's head out of the clouds and back down to Earth where she found the council entrenched in a loud and unruly argument. Asha quickly realized that the Elders had found the one clause in the treaty Asha buried deeply and had simply hoped would go unnoticed. But it seemed little got past Elder Shani, who likely read through it with a fine-toothed comb to find a mistake on Asha's part.

"This treaty is about respecting the Jabari's way of life and integrating it into ours. They have a different respect and custom for mutants or the Chosen, as I believe Lord M'Baku has referred to them. After conversations with my sister and Lord M'Baku, I will not ask them to change their customs and their ways. He has assured me that they will not be a threat to the ways in which we govern down the mountains." 

Asha and M'Baku gave her brother a side eye, knowing that he pulled that explanation out of nowhere. That part of the treaty was added last minute after M'Baku expressed concerns over integrating the Jabari's Chosen into a regressive society. She chose not to bring it up and prolong the talks, figuring her brother would not notice a clause buried so deeply in the treaty's many pages.

"And what if that changes? What if one of them comes down here and creates trouble?" 

"Asha, you met with the people of Jabariland, saw their customs in practice. What do you think?" 

Asha gulped, mouth going dry at the idea of having to defend mutants to the most hostile person in the room, the person who also knew her secret. She glanced at her brother out of the corner of her eye whose smirk clearly told her that this was a problem of her creation that she now needed to fix.

"T-t-the Chosen are a peaceful group of Jabari. They are no different than the non-gifted among them. They have absolutely no reason to fight or create trouble for us down the mountains. Their goal is to use their p-powers to help advance the tribe. It is my belief that they will not be an issue for us." 

"And what if their idea of advancing the tribe is overthrowing us and ensuring Lord M'Baku sits on the throne?" Another elder chimed in. 

M'Baku laughed loudly, as if the idea of wanting the throne was too preposterous to take seriously. 

"I wanted to be king of Wakanda once, yes, it is true. However, since then I have saved your rightful king, risked Jabari lives to overthrow a usurper, and put that King back on his throne. Without my people and I, Killmonger would still be alive and sitting in that chair. Seems like an awful lot of work when I could have just taken the Heart-Shaped Herb to become King myself and left King T'Challa to die. My interests no longer lie in leading this backwards nation." 

"'Backwards?'" Elder Shani shouted, outraged at the insult. "How dare you?" 

"Yes, backwards. A country that has all the resources in the world, offers all the opportunity in the world to its people and still finds a way to hold people back, to limit the power and ability of the more gifted among you. You can call us savages and insult me, I know what some of you say behind my back. But at least, the Jabari treat their fellow citizens with the respect Hanuman demands. When Bast calls you all home to the Plains... Will you be able to say the same?" 

"Enough! That is quite enough," T'Challa called, causing all the tempers to quiet down significantly. "Elder Shani, as always, I appreciate your counsel. However, the treaty is final. The Jabari will not be forced to comply with any law within the Mutant Regulation Act. Lord M'Baku and the Jabari proved themselves to be a loyal tribe of Wakanda ten times over and I will not have that loyalty questioned in this room again. I reserve my right as king to revisit any aspect of the treaty if, and only if, it becomes an issue." 

He and M'Baku shared a respectful head nod before T'Challa continued. 

"Thank you all for a productive meeting. Unless there are outstanding matters, we will reconvene next Saturday prior to the start of the Festival. This year's festival will begin Sunday night at the Falls for the announcement of my sister's engagement and the King’s Exhibition. Thank you all. Wakanda Forever." 

At the mention of her engagement, Asha glanced at M'Baku and she wished she hadn't. His body was rigid and she could almost see the rage radiating off him into the space. 

"Wakanda Forever," they all replied in unison, as the meeting broke up. 

Asha turned around to pick up her tablet and notebook, mainly to avoid the death glare she was receiving from Elder Shani across the room. When she turned back, the older woman was in a huddled discussion with another elder and her mother. Their hushed whispers could not reach her ears but she knew it was likely nothing good. 

She kept her eyes trained on the floor as she walked, until she ran into the hard, broad back of someone. 

"Oh, I am sorry! I didn't see you th- M'Baku," she started to apologize to the unknown person until they turned around and she came face to face with the man she was desperately trying to avoid. She wondered if it would have been less painless to run into Elder Shani as she looked into his eyes, finding no more admiration and love there.

"Yes your highness?" 

His voice matched his eyes... cold and despondent, everything she didn't expect from him. She felt a sense of deja-vu to how he treated her prior to coming to the mountains. She remembered how it felt to be on the receiving end of his coldness and not understand why. She understood why now, but that didn't dampen the sting.

"U-uh, w-well I-I wanted to s-speak with you, actually," Asha stammered as she adjusted to all the things she was not used to from him... his coldness, formality and harsh tone. The silence between the stretched out as she tried to figure out what to say.  

"Well?" he barked. "I do not have all day, I am in a rush to return home." 

His tone hit her like a slap in the face. "N-never mind then, I hope you have a safe journey home." 

He nodded and saluted her with a pained look on his face before turning to head back down the hall. Her eyes glistened slightly, she felt the pressure of tears building behind them but she tried to push those emotions down. They both made their choices and here laid the consequences, she would learn to deal with them.  

M'Baku thought his feet could not carry him back to his carriage fast enough. He wanted nothing more than to flee this palace, and retreat to his own home to sulk and nurse his bruised heart. He thought they had started to build something... something beautiful and as quickly as it was put together, it crumbled. 

"M'Baku!"

He grimaced as he heard the unmistakable timbre of his king calling after him. He wanted so badly to ignore him and if this was a time in the past, he would have. But he respected T'Challa, and was growing to see him as something resembling a friend. So he pushed down his annoyance and heartbreak to speak to his King, praying to Hanuman that this was a short conversation. He almost jumped clean out of his skin to find the King directly behind him instead of down the hall. 

"My king?" 

"Leaving so soon?" T'Challa asked, his tone pleasant and airy, not like someone addressing the man whom he found making out with one of his younger sisters the day prior. 

"Yes, I have matters to attend to at home. What can I do for you?" M'Baku decided to cut the formalities short, he knew T'Challa did not stop him for that. 

T'Challa nodded, his face descending into a more serious look. "Are you in love with my sister?"

He eyed the look of surprise that passed across M'Baku's face before adding, "I speak to you not as King but as an older brother who just wants his sister to be happy. There is no wrong answer here. Are you in love with her?" 

"Yes," M'Baku replied shortly. There was not much else to say, this was all very simple to him.  

T'Challa gestured forward, allowing the man to continue his journey toward his carriage as they walked. 

"My sister always pretends to be happy, never complains about her horrible treatment at the hands of my parents or her regulation to being a prisoner in her own home. She always tries to hide it but it shows... it always shows in her eyes. They hold a certain sadness, or at least they have every single day for the last 15 years. The only other person on this Earth who I have seen with eyes like that died a few weeks ago. I couldn't save him, couldn't undo the injustices my family doled out upon him. But I... I can save Asha." 

"Forgive me, my King. But I don't understand what you want from me?" 

"When my sister walked off the Talon 24 hours ago, she looked like a completely different person. Joy and happiness radiated off her like light from the Sun. It was the first day I looked at my sister and didn't see that sadness. I do not have to be as smart as Shuri or as intuitive as Nakia to know who brought that about. My sister is in love with you. I want you to know that before you get in that carriage and resign to writing her off for the rest of your life. She is stuck between her heart and obligation, what she wants and what she has been conditioned to believe she should have. And Shuri and I are trying to help her but... As a brother, I-I am just asking you not to give up on her just yet."

As he finished, they reached his carriage. T'Challa did not wait for M'Baku to respond, he simply saluted him before turning on his heels to tread the same path back into the palace. Meanwhile, M'Baku just stood there staring after him for a while, another plan to forget Asha slowly sinking down the drain. 

****

"M'Baku!"

He tore his eyes from the mountains, ready to snap at the man foolish enough to interrupt him, only to find N'Danna standing not too far behind him. N'Danna looked annoyed as if he had been calling the chief's name for a while. M'Baku clearly hadn't heard him, trapped in a cycle of his own thoughts, the light wind blowing past, and the nighttime jitters of the forest.

He barely acknowledged his second-in-command, knowing his best friend would just come and occupy the empty spot next to him. And sure enough, he felt his presence beside him as the man dusted the snow off the odd-shaped, massive boulder M'Baku was currently sitting on and sat down beside him.

"You are a hard man to find since returning from the Golden City," N'Danna mused as he took his cue from his chief and began staring at the mountains in front of him.

N'Danna supposed they were really just staring at nothing. He knew mountains were there, visible when the sun was high in the sky. But in such darkness, the best they could see was a vague outline. His gaze fell down to the village below that was still bustling with activity, lights branching out like veins in the darkness. 

"How long have you been out here?"

"Since the sunset."

"You have turned into somewhat of a sunset enthusiast. And why did you decide to come out here on the coldest night of the winter?" N'Danna inquired.

M'Baku shook his head, "I don't know. I have come here every night for the last three days. I say I am not going to come and still I find myself out here all night. Not sure what answers I expect to find out here though." 

N'Danna nodded, both men leaning back and laying against the rocks to look up at the midnight sky and twinkling stars. 

"This is a good spot to find answers I suppose. And being here probably makes you feel closer to her, right?"

The two men turned to each other and N'Danna let out a light chuckle at the disgruntled look on his friend's face. 

"I didn't even get that from your thoughts this time. Just an observation. You have been this way for the last few days, ever since you got back." Silence fell over the two for a moment before N'Danna spoke again. "Talk to me, M'Baku. What is going on with you? I have never seen you like this before."

When he didn't say anything initially, N'Danna assumed he opted to ignore his question. It wouldn't be the first time his friend chose to ignore things instead of addressing them. And so, after a few minutes of quiet, N'Danna returned his attention to the barely visible mountains ahead of them. He was surprised when he finally heard a response minutes later. 

"I fell in love with her," M'Baku stated out of the blue. N'Danna wished he could see beneath the Earth's surface, and get confirmation of his suspicion that Hell had indeed frozen over at this admission. M'Baku had been with many women in his 30 years of living and had never so much as uttered a word similar to "love" toward any of them, such a word was vacant from his vocabulary. Now N'Danna understood, he got it. His poor chief had fallen fast and hard for the first time and was left out in the cold, a cold he was not accustomed to. 

"And s-she rejected me. I was j-jus- And now she is about to be engaged... engaged to a man wh-" words failed him as he tried to verbalize how truly frustrating this all was. But his words resembled his thoughts, jumbled and disjointed as he tried to sift through the complex web he had woven. "About to live her life in hiding and secret again. It just does not make sense!" 

"Why does that bother you so much? It is her life to live. If she chooses to hide and waste it, what is it to you?"

M'Baku gave him an incredulous look, immediately standing from the boulder to pace beside it. N'Danna was a Chosen, M'Baku was baffled that he could not see the issue in all this. 

"Because she deserves better! She deserves what every person like her in these mountains has: the opportunity to be yourself, be raised to see the limitless power of what Hanuman has given you, the chance to do anything. That is what you have! That is what all of the Chosen have. It is not fair that she was stripped of that... Striped of that to be what? Someone of her power reduced to a rung on a ladder for a power-hungry shell of a man. It is not right."

"She is a princess, M'Baku, these obligations come with the territory. I am sure she is just doing what she thinks is best." 

M'Baku scoffed, "Screw the obligations of royalty! We are talking about a woman who possesses powers... a gift that these mountains - Hell I would wager the world has not seen in generations. She is a once-in-a-lifetime gift, limitless power at her fingertips. She is not ordinary, she deserves more than ordinary!" 

N'Danna sighed, sitting up. 

"You speak of the Chosen as if we are Gods and Goddesses M'Baku. That has always been the problem, this altar you exalt us to, you prayed to be one of us when you don't really understand the burden we all carry.  Asha is not limitless, none of us are! Asha was raised to hide, taught to be ashamed of who she was. Her powers are not unlimited. They are faulty, complicated, powerful, rare, stressed, beautiful and malleable just as the woman who wields them. You are so blinded by the beauty of her powers that you cannot see the tragedy in it. And that is why you are so disappointed. Not because she chose another man, but because she is has something you have longed for and she is showing you that not everyone is happy to be gifted... not everyone wants it. She may be a once-in-a-lifetime power, I do not doubt that, but she is also a young girl stuck between impossible choices, stuck between realities."

M'Baku shook his head, "Being with me is an impossible choice? Following your heart, choosing a better life is an impossible choice? I showed her how life could be different. Ok, you say it is not freedom, fine. But it is so much more than what she has now. How hard of a choice is that?"

"Following your heart has consequences, running up here to be with you and throw fire around to her heart's content has consequences. And not just for her... for her family, for all of Wakanda. She is a member of the Royal Family, for Hanuman's sake. P-people learn to love their chains M'Baku. Sometimes they become more comfortable, safer than what lies outside them. You offer her freedom but ignore the price of that freedom. Maybe she is not willing to pay it after only knowing you for two days."

M'Baku sighed and bowed his head, looking toward the forest to his left, the dark branches loaded down with fresh snow from the storm earlier that day. 

"I j-just... I want better for her. I thought I could help bring light into her life and maybe, I just don't know how to accept that I failed. I-I don't know how to go back to life before her," he admitted honestly. 

"Perhaps it is not all about you. You want her, and I understand that. But you did help her start down a path of self discovery. The Asha who left here last week is very different from the one who came here at first. She will find it difficult to retreat to her old life. Maybe you planted seeds that will flourish one day but you don't get to bask in the garden's beauty... it may not be meant for you. I know it is not what you want but you may have to accept that it is all you will get."

The two men stared at each other as his words settled in M'Baku's mind. This was probably the most honest conversation the two men had ever had in their friendship, N'Danna was the only person willing to tell M'Baku when he was wrong, push him down the correct path when he was stuck, straying or stalling to find it himself.

"The King asked me not to give up on her, not to push her away," he offered quietly, the grief of a love lost clear in his voice. 

"Then don't, if you don't want to. She is not getting married Sunday, merely publicly announcing her engagement. So much can happen between now and the altar. But until then, you can stop torturing yourself and all of us," he added with a joking tone and smile, "Let her go and let the chips fall where they may. If she is meant to be yours, Hanuman will bring her back." 

M'Baku nodded slowly. He looked over N'Danna's shoulder toward the center of the cliff they stood on. It was like a movie in front of him, he could see them clear as day. He wished he could go back to that moment, wrapped in the warmth of each other and deep in their own world. It was worth it, he decided, whatever heartbreak he had to endure the last few days or was in store for him moving forward. 

"Let us go home, M'Baku. You got the answers you need." 

M'Baku smiled at his friend and they both walked back to their individual carriages. Before it pulled off, he smiled sadly at that spot again, knowing he wouldn't be back here any time soon. N'Danna was right, Hanuman sent the answers he was desperately seeking. He just had to listen. 

****

Asha felt like she had blinked and suddenly the week was almost over. She was not complaining though. A busy mind meant she couldn't pine for M'Baku, grief the loss of him, or think about her upcoming public engagement, which made all of this official, not some back alley deal between their parents. Staying busy was the only way to keep those thoughts and her looming dread at bay.

She had to admit though, without the allure of M'Baku and Jabariland, Asha realized that her new job lacked a certain appeal. But... she felt like everything lacked a certain appeal these days. 

However, when darkness fell and the palace quieted, it hit her the hardest. She didn’t really need sleep so she couldn't count on it to take her away from it all and sometimes, even the unconscious world was unsafe. She counted at least one dream a night that featured M'Baku in some fashion. 

And that is how she found herself after a particularly packed Thursday, laying in her bed, staring at the ceiling and praying to Bast to let her sleep. But no such luck. She tossed and she turned, and she thought of no one and nothing else but that man up the mountains and their last conversation. 

It is clear that he is falling for you. You could escape... leave all this behind, the panther inside seemed to whisper, desperate to return to its life outside its cage. You hate it here. 

I don't hate it here, she argued back. My family is here. Well, at least T'Challa and Shuri... Nakia, Alexis, Okoye - they are all here. I couldn't just leave them to deal with whatever wrath Elder Shani could unleash. 

But this isn't for you anymore.

The thought made Asha cringe a little, knowing she could never say that out loud. What would her siblings say? It would devastate them. But it was not untrue, she realized in those quiet, lonely and restless moments in the dead of the night. After her father's death, her life was supposed to get easier with less restrictions and a bit more freedom. Yet somehow, the chains felt heavier and tighter. Pretending to be normal had never been this... this hard. 

She felt like an animal being herded back into captivity after experiencing the wild, a life driven by its own desires. She did not realize what it would take to learn to re-love her chains, the pieces of her soul they siphon from her to do so. She shed them so quickly and willingly up the mountains, savored every second of the sweet freedom it offered her. And just like that she was back here, ripped out of her dreams into reality. She didn't expect it to be so hard truthfully... had no idea the pain she was preparing herself for.

She knew one thing though - this would never be enough, not after she experienced something different. This bastardized freedom her brother gave her just wouldn't do. It was the best he could offer, she certainly didn't fault him for it.  But compared to what M'Baku showed her? This was merely a weak imitation. 

She pulled the fluffy white pillow from beside her on top of her face and screamed into it, loud enough to release her frustration but not loud enough to send Alexis racing into her room, spear raised. Annoyance rippled through her that her body would not just allow her the simple reprieve from this world for another, the downside of sleep being a mere luxury and not a necessity for survival.

This just isn't helping, she ultimately decided.

Her mind drifted around the palace, thinking of all the places she could go to distract her and pass the night hours. Shuri's private lab was an option but she knew the young girl liked to work through the night and was not interested in talking to anyone. Her mind wandered to the library, which was a solid option of unlimited solitude. But even that did not have a certain appeal, she just thought of him and how they first met. 

The training center?

There was an idea she could work with, a space that could not remind her of him. Besides, nothing cleared the mind like a good at was an idea she could work with. Nothing cleared the mind like a work out and thanks to her brother, she had a brand new, never been used training center of her own to test out. It was the only spot that offered any sort of appeal to her now. She slid out of bed and quickly changed her clothes.

Alexis stood at attention, saluting her before Asha told her where she was going and convinced her to take the rest of the night off. 

She walked across the palace and downstairs, entering the main training room and immediately heading for a discreet door on the back wall. One full body scan later and the door slid open for her to enter.

It was beautiful, Asha thought to herself as she walked around the room. It was long and slender unlike the expansive training room on the other side of the wall. The cushioned training mat floor was soft beneath her feet, the tall ceilings overheard would give her just enough space to practice sustaining flight, sleek walls embedded with blue flecks of vibranium that glowed lighting the room in a blue hue.

One thing did confuse her though, the lack of equipment. She looked around, trying to understand the mechanics of the space. It was completely empty, all except for the computer monitor across from the entrance. As if it sensed her presence as she approached, it immediately lit up and offered a menu of training modes for Asha to choose from. Asha slowly took her rings off, sitting them and her shoes together in the corner, before scrolling through the many options and settings. She didn't understand how any of them would work with no equipment but she never got a proper tutorial of the space. But she knew her brother was smart so she chose combat and figured that she would learn as she went.

She walked to the center of the room and on cue, the lights dimmed and suddenly, a hologram of a person came racing toward her. Asha barely had time to think or process before the attacker raised a digital weapon and a loud bang sounded across the silent room.

Before she knew it, a massive blast of air knocked her on her back and let her know that she had been hit. 

"Simulation over," a computerized female voice called throughout the room. "Assailant: 1; Asha: 0."

A small groan escaped her throat as she slowly sat up and tried to catch her breath. 

Once she was on her feet again, she called out, "Again," signaling for the simulation to restart.

She sank into a defensive position as the lights darkened again, focusing her eyes on the wall at the end of the room and preparing for the man to emerge once more. She watched, waiting as nothing happened. But soon, she felt a presence behind her. She turned quickly, not wasting precious seconds this time. She immediately threw a ball of fire at the figure causing it to crumble to the ground and disappear. 

She was so distracted watching the hologram disappear that she was surprised to feel a small blast of air hit her shoulder, directing her attention to a hologram on the window ledge. She was finally starting to understand the mechanics of combat mode, Asha killed that assailant next. This continued for 10 minutes, Asha dodging targets and their weapons. The simulation ended with another sneak attack, causing her to realize that any blow that would be fatal in the real world caused the simulation to cease. 

Still, as she heard the score back, she felt as though she had redeemed herself. Not that it really mattered, there was no one there to see it. Asha: 10, Assailants: 5 was not bad for her second round. 

Asha watched as the computer pulled up a heat signature of the room, red and orange on random spots around the room. She pressed a glowing "extinguish" button, which caused the room to release the targeted extinguisher to those spots, returning the room to normal.

Asha went through combat mode three more times, the assailants and patterns changing every time. They became more complex, she realized, the room analyzing her battle patterns and movements to push her harder. By her last round, Asha had kicked her powers into high gear, certainly more energy than she had ever used. But she looked like a skilled dancer instead of a clumsy fawn as she ran, jumped and dodged blasts across the room. She threw fire, caused diversions, hovered in the air to better examine the full field of attackers. She created life-sized fire panthers that chased down her attackers and killed them at her command like her own personal army. She even realized that once or twice, she could block the blasts with a fire shield, though she couldn't sustain it. The last simulation only ended when a voice overpowered the settings. Asha was directing a panther to attack three figures who were running from it from her position in the air when she saw her brother leaning against the wall in the corner.

"Simulation over," the voice said again as Asha made the fire disappear and landed softly back on the ground. She did not acknowledge her brother initially, walking to grab her shoes and rings as the voice said, "Assailants: 3, Asha: 25."

"I was trying to get to 30," she called, realizing how out of breath and tired she was as she tried to talk and walk over to him. 

The room did a final extinguish of the night as they both moved back into the main training center. She sat down on the floor, exhausted, to drink some water. 

"I needed a training partner. Trust me, you looked amazing, you were just showing off at that point. I am surprised to find you down here. Have you ever even used it since I built it?" 

Asha's chest heaved as she caught her breath. She didn't understand how she felt this exhausted despite only training for an hour.

"Not since Baba. Figured now was as good a time as any. I couldn't sleep. You either?" She looked at the time on her beads: 3 am. 

"Nope. I woke up and tossed around for a bit before something told me that this was the place to be tonight. Now I know why. Train with me," he asked assertively. She knew it was not a legitimate question. There was only one proper answer when her brother wanted a late-night sparring partner. 

T'Challa powered up his suit, the only thing that would protect his skin from burns when practicing hand-to-hand combat with Asha. She sank into her battle stance, ignoring the exhaustion in her body. T'Challa was the better fighter, regardless of Asha's lethal abilities, because he practiced more and had super strength and speed. He knew all of Asha's moves and how to respond while it seemed she could never keep up with him. If he was being honest, these sessions were more for Asha than him.

After letting Asha win twice and beating her once, T'Challa let her fall back on the training floor to rest.  

"That was good, you are getting better," he offered as he sat on a bench next to her. She envied him, she looked like she had just stepped out of a pool of her own sweat while he looked as if he could walk into a state dinner, perfectly unruffled despite fighting for 30 minutes.  

"Thanks," she nodded. 

"How are you? I meant to check in earlier this week, see how you are enjoying your work." 

"The work is good T'Challa. I enjoy it. Everything is good," she responded lightly, hoping that would be enough to end the line of questioning she was sure was forming on his lips. 

They hadn't really spoken since the drama at the state dinner the week prior and she had been kind of avoiding him to keep it that way. She did not want to talk to anyone about this but something felt especially odd about going to her older brother about her love life. She knew T'Challa had his way, she would be single forever so no one could hurt her.

"Asha..."

She turned her head away from him, recognizing that tone. He was descending into full big brother mode, desiring to talk about her feelings and fix whatever problems he thought plagued her. Asha knew he meant well and he tried, but most of her problems... he actually couldn't fix. And this one would be no different.

"Talk to me. Everything is not good. You are not ok. You are different, we can all see it. Don't keep it all bottled up." 

Asha sighed, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the towel next to her.

"If I could explain it, T'Challa, I would." 

"Try... for me. As long as it takes." 

"Before I went to Jabariland, the idea of leaving this palace terrified me. You know how resistant I was to take on this role in the first place. All I could think of is Baba saying that I was dangerous and all the ways I could hurt or kill people. And so, staying here, being a good princess and marrying Hasani... it was prison but it was a comfortable one. Over time, the chains hurt less... the frustration faded and I learned to love and appreciate the life I had. It was not the best but it was enough." 

"But then you experienced something different?" He offered. 

Asha looked at him, appreciating that he was giving her the opening to admit the one thing she thought she had to keep secret to spare his feelings. 

"But then I experienced something different," she echoed. "Thanks to you, by the way," she nudged him playfully. "Something life-changing. He pushed me to the edge and made me rethink everything I had thought about my powers before. Made me see beauty in the flowers where I only saw weeds. And then on top of that... I-I fell in love with him. So fast and hard like I jumped off a cliff. And then I came back here and... reality just hit me like a rhino. I am forced to hide... cannot have the man I love. I j-just don't know how much longer I can do this."

"Do what?" T'Challa asked, pained by his sister speaking so despondently and knowing there was little he could do to help her.

"This," she whispered, gesturing at her hands. "Pretending to be something I am not, hiding the one thing that makes me unique. Every day I get up and I put these rings on and head down to my office, I realize that this is it. All I have to look forward to for the rest of my days is Hasani and a life in the darkness. It will never be enough. Just doesn't seem like much of a life to me anymore."

Asha stared at the wall across from them, a painting of Bast on the training room wall, while T'Challa stared at her profile. The two just sat there for a while, not saying anything at all, as T'Challa thought over what Asha said. It was not that he didn't want to say anything, he just couldn't think of anything appropriate. What do you say to someone who no longer thinks their future is worth it?  

"What can I do?" he settled on. 

He was a fixer, he could help her fix this and forge a path forward.

She offered him a sad smile, "I am not sure there is anything you can do, brother." 

"Nonsense, I am king," he boasted, causing the two to share a laugh. 

"Even kings have limitations, just like the rest of us." She stood up, holding out her hand to pull her brother to his feet. "Come, let us go to bed. There is so much to be done before the start of the festival this weekend."  

T'Challa nodded, knowing she was ending the conversation to avoid talking about it. He knew he would not sleep when he returned to his bed, instead he would be thinking of how to give his sister freedom, true freedom, no matter the cost.

****

"Did T'Challa tell you what this was about?" Shuri asked as they briskly walked down to the throne room, after being alerted of an emergency council meeting. 

"No. We were training together last night, he never mentioned needing to gather the council early. I asked Nakia, she said he didn't mention it to her either. You would think he would trust his most trusted advisor though? Titles mean less and less around here every day," Asha joked. 

She and Shuri shared a laugh as they entered and settled in their seats, finding most of the council already assembled. 

Their mother walked in followed by T'Challa, who looked grim and exhausted. She shared a confused and concerned look with her sister as they all did the customary salute before directing her attention back to her brother. She was so concerned that she didn't even have much time to lament over M'Baku who was sitting across from her. 

"Thank you all for coming on such short notice. I realize this is unorthodox but this could not wait. I was up for most of the night, thinking and praying about the future of this nation. After deep prayer with Bast, I realized I can no longer sit by while injustice runs rampant within our borders. That is why I will be announcing the repeal of the Mutant Regulation Laws at the Festival of Bast on Sunday, effective immediately." 

There was a beat of silence before shouts and anger erupted among the group as his words settled in the room like fog. The shouts overlapping rants of her mother, Elder Shani and two others were incoherent to Asha as they shouted at her brother. She was still trying to formulate a simple thought, his words were bouncing around in her mind but were having trouble truly sticking. Once she emerged from the shock of shock, she couldn't have been happier, repealing those laws would change so much for people like her. 

The Mutant Regulation Laws were a set of laws, initially enacted by Asha's grandfather and expanded by King T'Chaka, that attempted to limit mutants movements in the country and to limit the increase of the mutant population. The only people excluded from the laws since their inception were the Jabari.

As far as the public knew, the purpose of the laws were to protect citizens from enhanced individuals. The act stipulated that all mutants had to register with the government and general rules to limit the use of their powers, such as forbidding them in public spaces. This registry was first enacted in response to what her grandfather believed was an exponential increase in the mutant population across the four tribes.

The laws were divisive no doubt, like all controversial things. Many loved them, advocated for further expansions, feeling safe knowing that mutants could not inflict their powers on everyone else. The less vocal half, though, saw them as something that made them no better than the discrimination colonizers around the globe subjected their people to. However, only the Royal family knew the truth, that her father's reasoning for expanding the law had little to do with safety and everything to do with his fragile ego. 

As she got older, Asha quickly realized that her father didn't hate mutants because they were dangerous or threatened his country. He hated them simply because they were born with powers he had to win combat to get, powers he had to be deemed worthy for and earn. While they just woke up with them one day, having done no real work to deserve them. As the mantle of Black Panther and title of King caused his ego to grow, he grew equally paranoid that one day, mutants would begin to believe they were the ones actually chosen by Bast and invalidate the legacy of the Black Panther. As the population of mutants grew year after year, his paranoia that he would lose his title of King and Protector grew with it. Soon, a registry to merely keep track of the population was not enough. Soon, he launched a campaign to ensure mutants were the lowest rung on Wakanda's social order. Soon, the registry turned into laws to limit their abilities and resources funding research to find a cure for their affliction. 

In the previous council meeting, M'Baku had echoed the sentiments of half the country... that the policies were regressive and a dark stain on Wakanda. But Wakandans were humans, just like those on the other side of their borders. After being fed enough ammunition, people can be conditioned to hate anyone. 

T'Challa raised his hand to silence the group, adding, "Lord M'Baku was right, this is not the Wakanda Bast promised her people, at least not for everyone. Not for enhanced individuals, who are just as deserving of the same respect and opportunities as the rest of us. The Jabari and their enhanced people have lived in peace for centuries. We can do the same here." 

"Have you lost your mind??" Ramonda asked furiously from her seat next to her son. "That law is part of your father's legacy!" 

"Baba was a great king, but that does not mean he was always right. And on this, I feel he was wrong." 

"Half of your country sleeps peacefully because of those laws," Elder Shani cried, pointing out the large window at the city below. "Sleep peacefully knowing lethal people cannot murder them or hurt them with no thought. What would you say to those people?" 

"Yes and half the country sleeps less peacefully knowing that with all our technology and opportunities and advancement, we are no better than the colonizers who discriminate against people for their race or gender or sexuality. It is not right," Nakia interjected.

"You will end your father's legacy in one day. You will destroy everything he has built, the tribe and country he has created."

"The tribe and legacy he built on the backs of a brother he murdered, a child he abandoned and rampant discrimination of his people! Would that be such a bad thing?" Asha argued quietly, drawing the group's attention (and subsequently, their anger) toward her. 

She almost balked at the looks her mother and Elder Shani gave her but when she looked passed them, she was met with a reassuring and encouraging nod from M'Baku that empowered her to press forward. 

"This is a good thing," she asserted, shoulders squared and head held high.

"Of course you would think so," Elder Shani sneered. "I am sure you were the one that forced him to do this. People like you are destroying our country."

The room fell silent as the other elders stared shocked at their fellow member, seemingly surprised at her very vocal and unwarranted disrespect toward a member of the Royal Family. 

"Elder Shani! Princess Asha is royal advisor to the King, our princess. Apologize at once!" Elder M’Kathu exclaimed.

"I shall do no such thing! The only thing that makes her worthy to sit before us is that crown on her head... her title. She is beneath me, beneath all of us," she spat at Asha, staring at her with such contempt. 

Asha sat rigid in her chair as her future mother-in-law threw her vitriol at her. Asha wondered if this was how out-of-body experiences felt. She could so very clearly see where this train was going, see how her life's secret was about to implode before her eyes in a manner of moments but she could not direct her mouth to say a word or her limbs to move. She just sat, paralyzed and silent, unable to save herself or stop the train that was about to carry her whole family off a cliff. 

"Elder Shani... I would think about what is at stake before you say another word to or about my sister," T'Challa threatened, his voice low and deadly. 

For a split-second, the room saw it - a king no longer sat before them, the Black Panther did. For most, this would have been enough to slam on the brakes and beg for forgiveness. But it seemed Elder Shani was done, tired of pretending to respect someone she felt was beneath her, tired of keeping a secret for a person she despised. And her hate would not be outweighed by her greed any longer, she clearly couldn't take it.

"I told your father! I told him, warned him of the damage you and your affliction would cause him. Even from the grave, you destroy him and taint his legacy. Your kind... your disease destroyed him and it will lead to the end of Wakanda! You are a threat to us all." She took a deep breath before continuing, "Princess Asha is a mutant! The Panther Tribe has been hiding it, lying to their people for decades. Hiding her and t-this abomination from us all! And now she has our King under some spell, convinced him to uproot all the safety and security we have worked so hard to build."

As she spoke, Asha could feel rage rising in her body. It was steady, slowly building with every word that fell from Shani's lips as she spewed her hate and vitriol for all to hear. She tried to calm herself, control her breathing and emotions as she sat there, push them back down so she could get through the night. But it was proving to be impossible. The metal bars of her panther's cage were meaningless, being torn apart like pieces of paper as her emotions reached their peak. 

"That is enough! Take her away!" T'Challa stood before her, directing the Dora to come and escort Elder Shani from the room. 

Asha held her head in her hands as she took sharp, shallow breaths. Her whole body shook as she tried her hardest to not lose it in front of her family and the remaining members of the council. 

"Asha." 

She heard Shuri's voice and felt her hand on her shoulder causing her to jump up. Everyone seemed to back away from her immediately, causing Asha to notice the smoke and small flickers of flames erupting from her hands. The rings around her fingers were completely useless as the flames continued to grow steadily. Asha could only recall one moment in her life when she felt this out of control, the day her brother “died.” 

She got up and backed away to put some distance between her and the rest of the group. 

"Stay back!" she yelled through her gasping breaths, holding her hand out and inadvertently causing flames to fly toward her family. 

The Dora around the room instinctively lifted their spears, the remaining elders fled to the opposite wall as far from her as possible. But her family remained where they were, M'Baku being the brave soul to ignore her direction and approach her, unbothered by the uncontrollable fire escaping her body. Fire that grew stronger and bigger as Elder Shani's words cycled through her brain nonstop, causing her despair and rage to grow. Years of ignoring her emotions, years of trauma and abuse were finally boiling over. Tonight was the final push off the cliff, she could not do this anymore.  

"Asha.. you have to calm down," M'Baku whispered, motioning for the rest of her family to stay behind him. 

He wished he could get her to look into his eyes but as he looked at her blood-red irises and the tears streaming down her face, he realized she looked without truly seeing. 

"You are none of those things. You are beautiful and powerful. You are not dangerous. Don't become what they fear you are."

She heard his voice, understood the words he was saying but she didn't believe them, not when 25 years of abuse cycled in her mind to counter it. She looked around the room and all she saw was fear, proof that her home, the place she loved would never truly accept her. Elder Shani proved that. She had freed her from hiding but she also ensured that Asha couldn't stay here anymore, not when people looked at her like what she always feared she was: a monster. 

She couldn't do it, wouldn't do it, didn't have the strength to subject herself to it any longer. This was her out and she was going to take it. She looked from her family to the window across from her. 

She didn't think about it, didn't consider the mechanics. She just tore herself from the wall she backed herself into and ran toward the window. Her body lifted off the floor into flight as she used a blast of fire to cause the glass to break open for her.

"Asha no! Come back, " she heard her sister call after her. 

She turned back and looked at them once as she used all the energy she could muster to fly away from her, her family, her home and her past for good. 

Night had fallen during the course of that meeting, giving Asha a nice cover so no one could see her flying overhead. She zoomed out of the dome quickly, her mind not even conjuring up a location or place to go. She just wanted as much distance between her life and her as possible, knowing she would run into the border at some point. 

The wind painfully whipped against her face, causing her eyes to blur so she could barely see where she was going. In her emotionally-heightened state, it proved difficult to sustain flight as she passed over the uninhabited forests of Wakanda. As she tried to sort through the wreckage that was her life, she could not concentrate on her task, which caused her to lose height or speed every few minutes. And it just became harder and took more energy to accelerate and regain the height she lost every time she had to refocus. 

This cycle lasted for about 20 minutes before she had to reckon with this hastily made choice. She had no idea where she was or if she was even still in Wakanda, all she saw for miles were forest. She figured she must still be in the country, she couldn't fly that fast. In a short time, the explosive anger that coursed through her in the throne room was long gone, replaced with very real fear. Fear that taking an impromptu flight with no direction, after only one lesson, and without telling one living soul where she was headed was the worst decision she had ever made. 

She realized soon that she had no choice but to turn around and pray to Bast that she could sustain flight enough to get back to civilization. This was not sustainable and she knew it. She frantically looked around for a landmark in the trees, anything that looked familiar and could provide her a spot to rest before finishing the journey. She spotted the temple by the Garden of the Heart-Shaped Herb, silently thanking Bast and deciding that it would be as good of a spot as any to catch her breath. She headed in that direction. However, like a real fire reaching its end, Asha could see her internal fire slowly dying out. 

"No don't do this, we are almost there," she begged herself as the fire encompassing her hands and feet started to die away as well. 

Her mind felt cloudy and it was a struggle to keep her eyes open. Before she knew it, her eyes fell closed, her fire having died out completely, and her body fell gracefully from the sky before thudding in a small clearing in the forest at the foot of the Temple of Bast. 

****

@destinio1 @muse-of-mbaku @missmohnique @jellybean531 @afrolatinpami @leahnicole1219 @archivistofwakanda

[imacrowcawcaw]

Treasure Ch. 2 (Penntin)

(Ch. 1 on Tumblr)  (AO3)

Summary: 

Quentin fucks up a spell (Penny may or may not have also helped/hindered).

Quentin is the reason why everything smells like the Bog of Eternal Stench and Penny can't see.

Quentin’s run-amuck brain brings all sorts of problems to the table.

Quentin is starting to make Penny feel funny in his chest (and his pants).

Fuck Quentin, man.

Notes: Okay so I have been binge-watching like a crazy lady and gotten up to the middle of season 3 (which is FAST for me) so this is almost hard to write, knowing things that have happened… but also fun to take it back to a simpler time, in a way. I’m putting this roughly at episode 10 era, I think? Some stuff has happened, but they’re not on any time-entrenched quest right now. 

Also, the spell they did? Google translate (eek). I tried my best, but I couldn’t find something that seemed fitting in any online spell books so I made my own to suit my purposes. So sorry if you speak Azerbaijani and this is wrong, I just kinda picked a language.

One last thing: I am still not sure about updates. I know I posted this chapter about a week after the first, but that’s because I’m on spring break and am, as I have said, OBSESSED. The next chapter might be tomorrow, it might be two weeks from now, I don’t know. But I’ll try not to let it hang too long!

@penntin

-----

“Uh, should we go to the infirmary?”

Penny sighed and rolled his eyes. “No, Q, we should not. Let’s just go through the rest of life blind and unable to smell anything other than that god awful-”

“Okay!” Quentin snapped, surprising him a little, and looked up from where he was kneeling at Penny’s feet. “Look, I’m sorry that we somehow messed up. I don’t know what it was. But whatever the hell happened, clearly we need to stick together. So can we just, I don’t know, get along for a bit?”

“Hmm…. No.”

Quentin huffed but shakily stood up anyways, keeping a hand on Penny’s body the whole time; Penny thought about knocking him in the jaw when he felt fingers running from his knee all the way up to his ribs. Instead, he let Quentin do it - he liked breathing clean even more than personal space - and tried to ignore the odd shiver that ran up his spine. 

They grudgingly maintained contact, by arm or back and once by Penny yanking Quentin’s stupid hair, as they gathered up their belongings. Quentin was still a nervous, confused mess as he babbled mentally about what could have gone wrong. Penny grit his teeth at the panicked monologue and answered each suggestion that popped up in his head with a terse “no”, “maybe”, “don’t be dumb”, or “better not be”.

----------

The girl at the infirmary sighed when she saw them. Penny couldn’t say he blamed her; both of them had been in here. A lot. Together, usually. Because they either got hurt by each other or on the other’s behalf.

“What is it this time? I don’t see any blood…”

Penny grunted. What a fucking day. At least there wasn’t any blood, he had to concede (though, if he had to spend another minute with Quentin…). He followed her along to the room he usually ended up in, dragging Q by the wrist until they reached the bed. 

She busied herself with something on a clipboard while Penny stood with a death grip on Quentin’s hand. Any looser and the guy would start pacing like a madman, he could feel the desire in his head. And wasn’t this just fucking annoying? It was over, they weren’t gonna lose each other, could he put his goddamn wards back up?!

“So, what’s the problem, then?”

She blinked expectantly, and Penny had the brief thought that she was very beautiful. Tilted eyes, dark hair, a pointed, pale face and very pink lips.

Quentin gave him an odd, almost alarmed look - like he was worried about something Penny had said - but he ignored it. He hadn’t said anything at all; Coldwater must have hit his head hard when he tripped like an idiot.

“This one fucked up a locator spell,” he said, jerking Quentin’s wrist in his grasp so the guy lurched forward a bit. “We’re fine if we’re touching, but the moment we let go there’s this smelly, blinding fog. Also, I think he hit his head cause he won’t stop looking at me.”

He didn’t like how she was looking at him -- like he had just started speaking Tagalog instead of English. Were those really such weird symptoms? But he knew he hadn’t been speaking gibberish, at least, because Quentin nodded in shameful agreement. Though, he had heard a ‘your fault, too’ somewhere in his head. 

“Shut it, asswipe,” he hissed. Then he turned to address the confused lady again. “Look, can you just get Lispon. Please?”

Since when do you say please. 

Penny glared at Quentin and sat back on the bed, not bothering to hide his smirk as Coldwater stumbled and landed half on top of him. They both half-heartedly shoved at each other and settled onto the hospital bed, legs pressed together. He reached for a glass of water that had materialized on the bedside table and accidentally ceased contact, the smell hitting so sudden he could barely contain the bile in his throat. 

Quentin squealed - fucking squealed - and Penny looked back at him with a start -- he was completely clear. Every greasy strand of hair, every zit on his ugly mug, the shocked look in his watering eyes. They stared at each other and the smell stopped and the fog melted away, like a shitty adventure movie at the peak of it’s quest; treasure located. 

He scowled and knocked their knees together, bringing the rest of the room back into light. Lipson came hurrying around the corner, heels clicking, and Penny sighed. He didn’t feel good about this. 

----------

“Interesting. Very interesting.”

Penny wanted to murder Dean Fogg. He wanted to murder everyone. He especially wanted to murder Quentin, but that wasn’t really new. Right now, though, Dean Fogg in particular could go fuck a hornet’s nest along with his loathed “roomie”.

He grit his teeth against what was very clearly a bad steal of cinema doctors’ lines and shifted in the wooden chair. It creaked in the most irritating way - purposefully tortuous, awkwardly long and broken up, never quite coming to an end - and he was ready to murder the entire faculty right now.

The only thing that kept him from leaping up and snatching the tumbler of whiskey out of the Dean’s hands, if nothing else, was the fucking magical chain wound around his and Quentin’s wrists. Cause that was just the icing on this foggy, shit-scented cake. 

“So you don’t know what you did?” the Dean asked them.

Penny bristled. “Man, if we did, do you think we’d fucking be in here?”

Fogg shrugged and raised his hands in a placating gesture -- Penny hated that. He hated people trying to make him forget his anger when he was justifiably upset. Hated it. Especially when it was people with more power trying to tell him to be satisfied with the little they gave him.

Answers. For once at this fucking school I just want a straight answer. 

Yup, agreed. I wouldn’t have asked like Penny but, man, we just want answers. What did we do?

Had… had Q just responded to him? To his thoughts? That had never happened -- it wasn’t supposed to happen. Sure, Quentin’s thought diarrhea leaked all the time but HIS was not supposed to. He was the tightest warded psychic on this fucking campus! Loose-lips over there shouldn’t be able to break into him. 

Oh shit, really? Sorry dude, I’m not trying to. 

He had thought that it was just Quentin’s shitty wards, but if they were having a mental conversation here, as in a two way street where he was fucking exposed, this was not good. At all. It was also very annoying -- like, seriously, universe? Of all the people to be chained up to and mentally communicating with, it was Quentin? 

“Ahem, Penny?”

He blinked back to concentration as the Dean leaned forward and stared at him through those kinda-creepy-kinda-cool glasses. Why the fuck was everyone staring at him? He was not at fault here!

Well, I mean… you messed up too. But I don’t know. Did they say something?

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Quentin!”

The Dean sat back in his seat. “Glad you’re back with us, Penny. As I was saying, do you recall which spell you were trying to cast?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. He just wanted to sleep. “It was some locator, I can’t really pronounce the name. We were trying to find a lost item? We chose one of my scarfs that’s probably hidden somewhere in the Physical Cottage. Eliot keeps stealing my shit.”

“I think I know what it was.”

Suddenly, heels clicked, and the voice of a certain sexy, blonde professor spoke up behind him. She laid a hand on Penny’s shoulder and he settled into it, privately happy to have her there. Sure, she was still a professor, but she was cool and helped him out (and she really was beautiful. He would sleep with her even if it wasn’t for school.)

Oh Jesus, dude, seriously? Sunderland?

Quentin-

“Spell for revealing the truth. Həqiqəti üzə çıxarmaq üçün yazın. It’s in Azerbaijani, and they had to translate it themselves if I’m not mistaken.”

Quentin nodded his head and his ridiculous fucking hair swung with it like a car wash. Penny grit his teeth. This whole situation was fucking fucked! Even the sight of Quentin sitting next to him, having to hear his thoughts, feel his hand chained to Penny’s -- it was driving him insane. The guy’s very existence could grate on his nerves, sometimes (especially when he was being an idiot and ruining life for Penny).

“Well, let’s go over your notes and see if we can find the problem that way.”

His wrist was roughly yanked as Quentin shuffled around in his bag and got the notebook they - 80% Penny - had been doing the work out of. There were pages of scribbled symbols, diagrams, and translations; hours and hours of work sent down the drain by an idiot. 

Might I remind you that, if you did eighty percent of the work, you’re eighty percent at fault here?

You know what? If this little dude wanted to talk back to Penny in his own fucking head then fine.

Might I remind you, I can make your miserable life even worse with a snap of my fingers? 

Quentin huffed and turned his head. Coward. Penny could feel thoughts from Quentin’s mind inside of his own, but he decided to ignore them for now; there were more important things to do. Like removing the leech on his arm.

“Oh,” Professor Sunderland gasped, and Penny looked up.

That didn’t sound like a good oh. If this was permanent - or if the cure cost him even a hair off of his ass - Penny was going to kill Quentin. 

You keep saying you’re going to kill everyone. Can you just hurry up and do it already, then?

Keep talking smart-ass, I’ll get you when you least expect it.

Blah blah blah. I know what you’re thinking! You can’t get the one up on me now. 

Penny scowled and turned back to Sunderland. He could feel Quentin gloating in his head but he ignored it, again, for the sake of maturity and his sanity. The notebook was propped up against a globe on the Dean’s desk and they all peered at it, reading first the original spell pasted in and then the scribbled translation next to it. 

İtirilmiş şeyi tapın. 

Gözlərimi bağlayın. 

Düşüncələrimi istiqamətləndirin. 

Məni uydurmalardan müəyyənləşdir. 

İtirilmiş şeyi tapın.

Find the one that was lost. 

Unblind my eyes. 

Guide my thoughts. 

Deter me from falsities.

Find the one that was lost.

“The one?” Sunderland’s voice came, next to Penny’s right ear, and he looked up at her. 

She looked nervous, which caused some anxiety to roll in his own gut; Quentin was feeling the same. Ten times as intense, of course, cause he was Quentin, but… the look on her face was bad. The whole situation was fucking bad. Quentin was so dead. 

“What’s wrong with it?”

She looked at Quentin. Fogg came around the desk and poured two fingers of brandy into two cups, handing one to each of them. They looked at each other as the chain around their wrists - keeping them together, per Lipson’s assistance - rattled. 

This is bad if he’s giving us alcohol to cut the news with.

“Your translation was off by one word, but it was a big one,” Sunderland began, her hand tightening on Penny’s shoulder. Somehow, it was no longer comforting -- he shrugged her off. She continued slowly. 

“The spell was used by ancient explorers to find lost items, usually in cursed areas. The goal was to set their sight on the one thing, and the one thing only, so they wouldn’t get distracted by sirens or other treasure or anything like that. What you did… instead of sending yourself on a hunt for a scarf, you sent yourself on a quest for “the one that was lost”. Somehow, you set each other up as the objects, and now the spell will try and deter you from anything that separates you.”’

[ilovehallas]

Please tell me your opinions on the circle of magi?? The templar vs mage rebellion?

Thank you for sending in an ask!!

First of all, circle of magi: kinda garbage, my opinion isn’t too different there from what looks to be the popular opinion? We know that each circle is somewhat unique in terms of how strict the regulations are, what the relations between mages and templars are, the internal politics etc so that should be considered in the conversation, but I take issue with the concept itself. The in-game justification is that it protects the outside world from mages, but also protects mages from the outside - and I just think that’s a bad argument? Because historically keeping people separated and limiting contact between different types of people or strongly regulating what kinds of contact are acceptable is what fueled persecution. The distance doesn’t only further entrench the idea that a mage is fundamentally different from other people, it also further breeds distrust, resentment and fear because most people would never have contact with a ‘normal’ mage. Then, the power dynamic between mages and templars does something similar. Putting one group of people in charge of another and basing this on a perceived fundamental basis creates division and disincentivizes templars from empathizing with mages. As we’ve seen, that power imbalance permits abuse of power and the secludedness of the circle creates a space where templars can (somewhat) freely abuse mages. Further, there’s the practice of ripping children away from their families. Yes families may not be able to support a mage child adequately, but there should be another option besides “never see them again”. Plus iirc templars will also snatch up Dalish children (or at least I remember reading something about that), so as a practice there’s also a racist dimension attached to it. Naturally, also the issue of depriving people of freedom. Vivienne is an example of a mage who grew up in a circle that permitted some more freedom, but it still took a lot of extremely hard work to gain the kind of freedom we see her enjoying by the time we meet her - and even she acknowledges that which circle you are sent to greatly impacts a mage’s ability to have some personal freedoms like that. It’s cruel to keep people in captivity that they cannot opt-out of. Generally I feel like circles aren’t a sustainable model of addressing the danger of demon possession and magic gone wild. It engenders violence through its very set-up. I understand that some regulations may be necessary, but they should definitely not look like this. While Tevinter is a negative example, they seem to have found ways to handle the threat and before the retcon of Inquisition, so did the Dalish. So it’s not like circles are the only way to cope with the potential risks attached to magic.

I have some complicated feelings when it comes to the rebellion(s), which is in part due to the discussions surrounding it. Mages freeing themselves of the circles? Hell yeah. Templars shaking off chantry control? Yeah, that’s valid (but what they do with it isn’t). Like any rebellion, the mage rebellion also has people going off doing shitty stuff because yeah, any large movement will inevitably also include terrible people. The part that makes me uncomfortable is how figures like Anders are talked about because the way I see it, even if your cause is just and you do what must be done, you don’t get to... block out the negative consequences of your actions? You don’t get to pick and choose what consequences you will acknowledge. If you believe in your cause, then you should also take responsibility for the suffering that comes with it and the wrong you’ve done.  So I’m not very fond of how it sometimes feels like people are hand-waving away the negative sides to the rebellion and the way even people who are uninvolved or even members of their own movement get screwed over. I’m definitely pro-mage and think they were right to rebel and I support them, just wish I didn’t see people acting like there are no negatives to what they were doing. Violent rebellions are ugly things, that’s how that is! Don’t whitewash it or act like the violence only impacts “bad” people.

[rahelawaters]

Prompt #1: Voracious

For @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast‘s #FFxivWrite2019 challenge.

Ao3 link here!

W'rahela was always a hungy child. But she possessed no strength to swing a sword or draw back a bow; she made for a poor huntress, and thus had to rely on her mother, W'yulhia, to feed her. But even then, W'yulhia had to contend with a great deal of obstacles to feed her family. Her hometown was at the very southernmost part of Thanalan; a pointed mesa known as the Gold Fang. It was one of the few settlements south of the Sagolii that still stood. The harbor at Cape Deadwind had been on the decline from pirate attacks even before the Calamity irrevocably wrecked the place and broke the earth, cutting off the entire region from the rest of Thanalan. The W tribe's rivals of the U did not help matters by competing for what little land prey was left. Most of Rahela's meagre childhood meals consisted of various fish from the sands and seas, and little else. Occasions when the W tribe huntresses were lucky enough to bring down sandworms and sundrakes were her idea of a lavish meal…

"And with that, I bid you enjoy the feast!"

Thus, the now up-and-coming adventurer sitting down for the royal feast held in her honor, could scarce believe her eyes at the sight of the impossibly rich banquet laid before her. More foods than she knew the names of lined the table of the Fragrant Chamber, filling her nose with more scents than she could describe. Steaming, freshly-baked bread rolls, with golden brown and bubbly crusts. Countless kinds of meat, some pink, some white, some dark brown, some in-between, all juicy and glistening. Roasted popotoes cut into bite-sized pieces, made colorful with green and red spices. Sauces and melted cheeses to pour over top of everything…

The anxiety she'd had at rubbing elbows with the Ul'dahn . Any and all reasoning that once resided within her brain was henceforth given to her appetite; she was a stormy vortex and all food within her arms' reach was going to disappear within her mouth. Eyeing the meats, she grabbed the biggest fork in front of her and speared slices of every kind onto her plate. With a spoon, she scooped up the popotoes. While her bare hands were all she needed for snatching the bread from its basket.

Her hand was a blur as she formed a small mountain onto her plate. Once she'd had a satisfactory pile, Rahela dug in. She began by taking a roll and chomping down, savoring the crackling crunch of the crust beneath her teeth, contrasted masterfully with the much softer warmth of the bread. One roll, and then two were quickly devoured, at which point she noticed a miniature plate containing a scoop of butter. The third and last roll was quickly sliced open, and a smattering of half-melted butter was smeared between the split before it closed again; Rahela practically purredat the difference that the addition had made in the flavor.

Next were the popotoes; the skin was crisp and salty, the spices giving mouthwatering flavors to what might otherwise be bland flesh. Even better, their compact size meant Rahela could stab three pieces upon a long-pronged fork and eat all three at once.

And the meats… Gods be good, the meats… The tastes of them defied all description. She could never, ever, ever go back to eating fish after this.

Her reverie abruptly ended mid-chew when she chanced to open her eyes and see a masked lalafell looking right at her. The upturn of his mustache indicated that he was… sneering at her. Rahela stared back, confused, unconsciously swallowing her mouthful.

"Your Grace," the masked lalafell said, leisurely turning his head in Nanamo's direction. "I accept that this banquet is meant to hail this, ah… this 'lady' adventurer as a savior of Ul'dah, and is meant to cater to her limited palate. But I ask you all, must we really watch her gorge herself with such reckless abandon?"

"Wh-- huh?" Rahela froze, her ears folding back. Was she doing something wrong? And did he really use air quotes when he called her a lady? What was he saying? "I-I, I was just, I, I…"

"Lord Lolorito," Nanamo spoke up, her voice even, but icy cold. "I ask that you refrain from mocking our guest of honor at her own banquet."

Lolorito? The man who tried to have Wystan killed for wanting to help the poor? The man who terrified Rahela into hanging up her staff for a week, and nearly forever, for fear that the same would happen to her? THAT Lolorito?!

The monetarist goes on, not reacting to the sudden, visible fear that had gripped the adventurer. "Then I ask that the guest of honor act in a manner that reflects as much. I can hear her chewing from here, and her elbows are on the table. Scrawny as she is, I suppose I could tolerate her simply eating quickly; but honestly, I've seen swine with better table manners."

"I fear that not all of us have been entrenched in etiquette lessons since before we could talk," Nanamo deadpanned. "If the sight of a hero vigorously enjoying a well-earned meal is so unbearable for you to watch, then don't."

It seemed that Lolorito had run out of motivation to argue the point any further, because he said nothing else. Despite the mask covering his face, Rahela could still feel him glowering at her. And now, thanks to the scene he made, she could feel the stares of everyone in the room. She'd made a fool of herself in front of the entire upper class of Ul'dah, just by eating in front of them. By not knowing unspoken rules that nobody told her existed. Just by existing and enjoying a nice meal, she was an embarrassment…

The spiral of anxiety was abruptly ended with the sound of a low belch directly next to her. And immediately all the judgemental stares were drawn away from her, and honed in on the source of the noise.

Rahela blinked, and turned her head to the one sitting at her right. The source of the belch was a young midlander man with slicked-back, snow-white hair; there was something familiar about him, but she couldn't put her finger on it. He held a cloth napkin to his mouth, and then cleared his throat. "Do excuse me; the meal was so exquisite that I forgot myself."

That voice! Rahela felt a warmth in her cheeks; she didn't recognize Thancred with  lowered the napkin from his face, and took the briefest moment to give her a knowing wink.

"But what's a little faux pas between friends?" He punctuated with a shrug, and a disarming laugh. The tension in the air remained, but it passed into simple awkwardness as the dinner guests returned to their meals and conversations amongst themselves.

She'd been eating like a slob in front of Ul'dahn high society, and in front of her crush… Thankfully, he seemed to be on her side; and so did the Sultana. But Nanamo was on the other end of the table and Rahela at least knew enough that yelling her thanks across the table would not help matters. But, her mind digressed. "Thancred, I, uh, I, I didn't…"

With a smile, Thancred crossed his arms in his chair. "I wanted so badly to remind him that it was the Monetarist vote that was prevented the Sultanate from giving aid to Cape Deadwind after the Calamity and accelerating its decline into poverty. But I doubt you would appreciate my telling him where your family lives. So instead I opted for the diversion."

"I…" Rahela wanted to say more, but no words would come to her. Instead, all she could communicate was a simple, "Thank you."

"'Twould be remiss of me to sit by and let that bastard humiliate you," he reassured.

"But, Lo--"

"Don't mind him, or any of them. This is your feast, not theirs."

Rahela knew he was right, but… "Still, I went overboard, and made a slob of myself in front of everyone here…"

"And? So what if you did?" The bard shrugged. "A man of my occupation has seen his fair share of well-to-do social events. Etiquette is important for keeping up appearances and blending in, but it's all performative. No need to be self-conscious, friend. Truly, I understand."

"Understand what?"

"Being excited at the prospect of having access to more food than you've ever had in your life," he explained. "For them, a feast like this is nothing; they eat this well all the time. But for starvelings who've never seen so much food in one place, freely offered to them? It's an experience beyond all our imagination. Don't let the upper crust snobs ruin this for you."

(In the din of the room, Rahela didn't catch onto the meaning of Thancred's use of 'our'.)

"In fact, allow me to make your feast even more indulgent…" Pulling some roast popotoes from the pile and putting them onto a small plate, Thancred poured a thick cheese sauce over them, letting it drape over them, followed closely by another, thinner brown sauce. He then nudged the completed dish towards Rahela. "There we are. Popotoes, combined with cheese and gravy; or to call it by its proper name, poutine. You are welcome."

She looked to him, then back to the dish. Scooping up a spoonful of this new dish, she lifted it to her mouth, and… By the gods, he was right; all the flavors she loved in the popotoes combined with delicious cheese and meaty gravy? Somewhere deep within her throat came a high-pitched squeal as she chewed, the look on her face akin to one who'd just reached the Seventh Heaven.

"The only thing I would advise regarding your eating," Thancred advised, while watching her reactions with a crooked smile, "is that you pace yourself. And save room for dessert, of course."

Rahela's ears perked up and her eyes flew open. "There's dessert?!"

"If I know Her Impetuousness' sweet tooth, most certainly."

[dashielldeveron]

A Prologue in Venom

Part One of the Viper AU: a Mob!Tom Holland AU in which you are a political author, Tom’s personal lawyer, and eventually his consigliere. 

Warnings: violence, swears, the law.

Summary: an introduction to the ongoing AU of you working for the mob tirelessly out of your innate sense of justice and thirst for the mob boss. You have an incredible mentor who is pushing you down a path of crime in order to do the right thing. Your mentor forgot 1) to mention that your new employer is so fucking charismatic and 2) that you’re a dramatic little bitch.

From: Tracey Prine To: epiales@epiales.com Subject: article attached

Thought you might want to see this. You’ve made the papers for your real job for once, although your name still isn’t mentioned—but I expect you enjoy that. It’s all over the news stations, and NPR is currently airing the story. Congratulations. There’s a nice quotation from Polson near the bottom that you’ll get a kick out of.

Additionally, I’m going to need your piece on the refugee crisis within twelve hours if it’s going to be published this week.

Thanks, t.

[attachment]

FALSELY ACCUSED, JULIA LAURENS ACQUITTED

In the late afternoon of October 17, the protracted trial of Julia Laurens came to a sudden end in light of new evidence. Laurens, on trial for the murder of Moira Herrington, daughter of celebrated actors Jay and Melissa Herrington, walks as an innocent woman this morning.

As Moira’s violin teacher, Laurens would have had access to the Herrington residence during lessons on Mondays, but, it turns out, she was not the only one. It seemed like an open-and-shut case when Moira’s body, dismembered, was found in various black bags in Laurens’s garbage bins, along with the ice pick used to gouge out Moira’s eyes under the seat in Laurens’s vehicle on the day Laurens was stopped on the route from the Herrington residence. Laurens had said that she had driven to the lesson without being able to find Moira and was returning home, but the body had already been discovered.

However, as the defence exposed, all supposed evidence was a plant by perpetrator Johnson Mays, a colleague of Laurens who had a secret, unhealthy obsession with the underage Moira. Mays, a mechanic, had attended the weekly game night at Laurens’s apartment on Sunday and had sabotaged Laurens’s car and planted an ice pick similar to the one used. With this setup, Mays would have time to commit the murder during the scheduled violin lesson, while Laurens would have to attend to her car.

You kicked your feet up on the coffee table and flicked through the article. Fucking yes. You’d made national news for being a lawyer, for once. You were the one who’d done the intricate research to discover Mays’s connections, and when Dr. Prine gave you leave, you had driven upstate to investigate Mays’s house under warrant, posing as a general lackey. You had felt the need to see his place with your own eyes, and you had struck gold: not only had you found the real ice pick in his wood pile, but you had found one of Moira’s contacts stuck to the back of his freezer. Her fucking contact. When the lab reports came back, complete with the drop of blood on the ice pick matching Moira’s, you forwarded everything to Dr. Prine, and she sent it to her attorney acting defence in the trial. Mays wasn’t even a player in the game before you, and now the rightful murderer was going to jail. An innocent woman walks free because of you.

Justice felt fantastic. Your work being in the national headlines felt a little better.

You scanned the rest of the article until you reached the quotation Dr. Prine had told you about.

…Out of the clamouring press following the trial, only this was squeezed from a fuming Prosecutor James Polson: “I [redacted] had them. Whoever dug up the dirt on Mays, they’re a [redacted] viper, sinking their fangs into the status quo and letting their venom spread.”

Grinning, you took another bite of Ben and Jerry’s, straight out of the carton. Dr. Prine was right. You were going to have to find a hard copy of the Times so that you could post this on your bedroom wall. You had to bite your lip you were smiling so hard.

You set your ice cream on the coffee table and lay back on the couch to compose a response to Dr. Prine, but you called her instead. As your phone rang, you kicked back and stared at the ceiling fan, its pull making small circles as the blades spun.

“Dr. Prine,” you said when she picked up, “Holy fuck! Holy fuck!”

“Congratulations,” she said, her smile coming through over the phone, “I’m proud of you. You did some really solid work.”

“I didn’t think this would happen! I saved someone’s life! Julia Laurens can go to fucking Hobby Lobby, and no one will accost her. It’s my fault, and she doesn’t even know me,” you said, sitting up to grab your ice cream again.

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Well, yeah,” you said thickly through a chunk of frozen brownie, “It is. I wish I could tell my mother, though, but it’s not that big of a deal.”

“Is she still doing all right?”

You swallowed, choking a bit to get it down. “Yeah. How’s work for you?”

“The freshman students write the worst papers I’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Prine with a clattering in the background, “Damn, I just—hold on. Dropped the binders.” A door creaked shut on her end, and Dr. Prine spoke more loudly after. “I miss your work. It was nice grading it, since I didn’t have to mark it up much. These kids can’t even handle a mock trial yet. I worry for your generation.”

“Don’t worry. We’re all just tired,” you said, “Speaking of my work, I’ve almost finished the refugee piece. Once I get a solid closing statement, I’ll send it your way.”

“Well, don’t procrastinate. Your deadline’s soon. You got anything lined up this evening?”

Scrunching your eyes shut, you winced. “Don’t remind me. Polson’s got me doing menial work again. Something totally useless with spreadsheets and the expenses of the fucking break room and secretarial offices. If he knew what I was capable of—”

“If he knew you worked against him in the Laurens trial? I know,” said Dr. Prine, her voice softening, “I’ve been meaning to tell you something. It’s your ticket out of Polson’s firm. I’ve found a place where your talents would be…much more appreciated. You could start within the week.”

“Say more right now.”

***

2,132.

2,132 rejections via mass email, starting in your second year of law school. All from different firms that didn’t want you. Rounds upon rounds of interviews, competing with your friends and total strangers who held themselves like they were Croesus, reaching the final interview, only to get rejection emails three days later from firms you would have quite literally killed people to work for. Years of working for and studying under Dr. Prine, editing her national law journal, diligently dotting the is of her excruciating cases late into the night. Getting a taste of the allure of wealth and entrenched power, and never having it want you outside of the knowledge that you were her student. All of it—from the cases you and she never could crack and stood outside in the rain pulling your hair out over, to the parts of your life you missed out on, like your best friend’s wedding and your mother’s last birthday before you started growing apart—leading up to this: walking into a high-rise building with mirror-like windows in the middle of Manhattan and staring up at an embossed, brass nameplate on a door that read Harrison Osterfield.

The next chapter in your life, and it sank like a stone in your stomach. You raised your fist to knock, but before you could, someone snatched it away.

“Ripley,” said the bony man maybe a decade older than you, pulling on his collar and dropping your hand, “and you’re not getting my first name. We’ve got to get upstairs before they see you. No time to lose. I’m the lawyer you’re replacing.”

Glancing back at Osterfield’s door, you followed behind Ripley up a few floors (the elevator was too risky, he told you.) and into a crusty, windowless office with water damage dripping in a back corner. After closing the door, he sat in one of the two chairs in front of the desk (one leg was propped up by a book) and gestured for you to do the same.

“You’re Dr. Prine’s student, aren’t you?”

“I am,” you said, sinking into the leather, “She also told me that you’d be waiting for me, but considering this business belongs to a Mr. Thomas Holland, one would think I’d be meeting him on my first day.”

Ripley pulled a leg into his lap, resting one ankle on the opposite knee. “With any luck, you won’t have any direct interactions with him. Nasty man in a nasty business.”

“Being in an IT consulting company can’t be that bad,” you said, head snapping towards a bucket against the wall once water dripped into it from the ceiling. “What’s with the, uh…?” You nodded your head towards the leak.

“They shoved me down here while the real office is getting renovated, or so they say. Doesn’t matter,” said Ripley, “You and I have a lot of work to do. You’re one of Dr. Prine’s. So am I. They’re working me to death here, and apparently you’re a masochistic workaholic. I need to get out, and this is—well, what we’re about to do is going to be easiest for everyone in this room.”

You tapped your fingers against the split leather, each landing with a dull thum. “Why do I get the feeling this is going to be needlessly complicated?”

“Please, trust me, or at least trust Dr. Prine,” he said, untwisting the cap of a nalgene from his desk, “It was her idea. I can call her up, if you want.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Shaking your head, you said, “I’ve already seen your credentials. Dr. Prine gave me more information on you than I need to know, Jerome Ripley. I know you’re trustworthy. What’s the plan?”

“I hear you’re into anonymity.”

You always were a dramatic little bitch, so you agreed to the plan: you and Ripley would collaborate on the job until you knew much more of the rope of Osseous Enterprises, and Ripley would fade out as you took on the job by yourself. The plan was sketchy, and everything reeked of ulterior motives. You found yourself addressing stranger and stranger things sent to you in the emails (a lousy lawyer@osseous, how lame) right up until you opened an email from Holland before Ripley could get to it.

Inside were photographs of a human skeleton with the flesh freshly ripped off of it, and that lay to the side of the bones. Boss shot him through the neck, it was labelled, Had me skin it. Wants you to send it along to H. Jones in Queens and cover the death. Victim lived in… And then addresses, social security, et al.

You were supposed to cover up a murder. A murder committed by—oh, um. Hm. You didn’t sign up for this.

Ripley walked into the office right as Dr. Prine picked up on your phone call, and he slapped the phone out of your hands.

Both of them talked you through. The mafia. You were working for the mafia. Not the whole thing, obviously, but you were working for the most prestigious mob family in—fuck, they covered multiple countries, but their base was right here in New York, in the very fucking building you’d been working in for a month—oh, fuck. Were you in the mob? No, you had to be inducted, and to be inducted, you had to be trusted, or at least, even fucking noticed. Osseous Enterprises was a front corporation for Holland’s dealings in the mob, even though it made a lot of money—but significantly less than what was officially recorded. No wonder Ripley was taking certain tasks. He was easing you into it, letting you deal with the surface level shit before you really knew what you were getting into (an aside: this explained why Dr. Prine seemingly sent you to work in business when you specialised in criminal law).

It took hours and hours of skype calls with Dr. Prine and talking with Ripley outside of work to convince you to stay. Dr. Prine appealed to your better nature, damn it, and talked about how even though Holland worked selfishly, he confronted people and solved problems the government was too scared to commit to. All she had to do was talk up your innate sense of justice, and you started changing your mind, albeit with extreme reluctance, especially with the threat of returning to Polson’s firm. Not to mention your first paycheque had your head spinning, and that didn’t hurt your cause.

So, you worked for the mob, and no one knew you did, not even the mob. If Holland knew Ripley were leaving, Ripley would have a knife in his back within the next minute. It was safer for Ripley to phase out, with you proving your worth secretly, until you deemed it time to reveal yourself, after Ripley left.

“It’d be odd if all areas of your life were perfect in tandem,” Dr. Prine would remind you, and you’d affectionately flip her off and get back to writing your next Epiales piece. Deadlines were always too soon.

***

The Epiales project was the only thing going for you right now, aside from the sudden income from Holland. It began your final semester of law school, when you shouldn’t have been taking on anything new at all. You had written, quite frankly, a fucking astonishing article on modern feminism as it functions in the government and in law, and Dr. Prine had featured it in her law journal. You hadn’t wanted recognition, because your views differed drastically from your family’s, and you didn’t want your peers making fun of you, either. You’d decided on Epiales as your penname, because, even though you wanted to follow in the footsteps of political authors throughout history, you couldn’t find a Greek philosopher whose views you agreed with. So, you went with the personification of nightmares, just because it’d be your family’s worst nightmare if they knew you were this politically different from them.

Just as a joke.

But then, the New York Times had bought your article from Dr. Prine and published it on the front page. Eventually, through repetitions of this and an endless string of emails, you had a monthly feature in the fucking New York Times, so long as the article was original to their newspaper and not a republished one from the law journal. They conceded to your continued posting to the Epiales website on the basis that you posted online after they began selling that day’s edition. You didn’t care. You were in the New York Times, for Christ’s sake.

And no one knew it was you. You were completely safe, from hecklers, from your family, from disgusting men threatening to ruin your life and/or end it. You had taken too many precautions. Hell, if someone tried to trace your IP address, it’d relocate to the middle of a sulphur pit in Yellowstone.

Through a series of accidents, you garnered respect.

***

The day you should have been waiting for comments to roll in for your latest instalment on the refugee crisis, Tom Holland needed his lawyer present at a tennis match in the Hamptons. Holland intended to ensure political ties with Senator Hernandez, whose daughter was playing in the tennis tournament. A sizable crowd at a public outing, all distracted and getting steadily drunk? Holland could make his move easily.

Thus there you stood under the scant shade of a pine tree in the ninety-seven-degree heat, sweating through your jet-black blazer, sucking on a piece of ice, and damning Tom Holland to his grave. You glared daggers into the back of his pretty head as he leant against the railing of the pavilion, laughing with the crowd and swirling an old fashioned in his palm against the muted sounds of rackets hitting the ball in the background. When Harrison bent in to whisper to Holland, Tom took off his amber-tinted sunglasses and cleaned them on the inside of his suit jacket, and once finished, he nodded and started weaving his way through the spectators.

Holland wanted his lawyer here yet wasn’t doing anything worthwhile, you thought bitterly. You were too good for him, really, because you’d planted yourself near Senator Hernandez’s bench as he watched his daughter. While Holland flirted, you were eavesdropping and sweating your fucking skin off.

Near the end of the second set, you caved and shrugged off your blazer when you caught the latter half of something Hernandez was saying: “—read it? It’s brilliant. Next time Congress is in session, I’m bringing in that Epiales article.”

Your jaw dropped, and so did the ice from your mouth. Your blazer hung limp from one hand, and you steadied yourself against the tree, your high heels sinking into the earth. Fumbling around for your phone, you barely had time to get to Dr. Prine’s contact entry before someone gently nudged your arm from behind with a glass tumbler, condensation sticking to your skin.

“You look like you’d rather be anywhere else but here,” said Tom Holland, his voice hot in your ear, while he’s standing a little too close for comfort and holding out an old fashioned identical to his, “I can offer a distraction, at the least.”

You don’t drink, but you took what was offered. “Am I that transparent?”

“Like glass, sweetheart. What’s bothering you?” He leant against the tree trunk, slumping a little, and tapped his index finger against his tumbler.

“Afraid I’ve been dragged here for work.”

“On a Saturday?”

You met his gaze, completely fixated on you through the amber sunglasses. “My boss is a bit of an ass.”

“Sounds like it,” Tom said, cracking a grin, “Forcing you to come to some silly tennis match on the hottest day of the month and flat-out ignoring you.”

“It’s better than putting me in a sundress and having me on his arm.” Like Polson did once that summer. You had kicked his ass, verbally, about it, but since he threatened to smear your name through the mud for the rest of your life, which he was capable of doing, it had to be done. “At least I’m here for a reason, supposedly.”

“Who treats his employees like that? Wouldn’t dream of it.” Tom brought his glass to his mouth as his eyes flicked up and down your body, taking his time about it. “Though I’d put you in a green sundress. Something that shows off your shoulders.”

“And I’d put you in navy, in something with a high neckline. Anything to accentuate those pretty-boy cheekbones you’ve got,” you said.

At this, he ran his tongue over his lower lip, pushed off the tree, and took a step closer to you. He may be enjoying it now, but this motherfucker would regret this conversation in about five minutes. To be honest, you were enjoying it a little too much. To have someone as powerful, confident, and attractive (the grey tweed suit buttoned over a tight, white button-down was doing things to you) as Tom was having his complete, unadulterated attention on you? It was a taste of something you denied yourself. But no matter how fast his charisma held you, it was time to wrap it up. You planned to work for this man a long time.

“Listen,” said Tom, “Why don’t I give you a tour of the country club?” He trailed two fingers from your wrist over the back of your hand to take your drink. “It’s not much, but we’ll get you into some air conditioning. We could find a place to talk without anyone overhearing, if you like.”

You rolled your shoulders back, and for the first time, you began to smile. “Hardly professional, Holland. To think I expected better of you.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Shouldn’t you be giving this attention to Senator Hernandez’s daughter? It’ll be easier to get to him through her.”

And there it was: his face hardened, his eyebrows furrowing and lips puckering very slightly, the brief clenching of his jaw and the flush around the tops of his ears—the face your opponents got in court when your research that would pack the case into a tight box was brought to the stand. “Who are you?” Tom asked flatly.

“You’re going to have to work for that information, Holland,” you said, “Be careful about how you respond. As much as you should like to, you can’t make a scene with so many witnesses.”

“I own all of these people,” he said through his teeth.

“Go ahead, then,” you said, and you clasped your hand behind your back, waiting.

After a beat, Tom sighed exasperatedly and grabbed you by the wrist to pull you somewhere, but before he could take two steps, you yanked yourself out of his grasp. He didn’t even bother looking over his shoulder. “Are you going to follow me?”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

He turned his head enough to look you in the eye. “You’re going to talk.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You appear to know who I am. Use your imagination.” He jerked his head towards the country club’s restaurant, not far from the tennis courts. “C’mon.”

Death sounded good at all occasions for you, but since someone needed to feed your cat this evening, now wouldn’t be the best time to die. Not to mention you still had half a croissant left over from that morning, and you couldn’t let that go to waste. You followed behind Tom at a couple of paces, checking to ensure no one was watching you leave, because it sure looked like you were sneaking off to give him a blowjob behind the ice machine.

He made you go first once you reached the stairs to the upper storey restaurant, and he cornered you at the far end of the balcony, trapping you against the iron railing with the metal pressing into your back and his hands planted on either side of you. Tom stood close enough that you had to lean backwards a little over the railing, and you had to grip the railing just inside of his hands to stay upright.

His mouth twitched. “Why are you here?”

Your gaze flashed from his lips to his eyes. “I’m here to supervise the contract you’re making with Senator Hernandez, and I’m ensuring that he does sign it.”

“And why’s that?” When he jerked forward in an attempt to make you lose your balance, you stifled a cough at the wave of the oversaturated cologne that hit you.

“Like I said, my boss is a bit of an ass.”

“Damn it,” Tom said, breaking eye contact for the first time. Freshly determined, he moved closer, his hipbones poking into you with one hand gripping your waist. “Who’d be stupid enough to provoke me? Who do you work for? Fletcher? The Fratellis?”

“You,” you said, and you left your lips pursed as he flinched away from you and bent over the back of a wrought-iron chair, pressing his fist to his mouth.

“I’m your lawyer,” you said, stifling a smile, “I wrote the Hernandez contract. I’ve also been managing your affairs for some time now, specifically covering your tracks for fucking murder—”

“What’d you do to Ripley?” Tom straightened up and removed his sunglasses. He tucked them over his collar.

“Ripley’s gone,” you said, “of his own free will. Or of his will, at least, since he wasn’t free to leave under your—”

“Where is he now?”

“Sorry. Privileged information. What matters is that Ripley’s gone completely off-grid so that you can’t find him. Even I’m not able to reach him.” You tentatively slid from your corner along the railing nearer to the chair he had propped a foot on. “I’ve been working for you for over a month now. You really should keep better tabs on your employees—though, I suspect, that’ll be part of my job soon.”

Tom snapped his fingers twice. “Name.”

“Paul McCartney.”

He narrowed his eyes, his nose wrinkling in the process, and said, “Your name.”

You didn’t hesitate in saying it, a first for you, and as he mouthed the syllables slowly, you said, “And don’t bother looking me up. I don’t have any social media, nor do I have an online presence at all.” Under your real name, that is. “You can find me in a list of interns for a certain renown professor, but I’m about to give you that information, anyway.”

Tom stared up at you, a curl dangling in front of his eyes. “A freely given piece of personal information?” His fingertips pressed above his left lapel. “I’m touched,” he said, his voice dark.

“My mentor for the better part of my life now,” you said, stepping closer to drag the back of your hand over the iron pattern in Tom’s chair (he jolted backwards, just barely, but you caught it), “has been Tracey Prine.”

He tilted his head, and his jaw hung open slightly, his tongue lingering on the edge of his top incisors before clicking it against the roof of his mouth. “No, she hasn’t.”

“Want me to call her?” You dug your phone out of your pocket and unlocked it to her contact entry, just where it had been before Tom started talking to you. Your thumb waited above the call button for his decision, but whatever. Fuck with him. You pressed it anyway and put it on speaker.

It rang twice before she picked up, and at the sound of her voice stating your name and telling you she’s got a class in two minutes and to check on the Times (you didn’t react to that part), Tom inhaled sharply and straightened his shoulders.

“Not much, Dr. Prine, but I’m here with my employer,” you say, the phone lying flat in your palm between you and Tom, whose gaze flickered from it to you.

“Tell Mr. Holland I appreciate his work ethic and that he should value yours to no end,” she said, “I’ve got to go. Tonight?”

“Tonight,” you said, and you hung up on her.

“What’s…?” When you shook your head, he held out his hand. “Let me see your texts.” He swore under his breath as he scrolled through them, going through months and months of casework for notable trials, and he read the attachments you had sent recently. “Lab work, blood results. An ice pi—holy shit,” Tom said, the hand with the phone falling limply to his lap, “The Laurens trial. You.” The corner of his mouth twitched before breaking into a smirk. “You’re the one that solved everything. You’re that viper.”

Oh, my fuck; he’s heard of you. Tom Holland has heard about you. He’s familiar with your work. Oh, holy fuck. You held it all in for the moment, but if you made it home alive, you were going to marathon Star Wars and call in for takeaway. “That I am,” you said coolly, accepting your phone when he offered it, “and what does that mean for you, Mr. Holland?”

Any evidence of doubt about him evaporated, and his charisma returned almost instantly. He was smiling now, his teeth on display, and he leant towards you. “I want you at my side, Viper,” he said, his hands dangerously close to yours on the back of the iron chair, “I want you to do for me what you did for Laurens. Exclusively. I’ll be your only client. I want you to tear apart my enemies and pick their bones clean. I want you to be merciless, and I want you to be mine.”

That’s a lot of subtext you’ll be thinking about in the shower later. But show nothing; be nothing. “You want an awful lot.”

Tom took a deep breath and moved to sit on the wrought-iron table. “That’s why I’m giving you an out,” he said, crossing his arms loosely, “before you’re in. Because once you’re in, you can’t leave. I’ll make sure of that.”

You took a moment before clasping your hands behind your back and taking a step around the chair towards him. “I want my privacy.”

“I can’t guarantee that. I’ve got to keep a close eye on you, since Ripley slithered away,” he said, “You’re a shot in the dark despite your accomplishments.”

“You will guarantee it,” you said, leaning against the table with the iron pattern pressing into your palm, “Addresses, bank accounts, social security, everything that I don’t give you.”

Tom shook his head. “I can’t—”

“You will. It’s all I’m asking. I’ll be covering your dirty work from the world, so why can’t I hide mine?” It was your turn to be too close, for your breath to be hot against his skin as you said softly into his ear, “Tell me, Holland: are you afraid of the dark?”

tags: @presidentbttrflyfreak @magstorrn @imstarwarstrashokay @infamous-webhead @starksparker @starksmile @pparkerwrites @softspideys @spidereyhes @bi-writes @iron-spiderr @laurfangirl424 @wheremyotpat @valar--m0rghulis @upsidedownparker @hollandroos

[southeastasianists]

For the past four years, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) has sought to control political resistance. Measures have included confining protest leaders and key political figures in detention for ‘attitude adjustment’ and coercive memorandums on political activity. Soldiers, police and other security officers continue to pay visits to the homes of activists. Laws to curb political assembly, enacted via executive powers, include but are certainly not limited to NCPO Order No. 7/2557 and NCPO Order No. 3/2558 (bans on political gatherings of five or more people), and NCPO Order 49/2557 (a ban on providing support for political assembly).

At a glance, the NCPO’s efforts may appear to have had some measure of success. Key political movements such as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) has ceased organising rallies at the scales seen before the 2014 coup. Yet the UDD’s quietness does not at all mean that civilians who disagree with military rule have surrendered to the finality of the NCPO. In a context where peaceful assembly is outlawed, activists are managing the risk of open conflict with authorities by creatively transforming everyday activities into symbolic expressions of frustration.

These strategies are as much about toeing the lines set by law, as they are about imparting a message that political expression is a normal thing that all people can do, rather than a dangerous and scary thing as suggested by the NCPO’s discourse. To mark the fourth anniversary of the NCPO’s coup, I have compiled a tapestry of activist inventiveness that military rule has not been able to stamp out.

Anti-coup sandwiches  

Activists never intended to use sandwiches during protests—rather, it was the authorities themselves who seized upon sandwiches in 2014, making their own, unintended contribution to anti-authoritarian emblems.

Kate, an activist leader*, recalls that after the junta announced its ban on political gatherings of five people or more, she and her friends (who at the time were still students) decided they should organise some kind of resistance activity. Not wanting to draw the ire of officials, they decided to revolve the event around an everyday activity: watching a movie and eating snacks together. So Kate and fellow activists created an open Facebook event for 6 June 2014: “Picnic Under The Shade: Poetry, Movie Screening, Coup”.

At first, Kate and the activists had no ulterior motives in serving sandwiches at the event to attendees—they had brought them because they are easy to cut and hand out. But before the event began, authorities gathered at the event location and forcibly cancelled the event. The students requested to merely eat the sandwiches and then go home, seeing as they had prepared them already. The authorities refused—leading to a now notorious image of a security officer snatching sandwiches from a small-bodied student. In that second, sandwiches were transformed into a resonant anti-authoritarian symbol.

“The best spokesmen for the activists isn’t Rome or Ja New, but the NCPO itself,” Kate laughs.

Kate and eight other friends decided to make the best out of a bad situation, and organised an event to eat sandwiches—‘Nothing Much, We Just Want To Eat Sandwiches’—outside the Siam Paragon mall on 22 June 2014. The students were promptly arrested and detained in a camp for ‘attitude adjustment’. Several other sandwich-eating events have been since been staged, leading to international headlines such as “4 Absurdly Harmless Acts Now Criminalised By Thailand’s Military Rulers” and “Man Eats Sandwich, Gets Arrested”.

*At the time of this article’s publication, Kate is being detained in a police station for leading a protest demanding elections at Thammasat University.

Subversive reading groups

‘Peach’ (pseudonym), the activist behind past stunts where civilians gathered to do nothing more and nothing less than read books together, recalls following the news of activists being harrassed in the aftermath of the coup. She felt that the NCPO was succeeding in building a climate of fear through open collisions between protesters and authorities. She and her friends began divising resistance tactics that avoided overt political expression—to give authorities no cause to interfere—but which could still impart forcefully an anti-authoritarian sentiment. When a friend told Peach about a stunt in Turkey in 2013 where civilians gathered to read books at a park to protest plans to turn the public space into a mall, Peach borrowed the idea and applied it to the recent coup.

Peach felt that the activity of reading was not overly confrontational, but that the choice of books—George Orwell’s 1984 and other political books—would still impart that the gathering was aligned against the coup. In total, she organised four gatherings to read books: at the National Stadium skywalk, the Chong Nonsi BTS skywalk and near Wat Pathum Wanaram. The fourth reading session was mobile—readers rode on trains.

Peach recounts that the reading sessions were closed events, in that attendees were invited by word of mouth, out of fears for their safety. Only the fourth session was advertised through a Facebook event. At each gathering, Peach brought a cheap phone that she could quickly discard if necessary, rather than her usual smartphone. Though the reading sessions were organised secretly, Peach contacted trusted media contacts to cover the events and disperse images of civilians reading political texts together. She did not experience any direct harassment from authorities, which she puts down to their covert organisation.

Peach and her friends also poked holes in the junta’s laws, by reading in groups of four—not enough to violate the ban on gatherings on five people or more. Though Peach felt some fear while reading, she feels now certain they brought new tactics to Thailand’s resistance space that left authorities scratching their heads over law enforcement manuals—Peach recalls with humour that after the third reading session at the Chong Nonsi BTS skywalk, a stage for aerobics was conspicuously erected covering the space where the event had been held.

The three-finger salute

Protests against the NCPO took place as early as 23 May 2014 (the day after the coup). But in the coup’s immediate aftermath, protesters in their urgency did not think to seek a unifying symbol of resistance—individuals constructed their respective signs, converged at agreed meeting points, and shouted their grievances. Gatherings that took place on 1 June 2014 were probably the first time that protesters performed a shared symbolic gesture across a number of disparate meeting points (the National Stadium skywalk, outside the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, outside the Terminal 21 Mall, Thammasat University’s Tha Prachan campus).

This gesture was a raising of three fingers, a salute borrowed from The Hunger Games. In the book and film series, the three-finger salute “means thanks, it means admiration, it means goodbye to someone you love”. But for protesters on the ground, the raising of three fingers is laden with further meaning borrowed from other “revolutionary trios” such as the 1789 French Revolution’s liberty, equality and fraternity.

On 19 November 2014, while General Prayuth was visiting the province of Khon Kaen, five students from the local activist group Dao Din stood in a line and raised the salute, while wearing shirts reading, “No To The Coup”. The students were arrested quickly—the day the first part of The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay was scheduled to come out in Thai theatres. The following day, another student from Bangkok University stood in front of an advertisement for the film, raised the three finger salute and placed her other hand over her mouth. Unsurprisingly, she was “invited” by police officers to Pathum Wan Police Station.

The salute has been repeatedly performed at resistance events in Thailand, capturing considerable public attention. But its meaning has also shifted with political context. The formation in early 2018 of the People Who Want Elections (คนอยากเลือกตั้ง), an activist network mobilising against the entrenchment of military rule, has vested the three-finger salute with the following messages: “1. elections in 2018 2. down with dictatorship 3. long live democracy”.

This article was submitted by iLaw as an amended version of its annual post-coup report.

[justhereforthefanartbean-blog]

For the commentary tag: “”I can only offer myself,” Yuri replies” to about “The shout is too late.” from chapter 5 of The Thirst for Adventure. Also AGHH choosing a specific short section was so hard, just. The whole thing. One of the most memorable scenes I’ve ever read in a fic.

Bruh. That’s 800 words XD 

AlsoEXCUSE YOU HOW DARE YOU SAY SUCH NICE THINGS ABOUT MY WRITING (because theinternet does not allow hugging and I want to give you all of the hugs rn likedude, I cannot emphasise enough how much your opinion means to me, you’re afantastic writer and Heart is literally one of my fave YOI fanfics of all time,I’m so fucking stoned that you like my shit, holy crap)

Warning:I’m gonna post it all below because I wrote that so long ago I barely rememberit and I want to be able to reference it as I respond :P 

“Ican only offer myself,” Yuri replies.

Heis not shaking. The woman sneers at him anyway, her lip curling back to exposea mouth only half-full of teeth. Then, right before his eyes, her head opensup. A wound; the scar left by a sword. Stretching from the top of her headalmost to her eye, it splits her face and exposes her brain, but does notbleed. The skin is ripped, raw white and bloodless, and what he can only guessis the remaining mess of brain tissue is grey, like a carcass left to hang.

“Doesthis,” she hisses, moving closer, “deserve a half-blood’s revenge?”

IfYuri is shivering now, it is because she has chilled him to the bone. Standingthis close to her is like being immersed in the winter lake. It knocks all thebreath out of him.

“Ican only offer myself,” he repeats, choking it out as best he can, through whatfeels like lungs full of water.

“Notenough,” the woman spits, and steps back, sheathing her sword. “I will wait forsomeone better.”

Yuritries not to breathe a sigh of relief as the sensation dissipates. He coughs alittle, trying to clear his lungs of something that was never really there. Thechill, however, does not fade. The second widow steps forward.

“Whatwas your mother’s name?” She asks, hair whipping in the wind that wasn’t therethe moment before. It drags at the edge of his cloak, snatching it away fromhis fingers and throwing his hair in his face. It stings, cold, like tiny barbsof nettles.

“LarisaNikolayevna Plisetsky.” Yuri has to shout it above the churning and roilingair, and only hope that she can hear. To his great surprise, the woman stepsback immediately, and the wind drops to a breeze. “I know her name. She was agood woman. Your debt with me is balanced. I will not challenge you.” And thesecond sword is sheathed.

Liliahad told him that he might be in a better position than either of his brothers,upon meeting the widows, but he hadn’t anticipated by quite how much.

Unfortunately,his good luck cannot last.

Themoment the third woman steps forward, she introduces herself by name, and Yuriknows that he will have to fight.

“Iwas Véra Savvichna Ivanova. I fought and died for your ancestors over a hundredyears ago, only for my body to be tossed into the water as if I were nothing tothem. We will fight for my honour.”

“Iaccept your challenge.” Yuri does not take his sword. The nature of thechallenge is always the choice of the challenger.

Vérasteps forward and picks his sword from the ground, passing it to him.

“Sheatheit.” He does so, silently. “My body lies at the bottom of this river. You willswim down and retrieve it. If the river claims you, my debt is repaid. If yousurvive,” her eyes, dark and bloodshot, bore into him, “bury me properly.”

Yurilooks at the water. The river has been by their side since they left thecastle. It is fed by the mountain, from glacial streams, and this is not theseason for melt. The level of the water is well below the bridge and the bank,settled into the rocky hollow it has carved for itself. All the same, it isdeep, cold, and blue. He cannot see the bottom. Backing out now, however, is assure a death as drowning.

Hehas no choice.

Thethree women move back as he takes off his sword, and boots, then most of hislayers of clothing. As unwilling as he is to get his undershirt wet, and asmuch as it may hold him back in the water, he decides to keep it on. Divingnaked into a mountain river in autumn is only barely worse than diving inhalf-dressed, but he’ll take it. They move aside, allowing him to walk acrossto the halfway point of the bridge. Chancing a glance over his shoulder, Yurinotices that Otabek and Roza have edged closer. With a sharp shake of his head,he warns them as best he can. The fact that they’ve held off this long alreadyis surprising. He can’t say he would do the same if it looked like Otabek wasabout to jump into freezing water of his own volition.

Especiallyas neither of them will have any idea what is going on.

Hetakes a deep breath.

“Ready.”The two women who did not name themselves nod, and with matching smiles, jump,vanishing back into the water. The river does not splash.

Hefaces the river. Takes a deep breath.

“Goodluck,” Véra says, and pushes.

“YURI!”

Theshout is too late.

Holyfucking shit. Okay so MAJOR SPOILER ALERT. 

This chapter was the culmination of so much research intoRussian mythology. I’ve already talked about everything that went into itfolklore-wise, but character-wise, I knew what I wanted to do to Yuri. He’sjust left home for the first time, essentially, and although he’s been warnedabout this kinda stuff his whole life, the first thing he’s faced with issomething that completely isolates him. 

Hedoesn’t have the reassurance of his family or even his friends helping him. Buthe knows what he has to do. He faces up to the injustices that his ancestorscommitted, and for the first time in the story (I think) we see him be courageous withoutbeing angry. 

As anillegitimate prince, his station offers him both protection and danger. This isa direct reversal of that; in court, revealing that he isn’t Lilia’s son is thedangerous part. He’s been forced to hide it, and even though he hates that andisn’t at all embarrassed by his mother or Nikolai, there’s always going to besome residual effects from being forced to hide part of yourself. Here, hisreal mother essentially saves his life twice just by existing. Basically, Iwanted to give Yuri proof that while his blood has absolutely dictated his lifeso far, that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. (Although theWidows do basically insult him for it the whole time, because, you know, social indoctrination).

Ithink it’s also important to understand how entrenched Yuri is in his rolehere. He’s wanted to be a knight his whole life, he’s been training for itsince before he can remember, and then he had that taken away from him. Notonly has he got it back, his first ever encounter literally requires him torisk his own life. But he does it. Because he is a knight now, and that’s whatknights do. They do whatever it takes. And Yuri has always, always donewhatever it takes. It’s something that he struggles with a little later, especially when he actually leaves the group, so I wanted to establish it early so that when that happened it almost felt like he was betraying himself as well as them by letting go of some of his values and key goals. And also it then shows how fucked up that big key bond thing makes him, because he doesn’t deal with it calmly or sensibly even though we know that he can. 

There’salso a lot of traditional trial themes going on here. You know, he has to facethree tasks, the last of which is the worst, to prove himself kind of thing.All very ‘symbolic’ (idk it doesn’t feel like that when I write it). Taster of things to come! It’s definitely the simplestchallenge he’s faced so far, I think. For a start, there’s a very specific wayof dealing with it that he knows about, but also it doesn’t call his emotional state into question. Sure, it nearly kills him, but it’s a lot less gruelling than some of the stuff they go through later. 

It’salso kind of a test for Beka too. We get to see how much he trusts Yuri, eventhough Yuri hasn’t always given him reason to, and it’s obvious that he’s in a verydangerous situation. Otabek is the first person to actually trust Yuri tohandle it on his own. 

Butyeah, the folklore side of things was so much fun. I wanted to play withsomething that made it clear that Yuri isn’t the only supernatural being inthis world, but also that there’s a blur between the actual supernatural, simplesuperstition, and magic. Also, empathy. You know, they’re talking about theirdeaths and sort of forcing Yuri to experience them too. Like the sensation ofhis lungs filling with water, and the cold, and making him jump in the river –it sort of brings to life the brutality of what they faced. And we already knowthat, especially because of his influence, Yuri is a very humane person. It’sanother sort of inkling that he’s going to have issues helping Beka actuallyfight a war and kill people, even to protect more people in the long run. The ‘greatergood’ is much less of a clear concept for him.

Sothere you have it. Everything I was thinking when I was writing that scene! I’mnot sure a lot of it was very coherent but I hope it was interesting :P

[isolavirtuosa]

Starting Over (For Real?) 13-14

[fanfiction] NaruSasu

Read the previous parts here.

- 13 -

  Outside Iwagakure was a ghost town.

“I don’t think anyone will mind if we stay the night,” Naruto said cheerfully as we walked through an empty inn.  “No one will mind that we have no money, either.”

“So we can splurge on separate rooms?” I asked hopefully.

“When we know there’s a bounty on your head?  Uh, we’re gonna be glued together for the rest of your life,” Naruto said, like that wasn’t a completely weird and inappropriate thing to say.

“You’re such a creepy stalker,” Sai said, patting him on the shoulder with a smile.

“That’s not a nice thing to say,” Naruto muttered.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Sai said, looking overly happy.  “I’m practicing my friendly teasing between pals.”

“It’s not really teasing when it’s the truth,” I pointed out.

“I’m not a stalker!” Naruto cried.

“It’s funny because he believes that,” Sai said, turning his smile on me.

Maybe Sai had his good points.

In fact, he’d been a valuable source of information as we’d traveled, answering all of my questions precisely and without added emotional detail.  Hyuuga had made his power grab before Nara’s bones had even been recovered from the wreckage of the allied headquarters.  Before Naruto and I had been found.  That Kakashi had relied on covert maneuvering and favors to get the two of us back into the village.  That everyone thought that Naruto had lost his arm fighting Kaguya, and that no one knew about my arm.  That no one knew what I had done.  No one knew about revolution.

Sai knew all of these things, because Kakashi and Sakura knew.

They were the only three people in the village who knew.

“I’ll take first watch,” Naruto announced as we were brushing our teeth.

I looked at him in the bathroom mirror.

He smiled at me, toothpaste dripping out of the corner of his mouth.

I frowned at him.

He spit into the sink and rinsed it away.

“Don’t pretend to be okay.”

His head shot back up.  His eyes met mine, and his expression softened into a sad smile.  “I’ll be okay eventually,” he said, like his entire world hadn’t just been turned upside down.  Again.

“If you can’t sleep…” I started to say, then felt my face go red.  I hated when my mouth started moving without my permission.

Naruto nodded.  “Thanks,” he said, like he knew that I was going to tell him that he could wake me up to talk.  He chuffed me on the shoulder and went back into the room.

I brushed my teeth slowly, waiting for my normal coloring to return.  Being around Naruto all the time was making me stupider.  I thought not spending the day plastered to his back and actually moving on my own in my wheelchair would have helped put some healthy distance between us.

It did not.

Sai and I set up the futons while Naruto slipped out the window to take up his watch.

“You need to do something about your arm,” he said as we both settled in to sleep, interrupting the peaceful quiet thing that we had going.

“Such as…?”

“There will be questions.”

“You’re saying I shouldn’t go up to the tsuchikage and say that Naruto blew off my arm trying to stop me from killing all the kages?”

“Yes, I wouldn’t recommend that course of action at all.”

“What’s done is done.”

“You need allies.”

“...yeah.”

I drifted off into a light sleep, waiting for the sound of Naruto jumping back through the window so I could take my shift.

My entire body heaved.

Sai was next to me, pulling out a scroll and already painting furiously.

I was riding Susanoo, charging towards where Naruto had landed.  He wasn’t moving.  Susanoo snatched him up, his small body in that huge hand, and then he was looking at me and grinning sheepishly.

A bird emerged from Sai’s scroll.  He dove off of Susanoo’s shoulder and onto its back, swooping towards the two ninja standing in front of us.

“What the fuck is the point of you taking watch if you can’t even use fucking ninjutsu!” I screamed at Naruto.

“Heh,” he said, like this was somehow funny.

I was going to kill him, but first I was going to kill the idiots who’d dared attack him.

Unfortunately, Sai seemed to have that situation under control, the two ninjas running for cover from his onslaught of attacks.

“You’re breathing really hard,” Naruto pointed out as Susanoo dropped him next to me.

“I was just woken from sleep by a strange chakra attacking our camp,” I said irritably.

“It’s like a shot of adrenaline,” he said with a knowing nod.

We both watched Sai wrangle the two ninjas into submission with his snakes.  It was obvious that they weren’t very skilled, and that the only reason they’d gotten the drop on Naruto was because the idiot couldn’t do one-handed jutsu.

“I’m okay,” he said, squeezing my hand.

I didn’t respond, glaring out ahead of me.

“We should go help Sai,” he said.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘we’ since it’s already been established that you’re completely useless.”

“Enough.”

I was so startled by the authority in his voice that I actually looked at him.

Naruto’s face was hard, looking much older than his eighteen years.  “Take us down there.”

I was lowering us to the ground before it registered what I was doing.

Naruto strode off towards Sai like he was used to me following his orders.

I cloaked myself more tightly in my chakra, knowing it was a waste to keep Susanoo activated but not caring.

It was easy enough to get the captives talking.  They were some small fry thugs who had recovered quickly after being released from the God Tree and had decided to make this town their base.  They were hoarding all the town’s supplies and attacking any passersby to add to their stockpile.

Sai’s smile had taken on an unpleasant edge.  “There are people starving in this world, you know.”

“Hey, we’re just looking out for our own,” the dumber of the two protested.

Sai and I went on a quick excursion through the town, rooting out the other members and wrapping them up in a nice package for the tsuchikage.

“We should move on from here,” Sai told Naruto, and I nodded my agreement.

“You both exhausted your chakra,” he said with a frown.  “Let’s rest a few hours.”

“We’re fine,” I said, and Sai nodded his agreement.

Naruto looked between us, a furrow in his brow.

“We should get to Iwa,” Sai said.

“What’s the rush?” Naruto complained.

Sai and I both exchanged a look.

“When the hell did you two become best friends?” Naruto whined.

“Best… friends…?” Sai said slowly.

“We don’t know what’s waiting for us, idiot,” I growled.

“Whaddya mean?”

“He means that all of the strongest ninjas from Iwa were in Lightning when everyone woke up, and they only left to return a few weeks ago,” Sai explained.  “Maybe more of these kinds of factions had already entrenched themselves before the tsuchikage could return.”

Naruto nodded slowly.  “Okay.  But you two are going to be as useless as me if we come up against another group like this and you haven’t recovered your chakra, so…”

I glared at him.

He grinned.

“And who’s going to take watch, you?” I spat out.

“Whoever’s the least tired,” he said, unperturbed.

I looked to Sai.

He nodded.

“I’ll take first watch,” I said.  I glanced towards the row of sleeping prisoners we had lined up in the hall.  They were definitely throwing a wrench in things.  At least we’d found one of the food stores, so we’d have enough food to feed them in the morning.  I would have just let them miss a meal or two if it was up to me, but I was with the ‘good’ guys now.

“Give me two hours,” Sai said, heading into the room.

Naruto leaned against the wall next to my chair.

“You haven’t slept at all,” I pointed out.

“Well, I’m useless anyway.”

“You keep saying that.”

“You keep saying that.”

“It’s true.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

“I’m going outside,” I informed him, wheeling my chair down the hallway.

He followed.

The sun was just starting to peek out over the hills.  I felt the air, breathing in my surroundings.  I couldn’t sense any threats.

Besides the blond who was suddenly resting his chin on my knee and staring up at me pitifully.

“Go to bed, Naruto,” I chided him.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

I touched his cheek.

He leaned into it until I took my hand away, then got to his feet and went back inside.

 - 14 -

  I woke Sai up after two hours and finally sank into my own restless sleep, flooded with uneasy dreams.

“Sas’?”

I opened my eyes with a start, my heart pounding from something unfinished and unremembered.

“We’ve got some rice for breakfast instead of ration bars,” Naruto said cheerfully.  He was crouched beside me, rolling up his bedding into a scroll.  “You wanna get your exercises out of the way before we eat?”

I sat up, pushing my snarly bangs out of my eyes.  “Yeah,” I said, rolling my shoulders.  My body felt stiff from the fighting and the lack of sleep.

“Tell me when you’re ready.”

I sighed, trying to rub the sleep out of my eyes.  “Just get it over with.”

He turned to look at me.  “You didn’t sleep very well.”

“No shit.”

He frowned but didn’t say anything.

I lay back down, looking at him expectantly.

He got my left leg moving, then my right, before moving on to resistance training.  He was pushing me harder than usual, and I started feeling frustrated when I couldn’t keep up.

“Enough!” I finally snapped, pushing him away.

“We’re not finished.”

“Well I can’t fucking do it so who cares.”

“You’re just tired, from yesterday, so-”

“Shut up!” I snarled.

He frowned his adult-frown at me, which pissed me off even more.

My sheer fury seemed to melt the look off his face, and suddenly he was an insecure little boy.

“Hey, um… so Sai’s gonna stay here with the prisoners while we go ahead to Iwa, but… I mean is that going to be okay?” he asked uncertainly.

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” I asked, murdering him with my eyes.

“Sasuke,” he said, pained.

I stopped.

“Why can’t we just get along?” he asked glumly.

“Because I’m an asshole and you’re overly sensitive?” I suggested.

He sighed.  “You’re an asshole on purpose.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“You have a lotta stuff to sort out inside of you,” he said.  “I get that, but you can’t keep talking down to me and treating me like I’m garbage.”

“...I know.”

He looked at me.

I looked back at him, feeling a small piece of me crack.  “You almost got hurt.  Yesterday.”

He studied my face.  “Yeah, I did.”

I sat up slowly.  Why was he making me say it?  “I didn’t… like it.”

“Sas’,” he breathed out, catching me by the back of the neck and pressing in until our foreheads touched.

I looked into his eyes, refusing to say anything else.

He sighed, a soft brush of air against my lips.

“Don’t scare me like that,” I mumbled against his mouth before I could stop myself.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered back, his breathing getting heavier.

“I…” I started to say.  I stopped myself by finally completing the circuit, my lips molding into Naruto’s.  It was so easy and familiar, taking control of his mouth and making it mine.

He gasped when we pulled apart, looking dazed.

I felt myself going soft around the edges.

He tucked a piece of hair that had fallen from my hair tie behind my ear, his hand lingering.  “Damn, I hate that,” he said with a sad smile.

I felt my eyes narrowing.

“I… sorry, you know I don’t think before I talk,” he rushed ahead.  “I was just… it’s like you kiss me like you’ve done it a thousand times before, you know?  But for me, it’s like,” he started to say, then turned to his hand to count on his fingers, his brow scrunching up.  “It’s our fourth kiss, Sasuke.  The fourth!  It’s still new and special and kinda overwhelming, but you’re over here all cool as a cucumber while I experience all that by myself.”

“Maybe it’s just because you’re uncool,” I muttered, flustered.

“Well, that, too,” he said with an upward twitch of his lips.

We stared at each other.

“I have kissed you a thousand times before,” I admitted quietly.

“That wasn’t me.”

I studied his serious face.  “Okay.  Then kiss me.”

He tilted his head to the side.

“Kiss me,” I repeated, trying not to sound desperate.  “Show me what it’s like to kiss you and not… him…”

He hesitated.

I let him take his time, meeting his gaze as evenly as I could.

“Fifth time’s the charm?” he asked.  He was nervous.

“Fifth time’s the charm,” I agreed, leaving my lips parted and waiting.

Naruto thumbed along my bottom lip.  He was still hesitating.

I closed my eyes.  It felt like I was putting myself at a disadvantage, like I was leaving myself open.  Open to an attack?  Open to a rejection?

Time had slowed down, and all I could do was wait in the dark.

The first brush was hesitant.  I could feel the moisture from him licking his lips first, feel the uneven roughness of his sun-blistered mouth.  The pressure was light before immediately disappearing.

I swallowed.

His hand settled on my arm, his fingers digging in a little too tightly, clinging.  The second brush was more confident, the pressure of his lips firm against mine.

I responded carefully, following his lead.

His fingers slid down the sleeve of my t-shirt, caressing the skin where my arm ended.

It felt intimate, and I gasped into his mouth.

Naruto pulled back, breathing heavily.

I kept my eyes shut.

He pressed in more aggressively and I answered in kind.  His hand had slipped up my sleeve, rubbing along the skin.  Every touch said that this arm was his, and I found myself agreeing.

“Sasuke,” he said between gasps and kisses.  “Sasuke, look at me.”

I didn’t look at him, just continuing to move my mouth with his instead.

“Sasuke,” he repeated, swiping his tongue along mine.  He seemed to get distracted tangling our tongues together, but then he was pulling back again.  “Sasuke, I’m Naruto.”

I actually opened my eyes at that because it was such a stupid thing to say.  I stared at him.

He didn’t seem to think that what he was saying was stupid at all.  “I’m Naruto,” he repeated insistently, going in for another kiss.

My mouth was immobile as I continued to stare at him.

He frowned.  “I’m the real Naruto,” he said, tracing my closed lips with his tongue.

They parted without my permission.

“Forget about him,” he whispered harshly, and suddenly I could feel his chakra running along my skin.

We were moving towards some unnamed line, bodies pressed tightly, mouths moving together  My hips were somehow moving, Naruto’s rising up to meet me, and then I was on my back and I didn’t know what was happening anymore, just that I wanted more.

That familiar chakra pushed past my skin and into my pathways.

I could barely classify what we were doing as ‘kissing’ anymore, our mouths failing to meet half the time as we just gasped our way to some kind of completion.  My body was flooded with chakra as he came, and all I could do was cry out and cling onto him.

It took a while to come back to my senses and realize how heavy Naruto was, his full weight pinning me down.  “Hey,” I said, nudging his head with my chin.

He groaned, slowly emerging from his coma-like state.

“Off,” I said.

He grumbled something and rolled onto his side, pulling me with him.

I probably minded, but we were already mindlessly kissing again, albeit chastely.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” Naruto said when he finally regained the ability to speak human language.  He kept pressing our lips together between words.

“What, dry hump me into a futon?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

“Mm, yeah,” he said, blushing.

“Wish we’d brushed our teeth first,” I said, mouth separating from his with a soft smack.

Naruto laughed at that, still blushing.  “I didn’t know that the Uchiha Sasuke got morning breath.”

“It’s nothing compared to your dog breath,” I muttered, continuing to kiss him anyway.

“Bow wow,” he deadpanned.

I couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up out of me.  I felt like I was drunk on Naruto’s chakra.

“What are we doing?” he asked, looking happier than I’d seen him since we’d woken up in this world.

“Making out,” I said between kisses.

He gave me a goofy smile and suddenly started kissing me all over my face.

“Ugh,” I tried to complain, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop him.

“Do you think we fight so much because of all the unresolved sexual tension?” he asked, his brows knotting together.

I breathed out a laugh, smoothing the tension between his eyes with my thumb.  “I hope we weren’t experiencing sexual tension when we were six.”

“We might have been,” he said solemnly.

I slid my hand to his cheek, thumbing along the skin.  “I don’t think we’re going to stop fighting.”

“Due to the unusually high quantity of sexual tension?” he asked.

I would have laughed again, but his eyes were smoldering and I could feel the weight of his experience and his desire.

Naruto didn’t like whatever he saw on my face, flopping on his back with a sigh.  “Sorry,” he said.

“For what?” I muttered.

“This is okay, right?” he asked, reaching his hand out hesitantly before resting it on my side and pulling me closer.

I just looked at him, resting my head against his shoulder.

“You expect me to read your mind, and I can’t,” he said quietly.  His hand moved to my back, rubbing up and down and making me want to close my eyes in bliss.

“You’re not so bad at it,” I said, trying to keep the pure contentment out of my voice.

The corner of his mouth tilted upward.  “You’re like a freaking cat, Uchiha.”

“At least I’m not a dog,” I mumbled.

“I’m a fox, not a dog,” he said, sliding his hand under my t-shirt and rubbing the tension out of my muscles.

“Foxes are canids,” I said, absently tracing the seal on his stomach where his shirt had ridden up.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“It means foxes and dogs are in the same family of animals.”

“Oh… really?”

“Yes.”

“You’re smart…”

“Smarter than you?  Yes.”

“Jerk.”

I pressed a kiss to his collarbone, a quiet apology.

He kissed the top of my head and continued to rub my back.

Then Sai came into the room, said, “Pardon me, I didn’t know that you were mating,” and we were back to reality.

[gaiatheorist]

Delusions of good-enough.

Last week’s ‘Jagged Little Pill’-is-bad blog didn’t happen, I’d started retrospectively analysing the lyrics that resonated ‘then’, from a perspective of ‘now’. ‘Jagged Little HRT-patch’ if you will, reflecting that the words haven’t changed, we have, in the 20+ years since the album. (For what it’s worth, I think it’s a good album, there’s still a bit of the flailing-stomping-non-mainstream about me.) 

@samdylanfinch was re-tweeted into my Twitter timeline, and another piece of the jigsaw-that-is-me almost, but not quite fitted into position. (It’s a million piece jigsaw, it’s all sky, I’m trying to complete it in the dark, during a hurricane, and I’m wearing boxing gloves... I’m on a waiting list for therapy.) I’ve accepted for a very long time that I have a tendency to push people away, and always assumed it was a protective mechanism. The faux-bravado, styling myself as a heartless bitch who just doesn’t ‘need’ friends, or relationships is entrenched. I joke about my reverse-Midas touch being why I don’t engage with very many people. I deliberately distance, I deliberately disturb and disgust, to keep most-people at arms length. I don’t ‘get’ people, a lot of ‘me’ was very atypical even before the brain injuries, always-outsider, never quite ‘fitting’, so I just stopped trying after a while. 

I need to watch myself not to go off on the “Am I Frankenstein, or the creature?” slant again, whatever I am, I just ‘am’, potentially some of it can be unpicked and re-learned, some of it I might just have to live with, and work around.

I’m ‘doing it’ now, one of my behaviours, my superiority complex. I read the whole thread, about some damaged-people running from relationships, and I identified heavily with that. Then Little Miss Twist decided to show her hand, and I had a brief, but intense period of “No, I don’t, I’m better than that!” in relation to the ‘pleasing’ element. There is no ‘better’ here, it’s just a shade of different, I don’t approval-seek in the same way as ‘most’ people, and I can be very prickly about the ways some-people do it. That’s unkind, so I try to ‘catch myself’ before I start arguments. You wouldn’t believe how much of my waking hours are spent distracting and deflecting myself from starting arguments about things that happened decades ago. (Seriously, I’ve had one bubbling up for weeks about a family member who didn’t vaccinate her kids against MMR, twenty years ago.) I’m not withholding that argument to avoid upsetting her, I’m sitting on it because there’s no need for it, it would achieve nothing.

The adorable counsellor, who saw me for 16 sessions, when he was only supposed to allocate six, periodically asked me “Are you a bit of a people-pleaser?”, and it made me bristle. I can see his logic now, in light of the Twitter thread, but then, I misconstrued the phrase as ‘door-mat’, and absolutely denied it. I had been a door-mat, for far too long, with the ex, and to some extent with my last job. With the ex, it was path-of-least-resistance, the things he’d tantrum-smash were always mine, it was a preservation-behaviour. With work, I continued to absorb more and more workload, refining systems and processes to make them more effective, thinking I’d matter-more. I was approval-seeking right up until the last minute, making sure everything was as in-order as it could be before I left, because I didn’t want colleagues to think badly of me. That’s my ‘different’ door-mat behaviour I don’t sulk for weeks if nobody notices my new hair-do, and, while I do have intense periods of over-thinking whether I might have upset some-people, I’m not overly-concerned about being ‘liked.’ My people-pleasing is generally trying to help more than I harm, and usually dumping myself at the bottom of the priority-list in the process. 

It’s a learned behaviour, some of it is useful, some of it less-so. My Adverse Childhood Experiences led to me developing some entirely understandable hyper-vigilance and risk-mapping analytical behaviours. In the last mental health assessment, I referred to myself as ‘a machine’, ‘a robot’ and ‘a computer’, and I’m snort-laughing at myself for being ridiculous, I’m a human being, it’s just difficult to articulate the tangential-triage processes of my brain. ‘Over-thinking’ doesn’t even touch on it, I don’t feel safe unless I’ve considered every possible outcome (usually some improbable ones, too) to a decision, which is bizarre, given my tendency to make incredibly unwise decisions when I’m less-lucid. 

That’s the foundation of it, for me, the disordered thinking is rooted in not being safe, so building in these weird coping strategies, to make me feel ‘safer’, more ‘in control.’ Also to ‘please’ people, with my “I’ve already done it.” and “I’ve made it better.” behaviours. Back to being a show-off, and a try-hard, neither of which are particularly admirable behaviours. I don’t want to be ‘pretty’ or ‘feminine’, those signal-danger for me, so I don’t seek vanity-validation, and I do allow myself to become far too annoyed when I see other people doing it. I don’t want to be perceived as weak, or vulnerable, and I scare the shit out of people ‘proving myself’. (There are two text conversations on my phone, my son very gently telling me that if I wait until he’s home from Uni he’ll help me erect my poly-tunnel, and a jokey one from a friend suggesting I might not have thought to secure the cover, in case of high winds ‘because you’re a woman’. The poly-tunnel is up, very well secured, and I ‘beat’ the average time to build it quoted on the reviews. Show-off.) That’s knowing that I am both weak and vulnerable, entrenched by being conditioned-female, never-quite-enough, and then over-layered with 20+ years of the ex, and Father-in-law telling me what I couldn’t-do. I’m never going to be ‘pretty’ or ‘strong’, so I chose to be ‘intelligent’ instead. Then I had a brain haemorrhage, which has significantly impacted on some of my cognitive functioning. 

I have two simultaneous ear-worms, the ‘Daddy never came to my ball games’ at the end of Tim Minchin’s ‘Dark Side’, and snatches of Alanis Morissette’s ‘Perfect.’ My ‘Historical and Complicating Factors’ are rooted in dysfunctional early attachment, over-layered with significant abuse. My parents were profoundly unstable people, both prone to outbursts of violence, there is no ‘safe place’ when you’re never sure which one of them is going to hit you next, but bruises fade in time. The emotional aspects of that, and various other elements of my childhood are more difficult to overcome. There was no trust, ever, the people who were supposed to keep me safe didn’t, and compounded that by continually reminding me that I wasn’t good enough. If I scored 9/10 on a test, Dad would ask me what I’d gotten wrong, rather than congratulate me for trying. Mum would fly into physically abusive rages, and blame-shift that *everything* was my fault. (Yes, I did throw out “I didn’t ASK to be born!” a few times, then I just stopped reacting when she hit me, useless talent number-whatever, both in terms of taking showers of punches without flinching, and being able to split up bar-fights, bruises fade in time.) 

It was predictable, coming from that background, that I’d be vulnerable to further abuse-of-power relationships, the boyfriend-before-the-ex was a very damaged creature, who became physically abusive. The first time he hit me, I accepted the apology and reassurances that it would never happen again, the second time, I broke his nose. The ex wasn’t physically abusive, he was coercive, controlling, and of the opinion that the ring on my finger meant he could put his penis wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted. I had ‘nowhere to go’, so I went into myself, physically present, but not emotionally, for most of the 20 years we were together, I was living a half-life. (Whoa on the blame-shift, there, I’m down-shifting his behaviours against how ‘unkind’ I was in withdrawing my attention and affection, knowing how needy he was.) 

That ‘going into myself’ distancing behaviour is part of the over-arching issue. I ‘know’ that most people don’t intend to harm me, but what’s the point in taking the risk that they might? I don’t engage with people very much, I’m ‘stuck’ as that tiny little girl who wasn’t invited to parties because she wet herself, or that lanky teenager who was too intelligent to be in the gangs of the local kids, and too dirty-poor to be invited to the houses of the kids she was in classes with. Outsider-alien, I never quite grew out of the “I MUST be adopted, I can’t possibly belong here!” phase. It’s probably more than ten years since I realised that it’s not just the ‘not engaging’, I also actively push people away. Not quite as extreme as an abused child deliberately soiling themselves as a distancing tactic, but I can be pretty disgusting at times. It’s a tolerance-test, I say or do some pretty horrendous things to encourage ‘natural attrition’ of people, sometimes I just ‘drop off’, because I don’t have the emotional capacity to respond appropriately. 

At the very bottom of this rabbit-hole, I need to unpick the historical messages that I wasn’t good-enough from the fabric of now. I need to accept that what I have now has to be the foundation for whatever comes next, I can’t change the past, I can only shape my future reactions. I need to ease myself out of burrowing-behaviours, to stop running away from my emotions, and potentially engage-more, cut-off less. There are a very small number of people in my life who are very important to me, I need to rid myself of the notion that I’m too-cling, too-demanding, too-’me’, and accept that people who choose to engage with me do it of their own volition. I’m never going to be Ms Popular, and I don’t want to be, I’ll settle for good-enough. I’m damaged, I’m not broken, I’ll never be perfect, but no-one really is. I need to stop the old behaviour of ‘getting the first punch in’, and pushing people to reject me, it isn’t inevitable that they will. Keeping the whole world at arms length is incredibly draining, the bitch-armour is heavy, I need to learn to accept that I’m not ‘stealing’ attention or affection if it is freely given, that I might just deserve it.    

[newssplashy]

Pulse List brings you the eight most notorious criminals, armed robbers and killers that Nigerians can never forget in a hurry owing to their exploits that has become legendary.

In the history of Nigeria, there has been a history of crime and criminals who have become folk heroes and legends in themselves.

Some of them have had their names entrenched in the history of the country as bandits who almost debilitated the nation but whatever way you look at them, they deserve the roll call of heroes and villains are made.

Here are the most notorious criminals Nigerians can never forget.

1. Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini aka The Law

For those who grew in the 80s, the name Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini can never be forgotten as one of Nigeria's most notorious armed robbers who reigned supreme in the old Bendel State, now Edo and Delta.

ALSO READ : "Laying Bare: Profiling Nigeria's Notorious Armed Robbers: (Lawrence Anini)"

Anini also known as The Law, reigned supreme in the 80s and was so bloody that his matter was even discussed at the State Security Council meeting in the General Ibrahim Babangida's regime.

 Born in 1960 in a village about 20 miles from Benin City in present day Edo State, Anini migrated to Benin at an early age, learned to drive and became a skilled taxi driver, before he took to crime and quickly became  a much-feared gang leader whose approach got people trembling.

His gang members included Monday Osunbor, later known to be a dreaded killer without mercy, Friday Ofege, Henry Ekponwan, Phillip Iwebelue, Prince Kingsley Eweka, and others.

Starting out as car snatchers, bus robbers and bank thieves predominantly in Benin, Anini, and his gang extended his criminal acts to other towns and cities in other states in the country.

Anini was also able to penetrate the police echelon and had some top officers as his gun suppliers and informants, the biggest of them being Inspector George Iyamu who benefited immensely from the gang.

In an operation in August of 1986, the Anini team struck at First Bank, Sabongida-Ora, where they carted away N2, 000.

But although the amount stolen was seen as chicken feed, they left the scene with a trail of blood as many persons were killed.

On September 6, same year, the Anini gang snatched a Peugeot 504 car from Albert Otoe, the driver of an Assistant Inspector General of Police, Christopher Omeben. In snatching the car, they killed the driver and went to hide his corpse somewhere.

It was not until three months later that the skeleton of the driver was spotted 16 kilometers away from Benin, along the Benin-Agbor highway. A day after this attack, Anini, operating in a Passat car believed to have been stolen, also effected the snatching of another Peugeot 504 car near the former FEDECO office, in Benin.

Two days after, the Anini men killed two policemen in Orhiowon Local Government Area of the state. Still, in that month, three different robbery attacks, all pointing to Anini’s involvement, took place.

A day after the operation, Anini, The Law, turned to a ‘Father Christmas’ as he threw wads of Naira notes on the ground for free pick by market men and women at a village near Benin.

Anini thus spear-headed a four-month reign of terror between August and December 1986. Anini also reportedly wrote numerous letters to media houses using political tones of Robin Hood-like words, to describe his criminal acts.

Even the Military Head of State, Gen. Babangida got worried over the activities of Anini and asked the then Inspector General of Police, Etim Inyang where the bandit was and gave him the mandate to get him dead or alive.

Such was his prowess and myth.

Anini was finally arrested in a major operation led by Superintendent of Police Kayode Uanreroro, who brought his reign of terror to an end.

He was nabbed  on December 3, 1986, at No. 26, Oyemwosa Street, opposite Iguodala Primary School, Benin City, in company of six women, following a tip-off by residents of the area.

Anini who was confined to a wheelchair throughout his trial following the amputation of one of his legs was sentenced to death by Justice James Omo-Agege of the Benin High Court  and was executed on March 29, 1987.

2. 'Doctor' Ishola Oyenusi

Naturally, 'Doctor' Ishola Oyenusi should have taken the top spot on this list going by the fact that he was the first known armed robber in the country.

But Anini's exploits in the underworld took the shine off Oyenusi.

In the history of crime in Nigeria, Oyenusi, was a cold-blooded armed robber who held sway in the early 70s, stands on a very special threshold that none can ever dream of attaining.

He took the nation by storm shortly after the Civil War ended and before he was executed on Wednesday, September 8, 1971, at the famous Bar Beach show in front of 30,000 watching Nigerians, no one believed that 'The Doctor' would be captured, as he was famed for 'disappearing' or his body not penetrable by bullets.

In fact, he must have had so much faith in his charms that he smiled all the way to the stake and even as soldiers aimed their rifles at him and his co-criminals, Oyenusi still radiated an aura of invincibility.

 The phenomenal armed robber rose from the ashes of the Nigerian-Biafran Civil War that spanned three years, from 1967-1970.

Oyenusi was a charismatic, cocksure gangster whose lordly disdain for the law cast the terrifying portent of social breakdown, and had come to be celebrated as the quintessential bandit of his time.

During his reign of terror, 'Doctor' Oyenusi carved a name for himself as the most brutal terror the country had ever known and lived up to another of his nickname of 'Dr. Rob and Kill', because he was known to kill with impunity and his myth was legendary.

He unleashed boundless terror on many Nigerians and would kill even for a stick of cigarette. Oyenusi was no doubt, the uncrowned emperor of Nigerian robbers and he was described as the ‘first celebrated armed robber in Nigeria’, regarded by some as the pioneer of conventional armed robbery in Nigeria.

When Oyenusi reigned at the height of his regal confidence, he declared: ‘The bullet has no power over me.‘

Legend has it that Oyenusi got into active robbery back in 1959, but he committed his first major robbery when he snatched a car along Herbert Macaulay Road in Yaba, Lagos, and killing its owner in the process, just because his girlfriend was broke and needed money to buy her make-up.

He eventually sold the car for £400 (Nigeria's currency then) and handed the money to the lady. He actually snatched the first car he saw on the road. Such was the ferocious nature of his audacity.

By the end of the Civil War, Oyenusi had metamorphosed into a cold-hearted robber who took delight in causing pains to his victims.

Oyenusi’s arrogance was also legendary. In 1970, he was arrested and handcuffed by a police officer. As the policeman was ordering him around, Oyenusi blasted him and thundered: ‘People like you don’t talk to me like that when I am armed. I gun them down.’

The last robbery that did him in was when he and his gang attacked the WAHUM factory in Ikeja in March 1971, where they stole the princely sum of £28,000, which was unprecedented in those days. A police officer was also killed in the process.

 'Doctor' Ishola Oyenusi's execution was celebrated by relieved Nigerians who trooped out en-masse to the Bar Beach in Lagos to witness the end of a man who had held the country to ransom.

As the crowd thronged the Beach, jeering and booing Oyenusi and his band of six convicted robbers, the man of the moment kept smiling and waving at them but shortly before his body was riddled with hot-leaded bullets from stern-faced soldiers of the Nigerian Army, he finally screamed: ‘I am dying for the offense I have committed.‘

3. Abiodun Egunjobi aka Godogodo

Abiodun Egunjobi, alias Godogodo, was the modern day version of Lawrence Anini. The one-eyed monster was one of the deadliest armed robbers Nigeria ever had.

The 36-years-old Godogodo rose from being a slum boy to the leader of a gang that defied all reasons, struck with precision, killed without mercy and terrorized Lagos and the south-west with reckless abandon.

Before his arrest on August 1, 2013, Godogodo gave the Lagos State Police Command so much headache for 14 years, so much so that on the day he was arrested, the command erupted in joy: at least its men would be safe from his guns.

Originally from Ogun State, Egunjobi was on the wanted list of the police for over 10 years and the way he managed to evade the police is still legendary.

In fact, he was at a time, on the top of the Most Wanted list of the Command with several Police Commissioners assigning the toughest of cops on his trail.

At that time, any robbery in Lagos had the imprint of Godogodo, with him leading or one of his boys being responsible. He was famed for leading many robbery operations, especially on banks, with the infamous reputation of killing over 100 policemen in Lagos State.

 Godogodo allegedly went for operations with a bag containing 10 fully loaded AK 47 rifles with 30 rounds of ammunition each and as such, he was fully prepared in terms of weapons on his back.

It was gathered that Godogodo used to tell his gang members that he would never be arrested alive and had vowed to go down with as many policemen as possible on the day he is unable to escape arrest.

This vow was later found to be real, as anti-robbery detectives recovered several loaded AK47s, each with 60 rounds of live ammunition, from different parts of his residence, including the kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, sitting room on the day of his arrest.

He was so good at disguising his criminal activities that even his wife and family members never knew what he was into. He had six houses in different locations including Lagos, Ogun and Ondo States, and never stayed in a particular location for more than a month.

Godogodo began his voyage into the deadly world of crime after spending seven years in prison for what he considered a minor offence.

As a scrap dealer in the slum of Gatankowa, Abule-Egba, he was involved in a fight and the police arrested him. With no one to bail him out, Godogodo was sent to jail and in his mind, he believed his going to prison was an injustice and blamed the police for it.

While in prison, he became acquainted with more deadly armed robbers and formed an alliance with them and took the time to understudy them. When he finally left prison, he decided that he was going to deal with the police for sending him to prison for seven years.

 During his interrogation, Godogodo told the police that he took only raw cash during his operations and would only attack a place he knew there would be enough cash to cart away. He also said he doesn’t have any bank account as he invested all his money in the property immediately after each operation.

Abbey Godogodo visited many Lagosians with sorrow, tears, and blood. Many would not forget Sunday, September 9, 2012, when he and his gang terrorized the state and left indelible marks in the minds of many families after he led a coordinated attack in the city where many innocent people including policemen lost their lives.

He revealed how he coordinated the bloody  operation and gave chilling details of how he led members of his gang to cart away millions of Dollars from bureau de change operators in Agege and Gbagada areas of Lagos.

The Lagos State Police Command led by the then Commissioner, Umar Manko, mandated the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), led by  Superintendent of Police, Abba Kyari, to bring an end to the reign of Abbey Godogodo and that began intensive investigations which led to the capitulation of his empire.

Manko was given direct orders by the then Inspector General of Police to make sure the Godogodo phenomenon was quashed at all cost.

 After the gang attacked the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, where two police inspectors and more than five people were killed and over N100 million stolen, the police decided to focus on profiling the suspect, because, up to that point, no one knew anything about him or what he looked like. The police also began looking at the possibility of preempting his subsequent operations.

4. Okwudili Ndiwe aka Derico

Okwudili Ndiwe, alias Derico Nwamama, was also one of the deadliest armed robbers to have come out of the Nigeria.

In the early 2000s, the 22-year-old Derico Nwamama was probably the King of the Underworld in the Eastern parts of the country; a clear replication of the likes of Lawrence Anini and Ishola Oyenusi.

Derico had risen from a street urchin and pick pocket to a dreaded crime king and the mere mention of his name sent shivers down the spines of traders and residents of Onitsha, the commercial capital of Anambra State, and other parts of the east.

The traders could not display their wares with peace while many slept with one eye open. Derico sacked commercial banks in Onitsha, carting away millions of Naira. Travelers who had to pass through the state held their breaths, expecting the hoodlum to strike at any time.

The then Governor of the state, Chinwoke Mbadinuju, became an old man over night with worries on how to handle the menace of Derico.

He was described as the personification of terror. From Nnewi to Nkpor, from the villages in Umuleri to towns in Ihiala, the old and young were terrified at the mere whisper of Derico Nwamama.

At that time, he was said to be invisible and could not be arrested. The dreaded Bakassi Boys went on a manhunt for the man known to kill without batting an eyelid.

 According to legend, Derico Nwamama had killed over 100 people including 25 police officers whose lives he mercilessly wasted. He was a master of countless bus robberies and will not blink twice before pumping his hot lead bullets into the beating hearts of hapless victims.

And after his successful raids, he would boast and declare himself invincible. Derico seemed to have placed a lot of faith and confidence in the charms prepared for him by the traditional witch-doctors.

With the police and other security forces unable to bring Derico Nwamama and his terror regime to a close, the onus fell on the Bakassi Boys, the militant wing of the Anambra Vigilante Services (AVS), a local vigilante group set up to curb crime and criminality in the South East.

The group were then at the forefront of the hunt and capture of Derico Nwamama and on Tuesday, July 3, 2001, the hitherto invisible criminal was nabbed on his way to Onitsha from Agbor, ostensibly on one of his crime spree.

On July 9, 2001, six days after Derico was captured at the Niger Bridge, the Bakassi Boys did to him what many had earlier predicted. Chanting war songs, they drove in their convoy around the town and ended at the Ochanja Market Junction along the popular Upper Iweka Road in Onitsha.

Derico was dragged out from the bus, looking gaunt and severely beaten, a trademark of the vigilante group. His body bore cuts and gashes, a testament to what he must have gone through in their hands. He must also have known that the day of reckoning has come.

He was in obvious pains but no one seemed to care. Still chanting war songs and egged on by the enchanted crowd, one of the commanders of the Bakassi Boys named Okpompi, addressed the crowd, telling them they were in the state not for politics but to fight crime.

He handed over the microphone to the now trembling Derico who, like a cornered fox, began begging for his life to be spared. He made feeble attempts at declaring his innocence:

“My name is Oddy, alias Derico, alias Nwa Mama. I appeal to you the people of Anambra State, please don’t kill me, I don’t like evil. It was when I killed Chiejina that people thought I am a strong guy, you know.

I trust Bakassi Boys. They are strong. Please, mercy for me. Nobody can identify me as having robbed him. People just believe that I am a strong guy.”

What was to follow remains one of the most macabre displays of public executions in Nigeria. With the speed of a guillotine, a cutlass handled in the strong arm of one of the Bakassi Boys flew and came down with an unforgiving thud, landing on Derico’s slim neck. In a flash, Derico was beheaded.

His severed head rolled on the floor before the crowd while his convulsing body collapsed on the ground, with bright-red blood gushing from his carotid arteries. .

5. Kayode Williams

Before he became a man of God and the Director-General of Prison Rehabilitation Mission International (PREMI), and the Presiding Bishop of Christ Vessel of Grace Church, Bishop Kayode Williams was one of Nigeria most notorious armed robbers.

He was a member of the Ishola Oyenusi gang who stood out when his boss was captured.  He was known to be a dreaded robber who wasted no time in killing his victims. During a confession years ago, Bishop Willams narrated how he pounded little babies and used them for spiritual fortification.

 He was converted to Christianity while serving a 10-year jail term and since then, he has not looked back in preaching to prisoners and trying all he can to rehabilitate them.

6. Monday Osunbor

Legend has it that Monday Osunbor was the main man behind the dreaded Lawrence Anini gang. He was known as the executioner and sharp shooter.

Though not much was known of him during the Anini trial as his leader took the shine off him, it was gathered that he was a short-tempered stammerer who did not hesitate in killing their victims.

He was executed alongside Anini in 1987.

7. Shina Rambo

The name Shina Rambo has refused to go away from the consciousness of Nigerians who either witnessed his crime spree or were unfortunate to live in that era.

The Abeokuta, Ogun State-born Rambo was a terror in the 90s and the brain behind many crimes in the Western parts of the country where he robbed and killed with impunity.

He was so feared even by the police that many thought he was invisible as he was thought to disappear anytime the police closed in on him.

It is believed that the policemen who killed him did not even know that it was Shina Rambo.

He was said to be on his way to Lanrewaju Motors to buy a Pathfinder SUV when he was apprehended by the police on the Ojota New Garage Long Bridge.

Rambo was not the one driving when the police stopped him and his gang, they discovered a lot of money in a cartoon in the trunk of the Datsun car.

When they started questioning him on the possession of such huge an amount, an argument ensued and he attempted to disarm one of the policemen.

It was one of the policemen at the other side of the road who shot Rambo down. It was said that it was easy to shoot him because he was not with his charms since he was not going for an operation.

However, another account has it that the person killed was not the real Shina Rambo as another ex-bandit who claimed to be the real Rambo, is now a man of God by the name Mathew Oluwanifemi.

In his confession a few years ago, pastor Oluwanifemi described himself as a hardened criminal, a terror, and killer.

He narrated how he specialized in robbing exotic cars on highways and banks and that nothing could stop him, not even security operatives as he was totally invincible.

8. Isiaka Busari aka Mighty Joe

Shortly after the notorious kingpin of armed robbery in Nigeria, Ishola Oyenusi was executed, his second in command, Isiaka Busari, better known as Mighty Joe, took over the scene and became the defacto king of the underground.

Nigeria was still coming out of the pangs of the civil war and with the death of Oyenusi, they thought the era of violent crimes had been nipped in the bud but little did they know that another hoodlum would spring up and become deadlier.

In Mighty Joe's gang were ex-soldiers who were demobilized and with their know how in the handling of guns and other deadly weapons, they held the nation, particularly the South West, to ransom, robbing and killing with reckless abandon.

Mighty Joe was even deadlier than Oyenusi and was known to operate at anytime he felt like and taking a human's life was nothing to him.

 For many years, he constituted himself a big terror to the people of Lagos, the then Federal Capital, especially around Mushin where he lived and practiced his trade.

He strode the hemisphere like a colossus from 1971 when his boss was killed, till 1973 when he was nabbed after robbing a hotel bar attendant, Michael Osayunana, of the sum of  ₦10.

Also Read: "Laying Bare: Profiling Nigeria's Notorious Armed Robbers: ('Doctor' Ishola Oyenusi)"

The arrest of Mighty Joe, according to legend, was as dramatic as his reign of terror. The self-styled ‘Strongman of Idi Oro’ was caught when someone he had earlier robbed, recognized him and fingered him to the police and he was nabbed without any fight, as against his various boasts that no man born of a woman can arrest him due to his strong belief in his spiritual powers.

 He was said to pay some herbalists huge amounts to prepare charms for him so that he would remain invincible.

While he was in prison awaiting his day at the Bar Beach, Mighty Joe converted to Islam and even offered prayers that the execution is reverted. That was never to be.

After he was tied to the stakes, he was asked to say his last words and he blurted:

"May God bless everybody, both my friends and enemies. Tell my wife, my mother and my in-law to keep fit."

via Nigerian News ➨☆LATEST NIGERIAN NEWS ☆➨GHANA NEWS➨☆ENTERTAINMENT ☆➨Hot Posts ➨☆World News ☆➨News Sp

[republicstandard]

Evidence Over Experience: Confronting Racial Supremacist Ideologies

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, “The most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” Given that there is no governmentally-forced integration (yet), this observation, borne out by the statistics—close to 95% of American churches have congregations that are at least 80% one distinct race or ethnicity—tells us that when left to their own devices, most people naturally self-segregate. A trip to just about any major city will confirm this as different areas and neighborhoods have a distinct racial or ethnic composition, and in leaving the cities and heading into the suburbs (though gentrification sometimes reverses the process), and certainly the country, you’ll notice an increasingly uniform population of whites. This is actually true with many Western countries. This is anecdotal evidence and would not be permissible in a court of law, but people have eyes and instincts. Finnish sociologist Tatu Vanhanen observed:

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Interest conflicts between ethnic groups are inevitable because ethnic groups are genetic kinship groups and because the struggle for existence concerns the survival of our own genes through our own or our relatives’ descendants.

To prefer our own is perfectly natural, or as Vanhanen put it, “Ethnic nepotism belongs to human nature.” It ensures our continued survival. For one to not prefer their own, they would have to be either literally psychotic, or, in select cases, there is something called Williams Syndrome, which is a kind of mild mental retardation where healthy fear of the unknown, strangers, social inhibition, and racial preference are all absent due to normal neural communications being disrupted. Why then the incessant drum-beat for one group and one group only to cast aside this preference for the genocidal embrace of “multi-culturalism”? We should’ve learned from the events of 376 AD at the latest that multi-culturalism is a bad idea. To quote Kevin MacDonald;

“White liberals…are deluding themselves about the attitudes of the non-Whites that they so eagerly embrace. Their liberalism won’t save them when push comes to shove.”

For Jared Taylor:

Americans therefore live a contradiction that makes it difficult to talk honestly about race. There is probably no other subject about which there is a greater divergence between what is said publicly and thought privately…At least that is true for whites…Blacks and Hispanics [openly reject] the civil-rights ideal of transcending race. For many minorities, race or ethnicity is central to their identity…Non-white racial/ethnic solidarity is an entrenched part of the political landscape, and the pressure tactics to which it gives rise have been very successful…[Whites] have dismantled and condemned their own racial identity in the expectation that others will do the same…They should…ponder the consequences of being the only group for whom [racial] identity is forbidden and who are permitted no aspirations as a group.

The government can obscure and re-classify races on the census and manipulate and doctor crime statistics, but it doesn’t change the fact that biology is the primary driver of culture. Sickle cell is not a social construct. Tay-Sachs is not a social construct. Given full self-determination, Liberia—which has a constitutional amendment barring whites from citizenship—Liberia did not become Wakanda. It became Liberia. Like Liberia, Haiti has had two hundred years with no white interference or help, and it has become a very close proxy for hell on earth. Ethiopia, master of its own destiny since the dawn of sedentary societies minus a five-year interregnum from 1936-1941, is no better off. So let’s stop with the fiction for once. The culture reflects the people.

When a black says they’re going to “educate you,” what you can expect is an endlessly self-referential polemic of microwaved post-colonial jargon heavily imbued with the “lived experience” of “blackness,” utterly devoid of quantitative reasoning or evidence of any kind. You may also encounter vague references to “trauma” and definite examples of slavery and Jim Crow, which they will never have experienced first-hand. Black culture is a dead-end. If we as whites are not nearly racially-conscious enough, blacks are the opposite, luxuriating in this “blackness” despite having contributed virtually nothing to civilization outside of the pop-cultural realm. If whites internalize and have high rates of suicidality, blacks externalize, with a toxic excess of self-esteem and an enactment of their frustrations on others.

Blacks account for about 13% of America’s population but commit 52.5% of its homicides and at least forty percent of other violent crimes. Blacks commit 85% of violent black-white interracial crimes (blacks are twenty-seven times more likely to attack whites than vice versa; Hispanics eight times more likely to attack whites than vice versa) and commit interracial aggravated assault over two hundred times more often than whites. Black males are fourteen times more likely than white males to commit homicide and are between seven to ten times more likely to commit a crime than whites. Over half of blacks convicted of rape in the last decade chose white victims. Even on college campuses, center of the one-in-four rape hysteria when in reality college campuses are statistically safer than the national average, blacks are grossly overrepresented. Consider the real rape culture on Baylor University’s campus or the fact that the University of Missouri football team, which is 65.3% percent black, commits sexual assaults at five times the rate of the general student population, which is 8% percent black.

Statistically speaking, a white woman dating a black man is about as bad a decision as it is possible to make: 92% of children from a white mother and black father are born out of wedlock, and 82% wind up on government assistance. As we know, single parenthood is the single greatest guarantor of inter-generational poverty. For that 8 % who get him to put a ring on it, you have this to look forward to: in black male-white female marriages, the white woman is 12.4 times more likely to be murdered by her spouse than if she had married a white man.

But, as Taleeb Starkes points out, if “a black person is killed by a white person (my note: which, as evidenced above, statistically happens far less often), the benefits for the deceased black person are seemingly limitless. They include:

Canonization with eternal recognition as a martyr.

Incessant comparisons to icons of the Civil Rights movement i.e. Emmet Till.

Front page news coverage, and despite criminal proclivities or rap sheet, benevolent-looking pictures will always be used to propagate the victimology narrative.

Marches and protests with customized slogan.

Foundation created with celebrity endorsements.

Birth parents and even step-parents will become celebrities (Mom may also get to speak at the United Nations).

Trademarked likeness (Note: This may cause family members to fight over rights).

Covered funeral expenses with the likelihood that a big shot from the Race Grievance Industry will deliver the eulogy.

The white perpetrator will be caricatured as a racist demon whose purpose was to snatch black lives.

The white perpetrator’s private information will be publicized on social networks with emphasis on vengeance.”

More blacks are killed by police per capita because they are in contact with the police far more often with their criminal overrepresentation! Always lamenting the predations on their communities, most blacks and browns never put two and two together—criminality isn’t a shapeless cloud that menaces the black ghettoes and the barrios, it is the young men whose fathers have abandoned them to roam free as feral thugs, looting and terrorizing their own communities, utterly unconcerned with general upkeep, steady employment, and social harmony. The high-fecundity blacks and browns have the lowest investment in parenting, so we have a situation similar to pack animals now, where the alpha cultivates what is essentially a harem, and the betas scrounge around the periphery of the pack, or are killed or exiled (probably to terrorize Europe). The decrease in pair-bonding leads to lower investment parenting and either single-parenthood or in the case of sharia-compliant marriages what is effectively single-parenthood as the men may have up to four wives and at least one sex slave.

Lower investment parenting and single parenthood lead to a whole host of elevated risk factors for criminality to psychological issues to dependence issues. Play this out a few generations, and the trends we are already seeing manifest themselves in ways wholly unconducive to the maintenance, let alone advancement, of civilization. It takes six Japanese women to reproduce what one woman from Niger is “accomplishing” with her womb. Neither is healthy. Over-population by high time preference people and under-population by low time preference people is going to lead to environmental degradation, lack of proper aquifer and reservoir maintenance, and eventual mass famine and starvation. The farms in Zimbabwe né Rhodesia plummeted to one-tenth of their productivity once they were seized from the white farmers, and the nation went from food-exporting to food-importing. We are witnessing a similar trend in South Africa. By the time you read this, there may well be no more running water in Cape Town.

Lothrop Stoddard wrote about the inevitable deterioration of a society under “The Lure of the Primitive” when its “life-line of civilization wore thinner and spurred to fiercer energy those waxing powers of barbarism and chaos.” What did Rhodesia and South Africa do that could’ve caused the present situation? What is much of the West rushing lemming-like off a cliff to do now? Ah, right: The enduring image of one dead child on a beach in Turkey as a result of irresponsible parenting has been enough to accelerate the flooding of the European continent with feral young black and brown men, but the horror stories of the native Europeans victimized by these people are swept away as nothing but collateral damage in the pursuit of DIVERSITY.

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As whites, they are permitted no identity, and by extension, they are denied full personhood, especially if they are from the loathed lower classes. They have none of the mystique of the jungle primitive or the allure of the Orient, just bad teeth, a life on the dole, incomprehensible customs, and too many damn kids! Wait, is that the white lower class or the people the “elites” are importing? Remember, noticing is forbidden:

"If the Nazis hadn’t noticed that the Jews were actively debasing Germany during the Weimar era, the Holocaust would have never occurred, in which 6 million of the 2.4 million Jews in German-occupied Europe were mercilessly slaughtered, and their remains turned into useful household products like soap and lampshades. If white Southerners and South African Boers hadn’t noticed the criminal propensities of blacks, their reckless envy of whites and white accomplishment, and their general affinity for strongman-rule, we would have never had the brutal horrors of Jim Crow and apartheid. If Jesus Himself hadn’t noticed the man-made traditions and self-idolatry of the Pharisees, the specter of anti-Semitism would have never reared its ugly head. Noticing led to the greatest acts of oppression and injustice ever known in human history."

Forget everything you just read and get back in line, White Man. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil!

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[swipestream]

New Release Roundup – 5 May 2018: Fantasy and Adventure

A legendary Viking, a cursed outcast without arms, an Army sniper on the wrong side of the scope, and the return of The Ghost Who Walks feature in this week’s roundup of the newest releases in fantasy and adventure.

Amnesia (The Book of Maladies #6) – D. K. Holmberg

Deception runs deeper than the canals in Verdholm.

Traveling to the Theln lands will be dangerous and possibly deadly, forcing Sam to ask for help from an unlikely ally. What she learns reveals how she is woefully underprepared for the journey, but she doesn’t dare wait any longer. Her brother’s life might depend upon her ability to reach him.

While Sam prepares, Alec uses the newly discovered secret of the canal eels to try and understand the key to making easar paper. A visit with his father reveals that his deception runs deeper than Alec had ever imagined and that his mother might hold the key to what he’s searching for.

Just as Sam and Alec think they understand what must be done, a shocking revelation proves another deception, one that threatens not only the safety of the city, but of the ruling Anders family. Somehow, they are the only ones able to challenge a foe who has planned an attack for a decade or longer, leaving them to question everything they have learned about themselves.

The Arena (Eden’s Gate #4) – Edward Brody

Edgewood is under attack, and the threat of war lingers across the Serpent Sea.

In order to protect their village, the members of Unity will need to work together to level-up and find better gear. They’ll need to lay the foundation of a castle that can serve as a fortification from intruders.

But what if there’s a better way?

When Gunnar learns that the King of Highcastle will grant an audience to anyone who wins an Arena championship, he decides to enter the competition as a gladiator. If he can earn a meeting with the ailing King and persuade him to stop Dryden Bloodletter, he can save Edgewood and potentially countless lives. He’ll also get his name posted in every Arena which could lead Rachel one step closer to finding him.

The Arena is a spectacle where people gather to watch fighters put their skills to the test, earn fame, and take home gold. Does Gunnar have what it takes to become a champion or has he bitten off more than he can chew?

Atomic Underworld – Jack Conner

Washed-up professional gambler Tavlin Metzler is done working with the shadowy criminal network that lurks beneath the city streets, but when a brutal and mysterious set of murders occurs in the very bedroom of his old mob boss, Tavlin gets drawn back into the mix. In the world of the Atomic Sea, mutants thrive–fish-people, lobster-people, turtle-people–the list goes on. But in the country of Ghenisa, many of them are disenfranchised and relegated to life in the vast, alien sewers beneath the capital city of Hissig.

There the outcast Tavlin is taken by Boss Vassas’s goons and given an edict by the Boss himself: find out who (or what) committed the crimes . . . or else. In no time, Tavlin is hip-deep in danger, dodging spies, cultists, mobsters, monsters and more sewer mutants than he can shake a foul-smelling stick at. But things get really complicated when his old flame Sophia shows up.

Bloodaxe (Erik Haraldsson #1) – C. R. May

Under the iron rule of Harald Fairhair, Norway has been a land at peace for half a century.

Groomed for the succession, the king’s eldest surviving son has lived the life of a Viking prince; harrying wherever his longships can reach, from the frozen forests of Bjarmaland to the rocky shores of Brittany and beyond.

But none expected Harald to live so long, and as the king enters his ninth decade his powers begin to wane.

Seizing their chance other Haraldssons move to snatch the crown for themselves, and a brother war sweeps the land as Erik fights to defend his birthright…

Bloodaxe is the first volume in a trilogy which will tell the story of one of the Viking Age’s legendary kings.

The Cross Brand – Frederick Faust as Max Brand

Longtime friends, Sheriff Harry Ganton and Jack Bristol, find themselves on different sides when Harry is mistakenly shot during an argument. Thinking he has killed his friend, Jack flees town, only to run into two mysterious strangers. Why does one have a cross brand on his forehead? And then there’s the matter of Jack’s appointment with the hangman’s noose in his future….

“The Cross Brand” is a competent pulp western with some interesting features including an unusual plot element which sets it apart from other works in the genre. The characters are the usual types with the exception of the apparent villain who does gain depth.–Goodreads Customer Review

The Golden Circle (The Phantom #5) – Lee Falk

For the first time ever, the Avon edition of The Phantom is back in print! Hermes Press is proud to announce that they will be publishing all fifteen pocket Avon books, starting in August 2016 and continuing until the conclusion of the series in Volume 15! This exciting installment, Volume 5 offers the tale: “The Golden Circle!”

Famed artist George Wilson (Dr. Solar, Magnus Robot Fighter, The Phantom) painted the cover for Volume #3 as he did with all of the covers used for the Avon series, and they are reproduced beautifully to keep all of the details from the original books intact for a new generation of Phans to enjoy!

Accused of robbery and murder, The Phantom fights to find the real killers and solve the astounding secret of The Golden Circle! He also learns the truth in the old adage “The female is deadlier than the male.”

The Man With No Hands (My Lady #2) – Toby Neighbors

Magic, danger, rogue elves, and mythical creatures…

Orin is the son of the Raven King, High Lord of Floralon, the Kingdom on the Coast. But he is not a prince, or even an heir. He is an outcast, cursed by the gods, the Man With No Hands. He is also the sworn protector of the sorceress Lady Feray, who will venture to the Wilderness beyond the Mountain Veil where the magical races thrive. Little does he know there are dark tidings in the lands beyond the Veil, strange creatures that haven’t been seen for centuries, and hybrid races that are filled with supernatural power. Loyalties will be tested, futures will be lost, and the Man With No Hands will face the greatest temptation of his life.

Join Feray, Orin, Luc, and their faithful dog Rolo on a grand adventure where animals are allies, nothing is as it seems, and you never know who you can trust.

The Oaken Throne (Tree of Ages #5) – Sara C. Roethle

A tree’s memory is long. Magic’s memory is longer, and far more dangerous.

A new era has dawned. The forces of humanity are crippled by the ever pressing threat of the Faie. War continues to tear apart the countryside, robbing those who remain of their last shreds of hope.

While peace is only a distant dream for some, there exist the brave few who will stand and fight for what they believe in. Magic does not always mean death, and death does not always mean the end.

Will love and loyalty prevail, or will those who strive for power and darkness put an end to innocence once and for all?

Seeing Red (Gareth Red #1) – Nick Thacker

For Army sniper Gareth Red, hunting is all part of the game…

It’s being hunted that’s new to him.

Red is a top-notch sniper with a haunting past, looking to trade his skills for a hefty payday.

It doesn’t take long for an offer to find him.

But he soon begins to realize: this is no game.

Is the paycheck worth the trouble?

Soul Render (Soul Stones #1) – T. L. Branson

It takes a god to kill one.

Resistance fighter Will Sumner wants little more than to avenge his father who died at the hands of the ruthless king, Alexander Drygo. When the opportunity arises to steal the king’s most valuable possession, Will and his brothers launch an assault to retrieve it.

Obtaining the unimaginable power of a legendary soul stone, Will learns that the gods of old aren’t dead after all. But even his newfound ability is no match for the tyrant that sits on the throne.

Now, the power he thought would be his salvation may very well claim his life – or his soul. To help tame this uncontrollable magic, Will seeks assistance from an unlikely source and aligns himself with a rebel group that may not have his best interests at heart.

Will’s brothers have forsaken him, his friends may deceive him, and his enemies will stop at nothing to end his life and seize his power for themselves.

Vegas Rules (The Valens Legacy #7) – Jan Stryvant

Fresh from his victory in Reno, Sean’s now in Las Vegas to fulfill his promise to help the lycans there with their own slavery problems. Thankfully there aren’t any mages councils in Las Vegas, the mob took care of that years ago. However, there are a number of casinos that are still very entrenched in the use of lycan slaves, not just as workers, but as entertainment, both public and private.

Then there are all those magic users who come to ‘sin city’ to play, and many of them play rough when it comes to both the lycans and the mundanes. While shutting down those casinos that won’t see reason will help, Sean still has to figure out ways to help Roxy’s father and the others in their quest to rein in the worst of the excesses.

They may say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but the truth is, what happens in Vegas could very well send a notice to the rest of the nation councils that things are changing, and this lion plays for keeps.

Unity (Sevenfold Sword #7) – Jonathan Moeller

The quest of the Seven Swords will destroy kingdoms.

Ridmark Arban is the Shield Knight, questing to stop the rise of the evil New God. But Ridmark and his companions are caught in the war between the final remnant of the dying gray elves and the brutal muridach horde.

Unless Ridmark can save the gray elves, he and his friends will die, and the New God will rise in power to enslave the world…

New Release Roundup – 5 May 2018: Fantasy and Adventure published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames