#(“Perhaps even more dangerous the Fab Four had no one to say “no” to their self- proclaimed great ideas.”)

[reflectismo]

THE FALL AND FALL OF APPLE CORPS

“By 1967, the Beatles’ wealth had grown exponentially due to sold-out concerts and record royalties. Yet British income tax laws prescribed that any income greater than £2,000 would be taxed at higher rates in proportion to the total amount of income. In an attempt to liberate the Beatles from their tax burden, the band’s accountant Harry Pinsker advised that setting up a new company would help offset their tax liability.

Pinsker served as the Beatles’ accountant as soon as they signed Brian Epstein on as their manager in 1962. For years Pinsker utilized his expertise to conserve the band’s assets and, more importantly, to protect the boys from their profligacy. The evasive tax maneuver Pinsker suggested in 1967 had the Beatles reinvest their earnings in a business; this way, instead of being subjected to income tax, their earnings were filtered through a business and thus only subject to corporation tax, which was much lower. Using this strategy, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr could even reclaim their personal expenses by disguising them as company expenses. When asked about his role in the creation of Apple Corps years later, Pinsker simply stated that the company was just a way to help four “scruffy boys who didn’t want to pay tax.”

Under Pinsker’s counsel, Epstein laid the foundations of a new Beatles company in April 1967. Originally named The Beatles & Company, the new enterprise was designed to be governed by each of the Beatles and Epstein. In theory, The Beatles & Company was poised to serve its purpose and save the band’s income from British taxes. However, the sudden death of Epstein on August 27, 1967, quickly skewed any chance of the new Beatles company serving its original purpose.

[…]

By the time Epstein fulfilled his promise [to turn the Beatles into a worldwide phenomenon] and the Beatles had their first string of number one hits, they placed so much faith in Epstein that Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr signed off on whatever contracts he slid under their pens without even reading them. This trusting relationship eventually morphed into a dangerous dependence as the band’s career progressed. The boys’ tendency to sign first, read never, increasingly isolated them from the sensitive business aspects of their band. So when Pinsker proposed that the Beatles form a company to manage their finances and counteract their hefty income tax, Epstein took care of the details as usual. Epstein’s tragic overdose in the midst of plans for The Beatles & Company immediately postponed its opening and, on a larger scale, left the band without any business guidance. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr were now without the insulation that Epstein provided from the ravenous entertainment industry. Perhaps even more dangerous, the Fab Four had no one to say “no” to their self- proclaimed great ideas.

A few months after Epstein’s death, the Beatles revisited the idea of opening their own company, but this time no idea was a bad idea. The Beatles & Company was renamed Apple Corps, and the company’s fields of interest were significantly expanded beyond their original scope. Without Epstein to reign in the Beatles’ non-stop creativity, every new avenue they could think of was brought to life through Apple Corps, and the original intent of offsetting taxes slowly diminished. This led to the creation of divisions within Apple Corps that the Beatles had no practical experience in, including Apple Tailoring, Apple Retail, and Apple Electronics. The electronics division was by far the most expensive and simultaneously least profitable investment within Apple Corps. Alexis Mardas, or “Magic Alex” as Lennon nicknamed him, was placed in charge of inventions in Apple Electronics.

[…]

Clearly part of the appeal of investing in Apple Electronics was the optimism surrounding the growth of electronics and technology in general. But unfortunately for the Beatles’ money, advancements in these fields could only be brought about by someone competent enough to do so; Mardas certainly was not that someone. By the time his involvement with Apple Corps came to an end in 1969, his subpar inventions made no headway in the electronics market but still cost the Beatles over £300,000 (the modern day equivalent of approximately £3,000,000). Yet the financial losses at Apple Electronics proved only to be the tip of a very expensive iceberg.

First-hand accounts of former Apple Corps employees, including secretaries, accountants, and assistants, all construct a singular, clear picture of what Apple Corps managed to accomplish upon opening: nothing. The company’s inability to answer fundamental questions – who are we, what are we doing, and where is this all headed? – meant that its employees went into work every day directionless and failed to accomplish anything significant for the company. For instance, in the 2017 Apple Corps documentary The Beatles, Hippies, and Hell’s Angels by Ben Lewis, a former secretary of Apple Corps recalled seeing a man at work every single day that sat atop a filing cabinet doodling pictures of penises until it was time for all the employees to leave. Fortunately, whoever this Michelangelo was, his work ethic made him an outlier amongst the other Apple Corps employees, but what they did from day to day did not necessarily offer significant contributions either.

A typical day at Apple Corps began with chardonnay and cigarettes being served to secretaries and “Apple scruffs” by girls who would wait in reception at Apple Corps to get even a glimpse of the Beatles. When it came time for lunch, enough drugs would go around to ensure that everybody in the office was at least glassy eyed. As if drugs and alcohol being used during the workday was not bad enough, Apple Corps paid for the alcohol, which meant that Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr were personally paying the massive £600 liquor bill each month. On top of these party favors, employees spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on almost a monthly basis decorating their offices and the building with extravagant, overly ornate furniture. Even Neil Aspinall, the Beatles’ former road manager turned head of Apple Corps, thought it was entertaining to go overboard furnishing the boys’ offices and purchased four enormous “gold hand-tooled, leather top” chairs for them. But the unnecessary expenditures did not stop at just alcohol and furniture; unauthorized flights from London to Paris and America, coupled with international phone calls dialed by non-employees that just wandered into the building, all contributed to the chaos of Apple. The phone calls got so out of control at one point that Apple Corps was billed £4,000 for a single month. These mammoth costs were left unchecked for months. As a result, the company was hemorrhaging money from every angle possible, and because its profits were essentially non-existent, these costs were paid month after month by the Beatles, with no profits from the company to compensate them. By September 1968, things were so chaotic at Apple Corps that its chief financial advisor resigned, stating in his resignation letter that his departure was due to the “slipshod manner in which the company was being managed.” Soon after, the company’s second and only remaining accountant also put in his notice, writing: “your personal finances are in a mess. Apple is a mess.””

– “When the Beatles Played Businessmen: The Story of Apple Records.” Welcome to The Beatles, by Jason Arquette (2018)

#(John may have been on to something when he said capitalism broke up the Beatles) #(Specifically hip capitalism/the adaptability of consumer capitalism) #(“Perhaps even more dangerous the Fab Four had no one to say “no” to their self- proclaimed great ideas.”) #(Despite what you may think of Brian – he had the ability to reign the boys in and level them) #(It was crucial) #(Something they even admit to in Get Back) #(For the 3 people who care about the business and the chaos that was Apple Corps in the 60s– this one’s for you!) #The Beatles #Apple Corps #Brian Epstein #(These guys were losing money left and right) #(Long post sorry but I found this interesting) #(Definitely need to continue reading more about this period and their dealings) #(Got quite a few books lined up to read more on their business endeavour) #(But if anyone has any recommendations please let me know!) #Jason Arquette

[luveline]

brainwashed [Fred Weasley x reader]

tags: fluff, confessions, first kiss, reader-insert

word count: 1.5k

summary: Fred thinks you like George. Technically, you told him so. Though, technically, it’s a lie.

Brainwashed. You must have been brainwashed because you were in love with Fred Weasley.

You must be crazy, or delusional, or imperiused, or perhaps poisoned. He had beguiled himself to you.

You were as opposed to your infatuation as you were opposed to many things - like murder. And torture.

And infatuated you were. Your eyes sought him out everywhere you went. He was lovely, truly, with gorgeous brown eyes and a charming face, a quirky and honest smile. On top of all this, you loved how free he looked. Incredibly free, as though nothing could ever hold him back.

You loved him. He was going to kill you.

You picked at the roast dinner on your plate. Your appetite had dissipated the moment you'd realised you were in love with him and it had yet to return. It'd been 3 weeks.

You sighed mournfully, holding your face in your hand.

"Are you finished? We're going back to the common room," one of your friends asked.

"No, I should probably finish this, you guys go ahead."

Your friends smiled and bid you goodbye. Goodness, you wished you could stomach something, anything at all, but the only thing you'd managed in days was crackers and you'd already eaten the ones your dad had sent via owl.

Oh, how you craved a sleeve of saltines.

You poked again at the roast potatoes and gravy on your plate and frowned. Maybe you'd be better off skipping it for today anyway. Surely throwing up used more energy than what would've been gained.

You looked intensely at the grain of the table. You willed yourself to shake it off, move on with your life.

But you were in love.

Your eyes flitted to him again. He was sitting a few feet away with his brother and your friend, Lee Jordan.

You'd known Lee through your shared passion for gobstones, you'd even paired together for team matches in second and third year. Since then you'd remained friendly, often playing together when no one else was willing. A dangerous game, gobstones.

To your great misfortune, George had noticed your staring. You looked away quickly, the tops of your ears warming red. This was hardly the first time you'd been caught staring at Fred this year. Hell, this week.

You stabbed the tines of your fork into an ugly looking sprout, tempted to eat it just to look as though you couldn't possibly have been spying.

"You don't have to look so sickened, it's only a sprout," he said.

You gazed up at him pleadingly.

Fred gifted you an easy smile, sliding into the seat opposite you. His robes were ragtag and scruffy, his shirt untucked. The only thing straight was his tie, though it seemed a few good shakes from falling off.

You floundered for something to say.

"Not hungry?" he asked kindly. You looked down at your plate.

"Oh - no, not really. I'm actually feeling a bit sick."

"Yes, I'd say so. You're as green as the sprouts."

You laughed. His smile curved wider.

"So, Y/N, Lee has a theory. I've come to see if he's right, and win a few galleons, of course."

"Right," you said nervously.

Fred knocked his hand on the table. His lovely, lovely hand.

"Right," he agreed, "So, the theory. Well, please don't feel disrespected by this, it's purely theoretical, though if you do, that's alright too. I'm sure Georgie will be very flattered, as you're a stunning piece of work, though he's very happily embedded into the sides of Angelina Johnson."

"Okay," you cut him off, confused. "So, the theory?"

"Well, you fancy George, don't you?"

It took you a few seconds to catch up. "Fancy - I fancy George?" you asked, or you thought you asked. It came out flat and strangled.

Fred clicked his fingers and clambered to his feet. "Damn. I owe Lee a few quid after that one! Funny thing, I thought you fancied me. Well, see you around doll."

You were up and out of the hall before you could witness what you'd created.

-

You spent that night crying. It was more of a stress cry than a sad cry, no gasping sobs or heavy breathing, though you felt a bit light-headed when it was over.

The tears started in the shower and never quite stopped. At breakfast, you were careful to bite your lip and look up at the lights whenever you felt it coming on again.

Your eyes were puffy all through classes. Your friends shot you sneaky glances through the day. One of the guys from Hufflepuff in your charms class asked you how you were and offered you a biscuit.

It was a disaster.

You kept waiting for George to come up to you. It could go one of four ways.

1. George approaches you. Tells you that's he's flattered but definitely dating someone.

2. George approaches you. Tells you he finds your attention uncomfortable, and that he hopes you can control yourself.

3. George approaches you. Tells you he loves you too. Angelina murders you in the Gryffindor common room.

4. George approaches you. You cut him off and tell him the truth. He tells his brother. You never leave your room again.

You sighed.

Well, maybe you'd lived a nice life.

You were dismissed from lessons earlier than usual. You gathered your things in a rush and practically flew through the door, trying to turn as many corners as you could before the inevitable panic began.

"Y/L/N!"

Shit. You blanched, spinning on your hell.

"Heeeeeeyyy, George, how are you?

"I'm good. Yourself?"

"Oh, I'm fab, thanks."

"Right... so listen. I just wanted to say, I'm flattered that you fancy me, but I'm deeply in love with my girlfriend, and-"

"It's Fred. I fancy Fred."

George squinted at her, mouth still open mid-word. "But, you told Fred you liked me."

You wrung your hands together. "Yes, well. I was nervous, and I wasn't really expecting him to ask me, and-"

George laughed suddenly and loudly, startling you.

"This is brilliant. Ha! Oh my Godric." He reached forward and patted you on the shoulder. "You could've picked worse. He's very handsome; I'm sure you'll have lovely babies." He wiped a finger under his eye as though catching a falling tear.

Then he turned and began to sprint.

"I- George!" you yelped.

"Sorry!!" he shouted over his shoulder, "Twin code of honesty!"

"Twin code of being a tattletale," you said to yourself. "Twin code of ruining my life. Twin code of being absolute wankers.”

-

You were reading in a secluded section of the library when he finally found you.

"Weasley, I know you aren't of the habit, but please leave me to die shamefully of embarrassment unaccompanied."

Fred sat on the table next to your book, looking down at you.

"You told me you liked George."

"Technically, I didn't."

"You said, 'I like George', what is technical about that?"

You floundered. Closed the book and marked your page and tried not to look at him.

You failed. "Okay," you admitted, "I did say that. But I meant it more like... 'I like George?'. With a question mark. You know."

He didn't reply, though his gaze was intense.

"Like, 'I like George?'" You exaggerated your questioning tone this time.

He still didn't answer, lips pressed together tightly.

"Like-"

"If you tell me you fancy my brother one more time, I'm going to kiss you."

"You are?"

"Y/N."

"I like-"

Fred cut you off, covering your mouth with his hand. You looked up at him dolefully.

"It's almost like you want me to."

"I don't?" you asked against his hand.

"Well, can I?"

"Can you?

"You're impossible."

"Yes, you can kiss me."

He grinned, your face in his hand.

He leaned down. The air was warm between you and warmer when your lips met. He tasted like caramel.

You fed into it, pushing your hands up onto his neck and in his hair. He responded in turn, deepening the kiss with a familiarity you tried not to think of.

You wanted to be so close in that moment you pushed yourself up. The chair you sat on tumbled backwards, startling you both.

Fred only laughed, wiping the wetness from your lips.

He would kill you. You just knew it.

<3<3<3

tag list: @msmimimerton (lmk if u want to be added/removed :3)

#fred weasley x reader #fred weasley imagine #fred wealsey fic #fluff #reader insert #misunderstandings #first kiss

[permanentlyexhaustedpossum]

Madatobi - The More You Know: A gift for peppymint1986

I posted but forgot to @ ppl. Sorry! @madatobigiftexchange @peppymint1986

Elements:

Miscommunication, Scantily clad men, public indecency

Inspiration:

Marriage Hunt, Red eyes are blessed, Hostage for peace

Music:

Part 1: {The Moon over the Ruined Castle - Japanese Folk Music : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IqryOGvLAE}

Part 2: {Final Fantasy X - Hymn of the Faith [mashup] : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOiWCXzrBq4}

Part 3 & 4: {Most Wondrous Battle Music: "And The Sky Shall Unfold" by Johannes Bornlöf  : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP4eWOEnY9Y}

It wasn't his intention to get caught. In fact he shouldn't have gotten caught at all. Tobirama sat bewildered at what was happening, staring at the fine silk robes on the four mattress tall futon surrounded by flowers. As if this counted as being "caught." He looked down at his wrists, bound by chakra seals in cuffs that would have been mistaken for beautiful bangles had they not been chained together. Where did the Uchiha get such luxuries? They always looked less off than the Senju in battle. He huffed, thinking about the Uchiha's lack of armor, the recycling of used kunai and senbon. The way most of their people wore old sandals. He'd noticed. And he was sure Hashirama had noticed too. Maybe that was why he always held back against Madara.

Right. Madara. The one who had caught him. Tobirama sighed internally, then rubbed his face waiting for the genjutsu to wear off.

Except it didn't. The beautiful robes and flowers were still there. The four futons were still there. And here he was, barely dressed in what appeared to be some kind of expensive fabric in a way he'd never seen anyone dress before.

"You look confused." A familiar voice barked, laughing. Tobirama sneered, looking behind him and Izuna smirked in return.

"Shouldn't you be dead?"

"On the contrary. I think my act worked rather well. Even Aniki didn't figure it out until we returned from battle." Tobirama made a face. Izuna had always been a crafty rat but to not let his brother in on a plan, well, that's just risky on Izuna's part. He turned fully to face him and the Uchiha spoke again. "It was the only way I could separate you from your people."

"Be done with this farce, Izuna." Tobirama growled. "I was prepared to die when I came here gathering intel."

"Die?" Izuna tilted his head. "Oh no, Senju. You've got it all wrong. You're not going to die. It's going to be far worse."

"So torture then? Be plain, Izuna."

"Ooo, so familiar, Tobirama-san." Izuna snickered mockingly. "You're a hostage for peace."

A beat.

"Is that what all this is for? A bribery?" A pale hand gestured to the extravagance.  The younger Uchiha brother shoved off the open door frame and strode into the room.

"Nope. That would be preparation for the Marriage Hunt."

"The _what_?" Tobirama's voice dropped several octaves, a dangerous and threatening tone.

"The m-a-r-r-i-a-g-e h-u-n-t." Izuna drawled, grinning from ear to ear, all teeth. Red eyes narrowed at the man before him.

"Marriage to whom? I'm assuming you mean me as one of the intended parties."

"I do." Izuna sighed, "If only you'd been a woman. This would have worked out perfectly for everyone involved." He shrugged, running a hand through his bangs.

"And why is that?" Tobirama's wheels were turning already. If being a woman would get him out of this, he'd have no choice but to use _that_ jutsu. He frowned internally, it wasn't like it wasn't useful, because it was. He had, on more than one occasion, used his disguise jutsu to turn himself into a beautiful naked woman to gather intel. He just hated being anyone else. And a sexy jutsu just wouldn't be-

"Well, then you could bear heirs."

Tobirama's mind skidded to a halt, screeching at painful speeds into a flaming dumpster of chaos.

"What." Was all he managed to get out before Izuna started laughing. His mood quickly soured. "Your jokes are not appreciated-"

"Who said it was a joke? I was being honest-"

"Izuna." A deeper voice cut the air like a hot knife and both men turned to see Madara standing in the doorway. Tobirama's eyes were quick to assess the situation. A just bathed Madara in sleeping yukata with his hair braided, most likely for bed as Tobirama assumed his hair would tangle like Hashirama's throughout the night. He looked slightly flushed, as if maybe he had been training before hand? Or maybe he'd soaked too long in a hot spring. Madara cleared his throat. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" Izuna looked from his brother to Tobirama before exiting the room without another word. Silence fell into his empty space and Tobirama waited for the boisterous yelling that always commenced between Madara and his brother to erupt into this scenario.

But it didn't. "Are the accommodations to your liking?" A very quiet Madara inquired, throwing the albino for a loop.

"No. I would prefer a dungeon. Perhaps be bound with rope like any other normal captive." His eyes narrowed. Madara's face twisted, and for a moment Tobirama thought he might laugh but he just sighed instead, irritated.

"You're not a normal captive."

"I'm not some stolen princess."

"Right." A long pause by the Uchiha. "Suppose I should fill you in then, Prince."

The Senju scoffed, attempting to fold his arms but unable to do so with the chained bracelets and instead awkwardly let his arms hang. Madara continued, not moving an inch toward Tobirama. "This is no bribery. Though I suppose it looks that way. You're a hostage for peace. I should take care of Hashirama's little brother, keeping him safe, Hashirama is most likely to agree to our terms of peace instead of a Senju dominated treaty." Madara was making sense however,

"That doesn't explain the misuse of clan funds for such luxuries. And I know you don't make enough money personally for all this." Tobirama wasn't intending to be mean, it was just a fact.

"You'd be wrong. On both accounts." He paused. "I have been saving my mission funds since I was eight. Every Uchiha does for a time such as this."

Now Tobirama was really confused as he was sure it was plastered all over his face. Madara looked him in the eyes. "For their intended bride."

"I am no bride." Tobirama snarled, teeth and eyes sharp, feeling his defenses raise like a cornered wolf.

"No? I guess I'll settle for a groom."

"_You_?" The albino was exasperated now.

"Yes. Me. You will be marrying me, groom." Madara stated plainly.

Tobirama's mind whirled to life again. So Izuna set this up, acting as if he was mortally wounded to lure a Senju here in the hopes it would be him, to capture him as a hostage and force him to politically marry his brother.

"Why not just ask?" Tobirama confessed his curiosity. Political marriages between feuding clans or lands often brought peace along with it and though his family had never considered the option because the Uchiha head family was also all boys, it was clear the Uchiha didn't carry such prejudices among them if their Head had preferences such as ... this. But the look on Madara's face was nothing short of offended.

"Like you would have agreed to this otherwise." He growled. "I'm no idiot, Tobirama. It is and always will be an intellectual battle of strategy with you." Though Tobirama was always matched against Izuna, he couldn't help but feel a bit prideful that his prowess was acknowledged by someone else of Hashirama's caliber. Then again, he should have known. Madara was no fool indeed.

"What makes you think I'll agree now?"

"You will." Madara seemed sure of himself, which in any other situation Tobirama might have admired such a trait but right now it scratched at his last nerve. He huffed in return. "Sleep well, groom. Your room is guarded by the best Uchiha have to offer and a priest. I don't suggest making a break for it either. If you care about your brother's peace, you'll play nice for at least a few days. Give yourself an opportunity to see things from our perspective." Madara turned, back to Tobirama, a bold move for a shinobi then looked over his shoulder at him. "By the way, you look delightful." His eyes spun red and Tobirama instinctively looked at his throat instead, mind spinning, confused and wondering what that meant. He looked up when the door shut and he finally was alone again.

Part 2:

Madara was beside himself when he caught Tobirama sneaking into the compound after Izuna's supposed injury. The albino clearly didn't mean to get caught but Izuna had laid enough traps that both Madara and Tobirama would run into each other on purpose. The surprise on both their faces sent Izuna cackling right into the koi pond.

He sighed, looking over at the Uchiha children, too young for battle, scampering around the scantily clad Tobirama and asking him a million questions about his appearance. Apparently, the Senju thought him a monster.

"I am just a man."

"But you're so pale!"

"How'd you get a blank Sharingan?"

"Why's your hair white? Are you old?"

Madara laughed to himself. Surely Tobirama didn't expect this kind of treatment but to say Madara was entertained by it was an understatement. He paused outside the temple waiting for Tobirama to catch up.

"Persistent."

"They're eager to learn."

"Do you not teach them of the White Demon?" Tobirama spat. Dark eyes looked at his contemplative for a moment.

"No." Was all he said, leading Tobirama inside the temple.

Tobirama admitted to himself, he'd never seen a temple like this one before. Long black drapery hung from its rafters, a simple washing basin at the entrance.

"Follow my lead and try not to be disrespectful." Madara chimed, moving to the washing basin, systematically washing his hands and face then praying and shrouding his face with a black veil. When Tobirama did the same, a gloved hand reached and stopped him, handing him a white veil instead. He frowned. Insistently, Madara shook it at him silently. Tobirama rolled his eyes and took it, putting it over his head and following Madara behind the fabrics and soft candle light.

A large statue of a woman emerged, surrounded by flowers of crimson color and other Uchiha, the men shrouded like Madara, the women were not. They didn't look up at him. All except the male at the front, unveiled, a priest Tobirama supposed. A priest that bowed to him when he entered. The albino attempted to bow in return when the priest stopped him,

"No. Among all the people here, it is you who is most honored." The look of confusion on his face made Madara snicker. The priest continued, "You seem puzzled, Moonchild."

"Very."

"I will recount for you then." The priest nodded to Madara who left Tobirama's side and knelt in prayer next to his kin, "Our lineage hails from Indra and his wife, Amaterasu." He gestured to the woman. "It is from Indra we received our eyes but from Amaterasu we gained our love."

Red eyes gazed up at the woman holding the infant in her arms. The priest continued, "After the death of his brother, Ashura-"

A lie. Ashura lived and Indra died.. Ashura is Senju lineage.. Tobirama thought to himself, listening.

"Amaterasu was heavy with child and was kidnapped for the unborn child's potential." It didn't take a genius to know where this was headed and Tobirama stiffened. "The child was taken from her before it's due time and it didn't make it. In her rage, Amaterasu burned the entire valley with black flame that none could extinguish. When she returned to Indra, in her distraught, she thought she would never again bear a child." A long pause. "But she was wrong. She was blessed with a Moonchild. The babe grew and from her, our clan was born. A child with skin as pale as the moon, eyes like red stones, and hair as white as snow."

Tobirama wasn't an idiot. This was a description of him.

"So, naturally, we hail Moonchildren as blessed. As heaven sent. And you, even though you're the enemy, to kill a Red Eyed Moonchild will bring the wrath of Amaterasu down upon us."

It all made sense now. Tobirama looked up at the rubies that was set as the child's eyes. The reason why most Uchiha would never touch him, only retaliating out of fear of their lives. The whole reason why Izuna never outright killed him when he had the chances. Why this whole situation had occurred. Silently, he looked at the priest. "Only women are permitted to speak in here. Of course besides myself and.. well.. you." The Uchiha were making more sense with each day and part of him hated that they did. He just wanted to go back to when it was a simpler time, attacking the enemy just because they were the enemy and not understanding them at their core.

The women, less of them in battle than Senju, were guardians of the home, the most powerful and most protected by the Uchiha men. The reverence they have for their women, the understanding they have of life and death. And the way they gazed upon him as if their very insides were confused. He barely noticed when he and Madara returned to the head house.

"They're conflicted." Madara spoke at last, escorting Tobirama to his captive room, almost as if reading his mind. "People like you... are a blessing and they think the Senju have been blessed above us. They lost hope when you entered battle against us."

The silver and gold bangles clinked as Tobirama entered the room, contemplating all he'd seen and heard in the past few days. "They seem to have hope before my capture."

"That-" Madara began, standing in the doorway, "-is because of me." And with that, he closed the door, leaving Tobirama sneering to himself of how self-absorbed Madara really must be.

Part 3:

"You've got it all wrong."

"What do I have wrong, Izuna?" Tobirama sneered, it was the end of day three and he had yet to decide for himself what he would do.

"Aniki said we lost hope seeing you in battle, but he never said he was the one to bring us hope. He said it was because of him we have hope."

"You're speaking in circles." Red eyes narrowed, sitting on the floor, still refusing to use the many luxuries provided to him in the room.

"He said he'd bring you to our side. Well, more specifically, he said he'd marry you."

"Excuse me?" The albino pursed his lips, "You expect me to believe that your brother said that when he was a child?"

"I don't expect you to believe anything." Izuna set the very plain cloth down on the floor. "He said he would. We all laughed because of course, it wouldn't work. You're a male. But it occurred to me.. that marriages don't require children to be valid." The younger said, as if he'd had a revelation. "Political marriage specifically. So here we are." He put his hands on his hips, waiting for the answer.

Tobirama sighed, he'd seen and heard many things in the past few days, most of which did in fact, sway his original opinion of the bloodthirsty Uchiha he'd grown to hate and respect over the years. They were a clan gripped by a love deeper than the Senju, crazed with the pain that losing that love brings. It was Hashirama's dream, this peace. Tobirama could never really imagine it in his head, but he could theorize on how to accomplish such a feat. Many policies, many treaties, and so so much trust would be needed. But this... this capture turned everything on it's head. He could  single handedly stop this centuries' old war. Him. The second born of the Senju Head. Not the Mokuton User. Not the first born, his brother who shone like the sun and commanded respect with his very presence.

Him. A child of water and moonlight and darkness.

It was a long moment before he reached for the garment silently. He could hear Izuna's breath hitch. Was he really going to do this?

"Tell me how it works."

Part 4:

When he stepped out into the open with Izuna wearing only the loin cloth provided, he held his head high and walked straight to Madara. Surprised, the Uchiha flushed an interesting pink from his face down his chest, which only made Tobirama's eyes wander. They were dressed the same, and as per Izuna's instructions, everything looked to be in order. "Betrothed." Tobirama drawled bored like.

"You're going through with it?"

"Yes. Hashirama isn't the only one who wants children to stop dying." Tobirama huffed, hand waving. "Though I've never entertained the thought of a man before." Madara raised a brow. "There isn't much time for such things in war."

That was a lie, Madara knew quite well that sexual encounters were not just the norm in war time, it was honestly the quickest and most effective way to blow off steam. Every shinobi had done it if not with both sexes, then at least one or the other but from the look on Tobirama's face, he was unfazed. "Have you ever..."

"I don't think I need to be here for this conversation," Izuna nearly yelled to not hear whatever response had tumbled out of Tobirama's mouth. "Okay you've got your instructions. The marriage hunt begins now. Get going!" He flickered away and like that, the two men were standing nearly naked and alone at the forest edge of camp.

"We need to get going before they catch us." Tobirama only nodded at Madara's remark, gesturing for him to lead the way. With that, Madara darted into the forest, Tobirama on his heels. It was intensely quiet for a long period of time, Madara scanning the forest with his Sharingan as they put space between them and the compound. He paused on a branch, pulling Tobirama into a hollowed tree trunk with him. Except he didn't account for Tobirama's height and his eyes widened when the albino's head smacked on the opening with the force of his pull. A pale hand went up to hold his face and Madara tried not to laugh, listening to see if the loud thud had given them away. Tobirama looked unimpressed, but followed him into the tight space, surprised at just how bulky Madara's torso was compared to his own. Chest to chest, they hid inside the trunk, whispering and keeping their senses open.

"I sense fourteen at seven position." Tobirama whispered.

"They're not close enough for me to see yet." Madara looked back at the pale chest before him in the dark, trying not to flush again with their proximity.

"What's your plan?"

"I say we cross into Nara territory and wait out the rest of the day. The sun is rising." Tobirama scoffed looking bewildered at his shorter companion.

"I am NOT hiding nearly naked in NARA territory even if it is for peace."

"You could always hide fully naked." Madara immediately looked away as both of them flushed and scowled. "If we don't hide, we'll spend all day running and by night fall, the clan will be upon us. And I know their tenacity. They'll keep coming until we're both captured and if we want peace, we can't let that happen."

"Then we go north into the mountains."

"Are you crazy? It's nearly winter and you want to go into the mountains, in less than a fundoshi?"

"There's a hot spring-" Madara pulled Tobirama down to his knees, nearly flush with his waist as the top of the trunk was shattered over them. Ignoring the placement of his face so close to an erogenous zone, Tobirama took the initiative and lifted Madara onto his shoulder, bounding upwards as kunai trailed after them.

He picked up speed, silently thanking the gods that Hashirama had grown into the thick tree trunk brother he became or Tobirama would have never gained the strength to pick Madara up like this and bound away. With Madara using wind jutsu to cut down trees to block the way of his kin as he berated Tobirama for carrying him like a sack of rice, the sun seemed to spark brighter over the horizon and through the leaves. Suddenly, the albino tumbled forward, nearly planting them both into a cliff face and dropped Madara who squawked as he not so graciously caught himself on a hanging rock.

"What the hell, Senju?!"

"I should be asking you the same." Tobirama spat, holding onto another rock.

"I was helping you!"

"By hitting me with wind jutsu?"

"By propelling us forward faster!" Tobirama paused, a tactical moment when he realized Madara wasn't just limply hanging onto him, he was trying to work with him the only way he knew how. He opened his mouth to respond when a fire jutsu flashed between the two hanging on the side of the cliff and they both bolted upwards for the edge to keep going.

"You should have warned me you'd use that tactic!"

Madara just gave his companion a dirty look as they raced through the next bout of trees, fire licking at their heels. It wasn't long before they both broke through to the other side, right into a farmer's field. "Where the hell are we?"

"Oh gods damn it." Tobirama face palmed, then turned. "They're right behind us. Hurry."

"W-what?!" Madara squawked as Tobirama yanked him through the rice field, past the very confused farmer and into the bushes on the other side.

"They'll have to slow down through the field or risk burning it." Tobirama raised his voice over the sound of the wind as they ran, Madara too focused on the hand grasping his wrist to do anything about it.

"And we just-"

"Izuna didn't say we couldn't be seen. He said we couldn't be caught."

"That's not the point-"

"Then what's the point?" Tobirama looked around, engrossed in the chase now, body flexing as they stopped for a moment to reconsider their surroundings and listen for their hunters. Madara's eyes wandered over the companion before him and huffed, tearing his eyes away to scan the perimeter of their line of sight.

"It's not about the chase. Well it is but-"

"Izuna said-"

"Izuna didn't say-"

The two jumped as they were interrupted by a hailstorm of senbon. Madara tackled Tobirama, and the two rolling down a hill into a creek, fall leaves jumping into the air as they went. Madara groaned, now they were wet and cold, and- his brain stopped when they stood up and Tobirama looked around.

"What's wrong with you?" The albino snapped his fingers in Madara's face who blinked and suddenly looked up.

"You uh.."

"I what? Spit it out, Uchiha."

"You lost your cloth."

Tobirama's lips pursed as he decidedly did not look down to check and tried to decidedly not blush at his nakedness. He could hear Madara swallow. "Not something you like?" He hissed, touchy about the subject of his body.

"On the contrary." Madara cleared his throat, "You're quite gifted-" He ducked as another senbon went whizzing over his head. "But we can discuss who's riding who later-" Red enveloped Tobirama's entire body leaving him less agile than he'd like, especially when Madara snatched him up and took off running away from the approaching Uchiha trying to stop them. All he could think now was how nice peace would be. No running. No fighting. A warm body to wake up to.. and maybe.. just maybe someone to banter with.

#madatobi gift exchange 2021 #madatobi shenanigans #peppymint1986 #this was gonna be way longer but my entire house got a vomiting sickness twice #the basement also flooded #i had a panic attack

[sleevesareforlosers]

hello!! if you don’t mind could you elaborate on how you think the twitter fab four like. interact with kobra or how they see him? do they have a personal relationship or is he just kinda there cause he’s poison’s brother yk? idk i was just thinking abt it and wondering what you thought, ty!!

sdfksjh "if i dont mind" like i ever dont want to talk about twitterverse

so yeah like, i've been saying it a lot recently but i always try to have my crewmates like. like each other. esp in my zones, being solitary and not having a crew, while dangerous, isn't necessarily a bad thing or too uncommon bc the level of trust that i see crews as needing means that most of the time, there aren't people in a crew just to be there, theyre there for the family as much as the protection

how this shakes down in twitterverse with kobra is, obviously yeah hes poisons little brother but they dont lie to each other and they do (unconsciously a lot of the time) trust each other very intimately. they didn't have much of a relationship before leaving the city so everything that they Do have was a conscious choice, a 'i dont know this person well but they Are my sibling by choice as much as by blood and im not letting go of them' there wasnt a lot of room to go into this in SOA but like, they really do love each other very deeply and even their fights are more out of a fear of losing one another than anything else. party's a hothead and he says things in the heat of the moemnt but, and i think this was clear in SOA (i hope it was at least), as soon as he calms down he regrets it and tries to make that clear, in their own way.

for ghoul its a situation more similar to how kobra and cherri are? its very much a relationship of equals. theyre both the youngest by a lot in the crew, they're reckless in sometimes dangerous and often annoying ways, ghoul's not as dependant on waveriding as cherri is or as kobra is with sugar but having been a wavehead and still waveriding now takes out a lot of the judgement that kobra can feel from say, poison or jet. its somewhat a newer relationship (two years vs kobra's five years with poison and jet) but theres understanding and trust and enjoyment in spending time together and blowing off steam together.

with jet its a little more complex? theyre as much kobra's sibling as poison is because, really, they met only about three days after kobra and poison met properly/left the city/formed their relationship. and so theres a lot of, not necessarily protectiveness that jet has over kobra but kobra was fourteen when they met and jet was twenty, now theyre 19 and 25, thats a HUGE period of growth that both of them went through not even counting all the like. actual events and struggles and things that happened in those five years. you spend five years with anyone in such a close proximity and with such high stakes (wanted desert rebels hello!) and youre either gonna kill each other or end up loving each other. jet says what theyre thinking and theyre honest with kobra which is good for both of them and kobra is, despite being a handful, fun. hes funny and him and jet share hobbies and he gets along with mad gear so they're good at spending time together. on the other hand, kobra is a little wary (or like, almost jealous?) of jet. jet had a super stable childhood/teenagehood esp by zones standards, theyve got a steady relationship, apart from more recent traumas and weird witch destiny shit theyre well adjusted. compared to how uh, not, kobra is. that can make it a bit hard for them to see eye to eye on things, especially with things like how kobra very rarely says what hes thinking, its obvious thats irritating to jet and they dont understand it. but they work around that, theyre crewmates, theyre family, kobra cant imagine life in the zones without jet and at this point, jet cant really imagine life without him either. but that goes for all the fab four. theyre so entwined in each others lives that shit like hm... a crewmate getting captured, perhaps, throws them all out of alignment in a major way

you had to have been expecting an essay but tldr yeah, theyve all got personal relationships they all love and trust each other a lot

#danger days #tlotfk #twitterverse #jet star #kobra kid #fun ghoul #party poison #fab four

[gumnut-logic]

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Ooooh, one hell of a language warning on this one. Not a happy Tracy at all.

For @soniabigcheese​ for Gordon and Bedlam.

-o-o-o-

“Gordon!” Scott’s yell was echoed by John

Virgil didn’t think, he just moved.

Two was banking before he was even fully in his pilot’s seat, her massive thrusters firing to accelerate her down and around the listing platform.

“For Christ’s sake, hold still, you idiot.”

It was said under his breath, but Gordon’s voice carried over comms like a wave of reassurance. As Two darted under the platform, Virgil was both relieved and horrified to find the rescuee dangling from a hastily deployed grapple line.

Gordon was clinging to mangled superstructure not far below the hole he had leapt through. “Uh, hey, Virg. Need a little hand.”

Further up, Scott was peering through the hole in the tarmac.

An exhalation. “FAB, Gordon.”

Mental calculations and Virgil managed to squeeze Two up and under the victim. The collapsed runway was far too close for comfort, but he managed it with an inch or so to spare.

Rising out of Two’s top hatch, he was greeted with a wriggling wreck of a man. “About time.”

Virgil bit back his response. “Please hold still, sir.”

“Finally, I can get off this boat.”

Virgil felt no guilt at his urge to want to slap the man. Gordon’s grapple, as always, had been right on target, snagging the victim’s belt in its claw. The guy obviously had no idea how close he had come to dying…or the danger to Gordon.

If he cared at all.

The fact that there were at least three holocams buzzing around filming them was, oddly, a little reassuring. Perhaps Jack could press charges.

As Virgil took the man’s weight and released the grapple, the groan of pain from Gordon over comms only emphasized what the man had done.

Virgil bit his lip until it hurt.

Definitely pressing charges.

He held the man until his feet touched the hatch plates and made sure he could take his own weight before lowering them into the cockpit.

He fingered his comms. “Scott, are you able to reach Gordon? I can try, but its tight up there. Two will not be able to get close enough without further structural damage.” Not that he would let that stop him, but the platform was unstable and a thousand lives were still dependent on it.

“FAB, Thunderbird Two. I have him secured with a grapple line. Gordon, status?”

Their aquanaut brother grunted, but Virgil lost the rest of his answer as the rescuee started protesting that he was fine and no, he didn’t need to lie down and could he sit in the co-pilot’s seat?

Virgil’s abrupt ‘No!’ apparently wasn’t enough to shut him up.

Virgil did not have time for this.

Deploying the seat furthest from the dash, he strapped the man into it.

“Hey, I want to sit up front.”

“You will sit here.” And shut up.

“Do you know who I am?”

An idiot? “I don’t care.”

Virgil turned his back on him and did his best to ignore the man’s protests as he realised that, no, he couldn’t undo his seatbelt.

There was no way Virgil was going to have this moron free to wander around his ship.

“Thunderbird Four? Status?”

Instead of Gordon, Scott answered. “Pulling him up now, Thunderbird Two. Gordon is secure.”

Oh, thank god.

Virgil couldn’t help peering up out of the windows and checking for himself. Far above, Scott could be seen hauling Gordon up with his own grapple gun.

Virgil needed to be topside now.

Two responded to his touch as she always did, smoothly and immediately, the great ship banking away from the structure in a controlled fall. He fired her thrusters launching her up and around the massive platform just in time to see Gordon emerge from the hole in the tarmac.

“Medical report, Gordon.” He had to know.

Again, Scott cut in before Gordon could answer. “Possible sprained wrist, definitely some issue with his right arm. Some bleeding. For goodness sake, Gordon stand still!”

“I’m fine, Scott, we have more important things to do.”

“I’m aware of the situation, Gordon. I want you evacuated to Two.”

Hissed over comms. “Forget it, Scott, I’m not leaving you down here with this mob of idiots by yourself.”

“Gordon!”

Virgil sighed and switched Two into a secure hover. “Thunderbird Five, you have Two, monitor and secure, please.”

“FAB, Thunderbird Two.”

“Have Eos keep an eye on the two patients in the medbay and advise immediately of any change.”

“Monitoring already. Internal cockpit cams active. Eyes active.”

Virgil’s lips twitched as he stood up from his seat. John knew exactly what he was talking about. Leaving Idiot alone on his ‘bird was not ideal, but he couldn’t actually throw the man back into the danger zone.

Grabbing a medkit, Virgil strode back to the hatch and lowered himself down enough to catch a descent line and secure it to his harness.

“What? Where are you going?”

“I’ll be back shortly, sir. No need to worry, you are in safe hands.”

“Hands? Whose hands?”

Virgil didn’t answer before he leapt off the hatch and began his descent down to the platform.

Gordon and Scott were sharing a few stubborn words as Virgil strode across the tarmac. There were still people milling about. He caught sight of Penelope’s father desperately trying to talk several suited individuals into returning to the pods.

It was enough to frustrate even Virgil’s patience.

He was almost to his brothers when the first words were thrown his way.

“That’s the one who killed all those people in New York!” That same woman’s voice from earlier. Virgil forced himself not to look, focussing instead on his brothers. The crowd began muttering. His name was mentioned several times.

The moment he reached Gordon, Scott handed him over and returned to attempting to handle the crowd.

That didn’t want to be handled.

“Hey, Gords. What have you done to yourself?” A visual inspection revealed a limp arm being held by a tight hand indicating pain. Several tears in his uniform and a glare with enough energy to ignite the air around it.

Worst of all, Gordon was strangely quiet, eyeing the crowd.

Scott again urged everyone to return to the pods. As if to emphasize his request, the wind suddenly picked up and the whole platform shuddered.

John, ever the eagle eye, immediately tagged them on comms. “You might want to hurry up that evac, guys. The weather is stable for the moment, but the forecast for the evening is the arrival of a front. There will be turbulence ahead of the change.”

Virgil was aware of that and had factored it into his calculations when deploying the airjacks.

Didn’t make them impervious to the jostling. “FAB, Thunderbird Five.” He turned to Gordon. “I want you up on Two. Now.”

Gordon’s eyes were still on the crowd and their muttered complaints. Scott was deploying full commander mode and several had backed away, heading towards the stadium, but a core group were either begging to be taken aboard a Thunderbird, glaring at Virgil…or yelling accusations at him.

Gordon pushed past his brother and strode towards the crowd.

“Gordon!”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?!” Gordon’s comms were on loudspeaker and his voice hushed the crowd immediately.

Almost.

One angry man in a GDF uniform stepped forward. “I’m your superior, lieutenant, and I demand-“

“You demand? You have no right to demand anything!”

Virgil reached for his brother, but his hand was shaken off. Scott spun and narrowed in on the both of them, worry the foremost in his expression.

But Gordon ignored it.

“My brothers have done nothing but try to help you, to save you, THAT is what we do. But you assholes won’t listen!” Gordon took a step forward, the hand on his arm white knuckled.

“If you don’t return to your pods now, you are going to die! Is that simplistic enough for you? My brothers will, no doubt, try their best, risk their lives, trying to save yours, but they are not fucking miracle workers. You will DIE, if YOU DON’T MOVE YOUR ASSES!!”

That got several people moving.

But not all.

“Gordon!” Scott’s voice was more worried elder brother than commander.

That earned him a scathing look. “No, Scott, I’ve had it! Did you hear what they are saying about Virgil? They called him a murderer!” His anger turned back to the crowd. “You have no fucking idea who you are talking about. Virgil is the kindest of us, the gentlest, he can’t hurt a damned fly and you accuse him of purposefully killing all those people. He tried to save them.” His brother’s shoulders wilted. “He tried so hard.”

“They still died.” It came from that same world councillor who wanted his own private Thunderbird ride.

Gordon staggered up to the man and Virgil hurried to follow. The tarmac shook again. “Gordon, we need to get these people off the platform.”

His brother ignored him and instead pushed into the councillor’s personal space. “Yes, they did. But you don’t care do you? You have your own fucking agenda. It’s not about lives, is it? It’s about money. It’s about power.” A rough indrawn breath as the man took a step back. “Well, newsflash, asshole, we don’t care! We have the power, we have the money, and we don’t care. My brothers only want to help. Every life is important, even your mediocre and pathetic one. Now, move your ass AND RETURN TO YOUR POD SO WE CAN SAVE YOUR FUCKING LIFE!!”

Gordon staggered with the force of his yell and Virgil was moving. He grabbed at his little brother just as the aquanaut’s body suddenly folded. Virgil caught him before he could hit the tarmac.

What the hell?! “Gordon!”

Voice whisper weak. “Virg.”

He held his brother in his arms while fumbling for the med scanner. “Gords, what the hell are you doing?”

Beneath plexiglass reflecting the sky above, carnelian flickered up at him. Gordon blinked slowly. “They hurt you…” His eyes closed and didn’t open again.

-o-o-o-

TBC

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #Virgil Tracy #Scott Tracy #Gordon Tracy #John Tracy #nuttys fandomversary

[eirabach]

Backlash [1/2]

Another first chapter of a two parter? It’s more likely than you think! Gordon + Used as bait as chosen by @godsliltippy. I got carried away with the fishy metaphor.

Scott had started it. Scott always does.

Somewhere around third grade, at just about the point that people had begun to notice Gordon for good or for ill, Scott had dragged him off to some flooded old mine basin somewhere, chucked his spindley little body straight in and said,

“C’mon then, fish kid. Show me what you got.”

It’s a weird memory. Most of Gordon’s are, really, when you think about it. He recalls the instant of terror as he’d hung in midair, the delighted howls of the gang of teenagers smoking at the water’s edge, the immediate, glorious peace of entry and the icy, violent cold.

He remembers the scrapes left on his knees after a pale-faced Scott had dragged him out over the sharp rocks, and how he’d held him, all dripping and shivery, by the wrist as their mother’s car had screeched to a dusty halt, the teenagers bolting into hiding as an actual adult had thrown open the car door and screamed at Scott.

He remembers her face, puce with fury, little Alan tucked tight to her hip with his thumb in his mouth and --

Fish kid.

Mainly, he remembers how much he’d liked that. Something for himself, something all his own, and bestowed on him from on high by the biggest of big brothers -- wow. It’d had been seriously -- wow.

He just -- he’d kinda hoped he might grow up to be something a bit cooler than a minnow, that’s all.

Four creaks and shudders around him, the pressure out here far, far more intense than anywhere but the very deepest depths she’s designed to take, and his fingers twitch to seize back control of her, to swim, but he can’t, and she can’t, and he reckons --

“Gordon? Are you listening?”

It doesn’t matter what he reckons.

“Yeah, yeah I’m here,” he says, as though he could be anywhere else, “what’s the ETA on the big ol’ tuna fish anyway?”

Virgil scoffs, loud enough that Gordon can only imagine he’s got his face practically pressed up against the comm. “Tuna fish? We’re working with sharks here, Gordon.”

Four sways, swinging like a pendulum as Alan struggles to hold steady against a planet that wants to drag them both down. Whirlpools of thick, gaseous clouds swirl beneath Gordon’s feet, above his head.

“Sharks are our friends,” he grumbles, stomach protesting his last meal as Alan swears violently over the secondary comm. “Sharks do not undertake dangerous and illegal space mining operations. Did you learn nothing from all those Shark Week rewatches?”

“I learned you’d never get me in one of those cages,” Virgil says, then, with a pause that sounds just like a wince. “I didn’t mean --”

“Six minutes.” Scott’s voice is harsh, sharp. A commander's voice, but Gordon wonders if perhaps there’s something of the memory of that day at the mine lingering behind the snappishness.

Scott’s thrown him in, again, although it’s Alan who’s cast the line, and this time it’s Alan who’ll have to reel him in.

No pressure, then.

“FAB, control,” Gordon says, voice as bright as he can manage through the whining of metal and the thudding pain that’s developing behind his eyes.

“FAB, control,” Alan copies, and it’s almost mocking. Almost unkind. “I’ll be lucky if I can keep you up for six seconds!”

There’s a very good reason the comm line between the two of them is private.

“Good job I’m lucky then,” he grumbles, releasing the clasp on his helmet and pulling it off just to scrub at his aching eyes. “Not that I particularly feel it right now. I thought that rocket of yours had stabilizing thrusters?”

Alan’s voice is barely more than a hiss. “It doe .”

“Five minutes.”

Gordon doesn’t even bother acknowledging, instead grabbing hold of the controls for Four’s grappling arms and squinting out into the morass. The great red eye of Jupiter’s monstrous eternal storm is seething somewhere beneath him, and between him and it is a ship that absolutely should not, cannot be there. Except apparently there’s profit in the minerals thrown up by the planet’s constant temper tantrum, and absolutely nothing gets between Langstrom Fischler and profit.

Except, apparently, Gordon Tracy.

Hanging from the end of a very long high tensile fishing line.

Everybody’s gotta have a hobby. Shame this isn't his.

“Four.”

“Three, Two, One,” Gordon intones. “Have I mentioned I hate this yet?”

“Only fifty times.” Gordon can hear the strain in Alan’s voice as another current sends Four hurtling to port, the world outside twisting and blurring until Gordon’s forced to bite his own lip to keep from meeting last night’s travel rations in reverse.

“Jesus, Al!”

“Sorry, sorry!”

Gordon doesn’t really understand what happens next, only that there’s a huge, terrible clang of metal on metal as he’s thrown from the seat, his shoulders wrenching as he struggles to keep his grip on the controls.

“Gordon, you should have visual! ”

“Yeah, you think?!”

Four’s windows are filled with a huge, pockmarked sheet of red metal, the other ship so large and so close, so close , that Gordon can’t do much other than frantically twist his wrists and pray that the grasping arms manage to grab hold of something .

“Alan!” There’s the thud of Four attaching and a brief flicker of relief before -- Jesus, is someone screaming?

“Let go! Gordon! Thunderbird Four! Let it go!”

“Now? No way! Alan pull us up!”

“Gordon!”

He grits his teeth, his feet slipping against the plexiglass as he heaves back on the controls with all his might and how big is this thing anyway?

“Alan!”

The screaming grows louder, a horrible high pitched shriek that echoes through his pounding skull, makes his eyes water. Something else red, something viscous, drip drip drips onto the ground, brighter than the background, blurring in and out of focus as he squints at it. Important, he thinks. That’s important.

Something’s screaming, and something’s… bleeding?

Huh.

“Gordon, I swear to Dad if you don’t let go this instant I’ll -- ”

And Scott, Scott’s almost screaming, but all his words are blurring into that terrible overwhelming roar. Important. Something’s important.

But Gordon -- Gordon never finds out what.

#bad things happen bingo #thunderbirds #thunderbirds are go #gordon tracy #clare vs writers block

[insanityclause]

When coronavirus closed the theaters on March 12, there were still 16 shows left to open in the Broadway season. Audiences will get to see some of them later, others probably not — but what of the more than 20 plays, musicals and miscellaneous offerings that had already faced the press? It seemed unfair not to celebrate them, so on Friday, just after it was announced that the Tony Awards will not go on as usual this year, we sat down (in cyberspace) to devise a Tonys of our own. Naturally, we made our own rules.

BEN BRANTLEY Well, Jesse, even in a season that’s 16 plays short, there’s still a fat if imbalanced roster of intriguing shows. Have we ever before had such a preponderance of jukebox musicals that might qualify for Best Musical? The good news is that some enterprising minds managed to inventively retool the genre you once described as the “cockroach” of Broadway.

JESSE GREEN The cockroach has evolved! “Jagged Little Pill,” “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” “Girl From the North Country,” “Moulin Rouge!” and — since we’re playing by our own rules here — even “American Utopia,” the David Byrne show that was deemed ineligible for the real Tonys, are all jukeboxes, all worthy and all eligible for ours. Maybe not quite all worthy.

BRANTLEY Perhaps it’s appropriate then that the last show to open on Broadway was the most unorthodox of the “jukebox” shows. I use quotation marks here because that label seems too confining for “Girl From the North Country,” the Irish playwright and director Conor McPherson’s work that uses the songs of Bob Dylan to imagine life during the Great Depression in Duluth, Minn. The more I think about “Girl,” the more innovative and haunting it seems to me.

GREEN For me it took some time, and the show’s move from the Public Theater to Broadway, to appreciate how McPherson was deploying the music in this musical. The songs do not function the way songs normally do; they never address the situation at hand, and sometimes even contradict it. Yet in that gap, poetry grew.

BRANTLEY For me, “Girl” deals with the ineffable and unsayable through song in a way that makes it the most religious, or at least spiritual, show on Broadway. I have found this aspect of the show stays with me, as an oddly comforting reminder of the hunger for communion in this time of isolation. But moving on to matters closer to profane than sacred, what about another mold-breaker in a very different sense: “Moulin Rouge!,” based on the Baz Luhrmann movie about la vie bohème in gaslight-era Paris.

GREEN Here was a case where the gap between the story, such as it is, and the musical materials — found pop from Offenbach to Rihanna — did not produce poetry. For me it produced a headache.

BRANTLEY Ah, I had a swell time at “Moulin Rouge,” and I thought the far-reaching songbook became a kind of commentary on how such songs form the wallpaper of our minds. And then there was “Tina,” which was more business-as-usual bio-musical fare, although illuminated by a radiant, cliché-transcending performance by Adrienne Warren as Turner.

GREEN The creators of musicals really offered a sampler of ways to respond to the jukebox problem. “Jagged Little Pill,” built on the Alanis Morissette catalog, made the smart choice of abjuring biography and instead attaching her songs to a new plot (by Diablo Cody) that grew out of the same concerns and vocabulary. Or perhaps I should say “new plots,” because it is not shy with them. There are at least eight story lines.

BRANTLEY To be honest, this was the show that gave me a headache, because it was so insistently earnest in its topicality and, even when it was trying to be funny, humorless. So, of the new musicals (and we haven’t touched on “The Lightning Thief,” your personal favorite) what would you give the premature Tony to?

GREEN The one that wouldn’t be eligible: “American Utopia.” Joy and sadness bound to each other through David Byrne’s music and Annie-B Parson’s movement: What else do you want from a musical, even if it’s just a concert?

BRANTLEY I loved “American Utopia.” I think, though, I’d have to go with “Girl From the North Country,” but I wouldn’t have predicted that after seeing it in London two years ago. I find more in it every time I revisit it.

GREEN Despite all the Best Musical possibilities this truncated season, only one, “The Lightning Thief,” had a new score. Yet most of the offerings sounded new anyway, the result of terrific arrangements and orchestrations. I’m thinking especially of Justin Levine’s magpie-on-Ecstasy song collages for “Moulin Rouge!,” Tom Kitt’s theatricalization of post-grunge pop for “Jagged Little Pill” and Simon Hale’s excavation of the deeply layered Americana in Dylan’s catalog for “Girl.”

BRANTLEY Here, I’d have to say it’s a tie between “Girl” and “Moulin Rouge!,” each a remarkable accomplishment in a very different way. As for best revival, the undisputed winner is Ivo van Hove’s divisive revival of “West Side Story,” but that’s because it is, remarkably, the only musical revival so far.

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GREEN I liked “West Side Story” better than you did, Ben, perhaps because I wasn’t reviewing it. I lapped up the new things it wanted to show me (while also hunting for the old things it wanted to hide from me) and didn’t worry about the elements that laid an egg. (“Gee, Officer Krupke.”) Its evocation of innocence and hopelessness felt more like real life now than I’ve experienced in previous revivals.

BRANTLEY I concede the point intellectually. But the acid test for me with theater — and musicals in particular — is how much it makes you feel. And to borrow a lyric from “A Chorus Line,” for the most part “I felt nothing.”

GREEN I admit it was odd that there were no obvious breakout performances in “West Side Story” — which brings us to our first lightning round. Who wins our Tonys for leading actor and actress in a musical?

BRANTLEY Best Actress: Adrienne Warren, for “Tina” (though Karen Olivo in “Moulin Rouge!” is pretty fab, too). Best Actor: Jay O. Sanders in, perversely, a non-singing role in “Girl From the North Country.” You?

GREEN Same. I think we are having a socially distanced mindmeld. Will that also be the case with the nine new plays and four revivals that opened before March 12? With one exception, the revivals were not as thrilling as the full slate promised to be.

BRANTLEY For me, the winner is Jamie Lloyd’s spartan, merciless revival of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” which brought harsh clarity to the work’s emotional ambiguity.

GREEN And ambiguity to the play’s harsh formality — its semi-backward construction. It was certainly the best “Betrayal” I’ve seen, yet I hold out some love for the revival of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” which in retrospect turned out to be a farewell to Terrence McNally, its author, who died last week. I felt that Michael Shannon and Audra McDonald did it, and him, justice.

BRANTLEY It was certainly a reminder of his shrewdness and compassion. I was perhaps a little too conscious of the Acting, with a capital A. But it was a welcome addition to the season. For Best Play, we have a far more varied field, no? I suspect we’ll agree on the winner here, the season’s great iconoclast.

GREEN Yes, “Slave Play,” by Jeremy O. Harris, wins on sheer disruptive energy, even before considering its intelligence as playwriting, its knockout production (directed by Robert O’Hara) and its fearsome challenge to renegotiate race in America.

BRANTLEY But for all its shock value, what made it a wonderful play — as opposed to just a bracing exploration of dangerous ground — was its heart. By the end, you felt so completely the pain of its characters, all trying to navigate the perhaps insuperable hurdles of interracial relationships.

GREEN I think “The Inheritance” wanted to be that kind of play, too: a story of intimate relationships yet also a gay manifesto with the multipart heft of “Angels in America.” It got the heft, anyway; “Slave Play” ran 120 minutes; “The Inheritance,” 385.

BRANTLEY “The Inheritance” certainly gets points for ambition — and for the fluidity of Stephen Daldry’s production. And might I put in a word for the prickly comic abrasiveness of Tracy Letts’s “Linda Vista,” a lacerating anatomy of toxic masculinity disguised as brooding charm?

GREEN I liked what “Linda Vista” wanted to do but found it flabby. Perhaps straitened times demand slender plays. Certainly, the other new drama I greatly admired was whippetlike: Adam Rapp’s “The Sound Inside,” an existential mystery wrapped in a literary one, or vice versa. Among other things, it allowed Mary-Louise Parker, as a Yale writing instructor, to deliver a Tony-worthy performance. And now that “How I Learned to Drive,” the other play in which she was set to star this season, has been postponed, she doesn’t have to compete against herself. Is she our winner?

BRANTLEY I am going to declare a tie between her and Laura Linney, who gave a very subtle, and emotionally transparent, performance as the title character of “My Name Is Lucy Barton,” adapted by Rona Munro from Elizabeth Strout’s novel.

GREEN I buy that. But let’s not forget Joaquina Kalukango in “Slave Play,” Eileen Atkins in “The Height of the Storm,” Zawe Ashton in “Betrayal” and Jane Alexander in “Grand Horizons.” It was a very strong semi-season for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

BRANTLEY And for Best Actor?

GREEN The real Tonys decreed that Paul Alexander Nolan was eligible for his “supporting” role in “Slave Play,” but in my Tonys he’s a strong candidate for “leading.” Still, I’ll go with Tom Hiddleston, in “Betrayal.” Or at least he wins in my newly invented category of Best Use of the Lack of a Tissue. His facial leakage was Vesuvian.

BRANTLEY He was superb — and a reminder of the cathartic value of the tears of others in theater. Of course, there’s so much to cry about now in terms of opportunities lost this season. But I’m not writing an elegy for, or even a definitive summary of, this season yet. It will be fascinating to see how it reincarnates itself, won’t it?

#tom hiddleston #zawe ashton #betrayal #tonys #postponed

[cruelangelstheses]

louder than the maker’s revolver (and twice as shiny) - chapter 1: look alive, sunshine

fandom: dragon age rating: M characters: isabela/f!hawke, bethany/merrill, anders/fenris/m!hawke words (total): 6.5k words (this chapter): 6.5k additional tags: fabulous killjoys au, post-apocalypse, twin hawkes, slow burn, mutual pining, angst with a happy ending, canon-typical violence description: in which an eight-person gang of rebels living in the desert pisses off the government, firefights are lost and won, homoerotic wound-dressing is commonplace, bonds are forged and broken and reforged, feelings are hard, fighting a powerful and corrupt institution is slightly less hard, and everyone is just trying to survive, to heal, to find their way. (or, “the da2 killjoy au nobody asked for”) a/n: ITS STILL 2019 OUT WEST I MADE IT!!! ok so. [cracks knuckles] this is an AU fic based on the universe created in my chemical romance's album “danger days: the true lives of the fabulous killjoys” (and gerard way's subsequent comics) about rebels in the desert fighting a corrupt government post-apocalypse. the album starts/takes place in the year 2019 which is why i wanted to get this fic out before the year ends. while the general setting and terms are the same, no characters from the killjoy universe will appear and everything else is a more loose interpretation. you do not have to be familiar with my chem or the killjoy universe to read this. (for those who know the story, this fic takes place in the year 2030, so after the original “fab four” have died but before the events of the comics, during a sort of “lull” in the action you could say)

a key feature of the killjoy universe is the usage of “killjoy names,” usually one or two-word phrases that relate to the person, and often the person created the name themself - the original four are party poison, fun ghoul, jet star, and kobra kid. i've given each member of the crew a killjoy name (see below) that the other characters will usually use in dialogue (except for characters who knew each other before they became killjoys and got names), but i will use their real names for the most part in narration so you don't forget who's who

ANYWAY i've been planning this fic for a whole year now and it's gonna be a FUN RIDE !!!! i've left a guide at the end for the killjoy names (not all of them are mentioned in this chapter though). i tried my best to explain what certain terms mean in this chapter but they will all be expanded upon more throughout the fic!! ALSO some of characters might end up aged down a little bit because people in the zones tend not to live very long and someone in their early to mid 40s is considered like, ancient in the comics. bethany and carver are still 19 though, the others might just be adjusted in proportion

thank u for reading, i love ensemble casts and da2 and mcr and rebellion and also being gay. fic title and chapter title come from “look alive, sunshine” (by mcr of course lol)

read it on ao3

—

Bethany has never been one to complain, but she has to admit, her knee hurts like a bitch.

The rest of the Birds take down the remaining Draculoids fairly easily, so she doesn’t feel as bad about having to hide crouched behind a crate on the ground. If there were more of them, or if there was a Scarecrow, she’d probably try to keep fighting despite her injury, but this is just a small, unlucky group of Dracs, leaderless and mindless in their pursuit of one of the biggest gangs in the Zones. Perhaps a Scarecrow would have ordered them not to try to fight a group of eight fairly seasoned Killjoys.

When the guns stop firing and the Dracs lie dead in the desert sand, Isabela’s voice floats over. “You know, Blondie, a smoke bomb would’ve helped.”

Anders sighs. Bethany can practically hear him rolling his eyes. “Those things don’t grow on trees, you know. And even if they did, it’s not like we have many trees out here. You think I want to waste them on a group like that? We got rid of them just fine.”

Bethany peers out from behind the crate just in time to see Isabela shrug and gesture to her. “Well, at the very least, it might’ve saved Sunshine from being shot.”

At that, Carver seems to snap to attention. “Bethany’s hurt?”

Now it’s Bethany’s turn to sigh. Gingerly stretching her leg out and trying not to wince, she says, “It’s not that bad, Carver.”

Marian huffs, shoving her red-and-black ray gun back into its holster. “‘Not that bad,’ my ass.” She sounds angry, but there’s an edge of worry to her voice that Bethany knows like the back of her hand. “A few more shots like that and you’d have been dusted for sure.”

“But I wasn’t,” Bethany replies. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Anders rummaging through their supplies for the first aid kit.

“But you could’ve been,” Carver adds, crossing his arms and glaring at Marian as if she had something to do with the injury.

Marian scowls defensively. “What are you looking at me for? I was killing Dracs! Maybe if you weren’t so busy trying to show off at every opportunity, you could protect her better!” She sneers out the word protect.

“Maybe if you actually thought before you acted for once in your life—”

“Hey!”

Garrett’s voice rings out above everything else, so loud and firm that for a split second it feels like the whole world stops. These are the moments when Garrett Hawke is at his most serious and his most powerful: when he’s breaking up an argument between Carver and Marian.

“How about instead of blaming each other for Bethany’s injury,” he says, his hands held up in an appeasing manner, “we set up camp here and rest for the evening?”

Marian and Carver exchange glances. After a pause, it’s Marian that says, “Fine.”

The place in question is an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Zone Four, not so remote that it’s off the map, but remote enough that there aren’t a whole lot of Dracs crawling around (and even fewer now that they’ve taken care of this group). A few empty crates and barrels litter the ground surrounding it, some knocked over or zapped from previous firefights. Other than that, there are no recent signs of life—which means it’s a perfect place for the Birds of Passage to recuperate.

Bethany pushes herself to her feet, using the top of the crate to balance herself. Her knee hurts even more when she tries to stretch it out or place any weight on it, but she’ll be damned if she lets anyone help her.

“Are you alright?”

Well...almost anyone.

She lifts her head up at the sound of Merrill’s lilting voice. The girl’s black hair is plastered to her tattooed and sweat-covered face, not long enough to pull up into a ponytail like Bethany’s, but just long enough to get in the way. “I can help you get inside, if you want,” she says, holding her hand out. “Then we can take a look at it, get it all wrapped up.”

For a moment, Bethany just stares at her, searching her face for any signs of pity. Instead she finds only sincere concern for a companion, the same as it would be if any of the others were injured. With a nod, she lets Merrill wrap an arm around her shoulders and guide her slowly into the warehouse. She can feel the eyes of the rest of the group on them, some more subtle than others, but she knows deep down that they’re just making sure she’s okay. Like it or not, she and Carver are the youngest, and though he tries so obviously hard to act like he isn’t, there are still moments where the others look at him and remember that he’s only nineteen, too—moments like right now, as he paces agitatedly across the floor, looking like he’s never been more stressed in his life.

“Carver,” Bethany calls as Merrill helps her sit up against the wall, her legs stretched out. “I’ll be fine.” She laughs a little despite the stinging pain. “It’s not like we’ll have to amputate it or anything.”

Anders kneels down beside her, first aid kit in hand and a good-natured smile on his face. “We might.”

Merrill smacks his arm. “Don’t scare them!” she hisses as she sits down next to Bethany.

Garrett turns to Carver, cool and composed. “She’s fine,” he says matter-of-factly, a playful smirk on his face. “If it were really that bad, none of us would be joking.”

Carver snorts. “You might.”

Garrett puts a hand to his chest in mock offense. “Dear brother, you wound me.”

Merrill giggles as she watches them, her gaze soft. “Your siblings remind me of my family sometimes,” she says as Anders begins cleaning and dressing the wound. “Well-intentioned, but sometimes they need to be reminded that you’re an adult, same as them.”

Bethany nods. If there’s anyone that understands her, it’s Merrill. “To be fair,” she says quietly, “sometimes I need to be reminded of that, too.”

Merrill turns to look at her, pushing a few strands of hair out of her face. “Then I’ll remind you,” she says. “You’re a grown woman. You don’t have to always agree or go along with them. You can stand up for yourself like anyone else.”

Bethany nods again, unable to stop a faint smile from breaking through. Anders doesn’t say anything, but she can see the blush on his face, as if he’s just witnessed something he feels he wasn’t meant to see.

—

The Hawkes are only on the run for a month or two before they meet their first recruit (and fifth member).

Well, perhaps “on the run” isn’t the right phrase. All Killjoys are technically “on the run” from Better Living Industries—it comes with the whole “openly rebelling against your corrupt government” thing. But it doesn’t really feel like running. It feels like surviving. Every Killjoy knows it’s dangerous to stay in one place for too long.

Still, they’re traveling a lot more than they did when their parents were both still alive. Growing up in the Zones outside of Battery City, away from BLI brainwashing, the Hawke children learned how to thrive in the desert fairly quickly, which meant that their family was able to more easily live off the land for longer periods of time.

Now, though, after selling most of their belongings, they live out of their car, a black 1969 Chevy Camaro convertible, spray-painted with two red stripes down the sides and a red bird symbol on the hood (courtesy of Garrett). In honor of their surname as well as their living situation, they’ve christened themselves the Birds of Passage.

For obvious reasons, one of their most common pit stops is one of several Dead Pegasus gas stations littering the Zones. The siblings usually draw straws to determine which one of them has to pump the gas.

“Damn! Again?” Carver says, staring at the short straw between his fingers in disbelief. Frowning, he starts to open the left-side car door. “Just my luck.”

In the driver’s seat, Marian reaches into the back and pats Carver on the shoulder, a smirk on her face. “You’ll live. Now go.” With that, she gives him a light shove out the door. Carver snorts.

As he starts pumping the gas, Marian absentmindedly surveys the area, not really expecting to see anything out of the ordinary. Out of the corner of her eye, though, she spots someone she’s never seen before at one of the other fuel pumps: a petite girl filling up a black and forest green motorbike.

Bethany seems to notice her at the same time. “Who’s that?”

Garrett strokes his beard, like an asshole. “No idea.”

“Let’s find out.” Before anyone else can respond, Marian hops out of the car, popping the collar of her black leather jacket. She’s mostly tuned Garrett out at this point, but she thinks she can hear him warn her not to scare the poor girl. He underestimates her ability to be charming rather than terrifying.

The first thing Marian notices is that the girl dresses like a Killjoy. Her brown boots have flowers painted on the sides, and her acid-washed jeans are ripped and dirty. The back of her denim vest features a large daisy with white petals and a yellow center, and in the center is a radiation hazard symbol.

“Nice logo,” Marian says as she approaches.

The girl yelps in surprise, nearly dropping the gas pump in her hands. When she turns around, Marian sees that her face is adorned with branch- or root-like tattoos on her cheeks, forehead, and chin. “Oh!” she says, clearly taken aback. “Uh…thank you.”

Marian can practically hear Garrett’s “I told you so” from the Camaro. Holding a hand up, she says, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Somehow, her voice still comes out sounding gruff and vaguely threatening.

“Oh, that’s alright,” the girl replies, leaning against her motorcycle and seeming to relax a little. “I was just filling up Feathers.”

Marian raises an eyebrow. “Strange name for a motorcycle.”

The girl blushes. “Well, I named it after a pet I had when I was younger.”

“Oh,” Marian says, nodding. That makes a bit more sense. “A bird?”

The girl laughs a little and shakes her head. “Oh, no, it was a lizard. I always wanted a bird so I could name it Feathers. But I grew up in the Zones, and there aren’t many birds out here. Lots of lizards, though.” She gives Marian a lopsided smile. “I took what I could get.”

Marian can’t help it; she laughs, though in the back of her mind, she wonders why she’s never seen this girl before, if she grew up in the Zones.

“Oh! I’m so sorry,” the girl says, her green eyes widening. “I didn’t mean to ramble. I didn’t even introduce myself.” She holds out a hand, both of which are covered in long, fingerless fishnet gloves that end near her elbows. “Deadly Daisy. Daisy for short. Or you can just call me Merrill. I don’t mind.”

That explains the logo. “Kitty Hawke,” Marian replies, shaking Merrill’s hand firmly.

Merrill nods and starts to speak again, but something behind Marian makes her stop and narrow her eyes in confusion. “Who—?”

Marian glances over her shoulder and nearly jumps out of her shoes. Not one, not two, but all three of her siblings have decided to join the conversation.

“Firebird,” Garrett says, bowing dramatically—so dramatically, in fact, that it makes his stupid sunglasses fall off his face. Garrett has a habit of collecting weird sunglasses and goggles and such. This particular pair has bright orange lenses, which Marian is pretty sure do nothing to block out the sun, and flames sticking out on either side.

Marian rolls her eyes. “My twin brother,” she explains. “It seems I stole all his brain cells in the womb.”

Garrett blows a raspberry at her as he picks his sunglasses off the ground and uses his shirt to wipe off the sand and dirt.

Bethany steps forward, tucking a few strands of hair behind her ears, one of her nervous habits. “Midnight Sun,” she says with a tiny smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Oh! You, too!” Merrill says. Gesturing to Carver, who has yet to say anything, she asks, “Who’s the grumpy one?”

“I’m not—” Carver starts, but he cuts himself off at the sound of his siblings’ snickering. “Fantom Fighter,” he says, his face heating up. “Two Fs.” He turns around and gestures to the two large black Fs painted on the back of his jean jacket. Then, gesturing to Bethany, he adds, “I’m her twin brother.”

Bethany chuckles. “And we’re all siblings.”

Merrill cups her hands over her face. “Oh, my goodness.”

Marian clears her throat. “Anyway,” she says, side-eyeing Garrett, “why are you guys even here?”

Garrett throws his hands up. “Don’t look at me! I am but a slave to the whims of our younger siblings!”

Bethany and Carver exchange embarrassed glances, then both turn to glare at Garrett. Marian sighs. They’re all a mess.

“Oh, well, I shouldn’t keep you,” Merrill says, patting the side of her motorcycle. “Feathers and I can get moving, if you all need to leave.”

That catches Marian’s attention. “Wait, you’re traveling alone?” She hadn’t seen anyone else around, but she’d assumed that Merrill had at least one companion somewhere, perhaps inside the shitty convenience store connected to the gas station.

Merrill nods. “I was raised by neutrals,” she says—people who live outside Battery City, but don’t openly rebel against BLI. “I didn’t become a Killjoy until just recently. I haven’t really found a group yet.”

That explains why Marian’s never seen her before. Neutrals tend to stay out of the way unless they run a business, like their friend Varric.

“That’s dangerous, you know,” Carver says, but he sounds less matter-of-fact and more concerned. “You’re a lot more likely to get ghosted by yourself.”

Merrill sighs. “I know. But what am I supposed to do? Invite myself to tag along with the next Killjoy gang I see?”

Garrett shrugs. “Why not? You could tag along with us.”

To be fair, Marian had been thinking that, too, in the back of her mind, but it still stuns her to actually hear it spoken.

Merrill’s eyes widen with hope. “That would be wonderful, but I wouldn’t want to impose…”

Instinctively, Marian and her siblings all turn to look at each other, none of them saying anything, just glancing back and forth with various facial expressions ranging from embarrassment to uncertainty to excitement. Finally, Marian turns back to Merrill and says, “You wouldn’t be imposing. We’d be glad to have you join us.”

Merrill gasps. “Oh, thank you! You won’t regret it, I promise!”

Bethany smiles. “Welcome to the Birds of Passage, Daisy.”

(At the use of Merrill’s Killjoy name, Marian briefly wonders just how long her siblings had been eavesdropping before Merrill noticed them.)

“We’re headed to one of the outer Zones for the evening,” Carver explains. “You could follow us on your bike until we find a place to set up camp.”

“Oh, perfect!” Merrill says. “I’ve been meaning to head that way. Too many Dracs this close to Bat City.”

When the Hawkes climb back into the Camaro, Marian steals a glance at Merrill in the rearview mirror, watches as their newfound companion unties a green bandana from her belt loop and wraps it around her head to keep her hair out of her face. When Marian steps on the gas pedal and tears out of the Dead Pegasus parking lot, the roar of the motorcycle lets her know that Deadly Daisy is right behind them.

—

Fenris doesn’t sleep well that night.

Granted, Fenris doesn’t sleep well most nights, but for some reason, the night after Bethany gets shot in the leg is particularly bad. Maybe it’s the hard concrete floor of the warehouse, which no amount of blankets or cushions can completely alleviate. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s lying only a few feet away from Garrett, who sleeps like a log and snores like a chainsaw. Maybe it’s the pain in his shoulder from an injury a few days prior.

Or maybe it’s the fact that tonight, his nightmares are worse than usual. Tonight, when he dreams, he is alone, but worse than that: the bodies of his fellow Killjoys lie dead at his feet, glassy eyes wide, their hands still on the triggers of their guns. Draculoids—more Dracs than he’s ever seen at one time—close in on him, zombielike in the way they reach for him, pull at him from every angle, pin him to the ground and snarl in his face. He’d fight if he could, fight with everything he has, but his body is stiff and frozen, and no amount of willpower can force even his mouth to move. For a man with an aversion to closeness and touching, and painful tattoos from BL/ind experimentation, the sensation of being trapped makes him feel like he’s about to vomit.

It’s when they pull out a Drac mask and shove it over his head that he wakes up gasping for breath.

It takes a few minutes for his body to relax and his heart to stop pounding in his ears. Fenris can see the faintest bit of morning light trickling through the windows—he’d guess that it’s around five o’clock—and concludes that attempting to get a decent amount of sleep will probably be a fruitless endeavor. Sighing and forcing himself to sit upright, he reaches into the small backpack beside him and pulls out a Killjoy-made magazine that they snagged at the last gas stop.

The zine is filled with artwork of desert landscape and rebels fighting BL/ind, accompanied by writing—a few short stories and poems, a few articles and essays, all about the highs and lows of revolution. It’s a perfect representation of life in the Zones, every copy made by hand, since few (if any) Killjoys have access to a working printer. However many were made, probably no more than twenty, the artists and authors must have had to redraw and rewrite their work. Two Polaroid photos are taped to the inside cover, one of a Dead Pegasus gas station at sunset, the other of two female Killjoys kissing, with their names listed at the bottom. There are probably different photos in every copy, likely taken from the same photographer, someone lucky enough to have access to a working Polaroid camera (though Fenris concedes that it’s actually not too difficult to find batteries out here, though they might be half-empty).

He’s so focused on flipping through the zine that he doesn’t realize anyone else is awake—at least, not until the sound of someone sitting down next to him nearly makes him jump out of his skin.

“Sorry,” Anders whispers, holding a hand up. Behind him, the orange light of the sunrise creates a halo around his blond head. “I assume you couldn’t sleep, either?”

Fenris makes a noncommittal grunt, enough to give Anders his answer, but curt enough to hopefully get his I don’t want to talk about it message across. He’d rather not have to even think about the nightmares that his subconscious assaults him with, let alone explain them.

“Alright,” Anders says with an understanding nod. He glances over at the zine, skimming the page Fenris has it open to with clear interest.

Fenris holds it out for him to take. “You can look through it.”

Anders hesitates for a moment before obliging. Fenris watches his face as he flips through the pages. The brilliant poetry and detailed artwork seem to fill him with awe, similar to what Fenris felt browsing the zine’s contents, but there’s something else, too, something deeper—something like longing.

“I wanted to tell you something,” Anders says finally, slowly closing the booklet. “I just remembered, and I think you deserve to know.” He glances over at the windows, and the sun shines on his pale face, reflecting off of his gold earring. Without looking at Fenris, he says, “You have a sister, named Varania.”

Fenris blinks in surprise. A sister? Anders apparently knew him when they both lived in Battery City, before BLI wiped Fenris’s mind—or reprogrammed him, as they like to call it. It’s times like these that make him feel like Anders knows him better than he himself does. “And you’re just now telling me this?” Fenris says in an attempt to mask his bewilderment. A sister. He has a sister.

“You only mentioned her once or twice,” Anders says. “It was the last thing on my mind. But something reminded me of it this morning, so I figured I’d tell you.” He shrugs. “I don’t know much else about her. But I know she’s still alive, or she was by the time I left Bat City.”

Sister. Sister. Sister. His brain repeats it so often that it no longer really feels like a word. He knows he’d be angry if Anders had kept this hidden from him, but at the same time, he’s not really sure what he’s supposed to do with the information. She’s probably still in Battery City, which means it’s too late and far too dangerous to go back and search for her, or even attempt to write a letter to her.

Still, he feels like he has to say something. “Well,” he mumbles, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Thank you. For telling me.” Then, tilting his head to the side, he adds, “May I ask what reminded you?”

Anders sighs and pushes a few loose strands of hair out of his face. “She appeared in a dream last night.”

Fenris doesn’t expect it to hurt, but it does, just a little. To think that he doesn’t even know what his own sister looks like, while a man who barely knows anything about her sees her in his dreams.

Abruptly, Anders hands the zine back to him and stands up, covering his eyes with a hand to block out the sun. Fenris glances down at the page he left open: a poem written in an angry hand, calling for revolution, calling for justice.

—

Varric Tethras is what people in the Zones call a “neutral.” He doesn’t wear the flashy clothes, he goes by his real name, and he tends to stay in one spot minding his own business rather than get into fights with Draculoids. He has his own little gas station convenience store in Zone Three and is an expert at aiding Killjoys without giving BLI a reason to go after him. In short, he’s the perfect person to go to when there’s trouble, and there’s always trouble.

The trouble this time has nothing to do with BL/ind, for once; about five miles away from Varric’s shop, the Camaro broke down, so Marian had to jump start it using Merrill’s motorcycle, and now they’re hanging out in the store while she tries to fix the car.

Garrett frowns as he glances out the window at the setting sun. “We might have to camp out here for the night, Varric.” It’s not the first time, and he knows Varric doesn’t mind, but he still feels bad about it.

Varric waves a hand nonchalantly. “Yeah, I figured,” he says from behind the store counter, where he seems to be digging through some junk he’s stored underneath. Varric is a whopping four-foot-eight, so the chair he uses to reach the counter makes most other people who sit in it look like giants. Merrill finds a particular delight in this, and she’s so sweet that anyone would feel terrible asking her to get off of it, even Marian, which has been an especially interesting phenomenon to witness.

As if on cue, the front door swings open, and there stands Marian, covered in grease and wearing nothing but a sports bra and ripped black shorts. “I’m turning in for the night,” she says as she waltzes into the shop, letting the door slam shut behind her. “Round two starts in the morning.”

Garrett watches as she heads into the bathroom to wash herself off. Carver came in from practicing his shooting about a half hour ago (and is currently sitting on the floor eating potato chips), so now they’re all inside for the evening. Bethany’s been drawing quietly, her brow furrowed in concentration as she sits on the worn couch in one of the back rooms, and Garrett and Merrill have been making their own fun out front. The store is Varric’s home, so he had to get creative with the few extra rooms.

Garrett is wandering aimlessly through the little aisles, examining various snacks, all stamped with the BLI logo, when he hears the front door open, and in walks possibly the most gorgeous Killjoy Garrett has ever seen.

The first thing he notices is the shock of silver-white hair, the way the undercut contrasts against the man’s brown skin. The dim light of the store reflects against his leather jacket and his surprisingly wide eyes. When he takes a few steps forward, a chain hanging from his black jeans—yes, jeans, in the desert—makes a jangling sound, and his heavy footsteps suggest combat boots. He looks like he just walked out of a mosh pit, but that’s not what intrigues Garrett the most. No, what really catches his attention is the pale white tattoos that stretch from the man’s bottom lip down into his chest and out to the tips of his fingers—they almost seem to glow. “Varric?” the man calls in a deep voice as he surveys the area.

Varric pops his head out from the back of the store. “Oh-ho! Long time no see, Wolfy!”

The man rolls his eyes at the nickname and leans awkwardly against one of the snack aisles. “I see you are having a sleepover,” he says slowly as he eyes each of the Birds suspiciously (save for Marian, who is still washing up, thankfully). Bethany walks out into the store to see him better, and Garrett flashes him his best good-natured smile, causing the man to raise an eyebrow at him.

“Their car broke down not far from here,” Varric explains as he walks out from behind the store counter. “And because I’m just so charitable, I let them stay for the night.” That’s his way of saying that they’re friends.

“Hm.” The man makes his way through the store, seemingly on edge, like he’s keenly aware of the way the Birds glance his way out of the corners of their eyes, pretending that they’re not looking at him. Eventually, Garrett gives up on trying to be inconspicuous and plops down in a chair pushed up against one wall, allowing himself to stare openly. He’s never been good with subtlety.

Suddenly Marian’s voice rings out through the shop. “Who’s this?”

Varric clears his throat. “Birds of Passage, allow me to formally introduce you to the Painted Wolf. He’s kind of new, doesn’t have a gang to roll with yet.”

The Painted Wolf looks away, not making eye contact as he wanders into another aisle where he can’t as easily be seen. “I think I would prefer to keep it that way. No offense.”

After a few beats of silence, Merrill says from her place on top of the chair behind the store counter, “You have tattoos, like me.”

Instinctively, almost as if he was expecting it, the Wolf replies, “But you received yours willingly, I’ll wager.”

Merrill blinks in surprise. “Well. Yes, I did. You mean you didn’t?”

The Painted Wolf does not respond, just runs a hand through his hair and takes a breath through his nose.

Garrett frowns a little and stands back up, making his way over to where Marian is still standing in front of the bathroom door, her arms crossed. “Don’t tell me,” she says quietly. “You think we should let him come with us.”

Garrett shrugs. “Well, why not? He doesn’t have anyone. And he’s…intriguing.”

Marian rolls her eyes. “You’re just saying that because you think he’s hot.”

“I do not,” Garrett lies, but his face heats up, giving him away. “Okay, well, maybe I do, but that’s not the only reason.”

Marian shakes her head. “He doesn’t seem too keen on making friends. I mean, he just said he’d rather be alone. Also, what you call ‘intriguing’ I call ‘suspicious.’ The man’s got secrets.”

“So do we,” Garrett says, though at the moment he can’t think of anything particularly damning. If nothing else, he’s sure Carver’s got something embarrassing.

“You being gay doesn’t count as a secret when you gawk at any man that isn’t related to us,” Marian says, a tiny smirk forming on her face.

“That’s not what I meant!” Garrett says. He can feel his face turning even redder. He needs to find a way to get Marian on his side, and if he can’t do it with emotion, then maybe he can do it with logic. “Seriously, I think we should talk to him. He’s a new Killjoy, but he looks way more experienced than most newbies. He might even be older than us. I’d be willing to bet he knows something about BL/ind. I just think he’d be good to have on our side. And it’s not like he has to stay with us forever.”

Marian seems to think it over for a long time. It’s different than it was with Merrill. Unlike the Wolf, Merrill had expressed a clear interest in finding a group to fall in with, and the Birds just happened to be the first ones to click with her. Also, Marian is a lesbian and about ten times more suspicious of men than she is of women as a general rule, which is fair, but it makes these things difficult sometimes. Finally, she says, “Fine. If you can convince him, then I’m game. I can go tell the others.” She cracks her knuckles. “At the very least, he looks like he knows something worth knowing.”

Garrett holds his hands up. “Well, hopefully you won’t have to beat it out of him, so you can stop with the threatening looks.”

Marian snorts. “Just asserting my dominance, my dear little brother.” She reaches forward and musses his hair.

Garrett shakes his head as he starts to head over to the other side of the store, where the Wolf is standing. He doesn’t bother pointing out that she’s only older than him by nine minutes, because she’ll hang those nine minutes over his head until the day they die.

The Painted Wolf looks up from the magazine he’s been flipping through. “Let me guess,” he says. “You want me to join your gang.”

Garrett smiles sheepishly. “What can I say? We think you’d be a good addition to the team.”

The Wolf frowns and puts the magazine back on the rack. “You barely know anything about me.”

“I know you’re a Killjoy traveling alone, and that’s enough for me,” Garrett says, and it’s the truth. Killjoys stick together. It’s the law of the desert. It’s how they survive.

The Wolf narrows his eyes. “I already said I prefer to be alone.”

Garrett folds his arms over his chest, allowing his knowledge of the Zones to give him confidence. “That’s how I can tell you’re new,” he says. “Rule number one of making it as a Killjoy: find a gang. Hordes of Dracs are less likely to target larger groups, and even if they do, you have a better chance of making it out alive when you’re not alone. If you watch our backs, we’ll watch yours.”

The Wolf nods slowly, as if this just confirmed something he already suspected. “You watch our backs, we’ll watch yours,” he repeats to himself. “It’s...a sentiment I am not entirely familiar with.”

“I figured you were from Bat City,” Garrett says, stroking his beard thoughtfully. (Carver and Marian like to make fun of him when he does that. Marian says it makes him look like an asshole.)

The Wolf nods again. “The sense of camaraderie was one of the things that drew me to the Zones, and to the Killjoy lifestyle specifically. But until now, I suppose I have been too wary to actively engage in it.”

Garrett raises an eyebrow, careful not to show too much excitement. “Until now, you say?”

The Wolf gives the softest chuckle, his mouth curving briefly upward. “Perhaps you have a point about me traveling alone. BL/ind knows that I left Battery City; no doubt they’re looking for me. It...would be prudent to join a larger group, at least for a little while.”

Garrett allows himself the beginnings of a grin. “It definitely would.”

The Wolf clears his throat. “I...never got your name,” he says, fingers playing mindlessly with the hem of his jacket.

“Firebird,” Garrett replies, holding a hand out for him to shake.

The Wolf looks at it for a moment before responding. “Well, then, Firebird,” he says slowly, “if you’ll have me, I would like to travel with you and your gang.”

“I certainly would love to have you,” Garrett replies, only realizing how strange it sounds once the words are out of his mouth. His face heats up. “I...I didn’t mean it like—”

Across the room, Marian calls, “Real smooth.” Garrett flips her off.

An awkward little smile forms on the Wolf’s face. “I know what you meant,” he says, but if Garrett isn’t mistaken, he’s blushing, too.

—

A few days later, Varric, whose talents include knowing everything that’s happening in the Zones, says, “So I got a tip that there’s someone after you guys.”

Isabela rolls her eyes and leans against the counter, conscious of the way her ripped white jean shorts ride up her ass—she’s doing it on purpose, and she peers over her shoulder to make sure Marian’s watching. “Someone’s always after us, Varric. This isn’t new.”

“No, like a major someone,” Varric replies. “Does the name Meredith Stannard mean anything to any of you?”

The Birds exchange glances from their various positions throughout the shop. They’ve all heard the name, but only Fenris and Anders seem to know who she is. Makes sense, since they’re the only ones who have actually lived in Battery City and seen BL/ind’s inner workings up close.

“She’s a Scarecrow, right?” Marian says from behind Isabela. She steps forward and takes a large sip out of her Neptune Pop can. “Isn’t that all we need to know?”

“She isn’t just any old Scarecrow,” Fenris says as he examines the shelves for more food. “She is one of the Director’s favorites—very high-ranking, always flanked by six or more Draculoids and sometimes other Scarecrows. I have known a few BL/ind workers who do not wish to kill, but do so because they fear the consequences of disobeying.” He shakes his head, speaking calmly but severely. “Meredith is not one of them. She kills out of hate and nothing less. She views it as her duty, a mission she will carry out until the day she dies. I suggest taking her seriously. She has slaughtered many of you.”

The way he refers to Killjoys isn’t lost on Isabela. It’s been a little less than a year, she thinks, since he left Battery City and joined the rebels in the Zones, but he still seems hesitant to identify himself as one of them. He still refers to them as you instead of us.

His words send a brief chill down Isabela’s spine, but she shakes it off and looks up at Marian to gauge her reaction. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t seem fazed.

“It doesn’t matter how many of us she’s killed,” she says. The piercings in her left ear gleam in the light from the windows. “She bleeds just like the rest of us, and she’ll die just like the rest of us.”

Varric holds a hand up. “Fair point, I suppose. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. My source says Meredith considers you guys one of the most dangerous gangs in the Zones. That means one of her biggest priorities is wiping you out. Just...be careful.”

“Careful is my middle name,” Marian says as she finishes her Neptune Pop, crushes the can in one hand, and launches it across the store, causing Anders to duck because of his ridiculously long bird legs. The can lands in the garbage bin with a loud crash.

Marian grins. It’s lopsided, and her teeth are crooked and stained with soda, but it just makes Isabela want to kiss that alluring, imperfect mouth even more.

“I thought your middle name was Selene,” Merrill says from her designated spot in Varric’s chair. They call it the Tallening Chair.

Marian’s face softens, and her cheeks turn pink as she gently explains to Merrill that it’s a figure of speech. Isabela watches in silence until Marian suddenly turns to her, lightly smacks her ass, and says with a playful glint in her eyes, “Well, back to business.”

Isabela smirks. Works every time.

—

It only takes half an hour for Marian’s nonchalance about Meredith Stannard to come back and bite her in the ass.

“Guys!”

Garrett bursts through the front door of Varric’s shop, his eyes wide and panicked. He’d been outside restocking the trunk with supplies. “I think we’ve got company.”

Marian peers outside, and the rest of the Birds do the same. Sure enough, veering into the parking lot are two white vans with the Better Living Industries symbol emblazoned on their doors.

Shit.

In a flash, they all whip out their ray guns and rush outside just in time to see a horde of Dracs pouring out of the vans. Then, from the passenger seat of one of the vans, a woman climbs out. She’s tall, blonde, and middle-aged, and her eyes seem to pierce right through them.

“Ah,” she says as the Dracs line up behind her, brandishing their plain white ray guns. “The notorious Birds of Passage, or so you call yourselves.” As she speaks, she pulls out her own weapon and seems to aim it straight at Marian. “It looks as though you’ve been expecting me.”

For a moment, the two groups just stand there silently, revolvers pointed at one another, a classic example of a Mexican standoff. It feels like the air has been sucked out of the atmosphere, like the atoms themselves have stopped moving completely. Then Meredith snaps her fingers with her free hand, and the desert explodes in gunfire.

——

killjoy names: garrett - firebird marian - kitty hawke bethany - midnight sun carver - fantom fighter merrill - deadly daisy anders - nuclear blonde isabela - storm chaser fenris - the painted wolf

#SORRY FOR THE LONG AS FUCK AUTHORS NOTE THE REST WILL NOT BE THAT LONG #dragon age 2 #da2 #hawkebela #fenhanders #bethmerrill #hawke #isabela #fenris #anders #bethany hawke #merrill #f!hawkebela #m!fenhanders #male hawke #female hawke #garrett hawke #marian hawke #my fics

[csown]

July 2020 One of the most revealing ways to classify people is by the degree and aggressiveness of their conformism. Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system whose horizontal axis runs from conventional-minded on the left to independent-minded on the right, and whose vertical axis runs from passive at the bottom to aggressive at the top. The resulting four quadrants define four types of people. Starting in the upper left and going counter-clockwise: aggressively conventional-minded, passively conventional-minded, passively independent-minded, and aggressively independent-minded. I think that you'll find all four types in most societies, and that which quadrant people fall into depends more on their own personality than the beliefs prevalent in their society. [1] Young children offer some of the best evidence for both points. Anyone who's been to primary school has seen the four types, and the fact that school rules are so arbitrary is strong evidence that the quadrant people fall into depends more on them than the rules. The kids in the upper left quadrant, the aggressively conventional-minded ones, are the tattletales. They believe not only that rules must be obeyed, but that those who disobey them must be punished. The kids in the lower left quadrant, the passively conventional-minded, are the sheep. They're careful to obey the rules, but when other kids break them, their impulse is to worry that those kids will be punished, not to ensure that they will. The kids in the lower right quadrant, the passively independent-minded, are the dreamy ones. They don't care much about rules and probably aren't 100% sure what the rules even are. And the kids in the upper right quadrant, the aggressively independent-minded, are the naughty ones. When they see a rule, their first impulse is to question it. Merely being told what to do makes them inclined to do the opposite. When measuring conformism, of course, you have to say with respect to what, and this changes as kids get older. For younger kids it's the rules set by adults. But as kids get older, the source of rules becomes their peers. So a pack of teenagers who all flout school rules in the same way are not independent-minded; rather the opposite. In adulthood we can recognize the four types by their distinctive calls, much as you could recognize four species of birds. The call of the aggressively conventional-minded is "Crush <outgroup>!" (It's rather alarming to see an exclamation point after a variable, but that's the whole problem with the aggressively conventional-minded.) The call of the passively conventional-minded is "What will the neighbors think?" The call of the passively independent-minded is "To each his own." And the call of the aggressively independent-minded is "Eppur si muove." The four types are not equally common. There are more passive people than aggressive ones, and far more conventional-minded people than independent-minded ones. So the passively conventional-minded are the largest group, and the aggressively independent-minded the smallest. Since one's quadrant depends more on one's personality than the nature of the rules, most people would occupy the same quadrant even if they'd grown up in a quite different society. Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote:

I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it.

He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't. And indeed, our default assumption should not merely be that his students would, on average, have behaved the same way people did at the time, but that the ones who are aggressively conventional-minded today would have been aggressively conventional-minded then too. In other words, that they'd not only not have fought against slavery, but that they'd have been among its staunchest defenders. I'm biased, I admit, but it seems to me that aggressively conventional-minded people are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world, and that a lot of the customs we've evolved since the Enlightenment have been designed to protect the rest of us from them. In particular, the retirement of the concept of heresy and its replacement by the principle of freely debating all sorts of different ideas, even ones that are currently considered unacceptable, without any punishment for those who try them out to see if they work. [2] Why do the independent-minded need to be protected, though? Because they have all the new ideas. To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong. Conventional-minded people can't do that. For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so. So it's no coincidence that societies prosper only to the extent that they have customs for keeping the conventional-minded at bay. [3] In the last few years, many of us have noticed that the customs protecting free inquiry have been weakened. Some say we're overreacting — that they haven't been weakened very much, or that they've been weakened in the service of a greater good. The latter I'll dispose of immediately. When the conventional-minded get the upper hand, they always say it's in the service of a greater good. It just happens to be a different, incompatible greater good each time. As for the former worry, that the independent-minded are being oversensitive, and that free inquiry hasn't been shut down that much, you can't judge that unless you are yourself independent-minded. You can't know how much of the space of ideas is being lopped off unless you have them, and only the independent-minded have the ones at the edges. Precisely because of this, they tend to be very sensitive to changes in how freely one can explore ideas. They're the canaries in this coalmine. The conventional-minded say, as they always do, that they don't want to shut down the discussion of all ideas, just the bad ones. You'd think it would be obvious just from that sentence what a dangerous game they're playing. But I'll spell it out. There are two reasons why we need to be able to discuss even "bad" ideas. The first is that any process for deciding which ideas to ban is bound to make mistakes. All the more so because no one intelligent wants to undertake that kind of work, so it ends up being done by the stupid. And when a process makes a lot of mistakes, you need to leave a margin for error. Which in this case means you need to ban fewer ideas than you'd like to. But that's hard for the aggressively conventional-minded to do, partly because they enjoy seeing people punished, as they have since they were children, and partly because they compete with one another. Enforcers of orthodoxy can't allow a borderline idea to exist, because that gives other enforcers an opportunity to one-up them in the moral purity department, and perhaps even to turn enforcer upon them. So instead of getting the margin for error we need, we get the opposite: a race to the bottom in which any idea that seems at all bannable ends up being banned. [4] The second reason it's dangerous to ban the discussion of ideas is that ideas are more closely related than they look. Which means if you restrict the discussion of some topics, it doesn't only affect those topics. The restrictions propagate back into any topic that yields implications in the forbidden ones. And that is not an edge case. The best ideas do exactly that: they have consequences in fields far removed from their origins. Having ideas in a world where some ideas are banned is like playing soccer on a pitch that has a minefield in one corner. You don't just play the same game you would have, but on a different shaped pitch. You play a much more subdued game even on the ground that's safe. In the past, the way the independent-minded protected themselves was to congregate in a handful of places — first in courts, and later in universities — where they could to some extent make their own rules. Places where people work with ideas tend to have customs protecting free inquiry, for the same reason wafer fabs have powerful air filters, or recording studios good sound insulation. For the last couple centuries at least, when the aggressively conventional-minded were on the rampage for whatever reason, universities were the safest places to be. That may not work this time though, due to the unfortunate fact that the latest wave of intolerance began in universities. It began in the mid 1980s, and by 2000 seemed to have died down, but it has recently flared up again with the arrival of social media. This seems, unfortunately, to have been an own goal by Silicon Valley. Though the people who run Silicon Valley are almost all independent-minded, they've handed the aggressively conventional-minded a tool such as they could only have dreamed of. On the other hand, perhaps the decline in the spirit of free inquiry within universities is as much the symptom of the departure of the independent-minded as the cause. People who would have become professors 50 years ago have other options now. Now they can become quants or start startups. You have to be independent-minded to succeed at either of those. If these people had been professors, they'd have put up a stiffer resistance on behalf of academic freedom. So perhaps the picture of the independent-minded fleeing declining universities is too gloomy. Perhaps the universities are declining because so many have already left. [5] Though I've spent a lot of time thinking about this situation, I can't predict how it plays out. Could some universities reverse the current trend and remain places where the independent-minded want to congregate? Or will the independent-minded gradually abandon them? I worry a lot about what we might lose if that happened. But I'm hopeful long term. The independent-minded are good at protecting themselves. If existing institutions are compromised, they'll create new ones. That may require some imagination. But imagination is, after all, their specialty. Notes [1] I realize of course that if people's personalities vary in any two ways, you can use them as axes and call the resulting four quadrants personality types. So what I'm really claiming is that the axes are orthogonal and that there's significant variation in both. [2] The aggressively conventional-minded aren't responsible for all the trouble in the world. Another big source of trouble is the sort of charismatic leader who gains power by appealing to them. They become much more dangerous when such leaders emerge. [3] I never worried about writing things that offended the conventional-minded when I was running Y Combinator. If YC were a cookie company, I'd have faced a difficult moral choice. Conventional-minded people eat cookies too. But they don't start successful startups. So if I deterred them from applying to YC, the only effect was to save us work reading applications. [4] There has been progress in one area: the punishments for talking about banned ideas are less severe than in the past. There's little danger of being killed, at least in richer countries. The aggressively conventional-minded are mostly satisfied with getting people fired. [5] Many professors are independent-minded — especially in math, the hard sciences, and engineering, where you have to be to succeed. But students are more representative of the general population, and thus mostly conventional-minded. So when professors and students are in conflict, it's not just a conflict between generations but also between different types of people. Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Nicholas Christakis, Patrick Collison, Sam Gichuru, Jessica Livingston, Patrick McKenzie, Geoff Ralston, and Harj Taggar for reading drafts of this.

[dovesandsparrows]

D&S Collab: First Date!

( first entry - previous entry - next entry ) It was the first time in years since they had a moment to themselves like this.

He owes his life to Angela, after all.

Someone from before the recall, before the letters, before Blackwatch. He was so blinded by darker purpose that in those early days, he never truly appreciated her – and it was well past time to start showing it.

But a date? What was we thinking.

A lot of time was spent talking. Brief comments on the stage of Angela’s research in Oasis. The training Genji underwent while in Nepal with his master. All of these, things the both of them had previously mentioned to each other via their letters, but speaking to each other as if they hadn’t in ages. Before they knew it, they’d already spent an hour just speaking with each other.

Eventually, both found themselves quietly looking on at Gibraltar’s horizon, the Alboran Sea, after finally exhausting each other’s dialogue.

“Quite the view.” She said, breaking the silence. She wrapped her hands around his arm, then leaned gently against him.

Genji replied. “Let us make the rest of our day just as extraordinary, Doctor.”

She shot him a look, but before she could say anything, a sudden gust of air rushed to greet them as a shuttle quickly descended from above. As the door opened, Genji ushered her inside with a wide grin on his face. A familiar icon lit the shuttle’s screen and immediately began keying the controls.

“Good afternoon, Doctor Ziegler.” said Athena. Pictures and menus began populating the screen.

“I’ve pre-selected several high-rated restaurants from Portugal to Spain in preparations for your date. I’ve also included other restaurants and activities as recommended by your fellow agents, as they say, ‘to keep things interesting.”

Angela watched on as the screen continued to populate with more imagery, then looked to Genji for an opinion.

He shrugged. “Surprise us?”

“Already having trouble deciding lunch as a couple?”

“Hey!”

“Coordinates locked. Please enjoy this safety video while the shuttle takes you to your destination…”

Spanish cuisine. Honestly, he’d still say it wasn’t too spicy as Angela was claiming it to be, but then again, he was the one lacking about 90% of his tastebuds. She wasn’t enjoying the meal – but she wasn’t exactly upset with the date. She was laughing. Perhaps finding enjoyment with his company? He found comfort in the fact that she was at least smiling.

“No need to make such a face, Doctor Ziegler.” Genji teased. “You almost look like you’re not enjoying it!” She retorted. “Oh? I’d thought you to be the last person to judge one by just appearances, Mr. Shimada.”

He laughed, and pointed to a pair entering the restaurant – a rather tall and bulky omnic marked by the heavy plating of it’s face, lead by a stocky man with a thick stubble. Both were matching in particularly expensive looking suits.

“Looks are deceiving Doctor. Take those fine gentlemen for example.” Genji said, looking on at the pair as they seemed to be calling over one of the staff. Angela rolled her eyes and made an exaggerated ‘ha-ha.’

A beat.

Something flashed into Genji’s eyes. A glare – but from where? The metal finish off a weapon, pulled freely from under the stocky man’s suit.

Angela saw it too. “Uhm.. Maybe not these ones, Genji.”

Two more entered behind them, clad in the same suits. One bore facial tattoos, and the other with extensive piercings. These weren’t some sort of professional group. Just simple thugs.

“Genji…!”

“I see it.”

A surfacing silence washed itself over the restaurant as more and more people witnessed the armed party enter. People began to choke and gasp, sliding back in their chairs to stand as if ready to run, while others simply waited, frozen to their table in absolute fear.

But not them.

He caught a glimpse of Angela, her face twisted in what seemed like worry and concern, and a single bead of sweat that began to roll down the side of her cheek. But he knew better than to believe her frightened by something such as this – no, he could see it in her eyes, which danced from corner to corner of the room. The number of innocents, possible escape routes… her brilliant mind was already devising an escape plan. But considering the situation, there wasn’t much room to deliberate. His process was far less complicated. Perhaps instinctual. He crouched low and assumed a stance, like a predator ready to pounce – mechanisms whirred and shimmered to life from under his suit as his greater cybernetic functions steadily became combat-capable.

Four targets.

Quick triggers with bigger tempers. But all he needed was a chance to divert their fire away from the civilians, just one moment to allow them and Angela to escape – just one. In an instant, he uncoiled like a whip, launching himself forward at blinding speeds. First was the Omnic. Genji pivoted his body midair, throwing his foot squarely across it’s jaw, shattering it to pieces.

Three left.

Using his remaining momentum to carry himself forward, he wasted no time as he landed, and sprang forward yet again. This time, the man with the piercings. The man had barely a moment to aim as Genji swiftly brought his knee to his face.

Two left.

He tumbled across the ground and onto his feet, breaking into a sprint. He was able to take down two of them almost instantly, but now he had lost the element of surprise. Patrons were already scrambling over tables and chairs. Angela was directing them. He had to draw their fire.

They emptied their magazines as Genji nimbly zig-zagged through their fire, closing in on them – that pressure made them more frantic, and it showed. Their aim was sloppy.

Click click click. The sounds of an empty magazine. Genji seized the moment and jumped forward one last time, planting another forceful kick into the tattooed man’s face.

One left.

Genji rose to his feet slowly, and turned to face the leader, whom pulled a knife from his belt. “It took me thirty seconds.” Genji chuckled, then continued. “Give it up. You are outmatched.” “Like hell!” yelled the man, and charged. Genji sighed, then braced.

Catching the man by the arm, Genji tucked under and threw the man over his shoulder – servos audibly groaning under the weight – and with alarming force, threw the man face-first into the ground with a resounding thud.

Four criminals, pacified.

The manager was speechless, judging by the stunned look on his face. Genji approached him and helped him to his feet, dusting the debris from his fancy suit. A quick survey showed no major injuries.

Angela began to call out to him from outside.”Genji! Over here!” Shit. How could he forget? He finished checking with the manager by giving him an awkward pat on the back. Though his suit was torn up from the gunfire, he dusted himself as best he could, and even pulled a large piece of metal from his shoe, which he wasn’t sure exactly where it came from. Oh, wait. Walking to the now-jawless Omnic he had kicked earlier, he gently placed the contorted metal into it’s hand.

“Apologies for that, my friend.” said Genji to the confused omnic. “But you and your friends did ruin my date. I suggest a change in occupation, if you ever get the chance.” He walked away unsure if the Omnic had refused to reply, or was simply unable to. “Genji!” cried Angela as she ran to him.

“Doctor Ziegler! I’m glad you are safe –” Genji replied, but was cut off by a quick slap across his face. “That was dangerous!” She yelled. Her look of disappointment cut into him deeply, though he smiled knowing she was merely worried. “I am fine, Miss Ziegler.” he said softly. She pouted, and continued to glare.

“…I mean, my dear Angela.”

Almost instantly, her anger melted away by the blush on her cheeks, which she hid as she pressed her face against his chest. Or maybe it was exhaustion? It was difficult to tell. She spent a moment pressed against him before speaking, albeit muffled by his suit.

“If this is your idea of a date, I’m not having the rest of it.”

Genji laughed, and wrapped his arms tightly around her shoulders. “The sun has yet to set, dear Angela. I believe I owe you much more excitement than this.”

She sobbed.

--

Welcome back to the D&S Fab Collab event! Our dramatic telling of Genji and Mercy’s first date! Coming third on our lineup was an action-packed submission written by @helljumper!

♚ For illustration continuations, please limit these works to 8 panels. For prose continuations, please limit these fics to about 1k words. These are not benchmark figures, just the maximum amount for a submission.

♚ Submission from the next participating member is due on the 15th of May, either submitted to the blog or DMed to any staff member on the Discord server.

♚ Applications to participate for this round or “arc” have been closed, if you missed out, please keep an ear out for announcements about the commencement of the next prompt!

Please note: At present, this event remains a collaborative effort only for those DnS members who have signed up. You are welcome to observe and make suggestions as to the telling of our tale, but contributing to the story remains limited at this time.

If you want to join our server to participate in future events like this one, please send us an ask off anon or message our blog requesting a link.

Thank you!

#gency #emergenji #genji shimada #angela ziegler #mercy #d&s fab collab #submission

[jenmedsbookreviews]

Can four pictures really sum up my week? Well, if I’m being honest they come pretty close. Reading, paperwork, sunny skies and traffic jams. That’s what I’ve been up to. The sunny skies makes a nice change. Well … not a change exactly, it’s becoming quite repetitive now, but hey – we mustn’t complain.

So how has your week been? Good? Good. I had a pretty awesome one by all accounts. Monday, despite being at work (boo hiss) I had a pretty fabulous day as I was Netgalley approved for one of THE books I have been most anticipating all year, the first in James Oswald’s brand new Constance Fairchild series, No Time To Cry. Now I was in Dublin training on Monday so I started reading it in my lunch break. Carried on reading it in the airport where I was only disturbed by a small false fire alarm, boarding the plane and driving home. I know! Annoying right? Carried on reading when I got home, finished around two a.am. I am completely gutted now as reading it so quickly means I have ages to wait for the next book in either series but by ‘eck. It was good. Sooooooo good. This was my only Netgalley this week, but that’s no bad thing lol. And as I arrived home to a signed copy of The Reckoning by Yrsa Sigurdardottir courtesy of Goldsboro Books too, the day was pretty good all in all.

Tuesday was a work day (boo hiss) but I crammed in some reading in the evening, even though I was absolutely shattered from my early morning book binge. Wednesday was a little more exciting as I drove down to London for an early morning (six a.m.) appointment the following day, Whilst there it felt only polite to head along to the London launch for Louise Voss’ The Old You and Doug Johnstone’s Fault Lines. The sacrifices one makes for blogging huh?

A fabulous evening in the gallery of Collyer Bristow on Beford Row in some wonderful company. So nice to catch up with old friends, Vicki Goldman, Joy Kluver, Jacob Collins, Anne Cater, Karen Cole, Mary Picken, Barry Forshaw and Marina Sofia. I met Daniel Pembrey who is lovely, and of course it was a chance to say hi to the lovely Karen Sullivan again and also the effervescent Meggy who was in her element and perhaps more than a little high on chocolate cake ;), One of the biggest surprises of the night was seeing Thomas Enger there – totally not expecting that but just shows what a fab team the Orenda guys are as he flew in all the way from Norway to give his support to the launch.

Book wise I picked up a signed copy of Fault Lines (I already had The Old You from earlier in the year at the Orenda Roadshow in Warwick) and an arc of Good Samaritans by Will Carver, an arc I have been rather jealous of having seen arriving with all my blogging compadres.

Driving home from Tottenham on Thursday was pure hell. Hell I tell you! Left at three and, with a series of delays, accidents and general nonsense to contend with, plus a very late breakfast stop at four thirty p.m., I finally arrived home just before eight. You’d think I’d be unhappy about that right? Well normally I would be but I managed to finish an audio book and then, when you arrive home to a massive parcel with your TBC auction wins in it, well you can’t stay in a bad mood for long can you? Such a wonderful sight to see.

What was in it? Well … Random, Snapshot, Cold Grave, Witness The Dead, In Place of Death, Murderabilia and The Photographer by Craig Robertson and The Unseen, The Price, The Harrowing and The Book of Shadows by Alexandra Sokoloff. Oh, plus some Ferrero Rocher and a Bloody Scotland t-shirt. Tidy.

Friday it was back to work and some rather dull but essential meetings and a lot more spreadsheet work. You’d think I’d be flagging by this point, and normally you’d be right, but an email from the lovely Karen Sullivan put a big smile on my face and not even talking coffee pods, cost centre reports or proof of delivery capture could get me down. More on that later in the week 😉

Saturday and Sunday … well a little walking and more reading plus a whole lot of review writing. I’m a little behind. Unlike my actual behind which is currently anything other than little hence my need for all the walking, even in this heat… saw some cygnets down a the local canal basin though so that was nice. And the books I have been reading are awesome which is also nice 🙂

Book purchase wise I was quite good really. For me. No new audible, just the one Netgalley above and only three book purchased, two pre-orders and one free short story. They were The Night She Died by Jenny Blackhurst; Death’s Door by Paul Finch and No Further Questions by Gillian McAllister.

Books I have read

No Time To Cry – James Oswald

Undercover ops are always dangerous, but DC Constance Fairchild never expected things to go this wrong.

Returning to their base of operations, an anonymous office in a shabby neighbourhood, she finds the bloodied body of her boss, and friend, DI Pete Copperthwaite. He’s been executed – a single shot to the head.

In the aftermath, it seems someone in the Met is determined to make sure that blame for the wrecked operation falls squarely on Con’s shoulders. She is cut loose and cast out, angry and alone with her grief… right until the moment someone also tries to put a bullet through her head.

There’s no place to hide, and no time to cry.

Oh my life how I loved this book. Constance ‘Con’ Fairchild is a brilliant new protagonist who I am looking forward to getting to know. Very different in tone and style from the Inspector McLean series, it still bears James Oswald’s natural style of a twisted and complex story, with just a hint of something … supernatural, captivating characters and feisty determination. He may give his leads a very privileged start in life but he never quite lets them get comfortable. Loved it. And if you’ve not read any books by Mr Oswald yet, this is a great place to start. I’ll be reviewing later in the year, may do a taster review later in the month (ebook publication is late July) and you can preorder your own copy here. Do it. you know you want to.

…

The Killing Habit – Mark Billingham

How do you catch a killer who is yet to kill? We all know the signs. Cruelty, lack of empathy, the killing of animals. Now, pets on suburban London streets are being stalked by a shadow, and it could just be the start.

DI Tom Thorne knows the psychological profile of such offenders all too well, so when he is tasked with catching a notorious killer of domestic cats, he sees the chance to stop a series of homicides before they happen.

Others are less convinced, so once more, Thorne relies on DI Nicola Tanner to help him solve the case, before the culprit starts hunting people. It’s a journey that brings them face to face with a killer who will tear their lives apart.

Mark Billingham has a real knack for taking real life cases and spinning them into an occasionally gruesome, always compelling, what if kind of scenario. The book starts in an almost surreal way with Thorne tasked with capturing a cat killer of all people, and ends in a way no-one could have foreseen, Gripping, action laden and with the wonderful pairing of Thorne with his exact opposite, Nicola Tanner once more, this is irresistably good. I’ll be reviewing soon but you can get your own copy here.

…

A Patient Fury – Sarah Ward

When Detective Constable Connie Childs is dragged from her bed to the fire-wrecked property on Cross Farm Lane she knows as she steps from the car that this house contains death.

Three bodies discovered – a family obliterated – their deaths all seem to point to one conclusion: One mother, one murderer.

But D.C. Childs, determined as ever to discover the truth behind the tragedy, realises it is the fourth body – the one they cannot find – that holds the key to the mystery at Cross Farm Lane.

What Connie Childs fails to spot is that her determination to unmask the real murderer might cost her more than her health – this time she could lose the thing she cares about most: her career.

This was my first Connie Childs book, although I have the others on my kindle waiting patiently. I know I’veprobably missed quite a bit in Connie’s first outings but I have to say i really liked her, a determined officer, stubborn even, who is not willing to let things go just because she is ordered to do so and who has great instincts which she knows to trust. A harrowing case involving the death of a child puts the whole team on edge. Clever plotting, excellent writing and a guarantee I’ll be back for more. I\ll be reviewing as part of the tour later in the month but you can buy a copy here.

…

Dancing on the Grave – Zoe Sharp

In one of the most beautiful corners of England, Something very ugly is about to take place…

A sniper with a mission… a young cop with nothing to lose… a CSI with everything to prove… a teenage girl with a terrifying obsession…

There’s a killer on the loose in the Lake District, and the calm of an English summer is shattered.

For newly qualified crime-scene investigator, Grace McColl, it’s both the start of a nightmare and the chance to prove herself after a mistake that cost a life.

For Detective Constable Nick Weston, recently transferred from London, it’s an opportunity to recover his nerve after a disastrous undercover operation that left him for dead.

And for a lonely, loveless teenage girl, Edith, it’s the start of a twisted fantasy—one she never dreamed might come true.

A standalone CSI led thriller this involves a high profile murder, a killer on the loose with a very unstable young woman at his side. High tension, high action and with brilliantly drawn characters this is another top class read from author Zoe Sharp and highly recommended. I’ll be reviewing on the tour later in the month but do yourself a favour and bag a copy here.

…

Four books – not too shabby all things considered. It’s been a busy week. Less so on the blog but I am meant to be slowing down…

The Note by Andrew Barrett

A Meditation on Murder by Robert Thorogood

Death on Dartmoor by Bernie Steadman

After He’s Gone by Jane Isaac

Guest Post: Robert Dugoni – Author of A Steep Price

The week ahead is pretty full on. I’ve a few blog tours starting tomorrow with The Death of Mrs Westaway by Rith Ware and A Summer Scandal by Kat French; How Far We Fall by Jane Shemilt and Gone To Ground by Rachel Amphlett.

I’ll also be taking part in an exclusive cover reveal on Wednesday so do stop by. I promise you that you really want to see this. Love it.

My week will otherwise be made up of work, reading, reviewing and – wait for it – actual writing. Yes, you read that right. No more messing about. I will be writing. Eek. No pressure.

Have a fabulous and hopefully sunny and book filled week all. See you on the other side.

Jen

Rewind, recap: Weekly update w/e 01/07/18 Can four pictures really sum up my week? Well, if I'm being honest they come pretty close.

#Rewind Recap #Weekly Round UP

[gumnut-logic]

The Hero (Part Five)

Title: The Hero

Sequel/companion piece to The Joker

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

Author: Gumnut

20 Nov 2019

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: Thunderbird Two, with Virgil and Gordon aboard, is hijacked and stolen. With Virgil injured, it is up to Gordon to save his brother and his ‘bird. Sequel/companion piece to ‘The Joker’. Gordon is far more than he seems.

Word count: 2301

Spoilers & warnings: Violence, WASP!Gordon, Military!Scott, whump, language.

Timeline: Sequel/companion piece to ‘The Joker’.

Author’s note: For @corbyinoz because she has written some magnificent Virgil and Gordon fics and is a great inspiration. Thank you for all your wonderful words.

Half the size of the last chapter, but it called for a cut here. I hope you enjoy it :D

It started with ‘The Joker’. I got interested in WASP!Gordon and decided to explore his side of the story. Then PLOT happened. Now I have no idea what is going on.

Many thanks to @vegetacide and @scribbles97 for putting up with my crazy.

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

 Tanusha Kyrano baffled Gordon Tracy.

She was the same age as he was, so theoretically he should have had a new friend who could team up with him against all older and younger brothers.

But she wouldn’t let him in.

The girl was standoffish, never smiled and even showed fear at his presence at times. When her father was around, she clung to him.

It took Gordon a long time to work it all out, after all there was only so much an eight-year-old could possibly understand about the world. Over time she did relent and grew closer to all the brothers, though more than some.

She never did quite trust Gordon.

Oh, he had no doubt she loved him like a brother as he loved her like a sister, but there was always something caught between them.

Perhaps he should not have pranked her when she was so young...when she was vulnerable, but he hadn’t understood and the damage had been done.

He had only wanted to make her smile.

But Tanusha Kyrano had been hurt far too much in her young life and it showed.

As they grew up, she followed him into school, into his classes. There was the time he stood up to the bullies who cornered her in the gym.

Several years later, she returned the favour, nearly crippling a boy in the process.

His father hadn’t been happy.

Kyrano had frowned, but even Gordon had the astuteness to see that sparkle in the security officer’s eyes.

No one messed with Kayo after that.

Scott had sat her down and there had been words. The eldest Tracy liked to keep his ragtag entourage on the right side of the law.

Gordon just smiled and elbowed her in the ribs.

Her smile in return had lifted his spirits more than any grin ever could have.

From that point on, she was his sister on all fronts.

When Jeff Tracy disappeared, she was already fully groomed to support International Rescue. She stepped into her father’s role like she was made for it.

She was.

But the smiles disappeared.

But then no one was smiling on Tracy Island for quite some time.

Then a burly rescuee caught Gordon off guard and landed him in the hospital. Scott was worried. Virgil, hovering.

Kayo was livid.

The tongue lashing she gave him was one for the record books. The moment he was mobile and functional, her training response began.

All the brothers were caught up in it. Virgil complained like crazy, Alan whined, John tried to hide until Kayo rode the elevator herself and dragged him down by the scruff of his uniform.

How she found a scruff on that skin tight garment was one of the major mysteries of their time.

Scott just backed her up in full.

Even when she wiped the mat with him.

Sixteen times.

But Gordon...Gordon found his feet. Grief had knocked the family sideways. This return to training, to honing his body to its best, it was familiar and it made him better.

It became ritual, one they both enjoyed.

And he could almost match her.

Almost.

Until one day he did.

-o-o-o-

“Hello, Mister Virgil.”

Virgil blinked up at the silver-haired man and frowned. “What are you doing here?” He steeled himself and pushed his body upright, gritting his teeth as absolutely everything complained, but there was no way he was lying down for this conversation.

A hand caught him and helped him right himself.

He sat on the edge of the bed. A moment to catch his breath.

And he realised he was shirtless and only wearing pyjama shorts.

A flash of modesty and he came to the conclusion that he didn’t have the energy to care.

Kyrano grabbed a chair and sat down in front of him. “How are you, Mister Virgil?”

A sigh. “Been better. Scott call you in?”

“He did.” Those green eyes were assessing. “What happened?”

Virgil closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. “I got my ass handed to me.”

“You did.” He didn’t have to look to know those green eyes were tracking the bruising across his torso. “What did they want?”

“The usual.”

“Specifics.”

Virgil paused and looked up at the man. “What, Scott didn’t give you the details?”

“I need to hear your version.”

“Bad guys, wanted my ‘bird, beat me up, Gordon saved me, we came home. End of story.”

“They had you drugged and restrained. What did they want?”

The man’s bluntness cut to the core of the matter and it hurt more than his ribs. “As I said, my ‘bird.” He stared at Kyrano and something chewed on the back of his mind. There was something...

“Do you know who they were?”

“Scott knows. Some new group, Null? Got it in for us and the Chaos Crew. Apparently, we’re the easier target.” The logic behind that just hurt. Who thought there would be so much opposition to he and his brothers simply trying to save lives? Sometimes the world just sucked.

“Mister Virgil, did you recognise any of them?”

A blink. “What?”

“Were any of your captors familiar?”

Involuntarily, his mind was flung back to that woozy fog. His memory was patchy and faded in and out. “They were going to hurt Gordon.” Panic swelled as the memories caught him. “Can’t let him hurt Gordon!”

His agitated voice echoed around his bedroom and snapped him out of the memory.

Him.

The image was blurry. He had been held down and something shoved into his mouth. Something. Forced to swallow.

Sad green eyes.

Oh, hell.

-o-o-o-

“Kyrano?” Gordon just stared at his aunt. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Kyrano has been a member of this family for a long time, Colonel. You better have proof to back up that statement.” Scott’s voice was cold.

“As a similar member of your family, Scott, I hope you would trust me enough to not make such an accusation lightly. He was recently identified in conversation with the leaders of the Null faction.”

Gordon flared. “How the hell do you manage to uncover information like that, yet can’t catch a single asshole?”

Brown eyes swung around and pinned him where he stood. “I know your confidence in the GDF has fallen in recent years, Gordon, but trust me when I say we are not completely useless.”

Could have fooled me. But he didn’t say it. “Conversation? Doesn’t specify much.”

“Lieutenant, have you considered why we did not capture any Null operatives after this incident?”

She hadn’t called him by his rank in years. It straightened his spine regardless. “Why?”

“Because your operative was onsite. There were casualties.”

Gordon froze. Casualties. But... “Well, that vetoes your theory. Kyrano wouldn’t let himself be seen unless he wanted you to see him.”

“What he wanted is unknown, but he was there, Lieutenant. My question is, do you know where he is now?”

Gordon opened his mouth, but Scott cut him off. “Why, Colonel?”

Her eyes grew cold. “Don’t protect him, Commander. This goes far beyond you and I. He is a dangerous man.”

“I am well aware of his capabilities, Commander. As I am yours.”

Her lips thinned. “Pride before the fall, Scott. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m en route.” She paused a moment. A blink and her eyes softened. “Scott, you’re family. Please believe me, I don’t want to see you or your brothers hurt.”

Scott tilted his head just slightly. “We’re already hurt, Aunt Val. I’m sorry, but your concerns are a few injuries too late.”

His brother’s words hit hard and Gordon held back a flinch as his aunt took a step back. “Very well, Commander. I will see you shortly.” The transmission cut, leaving silence in the comms room.

Except for the blood in his ears.

Gordon jabbed his comms, bruising his collarbone in the process. “Kayo, is Kyrano with you?”

Her negative came back immediately. “He left a good fifteen minutes ago. I thought he was with you?”

A sigh. “He isn’t. Tin, you need to find him now.”

“FAB.”

Scott’s voice was sharp and desolate. “Thunderbird Five, give me a location on Kyrano.”

John flickered in. “You know I can’t track him, Scott.”

“Find him.” The tone brooked no argument and John blinked out.

The eyes that turned to Gordon were tortured. “If he was on site...”

“He wanted to speak to Virgil. He has been very interested in Virgil.”

A moment and Scott was moving, Gordon on his heels.

-o-o-o-

Virgil froze his expression, but he had never been good at lying or obfuscation.

“Mister Virgil.” The older man sighed and shook his head. “I am so sorry.” Those green eyes were sad again and it chilled him.

“Kyrano?”

“You were always the gentle one. You took such care of Tanusha. The music maker, the artist. I did hope you could not remember. But I can’t let that go.”

Images flickered in Virgil’s head, his brain attempting to reconcile the quiet, calm man of his childhood with the foggy blur who had hurt him.

With the sad man before him.

He shifted back on the bed, attempting to gain distance, but Kyrano reached into his tunic and pulled out a familiar electroshock weapon and shoved it into Virgil’s thigh.

The result was immediate. His whole body locked up, pain pulsing in waves as his muscles spasmed. It seemed to go on forever. He couldn’t cry out, couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe.

And it stopped.

Blood stole his hearing as he gasped in air, his lungs struggling to compensate. His body failed to respond to any of his commands to move away and he lay limp on the bed while Kyrano straightened up, staring down at him.

“I had hoped you would at least put up a fight. It isn’t like I want to put you down like a dog. I’d rather not kill you at all.”

Virgil opened his mouth, at first gaping like a fish, desperately trying to form a word.

Kyrano continued to gaze calmly down at him.

Supreme effort and Virgil got out one word in little more than a gasp. “W-why?”

“Because I have no choice.” And there was true sadness in those green eyes. “I can’t...” A swallow. “I tried...” He shook his head. “What has to be done, is done.” Something truly pain-filled flickered across his face.

He pulled a small box out of his pocket and, opening it, held up a tiny pill. “Now it is time for you to go to sleep and never wake up.”

No.

This couldn’t be right.

Kyrano was a second father. He had been there all his life. He couldn’t...

Virgil tried to drag himself across the bed and away, but his limbs wouldn’t respond correctly. The bed covers scrunched up under him.

“I have always admired that Tracy stubbornness. It has kept your family alive and moving through so many challenges.” A hand clamped onto Virgil’s leg and yanked. “I wish it could do the same this time.”

“No! N-no, don’t!” But Kyrano was pulling him closer, a hand clamped around his neck, a knee pressed down on his throbbing thigh.

A shadow appeared behind Kyrano and the man spun off Virgil, leaving him gasping.

“Daughter. I expected better from you.” The voice was calm and while Virgil attempted to regain control of his breathing, there was little more than the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

“Still predictable, I see.” Something smashed. Virgil desperately tried to move, to struggle off the bed. Kayo. He squeezed his eyes shut. Pull yourself together. Kyrano was going to hurt Kayo.

His daughter.

This couldn’t be right.

He finally turned his body enough to see the two opponents.

There was killing force at work.

Kayo had always been impressive, but this was beyond it all. Their bodies were a blur and every movement was counteracted by the other.

His sister’s expression was contorted.

A matter of seconds and her father broke through her defences. A single targeted stroke and Tanusha flew across the room to collide with the window sill. A sickening thud and his sister collapsed to the floor.

She didn’t get up.

“Oh, Tanusha.” Virgil frowned as the man wiped away a tear. “I tried to spare you. I tried so hard.”

“Kyrano!” Scott stood in the door, a weapon in his hand.

The security officer didn’t hesitate. Spinning he struck out ever so fast. The gun went flying. The electroshock weapon whipped into Kyrano’s hand and jabbed into Scott’s gut.

His brother spasmed and collapsed, twitching, his blue eyes open but vacant.

Virgil finally managed to throw himself off the bed.

He slid to a heap on the floor, little better off than his brother.

Kyrano turned to him. “I am so sorry, Mister Virgil.” The man reached down and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. “It has to be done more than ever now. At least it will bring all of this to an end.” A harsh breath. “Finally, an end.”

But there was a huff of breath as they were suddenly yanked apart. Virgil hit the ground hard, his ribs screamed.

“Get the fuck away from him.”

A grunt. Flesh hitting flesh. Virgil struggled to look up.

“Mister Gordon.” A slap.

“What the hell are you doing, K?” Another thud and something crashed to the floor. Virgil finally managed to turn himself around.

Kyrano and Gordon were circling each other. Calm green met furious red brown.

“I do what needs done.”

“You tried to kill Virgil.”

“I tried to kill all of you.”

“You failed.”

“I’m not yet finished.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Your humour is lacking.”

“I’m not joking.”

“We shall see.”

“No, Kyrano, this ends here.”

And Gordon leapt.

-o-o-o-

End Part Five

Part Six

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #Virgil Tracy #Gordon Tracy #Scott Tracy #Kayo Kyrano #Val Casey #Kyrano #the joker and the hero