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teawaffles · 3 years

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The Fugitives from the Fire: Chapter 5, Part 2

“Hey, madam innkeeper: where would you normally have been in the building?”

“……Since when did you get in charge of the investigation?”

As Sherlock took the lead, it seemed Gregson was displeased, but also no longer in the mood to put up a fight.

Hillary sniffed.

“I was always at the reception desk. I’m the only one managing the inn; I don’t have a single employee.”

“In that case, do you remember when these three men came to book their rooms? Or rather, at the time, had there been anyone with burns on their face?”

Sherlock was now diverting the conversation away from the case, instead attempting to verify if there were eyewitness accounts of the other fugitive. However, Gregson responded in a low voice.

“Holmes: it’s not going to work. We also tried asking her when we arrived at the scene back then, but it seems she has a strange policy of protecting her guests’ privacy, so she doesn’t check her guests’ appearances and such too closely.”

It seemed Hillary had heard him whispering, for she spoke up in defiance.

“You know, these parts are full of people with something to hide. I always make sure they pay up, but I don’t do such tactless things as staring people in the face.”

“Tactful, eh……”

Even Sherlock couldn’t stop himself; he cracked a wry grin. He didn’t know if it was an unwritten rule of the slums, but the innkeeper’s response was certainly a little too risky.

Nevertheless, at this point, there was nothing to be gained from laying blame on her. Sherlock continued.

“In that case, when the fire started, were you also at the reception?”

“That’s right. I wanted to stay there until the fire was contained, but a bunch of bobbies dragged me out at the very last moment.”

It seemed the lady possessed a truly dauntless spirit, so much so she had been willing to go down with her inn. That elicited something close to admiration within Sherlock, and he looked over the suspects.

“You mentioned ‘the very last moment’… That means you stayed at the reception until everyone had escaped?”

“Indeed: as the landlady, I have to ensure my guests are safe. Besides these guys, I definitely saw the ones from rooms 102 and 201 escape out the front door.”

“You’re indeed the epitome of a host.”

In his mind, Sherlock added this new piece of information on the guests’ rooms.

Excluding the murder victim, there had been five guests in total.

On the ground floor, rooms 101 (Jerry Dorff) and 102 had been occupied.

On the first floor, rooms 201 and 203 (Mike Myers).

Then on the second floor, room 301 (Bruno Campbell).

As he gathered the respective locations of the guests, the proprietress spoke up.

“Oh yes — earlier, everyone was talking about who had the chance to go up to the second floor, right? You’ll have to rule out Mr Jerry over there: for some reason, he immediately ran outside when the fire began. He seemed the very picture of alarm.”

“Hmm; this man, panicked?”

As far as he was concerned, people were free to run away in any manner they liked. But the gap between that and the taciturn, mysterious man before them made even Sherlock’s expression soften. It seemed Jerry had been strangely embarrassed by that reaction, deliberately clearing his throat.

Then, the detective turned to Gregson.

“Come to think of it, when you were going back upstairs, did you go past anyone? There must’ve been people rushing to escape.”

“I remember that: I passed by Bruno, Mike, and one other guest on the stairs. But is that important somehow?”

“If the killer had been among them, then he must’ve murdered the victim in the short period between the time you went downstairs to check the situation, and the time you returned to the second floor.”

Gregson groaned. “……Of course, that interval feels way too short. It didn’t even take me 30 seconds to go downstairs and back up again. So, that means……”

The locations of the suspects’ rooms. The escape route. The span of time until the victim had been murdered. Putting together all the clues they’d gathered by questioning the people involved, a single answer surfaced of its own accord.

“——It’s impossible for the killer to have gone upstairs and murdered him.”

Sherlock sounded as if he were pronouncing a judgement. Then, Gregson finally got his head around it — just like what a detective’s assistant would’ve done.

——“In that case, how did he murder the man in the room?”

“T-Then, the man in the room — how was he murdered……?”

Once again, the John in his imagination overlapped with Gregson. In theory, this ‘riddle’ had turned into something impossible to solve, and the assistant inspector was wracked with an anguish akin to agony.

However, that was a tale that only applied to ordinary people.

With his singularly transcendent powers of deduction, the consulting detective had already narrowed down two answers to this case.

Truthfully, right now, he could proceed to the solution right away. But for some reason, he didn’t want to do that. Surely, the reason why he was investigating the truth like this, was because he saw the figure of the man before him strenuously racking his brains.

As Gregson continued to despair, Sherlock Holmes placed a hand on his back.

“Gregson, do you have a moment?”

“……What do you want?”

He looked exhausted — but that was a weariness born from his own sense of responsibility, and even Sherlock refused to take a jibe at him now.

Gregson was shouldering a duty as a police inspector, so the detective resolved to use a little discretion.

“I want to talk to you outside for a bit.”

“…………”

Sherlock had said so in a serious tone, and Gregson didn’t put up a fight.

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Once they left the inn, an unnerving oppressiveness made their skin prickle: clearly, the locals’ anger had only intensified. Lestrade was trying his best to negotiate with and conciliate them, but it wouldn’t be long before their frustration boiled over.

Yet, even as they were caught in this race against time, Sherlock remained unhurried. On the streets to which filth clung here and there, he began to speak as if they were simply having a chat.

“First off, from the conversation earlier, we’ve eliminated the possibility that the culprit went to room 303 and killed him. As such, we have to consider a different tack.”

“A different tack?”

“What I mean is, the idea that he didn’t attack from the door — rather, the window.”

Sherlock proposed the theory he’d thought up at the start: that the man had been shot from the window. With this idea, they could break free of the ‘riddle’ created by the locked room — the murderer could kill the victim even without going all the way to the second floor.

However, Gregson shrugged in amazement, and explained in an indifferent tone.

“This might dispute the deduction you’re so proud of, but we did look into that as well. Firstly, for this method to work, there must’ve been two men in total: one to start the fire at the inn, and the other to shoot the victim from outside. But hiring another collaborator to silence an accomplice, or settle a falling-out, brings its own share of danger. In addition, in order to shoot his victim, a gunman would minimally have to be at the same height as him. There’s a brothel across the street from the inn, facing its north wall, and with three floors to boot, it fits the bill. But at the time of the murder, there’d been people on its second floor, and no one testified that they heard a gunshot. Hence, that explanation has to be rejected.”

Unusually, the inspector had discussed his view without a hint of his usual thorny attitude.

But Sherlock was adamant. “If that’s the case, then——”

——“If that’s the case, then how about something like this? Sherlock.”

His partner’s voice resounded through his mind. Now, the detective persisted in playing the role of an assistant, raising another idea to the inspector.

“From the street beside the inn, he could’ve aimed at room 303’s window and shot the victim. With that, he wouldn’t have raised suspicions among the people in the brothel.”

“……That’s rather cliché. There were officers outside the inn, so if there’d been someone with a gun outside, they would’ve arrested him long ago. Moreover, the victim collapsed a step away from the room door. If he’d been shot from the window, he would’ve lain there still. Even if he had then used the last of his strength to crawl all the way to the door, with that level of blood loss, it’d be strange that there hadn’t been a trail of blood leading from the window. As I said earlier, as far as I could tell through the keyhole, I didn’t see any marks like that.”

The inspector calmly refuted his theory, and Sherlock made the same troubled face as John always did.

——Then and there, he eliminated one of his two suppositions, and completely saw through the ‘riddle’ of this case.

“Is that so? Then I’m completely at a loss here.”

“Hmm, what’s gotten into you since earlier? ……You kept making deductions that were quite unlike you.”

Gregson had casually said something that, deep down, revealed a glimpse of his recognition of the detective’s ability. Unwittingly, Sherlock broke into a gentle smile.

But just as quickly, he replaced it with the troubled expression required of the fool he was playing. Sherlock put both hands behind his head, and looked up at the sky.

“Hey, Gregson. Somehow, we’ve been talking over and over and getting nowhere; so for a change of pace, how about a quiz?”

“Huh? You purposely brought me all the way outside, for a quiz?!”

Gregson frowned, but Sherlock continued without a care.

“Let’s say there are two children, A and B, and they’re friends. One day, the two of them play catch at a distance of about 20 steps away from one another. But although A can throw the ball to B, B can’t throw it back to A. Why is that so? In case you were wondering, the two of them have the same strength.”

“……Hmm.”

Gregson forgot about his complaints for a moment, and pondered.

“Did B sprain his shoulder?”

“In a quiz like this, that kind of reasoning’s rubbish, isn’t it?”

“There’s a wall between them.”

“Then A couldn’t have thrown the ball over.”

“……Another kid suddenly appeared and stole the ball.”

“You’re being a little careless, aren’t ya?”

It was unclear what the intention behind this quiz was, and to top it off, Sherlock had rejected every one of his answers. At last, Gregson raised his voice.

“Dammit, just tell me the answer already! Also, what’s the point of a quiz like this?!”

“Come on, now,” Sherlock parried. “I’ll give you a hint: for example, try looking at this building here.”

“Hmm……”

The detective pointed to the inn they had just stepped out of. Coincidentally, just like the one that had burnt down, this building also had three floors.

“What about it?”

“Man, you’re still as slow as ever. Look……”

Sherlock pointed to a window on the upper floors, and moved his finger between that and the window below it a few times.

Watching that action, Gregson seemed to have arrived at the answer himself.

“I see. So the children were standing on the upper and lower floors respectively, and leaning out the windows to throw the ball? Although it could be thrown from the floor above to the one below, it would be difficult to throw the ball back up in the other direction. That’s to say, the distance of 20 steps was not lengthwise, but vertical——”

Right then, as if a bolt of electricity had coursed through him, Gregson twitched. His hand shot to his chin; sinking deep into thought, he remained absolutely motionless, with only his lips piecing fragments together into clues.

“There’s only one way…… To be able to kill without going upstairs…… In that case, the position of the body…… And it ending up as a locked room…… But, such an extraordinary method –– is it even possible?”

At his final question, Sherlock grinned.

“I don’t have the foggiest idea what you just thought of…… But when you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” [1]

“………!”

Gregson looked at the detective, standing boldly where he was.

Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

That was what he’d always maintained.

A suicide, or an accident. Pretending to be dead. Entering the room and murdering him. A sniper shot from the window. After carefully pursuing all lines of thought, in the end, only this solution remained.

In that case, it had to be the truth.

Could it be, that he’d started this entire conversation in order to guide him here……?

“……Hmph.”

At that thought, Assistant Inspector Gregson reassumed his usual, haughty attitude: the manner of a police inspector who saw the detective as his enemy.

“Let’s go, Holmes. I’ll tell you what I’ve deduced.”

——This is my case.

As Gregson strode away triumphantly, Sherlock chuckled.

T/N: Sherlock has grown so much..! (my /heart/)

Footnotes:

[1] A quote from Chapter 6 of the Sherlock Holmes novel The Sign of the Four, by Arthur Conan Doyle. (Wikipedia)

#moriarty the patriot #yuukoku no moriarty #yuumori #english translation #the girl who sees rainbows

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yoon-kooks · 4 years

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Tie Me Up

Pairing: Yoongi x Reader

Genre: Fluff & Agust D

Summary: While planning the promotional shoot for Agust D’s second mixtape, you’re visited by the man himself who seems to have a lot of ideas for a “baddie” aesthetic. One suggestion in particular sounds a bit risky, but somehow you’re tempted.

Word Count: 1.3k

Warning: Yoongi may or may not have a bondage kink

A/N: i know what the title says but this is straight fluff, fam :^)

As the countdown begins for Agust D’s return, it’s up to you, BigHit’s resident art director, to make preparations for the photoshoot and music video. After playing the mixtape on repeat for the past few days, you’ve come to the conclusion that the visuals need to be bold, in your face, and for lack of a better word, badass.

The only problem is that you know Yoongi. You know how he likes to present himself as the hardcore underground rapper that he is. And you know his Agust D persona is quite raw and outspoken. But more than that, you know that Min Yoongi is actually a softie. Especially around you for some reason.

You’ve seen and experienced it with your own eyes. Because whenever he casually drops by the art department of the BigHit building, he always makes up some pathetic excuse about “enlisting your help for a personal art project” or “needing a change of scenery” just to visit you. And then he’ll just sit there, working next to you on the spare desk that somehow became his second office. He even goes out of his way to buy your favorite dessert “for himself,” only to share half of it with you on late nights in the office.

With the knowledge that Yoongi’s that soft, you struggle to envision him as the badass that Agust D is supposed to be. If only he weren’t so dang cute all the time.

“Fucking Yoongi,” you mumble to yourself as you study photos of the shooting location and several props to spark any sort of inspiration.

“Y/N.” You look up from your computer screen at the boy you’d just cursed out. “I can hear you, you know.”

“What brings you here today, Min Yoongi?” you ignore his comment.

“Ah, me? I just needed a change of scenery,” he shrugs with a whole ass keyboard in hands. “Helps the creative juices flow better.”

“You used that excuse like two days ago. Try harder,” you tilt your head.

“Oh, I did?” he ruffles his hair.

“No, I’m just fucking with you,” you crack into a giggle. “You did say it last week, though.”

“Oh, so you’re keeping count?”

“You could say that.”

“Anyway, I just thought I might as well stop by to make sure you’re not goofing off, young art director.” He makes himself comfortable on the spare desk beside yours. “How’s the planning going?”

“The most goofing off I’ve done all day is bickering with you,” you pinch the rapper’s cheek because that’s just what your fingers do. “As for the planning, it requires a big brain to make someone like you look badass.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he narrows his eyes at you. “Doesn’t it help that I’m naturally scary?”

You blink at the “scary” boy without answering his question. Then an idea pops into mind. “Want to help me plan? It is your music video after all.”

Yoongi nearly shoves his keyboard off the desk. “Sure.”

You turn your screen towards the boy to fill him in on the details. “So what I’m thinking so far is to have some fire involved…you mentioned Bang PD, so maybe like a cameo from him… oh, and it’d be cool if you had an eye scar like Kakashi.”

“Who’s Kakashi?”

“I was also thinking of inviting Seokjin and Jungkook to make a brief appearance?” you continue, again without answering his question.

“Yeah, maybe it’s better not to,” Yoongi sighs. “You know how those two are. They’ll probably just start fighting each other for the hell of it.”

“It would be good to have some of your friends on set to support you, though.”

“Are you saying you’re not a friend who will support me?”

“You know I’ll support you, Silly,” you chuckle. In addition to being a softie, Min Yoongi is also a funny guy.

“Right, right,” he says as one of the sample props catches his eye. “What were you planning on using the rope for?”

“Oh that… You know how Bruno Mars uses a rope to drag a piano around in that one music video? I was thinking something along those lines, but like with something to symbolize your achievements.” You start gesturing as though you’re playing charades. “It’ll be like ‘I had to work my ass off for this motherfucker.’”

“Interesting. I like that,” Yoongi nods, casually picking up the rope. “Or, what if we tied me up?”

“What.”

“Wouldn’t that be kinda badass?”

You attempt to envision a soft Yoongi all tangled in rope, but it’s a little too much for you to process. “Maybe it’s not best to broadcast your bondage kink to the entire world.”

“It’s not a kink, it’s an aesthetic.”

“Right,” you roll your eyes. “It’ll make you look like a real baddie, Yoongi.”

As soon as you snatch the rope out of the boy’s hands, he offers up his wrists to you. But all you can do is stand and stare, wondering if he’s legitimately serious about the bondage kink.

It takes a good minute or so, but Yoongi finally budges. However, you’re caught off guard when his hands wrap around yours—not that you’re complaining. If there’s one thing that you’re weak to about Yoongi, it’s when he completely breaks down his “scary” front and goes full soft boy on you. You’re not sure what triggered the handholding all of a sudden, but you’ll take what you can get.

“I still think it’s a good idea, yeah?” He tilts his head at you with a slight pout. A pout!

Aha, you see what’s going on.

“I’m not going to let your adorable face sway me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Yoongi drops your hands and sighs. “I don’t get why you always think I’m cute.”

“Because that’s just what you are,” is what you want to scream. You swear the boy drives you crazy sometimes. “It doesn’t matter what I think, Yoongi. You are what you are.” It’s not an opinion. It’s a fact.

“So no rope?” he blinks at you with that pout again. Stay strong, Y/N.

“Fine, we can try the rope if it makes you happy…” It’s your turn to pout. His cuteness always wins. It’s too powerful. Even more powerful than Agust D himself.

As you fumble around with the rope to get it around the boy’s wrists and body, he has the audacity to snicker.

“What?” You shoot him a look. You’ve never seen someone so delighted to be tied up. Then again, bondage isn’t really your area of expertise.

“Nothing,” he hums.

“You know, if someone walks in right now, they’ll get the wrong idea.” You tie a neat bow at the small of Yoongi’s back.

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

“You seem to care when I think you’re cute.”

“You’re different.”

“Is that so?” you giggle, backing up to get a full view sample photo of the tied up boy. You honestly don’t get the appeal. He just looks like a bigger dork than he already was. Then again, you are pretty smitten for that adorable dorky side of his.

“Did it work?” He waddles over to you in the restraints. You show him the photo and he nods in approval. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re the biggest dork ever, Yoongi,” you tease.

“You’re not affected at all by this?” He tries to lift his wrists.

“I’ll admit you’re right about it fitting the Agust D aesthetic. I can respect it to that effect,” you try to keep it professional for 0.2 seconds. “But on a personal level, I can’t unsee how dang soft you are.”

“I’m not soft,” says the soft boy as you untangle him from the rope.

“Right, and you’re not going to treat me to my favorite dessert after this.”

“I’m not?” The first thing the boy does when his wrists are free is take your hand once more. “Because I’m headed there right now if you want to tag along.”

You smile, shake your head, but follow him nonetheless. You’ve proven your case. The world may see and fall for the hardcore badass in Agust D all tied up with scars and shit, but you’ve fallen long ago for the dork who simply hangs with you for a nice change of scenery.

#bts scenarios #bts fanfic #bts fluff #yoongi x reader #btsboulangerie #agust d #yoongi #suga #yoongi fanfic #bts x reader #bts imagines #bts #bangtan #tie me up

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themuzzleofnemesis · 4 years

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4–Memory of the Battlefield; Scene 4

The Muzzle of Nemesis, pages 158-168

I was blindfolded, so I didn’t know where I was currently walking to.

“—Here, get in.”

I heard the voice of the man who had captured me, and a door being opened.

I was brought in and made to sit somewhere.

And then the blindfold was finally taken off.

“…”

It was an inhospitable, narrow room.

In front of me was a square black desk, and a simple wooden chair.

I remembered seeing this scene before.

Yes—it was just like the interrogation room in the prison.

The man sat in the opposite chair and glowered at my face.

“…I can still scarcely believe it. That a girl like you killed my big brother.”

The man’s name—was Gammon Octo.

He was the one Shakuson…Or rather, Nyoze Octo, had sent a letter to.

His younger brother.

--I had left the apartment complex where I’d been living the day after I had killed Shakuson.

That was to flee from two different figures. One was the police, and the other…was Postman.

I needed to disappear before he came back to retrieve the gun.

I still hadn’t reached a conclusion on whether I would live or die, but at the very least I no longer wished to be involved with the organization.

There was no issue with my having betrayed them. Someone may come to kill me—but I wouldn’t die anyhow.

The war was still ongoing, so it was a bit tricky to leave the country. Only, wanting to get at least a little ways away from Elphegort where I was born and raised, I decided to head south in the opposite direction.

Eventually I arrived at a town named Retasan. According to what I heard from an innkeeper, the town took its name from a country that had existed in the ancient era.

It was a dismal town. Apparently they were constantly being subjected to the threat of these monsters called “dead soldiers”, and so there were burned corpses piled high on every street corner.

A town of corpses—I thought at the very least that it would be suitable as the location of my demise. Even so, I passed three days at an inn there, still unable to make up my mind.

And then, the morning of the fourth day. Several men suddenly came to my room and surrounded me.

I was struck by one of the men before I even had a chance to struggle. …Immediately afterward he put some drugged cloth over my mouth and nose, and I lost consciousness.

--The very man who had struck me was Gammon sitting before me now. I had heard that fact while in the car transporting me here.

“You look like him, after all. Your brother.”

I first gave my honest impression.

“That’s because we’re siblings. Still…It’s not to the degree we used to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“My brother had some plastic surgery done on his face after he escaped prison. Before that we looked so alike that people would think we were twins.”

“I see…So then—What do you intend to do with me?”

If he planned to kill me, he would have done so at the inn.

Maybe he’d tried to do so while I was unconscious. –But I didn’t appear to have any wounds that would suggest such on my body.

“…Frankly I can’t decide. Though it is true that I wanted to try talking to you first.”

“If that’s all, I wish you’d politely given me an invitation instead.”

“You, an assassin? Give me a break.”

Silence descended on us for a moment.

Gammon was first to open his mouth.

“—What business did you have in the town of Retasan? Was there a new target there?”

“…I didn’t really have a reason. I’ve quit being an assassin.”

“And you…expect me to believe you? So soon after killing my brother—”

“I don’t care whether you believe me or not.”

“…Well, whatever. Then let me ask a different question. What do you think—of the organization you were a part of?”

“In two words: ‘They’re shit’. The only thing I can tell you is that they were the lowest of the low.”

“Then why did you work for them?”

“They would have killed me otherwise.”

Gammon looked surprised at that. “You? That’s hard to imagine. The head of the organization is your father, isn’t he?”

“…I had no idea that Gallerian Marlon was my father. …Is that really true, in the first place? You’re sure you’re not mistaken--?”

“Just to check, what is your mother’s name?”

“…Kayo. Kayo Sudou.”

“Then there’s no mistake. Kayo and Gallerian once had an illicit affair. After she learned she was pregnant with you she left him—This is what’s written in the secret documents we stole from the Dark Star Bureau.”

“And you’re sure those documents are legitimate?”

“Bruno Zero was the one who wrote them. I can’t imagine he’d go to the trouble of writing false documents to keep in his own desk.”

“Bruno…”

Then that meant he’d known all of it.

That was why he had saved me from prison—Looking at it that way, it lent credence to the claim.

But if that was the case, why had he hired me on as an assassin?

…Had he been ordered to by Gallerian?

Given Bruno’s loyalty to “Master”, I couldn’t think of anything else.

“…You look confused, Nemesis. It’s true then…You—didn’t know.” Gammon blew out a soft sigh. “If you really do hate the organization, then—I have a proposition for you.”

“No way.”

“Hold on…At least hear me out first.”

“I’m not becoming one of your allies.”

“We’re just talking....Though, well, I suppose you’re not wrong.”

Upon seeing Gammon’s flummoxed expression, I was reminded just a little bit of Shakuson.

Anytime I said anything selfish like that, he would…make that face.

“It’s the Tasan Party, right? The people you work for—"

“Yes, a political party of Elphegort. Currently…our objectives are to stop the war that’s occurring all over the world, and to take down the man responsible for it, Dark Star Bureau director Gallerian Marlon.”

“If they’re a political party, that makes you a politician.”

“Well, I suppose it does.”

“I didn’t go to school. I can’t follow along with difficult conversations about things like politics. I can’t imagine I would do well as a politician myself.”

“You don’t need to think of it as being that hard. Look at the people around you—I’ve heard you were once in a delinquent group in Aceid.”

“So you’ve looked up that much. Then—you know that I sank the S.S. Titanis, don’t you? I’m an ex-convict.”

“Strictly speaking you were never actually charged with that crime. Your death was faked before judgment was passed on you.”

“It’s not just that. I killed many people as an assassin after that.”

Yes…Shakuson too, with my own hands.

“You haven’t been arrested for any of that either. You aren’t even on the list of suspects the police have put up.”

“—Wait a second. If that’s true how did you guys know I was an assassin?”

“…Nyoze. My brother realized that you were the culprit behind this string of cases. And yet he never made a move to arrest you.”

“That was…because he was going to use me—”

“Do you really think that’s all it was?”

“…”

I didn’t know.

Back then—when I had pointed the gun at him, Shakuson had never showed any sign of resistance.

As though he had accepted being killed by me--

"—Let’s get back on topic. Did you never sense anything was wrong when you were in Aceid?”

“…I’d always thought that it wasn’t fair. That Elphe people were pushed into the slums, hardly able to get any work—”

“Right now we are working to change this unequal world of ours every day. I think—doing the right thing has nothing to do with whether or not you’ve had an education.”

“…”

“And sometimes there are situations when you need violence to carry out justice. If you say politics are difficult for you, then we can help you study in that field. There’s nothing for you to be ashamed of. I myself got into the Tasan Party by banking on my career as a soldier.”

…Hm, so that’s how it was.

In the end, this man—simply intended to make me kill people again.

“The answer is still no. Didn’t I tell you I quit being an assassin?”

“There’s a difference between killing to fulfill someone’s wishes and killing to protect someone. –Why did you sink the S.S. Titanis?”

“That was…to protect my friends—”

“Then, even if the whole world would blame you for that—I applaud such an action.”

“Are you…really a politician? What about the fact that this all happened in the first place because Zeus was trying to steal gold?”

“Midas Touch was no saint. Neither was Bindi Freezis, the man who manipulated all of you.”

Bindi Freezis…The man who had gone by the name of “Kandi” to us—I had only learned his true name after being put in my prison cell.

“Are you saying it was alright to kill him because he was evil?”

“I think so. …Perhaps I’m mistaken on my morality of the world society we live in. But the world’s never really going to get better just by yelling about love and peace.”

“…Well, I suppose that’s true.”

“What I think we ought to prioritize more than anything else—is justice! As long as we have that, our world can become a utopia…And I’m prepared for there to be sacrifices to achieve that.”

As I watched Gammon give his passionate speech, I felt a little bit like smiling.

It wasn’t that I was mocking him. It was pleasant to see a man who held no doubts about his own beliefs—I was envious.

“—I take back what I said earlier.”

“…? What about?”

“You and him are nothing alike. Shakuson would have never said something like that.”

“My brother was…not a worldly man. That was probably why he chose to be killed by you.”

“…”

“He must have thought that if you didn’t, you’d be erased by that organization.”

“…You mean…”

To save me—Shakuson had chosen to die.

“It’s true that when I learned you were Gallerian’s daughter, I suggested to Nyoze that he ought to use that to his advantage.”

“Yes…That’s what you wrote in your letter.”

“So you saw that…Then do you know of the reply that Nyoze wrote back to me?”

“I…don’t.”

“My brother rejected my suggestion. –And then he said this: ‘Even if Nemesis does kill me, please don’t hold any ill will towards her. No matter what you have to do, I want you to help her’.”

I quickly forced myself not to start crying.

Shakuson truly had—loved me, after all.

Even just knowing that was enough.

“Nemesis. If you do reject my offer—what will you do now?”

“…”

“I won’t let you die. That was Nyoze’s last wish.”

“But—”

“Don’t run away. Fight! Certainly, you made mistakes in your past. But—dying isn’t the way to atone for that.”

“Then…what are you saying I should do!?”

“Get angry! Your friends in Zeus, Nyoze…Do it for all the people you’ve lost! Why did they have to die? All of it—it’s because of that brute Gallerian, who turned even his own daughter into an assassin!”

Angry…huh.

I had never even met Gallerian. Even being told to get “angry” at him—

Frankly, nothing came up.

But…Gammon and Mr. Ziz both.

They told me to live.

To not run away.

“…Alright, Gammon. I’ll join you, for now.”

“I see. Whether I welcome that or not—it all depends on what you do next.”

Perhaps I should be grateful to him for saying even just that much to the girl who had killed his brother.

“There’s a lot you’ll need to explain to me. First regarding Gallerian. I only know what I’ve seen in the news on what kind of person he is.”

“Very well. I’ll become your tutor.”

“Though I hate studying.”

“That’s fine. I’ll make it simple, so even a child could understand—but before that, you must be hungry.”

“Yeah. A little.”

“First let’s get a bite to eat. The food they have at the Tasan Party headquarters mess hall is top notch!”

Gammon stood and opened the door.

<<prev------directory------next>>

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whereisthecd · 4 years

Text

Magnolia Riders: SuperM/Saddle Club AU ✨

CHAPTER THREE

Masterlist

Key Terms this Chapter

Jump Off - Usually considered a final speed round, especially in competitions. Whoever can jump the course in the quickest time with the least amount of poles down (faults), wins

Crossties - Picture two leashes across from each other attached to the wall. These are clipped onto either side of the horse’s halter (the harness on their face), so they don’t run away while you brush them, saddle them, etc. Essentially, they “tie” the horse up across the aisleway

Mare - An adult female horse

Gelding - An adult horse who’s been castrated

The fresh gust of spring air hit Taemin as he sat atop Rowan in the middle of the arena, admiring his students in the last half of their lesson. It had been a few weeks since the season started, Taeyong was fitting into the group seamlessly, and the guys were more focused on the upcoming competition than ever. While they still had another month before the first show, it felt like so much progress had already been made. Hoping to surprise his team with a bit of fun this lesson, Taemin gathered his riders at the mounting block.

“You all have been doing so well these last few weeks, the progress is astounding. I mean, Mark, I haven’t seen someone improve with their hand positioning as quickly as you have in the last two weeks. I feel we all deserve some fun today. So, how about a jump off?” Taemin offered, knowing it would entice the riders competitive side. Ten shot up in his seat, elongating his posture even further than thought possible. If anyone loved competition more than Taemin, it was Ten, and to compete with him was music to his ears.

“Hell yes, I think Gus and I can get a pretty good time in!” Lucas leaned back in the saddle, patting his hands on the grey dapples of Gus’s rear, causing his head to perk up. Mark and Taeyong shortened up the reins on their horses, already getting into fight mode.

“Alright we’ll start with the jump on the far end, come around the line through the middle, hit the two jumps on the left side, then back around to the cross rail here. Fastest jumper gets to plan the next course,” Taemin smiled at all of them before pushing Rowan forward, getting a good warm up in after she had been standing for nearly an hour. The boys were always slow to follow Taemin’s lead on horseback because it was mesmerizing to watch him ride. His form was the standard, light and free moving, with legs like cement. His match with Rowan was impeccable. Even though they didn’t make it to the Olympics, the pair surely would have won the gold if they had.

“Are y’all gonna catch up or keep staring!” Taemin yelled from the other end of the arena. He knew he was good, but always tried to change the focus. It was so important to him that his students knew their own worth first. The boys, catching the weight of his message, frantically pushed their horses forward and prepared for a jump off sure to impress.

They each went one by one. Mark taking off first, he knew Annabelle had the speed to win. She was a quick little mare and jump offs were her speciality. The boys hollered as Mark and Annabelle ripped through the course, cutting corners and flying over jumps. Only one pole knocked off the first jump, leaving a nearly clear round.

Next was Lucas, driving his giant goofy horse down the rail, mercilessly kicking at his sides to get any extra speed out of him. While the jumps were beautiful, Gus refused to put any gusto into his sprints. By the time Lucas and Gus made it through the last jump, the boys jokingly fell asleep in their saddles, as if hours had gone by.

“Hey at least Gus didn’t knock any poles over, we’re working on it!” Lucas said, shaking his head at the peanut gallery of riders anxiously awaiting their turns.

Ten and Taeyong were seamless. If it wasn’t for the fact that Taeyong’s horse was a hodge-podge of colors, they could have been considered the same run. Gliding quickly, they were the two competitors to beat. Ten however, edged out Taeyong’s time by a mere second.

“Told you that you were number one,” Taeyong said to Ten, trying to catch his breath. Ten shook his head and went to snap back, but Taemin beat him to it.

“Not if I can help it,” Taemin said, sending a smile in Ten’s direction before taking off on Rowan to the other end of the arena. Taeyong, Lucas, and Mark all stood with their mouths slightly agape, seemingly unprepared for the burn Taemin set on his student. Trying to recover, Ten nervously spoke up only loud enough for the boys to hear.

“He’s the only one that can call me number two,” he said before crossing his arms, intent on watching his idol careen through the back end of the course. If the boys thought Ten and Taeyong were fast, then Taemin and Rowan were considered light speed. Not only that, but his form was twice as good as the best two Sunset Magnolia students combined. Between the Magnolia Riders, managing the expenses of a 30 horse stable, and splitting his 12 hour days between training horses and giving lessons, it was rare to see Taemin just ride for fun. It was something the boys, especially Ten, always hoped to see from their trainer. No matter the fame, the horse business is always a costly one. And while Taemin’s story consisted of bumps, turns, and tight budgets, the boys never stopped looking at him with the utmost admiration.

With Taemin the clear winner of the jump off, the boys relinquished any bragging rights and made their way to the stables with their victorious instructor.

“Hey, you all are winners in my heart,” Taemin encouraged, walking with Rowan by his side. Ten rolled his eyes and pulled Frida along his side with the rest of the boys, letting out a small laugh as to not seem any bit uninterested in Taemin. As they entered the barn, the smell of sweet hay and dust filled their noses. Each stall reflected off another, light bouncing off each gold name plate. A few horses here and there stuck their heads out their stall windows at the sound of new voices. Halfway down the hall stood Kai next to his giant chestnut gelding, Bruno. It was always the joke of the barn that everyone somehow looked like their horses, but with this duo, it was a fact. Both Kai and his partner packed the most muscle on the property. From a distance, most would be hesitant to approach, but up close they were the most gentle and inviting creatures at Sunset Magnolia. However, the boys were caught off guard by the sight of Kai tacking up Bruno, because it only meant one thing.

“Ahh that’s right guys, now that the season is in full swing it’s time for your cleaning days. Tuesdays and Fridays still work?” Taemin asked. All the boys except Taeyong groaned.

“Cleaning days? What does that mean?” Taeyong asked inquisitively. Each of the riders had now taken their space in the crossties, pulling off saddles and brushing down their horses. Mark poked his head from over Annabelle’s shoulder.

“As the Magnolia Riders we have weekly cleaning obligations. Since Kai literally works here nonstop, he barely has time to himself, especially during show season. So to give him a break we take two afternoons a week and do some of his job to let him have time to go on a trail ride or take care of anything he needs” Mark answered with the utmost detail. Kai overheard the conversation and jokingly chimed in.

“Ahh my little bro is always speaking so highly of me! You’re too kind,” he said from the aisleway before heading to the tack room briefly. Kai always had such a soft spot for Mark, a nice cross between a big brother and a protective mother. Mark let out a smirk as his cheeks turned rosy.

“Hmm, that doesn’t seem too bad,” Taeyong followed up. Cleaning wasn’t an issue for him, he already felt indebted to Taemin and Kai in his own ways. Ten now came around, saddle in hand.

“Yeah, but that means ALL the Magnolia Riders have to help. And I mean all of them,” Ten sighed before escaping to the tack room to put his equipment away. Taeyong looked back at Lucas and Mark, both nodding their head in agreeance.

“Yeah it’s a real treat,” Lucas said. He unclipped Gus from the crossties and led him towards his stall near the end of the aisle. As he was leading him in, Baekhyun appeared out of the indoor arena attached to the barn with Galina in hand. He didn’t say anything to the boys and nearly ignored them, except for a glare in Ten’s direction as he came out of the tack room.

“Ahh perfect timing, Baekhyun. I was just telling your teammates that today is cleaning day. I expect to see you help out too,” Taemin directed from the entrance of Rowan’s stall. “Please do your part.”

Baekhyun didn’t even take a second to look over his shoulder at Taemin. Instead a mumbled “whatever” escaped his lips.

“You know you don’t always have to be an asshole,” Ten said as he approached Baekhyun, before jumping back as Galina lurched her head in Ten’s direction, ears pinned and teeth bared. She was quite large compared to most of the horses at the barn, and her sleek, black coat added to her sinister attitude. Baek came around from the back of Galina, patting his mare’s side.

“Now look what you’ve done to poor Gigi, you’ve frightened her,” Baek laughed.

“Oh shut up, your horse hates everyone, probably even you if she was smart enough,” Ten said before turning back towards the front of the barn where the cleaning supplies were located. Before Baekhyun could say anything, Taemin reappeared from his mare’s stall.

“Guys, please work together. I want to see the stalls cleaned, the aisles swept as usual, and everyone fed dinner. You’re my team and I expect strong efforts from each and every one of you. I’ll be out teaching another lesson if you need anything,” Taemin said before turning down the aisle. Ten reappeared from the front storage stall with a wheelbarrow full of brooms and pitchforks. He stopped in the center walkway for everyone to collect their goods.

“Why don’t we each pick a stall and work our way down, I pulled out some wheelbarrows down there.” Each boy came up and grabbed a pitchfork, except for Baekhyun who pulled his own set out after untacking Galina. Ten tried hard not to comment. Baekhyun always had to have the best of everything. For Taeyong, if anything, it intrigued him more than bothered him. He had never met someone so uptight and scornful in their 20s. Trying not to put too much focus into it, Taeyong grabbed a pitchfork along with the other boys and got to work.

For the next two hours, the boys cleaned stalls and tidied the barn in between small talk. Lucas and Taeyong teamed up to clean one side of stalls, seeing if they could beat Mark and Ten on the other side. Meanwhile, Baekhyun kept to himself, often disrupting the strategy the other boys had put in place. Once stalls were finished they congregated into the middle of the aisle to sweep. Sweat now dripping down their foreheads, reeking of sawdust and hay, the boys worked at a much slower pace, throwing back random small talk in between broom strokes. Taeyong, hoping to make the time go by a bit quicker, tried to engage in more meaningful conversation.

“I guess I haven’t asked yet, but how did you all end up here at Sunset Magnolia?” he spoke softly, his voice barely travelling over the noise of the horses and footsteps in the barn. Lucas, still looking down at his broom, answered through sweeping movements. His arm muscles flexed like he had been doing rounds of push ups in between tasks.

“Well, I was actually hobbyless for most of my childhood. I didn’t do much except sit around the house. When I was 15, I started helping out my cousin, Jackson. He’s a delivery driver for a local feed company. So during the day I’d go around with him dropping off hay, and I just fell in love with all the horses. Taemin was always so friendly, and has been ordering feed from Jackson’s store for years, so after pleading with my parents I started lessons about four or five years ago,” Lucas paused sweeping and rested his arm on the top of the broom. “It worked out too because the other barns around here were never accepting new clients, and I’m sure they didn’t want to waste time on a goofy kid like me. But yeah, I started on one of the old lesson horses here, and then a couple years ago Taemin helped me find Gus. Before long I tried out for the Magnolias and here I am” Lucas let out a small smile and looked at Gus, who was sticking his head out of the stall window next to him.

“Yeah, Lucas is actually the first of us to work with Taemin!” Mark exclaimed, following Ten with a large dustpan. “I didn’t start riding until I was 12, but Ten has since as long as I can remember.”

“Yeah I essentially came out of the womb horseback riding,” Ten joked sassily. He was now standing in the middle of the aisle, distracted by conversation. “Mark and I were actually at another barn a couple towns over, but after a while it just wasn’t as fun there. Barn managers changed, and my trainer wasn’t as invested in my riding as I wanted to be. I was also looking for a horse and Mark was taking Annabelle from me.”

“Wait, Annabelle was originally your horse?” Taeyong asked, now entertained by his friends’ histories.

“Yeah, I had Annabelle for quite some time, but she was much better suited for Mark. I need a bit of a challenge,” Ten answered. “I actually found out Taemin was a trainer because I almost bought an old horse here before I found Frida. Funny enough, I was so invested in Taemin’s career at the professional level. I legit had watched him when they aired the Olympic qualifiers, I was like 16 or 17. Then suddenly he wasn’t there….just stopped competing. I know it was some sort of personal matter or something, but to come here and then find out I could be trained by him, I mean I told my parents I was going to train here even if it meant selling my clothes.”

“And you should see how he feels about his clothes,” Mark chimed in, taking a step just far enough away from Ten to avoid any slap or punch in return. Ten rolled his eyes before continuing.

“I mean the fact that Taemin is only a few years older than me and now does ALL this, who wouldn’t want to work with him,” Ten said before throwing the brooms back in the wheelbarrow.

“Yeah, I’ve always wondered how he was able to do all this, but I’m too scared to ask. He doesn’t talk about his Olympic past much, even with us,” Lucas added. Before anyone could chime in further, Baekhyun walked down from the other end of the aisle. The stern look on his face made it clear he had been eavesdropping. Even with cleaning, his riding pants and burgundy mock neck looked unscathed.

“So you’ve asked everyone here where they’re from, but you haven’t said anything about yourself? Would you care to explain?” Baekhyun pressed, shooting his beady brown eyes in Taeyong’s direction. Taeyong’s cheeks blushed, unprepared for the question.

“I….I - I just move a lot,” Taeyong responded. He grabbed the side of his arm, feeling uneasy by Baekhyun’s pressure as he stepped closer to him. Baek smelled of strong cologne, muting out any typical barn smell. He wasn’t much taller than Taeyong, if at all, but his presence was magnified by his arrogance.

“That’s all you’re going to say? Surely you have some story, random boys don’t just show up here with polka dot horses asking -”

“Can you just shut up or fuck off” Ten said, stepping forward as if to shield his friend. Taeyong felt relieved by Ten’s interjection. He was maybe just as intimidating as Baekhyun. His perfectly smooth skin and dancer body was a force to be wreckin with, but at least he was on Taeyong’s side. Just as Baekhyun went to say more, Kai reappeared down the aisle. Baekhyun’s eyes brightened and he turned away, seemingly uninterested in anything else the Magnolia Riders had to say.

“God, I hate him. I’m sorry, Taeyong,” Ten said before wheeling the supplies back to their place. Taeyong stood quiet, trying not to seem frazzled by Baekhyun’s confrontation.

“Hey don’t sweat it, Baekhyun is a menace. The only reason Taemin probably puts up with him is because Baekhyun’s sister was his first client here. Their family has some history here,” Lucas said, resting a hand on Taeyong’s shoulder. Lucas was quite bigger than Taeyong, but his younger charm always felt reassuring.

“Well that, and he probably doesn’t want to piss off his mom. She’s a reporter for the local paper, and she is BRUTAL,” Mark said, now resting against the stall door by Taeyong. “The whole family is nuts.”

“So does he just spend his free time picking on everyone else?” Taeyong asked, trying not to glare at him from down the aisle. His thin frame still shook a bit under his t-shirt, still coming down from the confrontation about his history.

“Pretty much, you’d think at 25 he’d get a job of his own, but why do that when mom and dad will literally shell out money whenever you ask,” Lucas chimed in, finishing up the last bit of sweeping.

As the boys packed up their things, Taemin returned into the barn. His usual red vest was now exchanged for a black hoodie. The boys noticed Ten’s cheeks turn pink, the only noticeable sign of his fluster. He was weak for Taemin in comfy wear, it felt like one of the only times they would ever see him let his guard down. Taemin approached his team and smiled.

“This looks great guys, I know Kai appreciates the help,” he said looking down the aisle at Kai, who was now standing outside Bruno’s stall door talking to Baekhyun. He paused his conversation to speak up.

“Yeah guys, this is really helpful, makes my work much easier tonight.” Kai’s voice was much softer than his looks. Taemin continued his conversation.

“I have one more thing to add before you all go. I was just at the house going through the finances for the team this year, and let me just say, you boys did a great job fundraising. We actually don’t need to pull as much from other sources as I was expecting!” His smile grew wide, and the boys stood a bit taller hearing that information. “On top of that, I think it’s time we try some more group activities. So starting next Wednesday, we will be having full team lessons. That includes you, Baekhyun.”

The boys froze. It had been months since they had to do anything with Baekhyun, let alone train with him. While their reactions were stoic and internal, Baekhyun chose differently. He pushed himself away from Kai and stammered towards Taemin.

“You can’t possibly do this, we have an agreement!” Baekhyun now stood a few feet from Taemin, arms braced by his side. His ears grew hot and his glare hardened.

“Well, we made some changes. This is how it’s going to go if you want to be on this team, Baek,” Taemin responded calmly. Taeyong was surprised at how calm Taemin was after being yelled at in the aisleway. Baekhyun turned away and stomped towards Kai, grabbing his arm and pulling him down the hall.

“You don’t get to call me that anymore!” Baek yelled before dragging Kai out of the barn. Kai shot an uneasy look at Taemin, feeling sorry for him but also not resisting Baekhyun. Taemin rolled his eyes before walking up the stairs in the aisle way to one of the nooks upstairs.

“There’s a lot to unpack here with Kai, Baekhyun, and Taemin. I promise we will get to it,” Mark said quietly, “let’s just wrap up and get out of here.”

“Well this is fucked,” mumbled Ten under his breath. Ten grabbed his backpack and threw Mark the car keys. Lucas tossed his bag over his shoulder, keeping quiet.

“Sorry things had to end the way they did tonight, we’ll see you tomorrow?” Mark asked, staying back with Taeyong for a few moments.

“I’ll be here,” he let out a small smile. Mark turned and lightly jogged towards Lucas and Ten now nearly out the barn doors. Taeyong, on the other hand, took a deep breath before heading to the other end of the barn. His work for the evening was just beginning.

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their-name-is-morgan · 5 years

Note

Ok b so like, I'm gonna try to make this sort of specific, I live for some angst and I live for Abba so like.... Imagine Abba being in one of those days where he just feels like garbage , but then his nice softie s/o visits him and cheers him up and gives him luv bc uwuwuwu. im so awkward at writing this, anyways, it's a scenario if thats ok with u b, and the s/o is a female.

AAAAH B I tried my best to make this turn out decent!! I feel like Leo is extremely OOC and there might be some mistakes here and there, but it’s late and I’m tired...so I’ll fix this in the morning! ;;

I hope you enjoy it anyway, ilysm❤

Il loro segreto

Leone Abbacchio x Fem!Reader❤

Everyone has bad days, and everyone faces them in a different way. There are people like Bruno: he would try his best to help other people overcome their struggles, and seeing their smiling face would make him feel better in an instant. There are people like Fugo: he would allow himself to have a day off, and he’d spend that day doing his favourite things, talking to his favourite people, or even staying alone. And then there are people like Abbacchio.

Leone was a man of few words, he would talk when necessary, and he wasn’t the nicest member of the gang. His face appeared to be in an eternal scowl, with his dark, thin eyebrows furrowed and his lips rarely lifting upwards. One would think that he was a strong, confident man whose only emotions were anger and disgust, but there’s always more to a person than what they let the others see.

Abbacchio was like any other person: some of his days were happy, other ones boring, and other ones bad, upsetting days. On the latter he would isolate himself and even refuse to get out of his bed, too mentally exhausted to interact with other people. He would push them away, and then he’d feel guilty about it. His lips would quiver and his eyes would water, but he’d hold it in.

And that day was one of those days.

(Name) exhaled, her eyes fixed on the last message he had sent: “See you at 9” with a black heart at the end. ‘Edgy’ she thought with a chuckle, but the small smile on her face disappeared as soon as it came. They had agreed on meeting quite early in the morning and, when she noticed that it was pouring outside but his last access remained the same as the previous night’s, she had guessed that the rain wouldn’t have been a problem for him either.

But after an hour of waiting for his arrival in front of the smallest, saddest bookstore in town, she came to a sudden realization: what if something was wrong?

Was he okay? Was the rest of the gang okay? Was her phone being dumb and not showing her his true last messages? She needed to know. She was about to stand up and open her umbrella when she noticed a notification from a different chat: Bruno had just texted her.

‘Would you mind coming over? I know this is sudden, but there’s somebody here who needs you.’ The text read, and her expression twisted into one of concern. It wasn’t the first time that she received a text like that, from either the Capo –whom she considered one of her closest friends- or another one of the guys, and it was not a pleasant thing to read.

She didn’t even bother to reply, instead she started walking towards the Passione residence, which was not that far away from that spot. The rain didn’t stop, making her almost trip at least twice along the way, but she was determined to see her lover’s face and hold him as close as possible.

It didn’t take that long before three knocks on the door snapped Bruno out of his trance; he stood up and made his way to the front door, abandoning the crossword puzzled he had been trying to complete for the past forty minutes on the wooden table.

He slowly opened the door to reveal his friend, umbrella in her right hand and phone in the other, her eyebrows slightly furrowed but a polite smile still present on her face. He motioned to come in and guided her to the couch, where they both sat down;

“So, what happened?” she asked, fidgeting with her hands. He let out a sigh,

“I...will keep it short. You know how Leone can get and now I know he needs extra support that I can’t give him. But please remember, cara; if this is too much for you, if he somehow hurts you with his words or actions...” he paused, cautiously choosing what to say next, “It’s not worth it. He is my friend, but you are too and I wouldn’t want you to think that I agree with everything he says or does.”

She carefully listened, her expression concentrated. She warmly smiled as he finished talking and took his larger hands in hers, grateful for having such a caring and honest friend.

“Bruno, I will follow your advice if anything happens. But I’m pretty sure it won’t,” she reassured him, and he nodded and returned the smile, “Now, he hasn’t left his room has he?”

“He’s been in there since yesterday night. He’d making all of us very worried, (Name).” He confessed, his tone of voice sincere. The girl could only nod and direct her gaze on the flight of stairs leading up to the second floor, where the bedrooms were located.

Unmade bed, window shut, blankets and dirty clothes lazily piled up in a corner of the barely lit room. The smell not bad enough to be unbearable, but enough to make one’s nose wrinkle. The pitter patter of the rain soothed him, but unnerved him at the same time. Was it even possible to feel in such a way?

He sat there, intently staring at the blank, boring wall as if it was the most interesting thing. What else could he have done in his state after all? With his headphones too far away to reach and the overwhelming fatigue that didn’t seem willing to leave him anytime soon, he could only lose heart and sit there, with his back against the bed’s headboard.

His almost lifeless gaze fell upon his phone, which had been resting on his nightstand since the previous night. A feeling of guilt struck him at the thought that he hadn’t shown up for his and (Name)’s date, his chest tightening and a lump forming in his throat. No, he couldn’t cry. What was the point of crying anyway? His eyes alarmingly watered, salty tears threatening to roll down his pale cheeks; he tried to focus on breathing, when a soft, almost inaudible knock made his grip on the thin blanket covering his legs tighten and his eyebrows furrow.

No. He thought, his heart beating faster. Fuck, leave.

Silence. But then, another knock, this time a little bit louder. Who was it, and what did they want? He had harshly declined Bruno’s help earlier that morning, and made it clear that he didn’t want any of the other guys around. Watching Bruno retrieve his hand at his commanding voice made him regret his actions, but then again. What was he expecting from himself?

With his gaze fixed on the door, he flinched when he heard the voice of the person behind it.

“Leo?”

I don’t deserve you. He thought once again, his eyes burning. He suddenly became aware of the state he was in, with his normally silky hair now messy and tangled, tied in a low ponytail, no sign of makeup on his ghost white face, and his embarrassing attire composed by an old, short sleeved shirt –obviously too large for him- and a pair of grey night shorts, his legs exposed and, much to his regret, hairy.

“Leone, I just want to know if you’re okay-“

“I am, now leave.” Please, he wanted to add, before I say something I’ll regret.

He could feel her sighing, trying to come up with something to tell him that could’ve comforted him. But what exactly could’ve possibly made him happier? He had tried to think of something, to do something, but it only ended up hurting him more, making him lay back down, exhausted and ashamed of himself. Just the thought of it made him stomach turn, the thought of his beloved waiting for him under the pouring rain whilst he was laying in bed, frustrated... melancholic.

“Please tell me if there’s something I can do to make you feel better. I know you’re lying, but it’s okay,” a pause. Then shuffling, and the doorknob moved a little, “Can I come in, Tesoro?” she asked. Little did she know that the man was trying his hardest not to break down there, in that exact moment. Or did she? She’d never seen him or talked to him while he was in such a state, usually he would be angry and frustrated, drinking his pain away in the kitchen in the middle of the night, or even in a bar.

Silence means consent, she thought –as much as that sentence could’ve been wrong-, and she dared to open the door, moderately illuminating the chaotic room. He froze, not really sure what to do, if to yell at them or to gather all his strength to stand up and lock the door completely. But he simply stayed still, his chest rising and falling with every shaky breath he took.

“What are you doing here,” he asked, his words ended up sounding more like a statement, though. She slowly stepped inside, her gaze falling upon her handsome boyfriend’s body, partially covered by a thin, cream coloured blanket.

“I’m here to listen to you, what’s going on Leone?” she asked, slowly stepping closer to his bed. He eyed her for a moment, his eyes softening. He wanted to be mad and make her leave, he really did, she wasn’t supposed to see him like this and he deserved to suffer alone. He deserved to listen to all the horrible thoughts that his mind was full of, obsess over them.

He gasped at the light touch of her hand, which was now softly holding his, his long, bony fingers subconsciously intertwining with hers. That simple touch sent a wave of butterflies through his veins, making him shake and choke back a sob.

(Name) promptly took notice of this and sat down beside him, her eyes kind and a warm, welcoming smile on her face.

“You can cry, it’s okay to. Please look at me,” and he did, with tears finally spilling down his face, his cheeks flushed and the muscles of his chin trembling, making his lips quiver. His right hand clutched at hers as if his life depended on it, while his left was clenched in a fist, the knuckles slowly going white. (Name) worriedly moved closer to him, letting her free hand wander behind his head to untie his hair and run her fingers through it.

Tell me everything.

“I am... I don’t know. Fuck, I don’t deserve you-“ a stifled sob, and then he sharply inhaled, “You were waiting for me, but I was here. Being a useless dick even if they wanted to help. I just...” he suddenly stopped, allowing smaller sobs to escape from his parted, soft lips. The girl moved her hand from his hair to his back, pulling him closer so that his head could rest on her shoulder.

Slightly embarrassed by this position as she was the one usually laying her head on his shoulder, he tried to pull away, but her soothing touch and whispers sent a shiver up his spine and made him hold onto her for dear life, weeping and babbling about how he didn’t deserve her, about how he would miss her though if she left, and she thought she heard him say I’m sorry once or twice –and he’d rarely apologize-.

(Name) held him tight, noticing how quiet he was even while shaking and sobbing almost uncontrollably, wetting her cute, slightly elegant shirt. Not that she cared anyway, he was much more important than a stupid shirt.

“Leo,” she whispered at some point, making him blink, more tears rolling down his reddened cheeks, “You deserve so much and you don’t even realize it. I know you blame yourself for a lot of things...” he raised his head, his hair gracefully cascading down his back; their eyes met and (Name) gave him a small smile, which he returned, “But not everything’s your fault.”

He averted his gaze, his breath slowly calming and his shoulders relaxing.

“Hm. Just promise... this whole thing will stay between us,”

She chuckled, and shifted in a more comfortable position so that they could be even closer.

“Of course; now will you eat breakfast with me?”

#jjba #jojo #jojos bizarre adventure #leone abbacchio #abbacchio #jojo abbacchio #abbacchio x reader #vento aureo #golden wind #jojo part 5 #scenario #abbacchio scenario #angst #fluff #fem!reader

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duhragonball · 6 years

Text

JJBA Vento Aureo Reread Ch. 580-594

SPOILERS: Mista let one.

Okay, so last time a whooollle bunch of nonsense happened, but this is all you need to know:

Bruno’s dead (for keeps this time)

Narancia’s dead

Polnareff’s dead (or is he?)

The turtle is dead.

Doppio is dead.

If your Stand picks up one of the Stand Arrows and cuts itself with it, it gets gonzo powerful.

Diavolo (the Boss) tried to use this to his own advantage, but Giorno got the arrow instead.

This is sort of the moment of truth for Diavolo. Right now it’s just down to him, Giorno, Mista, and Trish Una. Mista and Trish appear to be hurt, but it’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, so I can’t tell if they’re mortally wounded or just a little dazed. Neither of them have gotten their tongues cut off, though, so they’re definitely alive.

Assuming they’re still able to fight, I’d like their odds right now, even if Giorno didn’t have the arrow. This was the exact situation Diavolo was worried about when he retreated from Venice. Regardless of whether he could beat six Stand users at once, he didn’t want to risk revealing his face to any one of them, in case they might escape the battle. So he left. Now, he’s only dealing with three Stand Users, but they’ve held their own so far, and they’ve gotten a handle on how to fight King Crimson’s ability. And they know what Divolo looks like. And Trish can sense his presence. And Doppio’s gone, so I think that means Diavolo can’t transform his body like he used to do. He could fight Giorno, Mista and Trish, and possibly win, but how long would it take? How many people would see him fighting these kids in broad daylight? It’s not worth it. Better to withdraw and take heart in the fact that he whittled down their numbers.

That’s if Giorno didn’t have the arrow. Since Giorno does have it, Diaolo’s situation is even more precarious. He won’t get the Arrow back, not here, not now. He doesn’t know what will happen if Giorno uses it, but it won’t help his chances. The smart thing to do is back off, like he did in Venice.

Except Trish won’t let him. The moment he takes a step back, she calls out to Giorno, warning him that Diavolo’s trying to escape. She’s not speculating, because she can sense him backing away, and by now they all know the Boss’s tactics. If he can’t ambush you now, he’ll go into hiding and wait for another chance to ambush you later.

I don’t know if Trish was trying to goad Diavolo into standing his ground, or if she was just worried about what might happen if he got away. I’m not sure if Giorno even needed her warning, but I like her moment of defiance here. This whole story has been about the Boss trying to kill his own daughter, and now he’s trying to walk away without finishing the job. Deliberately or not, Trish is reminding him that she’s a danger to him no matter what he does or where he goes.

Whether Trish was trying to manipulate him or not, Diavolo decides that he can’t run away this time. It’s like I was saying before when he sicced Cioccolata on the Roman public. At that point, he stopped being the Boss of Passione, because he had completely abandoned any pretense of leadership. By indiscriminately killing large swaths of people, including his own men, in order to kill Trish and Polnareff, the Boss was putting his personal obsessions ahead of his organization. Now, at long last, he seems to have figured that out. If he leaves now, after having done all these shameful things, only to run away in defeat, he’ll be turning his back on everything he’s built. Yeah, his survival is at stake, but so is his pride. So he decides to stand his ground and see what’ll happen.

Turns out, he likes what he sees, since his precognitive powers show Giorno using the arrow on Gold Experience, only for it to have no effect. So this is Diavolo’s big chance. He can kill Giorno, take the arrow, and he’s won.

Only it doesn’t work that way. When he attacks Gold Experience, its head cracks open to reveal another Stand inside, and then the arrow burrows inside its arm. I should point out that this isn’t too different from what happened when Polnareff used the arrow on Silver Chariot. Chariot seemed to melt away, only to reappear in a new form. What Diavolo saw in his forecast was just the calm before the storm. As Bruno observed back in Venice, King Crimson can only see a few seconds into the future. While that’s a powerful advantage, it also limits his perspective.

So Diavolo is now double-secret-screwed. It’s possible that he might still be able to escape, but probably not. Gold Experience Requiem flicks a stone at Diavolo’s, which shoots through King Crimson’s hand, into a wall, with enough force to break it. Then the stone turns into a scorpion and lunges after Diavolo, stinging his hand. I’m pretty sure the message here is that Giorno has Diavolo beaten in terms of range and power. He can pick him apart at a distance, which suggests to me that Diavolo can’t get away now.

But Diavolo still likes his chances. He’s impressed with G.E.R’s speed, but he was still able to survive the attack thanks to his precognition, so he bets that this is just a power-up of Gold Experience’s original abilities, and nothing more. Diavolo leaps toward Giorno and uses King Crimson, allowing him to get the drop on him and avoid Giorno’s next move. As an extra precaution, he splatters his own blood on the eyes of Giorno and G.E. Requiem, just in case anything goes wrong, and he forsees that he’ll punch Giorno through the heart, which will kill him instantly. All he needs to do is erase the next few seconds and land his sucker punch.

Only it doesn’t work. From Diavolo’s perspective, when he uses King Crimson, it’s like he can see an overlay of everyone’s movements over the next several seconds. This time, that overlay runs backwards, and Diavolo finds himself right back where he started before he activated King Crimson’s ability.

Put simply, Gold Experience Requiem cancelled King Crimson’s time erasure. Instead of allowing him to skip ahead several seconds and ambush Giorno, it’s like Diavolo never even used King Crimson at all, and he’s just standing there where he was before he tried to use it. Gold Experience Requiem itself tries to explain this, but I still don’t quite get the principle here. King Crimson can’t attack Giorno, that much is plain, but I don’t quite get why that should be.

The result of all of this is that Diavolo’s a sitting duck while he tries to make sense of this. He saw a forecast of himself killing Giorno, but that cannot happen, not if Gold Experience Requiem can cancel out his Stand Ability. It’s a complete contradiction, and while he’s struggling with that, there’s nothing he can do to stop Giorno from coming after him.

At first, it just looks like Giorno punched him a bunch of times and knocked him into the Tiber River. That would be enough to win the day, if Giorno became immune to King Crimson long enough to just beat Diavolo to a pulp. Except they can’t find his body.

This makes Trish worried, but I didn’t realize just how worried until the second read-through. Remember, Trish can sense Diavolo’s presence. She isn’t just afraid that he may have survived. She knows for a fact that he is alive.

Giorno tries to reassure her that he can’t return from whatever Gold Experience Requiem did to him, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense, and Giorno doesn’t really understand it himself. That’s gotta suck for Trish, though, since she can sense her dad no matter what happened to him. I assume she accepts Giorno’s judgement on the matter, and she must have eventually made peace with this seeming contradiction, but I’m left with the impression that she’ll be able to sense her father’s life force for the rest of her life. That’s supposed to only work at a certain distance, so maybe she can avoid Rome and it won’t bug her as much, but I’m not sure Diavolo’s location can be confined to a single city anymore.

What’s happened-- as I understand it-- is that Gold Experience Requiem essentially banished Diavolo from reality. Now he’s trapped in a never-ending loop of possible death scenarios, each one ending with his violent demise. I don’t know if he even has access to King Crimson at this point, but I suspect it wouldn’t do him any good. Basically he’s stuck in the movie Groundhog Day, except instead of waking up in a hotel rooom, he wakes up in some random place and gets brutally murdered or hit by a car within minutes.

I really like this fate for Diavolo, because it’s a twisted version of his own ambition. He wanted to erase his past and protect his anonymity, and now he’s trapped in a sitaution where he’s completely cut off from reality. No one he encounters seems to recognize him, and he has no past or future. He only sticks around long enough to get killed, and then the reset button gets hit. No one can possibly help him, because no one knows what’s happened, and no one knew the Boss well enough to notice he’s missing. Passione considers it an act of war to even look for the Boss, so how could anyone even think of trying to rescue him from this predicament?

Also, it’s just a powerful image to see him shrieking in terror at a little girl. Before, he was the one ambushing people whenever it suited his purposes, and now he’s in this panoramic minefield, unsure where the danger will strike from next.

As far as what exactly Gold Experience Requiem is, or how it works, I’ll try to explain it the way I see it. Everything I’ve read about it talks about how it “cancels all abilities to zero” or some other word salad that sounds like translation errors instead of observation. There may be some truth to it, but I don’t think the wording is useful.

Polnareff said the Requiem power allowed his Stand to dominate souls. We saw this when Silver Chariot Requiem created all those little light globes behind everyone’s heads, and it was only defeated when the Boss and Bruno attacked those globes instead of Requiem directly. When a Stand User attacked Requiem, their Stand would turn on them. Polnareff believed that this was only a small sample of Requiem’s power, implying that it could do a lot more if properly controlled. The first time he activated Silver Chariot Requiem, he took the arrow back fairly quickly, before he could see the full effects of the power, and the second time it happened, the Stand went on autopilot, possibly carrying out the alien will of whoever created the metal in the arrows.

Gold Experience Requiem represents what would happen if a healthy Stand User used the same power while maintaining control over the Stand. Presumably, Giorno was able to direct Requiem’s power in a way that Polnareff could not. But I think the basic power remains the same: Requiem can dominate souls. So whatever Gold Experience Requiem did to Diavolo, it must have been an effect upon his soul, rather than some sort of cheap power up, as Diavolo erroneously assumed.

That makes some sense, in that Stands in JoJo are considered to be manifestations of the users’ souls, so it makes some sense that G.E.R.’s power would interfere with King Crimson’s ability and nullify his attack, just as Silver Chariot Requiem was able to turn Stands against their users.

However, in addition to this, Chariot Requiem was able to alter people’s souls and transform their bodies, so it follows that Gold Experience Requiem must have had a similar power, which it used against Diavolo. Only instead of moving his soul into someone else’s body, it trapped his soul in some sort of “prison”, where he would be permanently cut off from the real world. Where Silver Chariot Requiem acted upon Polnareff’s wish to protect the arrow, Gold Experience Requiem acted upon Giorno’s wish to bring the Boss to justice, and that’s why Diavolo’s captivity turned out to be such a fitting punishment for him.

This is why Diavolo’s forecast of him killing Giorno never came true. What he saw is what would have happened if G.E.R. hadn’t banished him from reality. Once that sentence was executed, King Crimson’s predictions would no longer have meaning, because Diavolo would be cut off from having any effect on the course of events.

And that gels with the theme of cause vs. effect that’s defined Giorno’s conflict with the Boss. The Boss is all about the results. He wants to have all this power and influence, but he despises the past events that got him to that point, so he tries to eliminate all the evidence of his rise to prominence. Giorno is all about his dream. He causes things to happen, and inspires others to fight for his cause, but we never really see definitive outcomes of his quest. Yeah, he beat the Boss, but there’s a lot we don’t know about what happens next.

So Diavolo’s great crime against fate was in trying to game the system and bypass cause and deny cause in order to manipulate the effect. Giorno’s judgement against Diavolo was to remove him from reality, where he could no longer shape the course of events at all. Instead, Diavolo is trapped in some pocket reality where he’s incapable of experiencing any outcomes at all. He gets killed, but he’s not allowed to die. One scenario has no bearing on the next one. Prediction of the future is meaningless, and so is memory of the past. They no longer exist for him.

Perhaps that’s Trish’s consolation. She only wanted the Boss dead because she believed that was the only way to stop him from doing terrible things. Over time, she might come to accept that his reign of terror has ended, and the fact that he remains alive won’t bother her as much. He’s on the outside, unable to look in, and eventually, she might find satisfaction in this.

From here, we get into the Sleeping Slaves “Epilogue”, which is actually just a prequel story about Mista investigating a sculptor with the Stand ability to predict people’s deaths. I didn’t like this the first time around, and I’m not much fonder of it now either. The only real takeaway is that Mista rescued Bruno from dying to the sculptor’s Stand, but the sculptor warned that this would only delay the inevitable and Bruno would die some other way later, along with Narancia and Abbacchio. Well that’s great, but we already knew that. The implication is that Mista had some forewarning of his comrades’ deaths in Part 5, and once he realizes Bruno is dead, that prophecy will probably hit him like a ton of bricks. But the sculptor wondered if Bruno and his team were serving a greater purpose by denying fate, and their suffering would bring about a greater good. I still would have rather seen what happened to Fugo, and no, Purple Haze Feedback doesn’t count. Araki had like fifty pages to cover that in the manga itself, and instead he blew them on Mista chasing big stone balls around Naples.

Hey, remember Polnareff? Well he’s still in the turtle’s body, only now he’s a ghost living in the turtle’s Stand? So, is he still controlling the turtle’s body, or is the turtle somehow survive being in Polnareff’s corpse for all that time? Also, why would Polnareff want to live on as a ghost? He acts like he put a lot of thought into this, but he’s only been in this situation for less than a day.

Trish decides that she doesn’t mind Mista’s B.O. so much anymore. I thought this might be the beginning of their making some sort of love connection, but now I’m wondering if this is just Trish’s character development on display. With the Boss defeated, she’s finally safe, and she’s starting to loosen up around Mista and Giorno. Giorno’s not in such a celebratory mood, because he and Polnareff know that Bruno’s dead. The last we see of Trish is her going along with Mista to find Bruno’s body in the Coliseum, fully expecting him to be injured but alive. We know they’re in for a bitter disappointment, but we don’t actually get to see that moment.

Similarly, the last we of Giorno is him apparently in control of Passione. It’s what he wanted from the beginning, but we have no way of knowing whether it’s working out the way he intended. He’s got Mista with him, and the turtle, but it’s possible that Polnareff’s moved on to the afterlife by now, and Giorno had it stuffed as a souvenir. We also don’t know what became of Trish. From what I’ve read, she became a pop star in Purple Haze Feedback, which sounds kind of sketchy to me, since I’d rather see her become involved with the gang, if only to stay in touch with Giorno or Mista. But those are the main two options for the character. Either she goes off on her own to start a new life, free from the gang’s influence, or she joins the gang to stay close to the other surviving cast members. Everyone can guess, but Part 5 itself has no comment.

And that’s the main thing I’ve taken away from this reading. The ambiguity of Part 5 is a feature, not a bug. There’s a lot of details that just don’t get closure, and a lot of character traits that the reader has to interpolate from the information given. Part 2 or Part 4 would tell us exactly what happened to Trish, or how Giorno is handling Passione, but Part 5 wants us to answer that question for ourselves. This is probably why none of these characters appeared in Part 6. I’m starting to think it wasn’t just an oversight; Araki deliberately chose to never so much as hint at how things turned out for these three. Even if Giorno had shown up in a single panel in Stone Ocean, that would have told the audience that he was still alive, and Araki refused to give that away. That’s my guess anyway.

#jojo's bizarre adventure #vento aureo #vento aureo reread #spoilers #giorno wins the house cup #dumbledore awarded eleven hundred points to gryffindor on the last page #good night springton #there will be no encore

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neofrack · 6 years

Photo

The Memory He Choose Not to Remember

Judy run along side the nurses who pushed the emergency bed with Nick lying on it.

Nick please hang on, Judy thought. When they finally got into the operating room, one of the nurses stops her.

"This is as far as you go ma'am, please wait patiencely for the procedure to be done" The nurse said before closing the door.

Judy sit in one of the seat in front of the operating room, she was still in shock after what happened.

"Hopps" a voice distract her from her thought

Judy looked at the source of the voice and sees chief bogo standing in the hallway.

"Report" The chief ordered

Judy tells him everything including her reason why she was in there.

"Hopps, I handed you over to him to prevent his suicidal mission like this, not to join it !" The chief shouted at her.

"I'm sorry sir, I'm aware of my mistake, I will take responsibility and accept all the consequences that are given to me" she said in a trembling voice

Bogo sighed after he notice her condition, no matter how brave Judy is, she still naïve and probably traumatize after all she's been trough. Just like him, bogo thought of a certain fox.

"It's not all your fault, you both are just at the wrong place and time"

Judy still looked empty even after he said that. Not wanting another one of his officers falls, he spoke.

"Hopps, I know that this must be hard for you, but I want you to make this a lesson, don't be like Nick"

Judy attention was drawn by that last sentence.

"What do you mean?" She asked

Bogo thingking it for a moment and decided to tell her.

"Nick used to be like you, but something happened and it changes him to the way he is right now"

"Let me tell you a story" he continued to do what he has not done before for 10 years straight.

Nick is standing in front of the door he's very fond of for a long time. The door to his dream. The door to Zootopia Police Departement. Becoming a police officer has been Nick's dream since he was little. Most mammals says that it's hard to become a police officer, let alone for a fox. Nick just happened to be one of them. Foxes often stereotyped Sly and Untrustworthy, so it's more difficult for him to get into the force. But even after hearing all of that, Nick doesn't give up. Now, all of his hardwork has payed off as he open the door in front of him.

Finally ! he thought as he looked around and amazed how big the inside is. The view of the reception desk brought him back to reality. Right, gotta work first, Nick thought. He approach it and sees a honey badger reading some file report behind the desk.

"Excuse me" Nick said

The badger then sees Nick, she seems not care at all but Nick notices her slight expression change.

"What do you want ?" The badger asked

"I'm looking for the bullpen, can you tell me where it is ?" Nick asked back

"Go straight from here, and turn right" The badger answered

"Thanks" Nick thanked as he followed the badger instruction.

Well, that went well, Nick thought

When he got into the bullpen, stares from all the mammals in the room welcome him, looking at the smallest officer. Nick nervously walked to an empty seat that located in the middle of the room.

"Atten hut !" The tiger in the front shout a few moment after nick sit.

A buffalo then proceed to enter the room, followed by all the officer stand up.

"All right, everyone sit" the chief ordered

"We got some new face here today, but who cares" the chief continued

The mammals in the rooms then started chukling. Nick didn't bother at that and keep a straight face.

"Assigntments ! officer paul, Ralph undercover, Ronald, boris, sahara square patrol, Wolfe Bruno central patrol, and finally Wilde" he looked at Nick for a moment.

"Parking duty, dismissised !" said the chief as he walked out of the room.

Nick can't believe what he just hear.

Parking duty ? is that even a job in here ? Nick thought as he's upset.

"Don't worry rookie, the chief always does that to a newcomer" said a voice from behind

Nick turned around to see a wolf with a Black fur standing.

"You must be Nick Wilde right ? I'm wolfe" wolfe said as he offer a handshake.

Nick shake wolfe hands.

"I can't believe they hire a fox, I mean it must be hard for just to applicate into the academy!"

Nick remember the moments he struggle when he aplicated.

"Yeah it was" nick acknowledge

"But here you are, I'm impressed" praised wolfe

Nick feels a combination of proud and shy when he hears that.

"Thanks" Nick thanked

"Well don't stop know, you still got a long way if you wanna be a real police officer" wolfe said as he walks away, leaving Nick alone.

"Ugh…" Nick said as he looked into the mirror.

He's looking at the vest he wearing. Do I have to wear this ? , Nick thought. Nick always prioritized his appearance because he has been taught so. Now when he forced to wear something ridiculous, his confidence is decreasing. What could be worse than this, Nick wondered as he walks out of the locker room. What he doesn't know, a special vehicle for him is waiting to be found.

"Wilde, Wolfe Sahara square patrol"

After a month being a "meter maid", this is the first time Nick got a different assignment. Nick's look so happy he's finally free from parking duty. And what's best is he get to be partnered with Wolfe, the only nice mammals he knows in the force.

"Hey, rookie, looks like we're together" wolfe said from behind

"Yeah !" Nick Agreed

"Wow, look at you, all fired up, finally free huh ? grab what you need, I'll be waiting in the cruiser" Wolfe said

Nick getting more exited when he hears that last word.

Farewell joke mobile, Nick thought.

"is it really this boring ? " asked Nick

"Well, it usually is" Wolfe answered

They have been patrolling for hours now but there's no crime or suspicious activity occurred. They decided to take a break in some diner. Nick sighed while he's stirred his food.

"What's the difference between this and parking duty ? " Nick complained

"Hey, cheer up, there's still time until the afternoon, if you lucky you might be able to do stuff ….." Wolfe said as he sees something in afar.

"In fact, you'll maybe able to do it right now" he continued while pointing out to something outside.

Nick follow his gaze and sees a suspicious pig and hyena carefully look at their surrounding and heading into an alleyway.

"Follow my lead" said Wolfe as he put money in the table and proceed to approach the alleyway. Nick nod and follow him.

"Wait" Wolfe whisper when they reached the alley. Wolfe take a peak from outside and see the mammals.

"Let's hear them out first" he whispered to Nick

Nick hearing is not good as Wolfe's but he can still hear the mammals talked

"Do you get it ?" Nick assumed that was the hyena

"Of course, when I ever did not bring your order"

"Show it to me"

"This little thing can make you goes straight to heaven and comeback"

"That's our cue" Wolfe said as he walk in to the alleyway

"Fellas !" Both the hyena and the pig eyes widened as Wolfe and Nick make an appearance in front of them.

"Can I join your conversation ?" Wolfe smiled

Without thinking they ran away from Wolfe heading to the other end of the alley.

"Stop !" Wolfe chased them followed by Nick.

Unexpectedly by Wolfe or Nick, the mammals they chase split up ahead, the pig goes left and the hyena goes right.

"Get the hyena, I got the pig" Ordered Wolfe

Nick turns right and sees the hyena still running ahead.

"ZPD! Stop !" Nick shouted

The hyena then take a turn into another alleyway to lose him. Nick follows to the alley when he sees something coming toward him. He's not reacting fast enough to dodge as he was thrown back by the hyena.

"So long Fox !" The hyena shout as he continued running

Nick tried to chase him again, but he still dizzy from before. When he finally recover, the hyena is no longer in his sight. Wolfe arrived a few minutes later bringing the pig in cuff. He sees Nick expression and seems to know what happened.

"Once a rookie, always a rookie" Wolfe mock as he smiled playfully.

Nick cursed himself for failing at his first chase.

Nick enjoyed his life. Eight months in the force feels so fast. He has become best friend with Wolfe as the chief partnered them both so often. But Nick didn't know all of that is gonna end soon.

Nick and Wolfe is doing daily patrol when the Intercom started to buzzing.

"all unit, We got an emergency call from 19th street in sahara square"

19th street ? That's not far from here, Nick thought.

"This is unit 8, we'll check it out honey" as he drove away

"Copy that" Honey confirmed through the intercom

When they arrived, Nick eyes widened when he looked at the house in front of him. Compared to his place, this house is like a giant castle.

Wolfe walked to the front door and knocked it a couple of times.

"ZPD, we're here to help" he asked

There is no answer at first.

"ZPD, open up "

The door then opened revealing a tiger wearing a dark brown shirt and a black trouser.

"Can I help you officer ?" the tiger asked

"We've received an emergency call from this location, is there any problem happening sir ? " wolfe asked

The tiger then stare at Wolfe for a few seconds. Nick can see a little smirk has formed in his face.

"Yes, there was a burglar came into my house before, when I called the ZPD though, he ran away" said the tiger

"Mind if we check the scene ?"

"Not at all, come in" said the tiger

"He break in from a window on the second floor, then come out on the door over there" The tiger pointed the door.

"Can you show me the window he breaks in ? " wolfe asked

"Sure, come with me" the tiger answered

"Nick, check that door" wolfe ordered

Wolfe then walk upstairs with the tiger leaving nick alone. Nick proceed to the door which wolfe told him to check. He's appearently in the living room, since there was so many furniture lying around. Wow, the owner must be really rich, Nick thought as he looked at the expensive furniture. Seems fine, nick thought as he checks the door . His attention then drawn to a thread that was stuck on the edge of the door.

Where is this coming from ? , thought Nick while he follow the thread. It leads him to a closet not far from the door. When he opened it, his eyes widened. A female zebra was lying on the closet with her head bleeding.

"Ma'am are you okay ?"

She's not answering.

She seems to be unconscious, but why would he be…., It took a few moment for Nick to realize what is happening. The sound of something broke coming from the upstairs, returns Nick back to reality.

"Wolfe !" said Nick as he rushes upstairs

Nick saw wolfe lying on the ground in one of the room upstairs. He draw his tranquilizer out and carefully approach. He scanned the room wolfe is in and don't seems to find the tiger. He checked Wolfe pulse, and find that he still alive. Nick looks around wolfe body was pieces of a broken vase. It looks like he's been hit from behind, Nick thought. Nick then proceed to call backup when a sting comes from his back. He looked at it and sees a dart sticking out of his back. His vision is started to blurred, as his body is slowly limp. Nick then realize wolfe tranquilizer has been gone as he falls to the ground.

"Good night, officer"

The last thing he see is the tiger approaching them before the world around him turns black.

"Nick ! hey Nick !" a voice wake nick up

Nick groaned as his eyes trying to see the surrounding environtment.

"You okay Nick ?"

Nick looked at his right, and find wolfe beside him with his hand cuffed to a steel pipe behind his back. He then realize he himself has been cuffed as well by trying to moved his hand and failed.

"It was the tiger, Nick, all along" Wolfe said to him

"Yeah, I figured" Nick agreed

"Where do you think we are ?" Wolfe asked

"I don't know" he answered

Nick then looked around. He's in some kind of room, there are no windows at all, there are 2 doors on this room that located on his right and left. In front of him there's a stairs. Beside him there's wolfe and the female zebra he looked before lying unconsciously on the ground with his hand and feet tied with a rope.

"That's the real house owner" Nick tells wolfe

"You found out and still got caught anyway? What a rookie" Wolfe mock

"Hey, don't blame me, I priotized my partner condition who stupidly got hit from behind" nick counter mock

"Ah seems like you both awake" a voice come from the front. It was the tiger, slowly descent the stairs.

"Do you know that kidnapping is a serious crime especially if you kidnapped two police officers ?" Wolfe asked

"Oh I very much know officer, but if no one knews about it, what could happen ?" The tiger said as he smile

"The others officers will notice our disappearance and look for us !" Nick said

"Well good luck to them, we're in someplace where nobody will find, officer, trust me, I been doing this for years now" The tiger reply

Nick and Wolfe surprised when they hear the last part

"Wait, what were you doing ?" Nick asked

"You'll see" the tiger answered as he dragged the unconscious zebra by her feet to the door on the left.

"What are you gonna do to her ?" Wolfe asked

The tiger then opened the door on the left. The smell of rotten immidiatelly strike their nose. Inside of it was dark, so they couldn't see the whole room, but the back of the door tells them what they needed to know. Dried blood covered the back of the door almost on the whole thing.

"Hey ! Stop !" wolfe struggling to get his hand free.

"Please wait for your turn, okay" the tiger said as he entered the room dragging the female zebra along, and closes the door.

"Son of a bitch !" Cursed wolfe

They both found out the room was not soundproof as they can heard the tiger whistle . Nick and Wolfe then imagine what's happening there in horror accompanied by the Whistle and an unidentified sound.

After a few hours, the doors opened again revealing the tiger in brand new clothes and holding something that looked like a cloth in his hand.

"What did you do !" Wolfe shouted to the tiger

The tiger smiled and come closer to them

"Do you really want to know ?"

Nick then sees the cloth in his hand, it has white with a black strip all over it. Then, he realize that was not a cloth at all.

"You skinned Her" Nick said while his eyes widened

"Well, looks like we got some detective over here" The tiger looks at Nick

"You sick bastard !" Wolfe shout

"Shout all you want officer, nobody gonna hears you down here"

"Down here ? So we're underground then" nick said

The tiger expression changes a little when nick says that.

"I'm impresses fox, you really are that keen aren't you ? Said the tiger

"Too bad I'm not interested in you, as the reason i took you just because you sees my face, but this one..." He turns to face wolfe

"A black furred wolf….what a rare color, your going to look nice on my collection"

Both Nick and Wolfe doesn't have to be a detective to know what's that mean.

"You can't be…" Nick said in horror

"Over my dead body" Wolfe said

"Oh, I will officer, just not now" the tiger said as he walked to the room in right.

He opened the door, and turns on the light. This time he's not bothering to close the door. Nick and Wolfe can see the fur of mammals displayed on the wall. They can see the tiger hanging a new one in the wall. After the tiger finished his business, he then get out of the room, turn off the light and close the door.

"How many have you kill for that ?" Nick asked

"49" the tiger answered

"And the 50 is gonna be a blast" as he looked to wolfe and smiled

"Fuck you" Wolfe cursed

"See you tomorrow officers" the tiger said as he climbed the stairs leaving the two officers alone.

"Wolfe, im…."

"Stop it Nick, it's not your fault, instead of apologizing, why don't you help me find a way outta here"

Nick looked at wolfe face, his face is still showing anger from before, but nick can see a little fear on it.

"Okay" nick agreed

They been trying for hours to get off their bound, but the result is not great. Their wrist is started to bleed because of the struggle.

"Shit, this pipe won't come off" Wolfe said in anger

Nick stopped trying. Imagining what would happen if they don't make it out of here.

"Hey Wolfe, are we going to die here?" Nick said in depression

"What ?! are you giving up? What happen to Nick Wilde?" Wolfe asked In anger

"One thing I always liked from you….." as he pull the pipe

"that you. Never. Give up !" as wolfe said that last word, the pipe behind him comes off

"YES !" Wolfe shouted in victory

"Now…." He moved his tied arm in the back to the forward through his leg.

"We just have to get that damn pipe off you" continued wolfe as he picked up the loose pipe and started to pull nick pipe. The pipe in nick back fall off easier because of that. He do the same thing as wolfe moving his arm forward.

"Let's get out of here" wolfe said as they both carefully climbing the stairs.

When they reach the top of the stairs, a door appear in front of them. Wolfe opened it as quietly as possible only to find no one's is on the location except them. They realize they are in some kind of abandoned store as there are shelves around that is empty. They looked outside and notice there's a snow everywhere.

"Looks like we're in thundratown" Nick said

"No shit Sherlock, Come on" Wolfe mock

He open the door to outside, just a few steps later, a mechanical sound was heard from below Wolfe followed by his cries of pain.

"Argghh"

"Wolfe!"

Nick looked at Wolfe left leg and see a bear trap has attached on it.

"Oh god" nick said in horror when he sees it.

"That bad huh ?" Wolfe said in pain

"Maybe I can get it off" nick said as he tried to release the bear trap

"Arrrghhh stop! Nick" Wolfe cries in pain

"I'm sorry" he immediately stop what he's doing

Nick panicked, as he don't know what to do.

"It seems like I can't go with you Nick"

"What ?! no! I'm not leaving you !"

"You have to, or he will catch us both"

"What about you ? you'll die freezing !"

"I'm a wolf Nick, i can at least survive this cold with my fur, just hurry up and get help before that bastard took it from me"

Doubt appeared on nick face, and Wolfe saw that.

"Please Nick, do it for me" he pleaded to Nick

That sentence decided off Nick decision.

" don't you die on me Wolfe" Nick said as he started to run

"Thank you" Wolfe said as he look at nick running leaving him alone in the cold

Nick doesn't know how far he has run. When he finally sees houses, he knocked the nearest door and asked for help. Even though he's still wearing his uniform, a fox with a cuffed hand is what mammals is usually avoid. He keep moving from house to house to get help but the all the doors didn't open, until one of the door opened and revealing a bear.

"Sir, I need your help, please" Nick pleaded

" Are you sure you're not tricking me ?" the bear asked

"Please sir, I'm an officer of the law, and my friend need help" Nick pleades once more

The bear looked at Nick face and sees that he's telling him the truth.

"Fine, get in" The bear said

"I need your phone"

"Here" the bear give him his phone

Nick then immediately calls the ZPD.

"ZPD, what's your emergency?" honey asked

"HONEY !" nick shouted

"Nick ? Where have you been, we've been trying to locate you since you and Wolfe gone missing"

"I need Backup immediately, Wolfe hurts and been separated from me !"

"Okay, where are your location ?"

"Snowy hills in Thundratown ! please be quick" Nick pleaded

"We're coming as soon as possible"

10 minutes later, the backup has arrived on the bear house. The chief is with them, founding Nick inside the house fatigued and lying on the ground.

"God, what happen Wilde ?" The Chief asked as he looked at nick condition

Nick tries to get up, but fail, the other officers then help him.

"Wolfe, he's still in danger" nick said

"Where is he ?" asked the chief

"An abandoned store west from here"

"Allright let's go" he ordered the other officers

"Wait chief, I'll come with you"

"No Wilde, you need to rest and recover, we'll take care of this" The chied ordered

"Please Chief" Nick pleaded

"Fine, let's go"

Because of his condition, Nick is having a hard time to walk and get in to the cruiser. They started to going west. In the road there are no building at all, just snow every where. Nick doesn't believe that he was able to run that far when he backtracked with this cruiser. After a few minutes Nick can see the abandoned store in the distance.

"There chief" Nick pointed

When they finally arrived, Nick heart shed. Wolfe was knowere to be seen, The only thing left from before is his blood and the bear trap.

"No….." Said Nick

"What's wrong ?" the chief asked

"Wolfe, he's supposed to be there !" Nick cried

"Calm down Wilde, stay here, were going to check the perimeter" The chief said as he get out of the car

Nick didn't protest at all as he can't move his body. He can't believe Wolfe gone. What happened to him ?, Nick thought. He's imagining the worst case scenario, where the tiger found him, and take him somewhere else.

I left him to die.

Nick condition is at it's limit, he's losing consciousness as the world around him turns black slowly.

I left him to die.

Nick woke up in a bed. He looked around to see a mammals standing beside him.

"Oh you're awake" Said the mammals

When nick focused his view, he sees the mammals is a female hippo wearing a nurse clothes.

Nick realize he was In a hospital.

"What happened ?" Nick asked

"I don't know the details, but you come here carried by the other officers last night"

Nick tries to remember what's the last thing he do. Then he remembered it all.

"Wolfe !" as nick tried to get up, but failed because of the pain

"Stop mr Wilde, you have to rest in bed" The nurse told him

"Is the other officers still here ? I need to talk with them" Nick said

"Yes, the buffalo told me to tell him as soon as you wake up, please wait here" The nurse said as he exited the room.

A few minutes later the chief get in to the room.

"Wilde, how are you feeling?" the chief asked

"Where's Wolfe ? did you find him ?"

The chief expression answer it all for nick.

"No….." Nick said with disbelievement

"We already search everything around it, There was a faint traces of a car but it ended when it got to the road, We found what's in the underground of the store, Wilde I need you to tell me everything that's hapenned"

Nick is trapped in his own thought after he hears the bad news.

I left him to die.

"Wilde ? are you listening ?" the chief asked

I left him to die.

The chief notice his expression.

"I'm sorry Wilde, I understand if you need sometime alone, I'll be back later" The chief said as he exited the room

Nick is alone again in his room, mourned the loss of his partner.

Whopps, too long

I made Nick past with Different text format in microsoft word for the reader to be able to recognize that it happen in the past, but it seems like tumblr can’t change the text format, so i make it Italic instead. And for you who wonder why is there so many timeskips, it's because the story seems to be told by the bogo even though it is not. Not because i’m lazy to describe those boring scenes.

Well, until the next chapter.....

that would probably be late, cause unlike this chapter and the second chapter, the next one is not ready both the cover and the story.

First

#Zootopia #zoomania #zootropolis #zootopia fanart #Nick Wilde #judy hoops #wildehopps #fox #bunny #art #fanart #myart #fanfiction #fanfic #AU #Veteran Detective AU

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royal-tutoring · 6 years

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Licht's Bad Hair Day

(Story originally submitted by an anonymous user)

--this frightful tale has it's beginning in the Weisburg Palace, the usual spot you'd find four troublesome princes. They get up to all sorts of trouble, but today holds a completely different kind of 'trouble'..

The time is 11 30 in the morning and it's time for Heine's morning lessons. Bruno arrives early, as expected of a man who loves to study under his Master. Next is Kai, looking as carefree as ever. Eventually, after a time of waiting, Heine decides to go check on the heavily late Prince Leonhard & Licht. Both haven't shown up for their lesson--

Heine: *politely knocks on the door of Leonhard* Pardon my intrusion, my prince. It is time for your morning lesson..*carefully enters*

Ah. I see. So that is where you have been...*the bedsheets of the prince's bed is rising up slowly and falling at about the same speed. A loud snoring accompanies this phenomenon. Heine decides to pull the sheets, revealing a sleeping prince* My prince, it is lesson time. Please wake from your slumber.

Leonhard: Mmmnn....five more minutes--?

(Heine: *chibi* You are over ten minutes late!)

*the lazy Leo eventually rises from his eternal sleep as Heine heads for Licht's room, it is obviously his because he has placed a large heart sticker on his door that says so

the little professor knocks on the door and awaits a response before heading inside*

Heine: Prince Licht? *attempts to enter but the door has been locked for some mysterious reason* (Hm? Locked?)

..Prince Licht. May I enter? It is about--

Licht: N-no!! Don't come in!! Uhhh....just..pass whatever it is under the door, thanks!

Heine: I cannot pass an entire lesson under the door. That would be impossible. Please come out, your brothers are waiting patiently (although Leonhard may have dozed back off to sleep)

Licht: I--........f-fine...*grumble grumble*

*click! the door opens and Heine's eyes widen at the horrific sight of..

Licht's tangled and dirty-looking hair!! It comes as a shock to him, he steps back, giving the prince his personal space*

Heine: How did this happen, I wonder.

Licht: Be quiet! You can't tell anyone, I'll be humiliated. Just give me a little bit, I was tryna fix it when you interrupted me. I'll brush it a little bit and then take a bath, g-go start the lesson without me! Tell them I'm still sick!

Heine: You only just recovered, and they saw you prancing around just last night. You cannot avoid this situation, it seems. I shall go explain to them what has happened *turns around to walk away, but is grabbed*

Licht: N-no! Please spare me, Heine..*sob sob*

Heine: *stares and shrugs off the boy's grasp sternly, he continues to walk down the hall* Join us when you are ready, but do not take too long.

*30 minutes into the lesson and still no appearance from Licht*

Bruno: *focusing on work and nothing else*

Kai: *nodding off slowly* .....A..ah!....have..to...stay awake...mmnn....

Leonhard: Still no Licht, huh? I wonder where he is...

Heine: Prince Licht is having hair prob--

*the door is slammed open once again (and just after it had been repaired after the 'A Bet Between Two Brothers' story..) by a furious Licht with a makeshift hair solution atop his head (I will leave what this solution is to your imagination)*

Bruno: *looks up from papers, eyes looking dry and sore* ..Licht, what is that monstrosity that has defiled your head?

Licht: You don't have to rub it in! I know I'm having a bad hair day, don't make me feel worse!

(Bruno: I was referring to the elaborate contraption attached to said hair..)

Leonhard: Looks like you need a makeover...big time.

*ding ding!* Ah!

And we should be the ones to do it! Those hairdressers in town hardly know you! Have a seat. Kai, grab some....hair....styling things!

Kai: *salute* ..Rodger...!

Licht: I really don't want thi--

Leonhard: Bruno, go get something that can remove these big knots. We're gonna turn brother Licht into someone completely different! Hair can say a lot about a person, right?

Heine: *being talked over* My princes, now is not--*talking gets louder* e-excuse me! Ah--a-ahh! *comedically swept away by crowd of princes working on hair*

*Leonhard, Bruno and Kai all step away from Licht*

Leonhard: How's this look? I think it suits you!

*Leonhard has given Licht his original hairstyle but with outrageous spikes dotted in random locations*

Bruno: No, no, no! That's far too...'out there' of a style for a prince to be having. Give me those! *takes equipment and styles Licht into the 'perfect' boy, ..regular hair, nothing interesting to see here. Next!*

(Bruno: not even a comment?!)

Kai: *begins work on his vision of Licht while uttering 'fluffy fluffy' every few seconds. The result is..Sheep Licht! (baaaaa~)*

Bruno: A sheep? No, Kai, you have it all wrong. A prince must look the part---

Leonhard: --Yeah, but they all need to have a personality, too! What you made him into is boring!

Kai: Fluffy?

*an argue breaks out which overtime morphs into a fight, which eventually leaves poor Licht unrecognisable*

Licht: Stop. Stop! EVERYONE STOP! Look what you've done to my poor hair.....*chibi crying*

You've made it even worse. At first, I could've made an attempt to fix it, but now the future looks bleak. I might even have to cut it all off!

Just...leave me alone 'till I fix all this mess, 'kay? *storms out of room, past Heine, who was sitting on the floor listening in*

Heine: Prince Licht--please hold on a moment! Prince Licht! *is ignored, the prince simply keeps on walking down the hall until he approaches his room. He locks it and everything goes back to square one*

--THE END--

Mun: Sorry for the length of this one! I spent just a little over an hour on this, I kinda got too into it. I hope it's a good read.

I also would appreciate if the lovely anon who originally suggested this story would leave their thoughts in my inbox, I'd love to see what they & anyone else who'd like to share their thoughts think about this or any of the stories I have created.

Thanks for reading!

#the royal tutor #the royal tutor anime #the royal tutor manga #anime #manga #Oushitsu Kyoushi Heine Anime #oushitsu kyoushi heine manga #oushitsu kyoushi heine #Heine Wittgenstein #Licht von Granzreich #Bruno von Granzreich #Leonhard von Granzreich #Kai von Granzreich #story #anime story #original story #suggestion #the royal tutor story

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megamikethomson · 5 years

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Head League: 10 things to pay special mind to in Boxing Day and bubbly installations

1) Leicester without Vardy intend to party like it's 1963

Consistently for the greater part a century people have been seeking after a rehash of the Boxing Day fun of 1963, when the 10 top-flight installations created a record count of 66 objectives. We can't get a precise rehash of that this year since half of the groups who were in the First Division in those days are presently in the lower associations (in spite of the fact that, as it occurs, Ipswich and Fulham are meeting in the Championship this Boxing Day so Mick McCarthy could point to advance if his group show improvement over the 10-1 thrashing that Jackie Milburn's side endured against Fulham in '63). Be that as it may, the current year's Boxing Day installation list has hurled an indistinguishable blending to the '63 timetable, as Leicester have Everton. In those days, Everton, as opposed to Leicester, were the shielding champions and they lost 2-0 in what ended up being the most reduced scoring match on that record-breaking day. Both Leicester's objectives were scored by Ken Keyworth, who we will portray as the Jamie Vardy of his time in the event that we can determine that we just mean he was his group's most productive striker. Vardy, mind you, has not been productive this season however he scored a cap stunt in his last home match and would have been wanting to continue the latest relevant point of interest in the event that he had not proceeded to bounce into that handle on Mame Biram Diouf at Stoke. His suspension saves Everton's languid focal guard from adapting to his speed, however Shinji Okazaki and Islam Slimani could present various difficulties. Leicester could locate their different suspensions increasingly dangerous: the club didn't enroll sufficient guarded spread in the mid year so the unlucky deficiencies of Robert Huth and Christian Fuchs offer Everton a chance to recuperate from their Merseyside derby frustration – and retaliate for the thrashing of '63. PD

• Vardy to serve three-coordinate boycott after red card request is dismissed • Lukaku to sign new Everton bargain however may leave in summer – Raiola • Leicester battling yet Man City composed book on awful title safeguards

2) The signs are useful for Liverpool against Stoke

This will be the current year's other rehash of the 1963 Boxing Day plan, or rather it would have been if the current year's match had not been pushed back to 27 December. Fifty-three years back a 6-1 home triumph over Stoke helped Liverpool on their way to their first top-flight title in over two decades and, in the long run, a great time of household predominance. The parallels are self-evident. Isn't that so? All things considered, we should perceive what Joe Allen needs to state about that. The Welshman comes back to Anfield in awesome, free-scoring frame and will without a doubt be instrumental in Stoke's endeavor to pick up their first group succeed at Liverpool since 1959. In any case, Glen Johnson could be considerably progressively significant, thus also will Bruno Martins Indi, who has become the support of Stoke's resistance since joining the club in the mid year, particularly with Ryan Shawcross still apparently battling for greatest wellness. In the mean time, in the event that Daniel Sturridge is equipped for enduring an hour and a half, at that point he should begin for Liverpool instead of Roberto Firmino, who has glanced in genuine need of a rest in late games. PD

• Liverpool's Mané will make a beeline for Gabon with crushing sadness • Klopp acclaims Sturridge for helping Liverpool to derby triumph

Daniel Sturridge could come back to the Liverpool beginning lineup. Photo: John Powell/Liverpool FC by means of Getty Images 3) Arsenal and West Brom would like to think not to fuel old contentions

For some time it resembled this, finally, would be the period of generosity towards Arsène Wenger. Be that as it may, at that point his group lost two extreme away matches in succession and lo, Arsenal fans will again spend Christmas Day squabbling about their chief and the manner in which he plays his adaptation of imposing business model. The second 50% of Wenger's rule at Arsenal has not all been about property advancement, there has additionally been some group building, however the inquiry stays with respect to whether the supervisor has laid tough enough mental establishments. Beating West Bromwich Albion at home would not resolve that contention however it would at any rate convey Arsenal fans the endowment of flitting reprieve from in-battling. In 1963 the quarreling was all in the West Brom camp before their Boxing Day meeting with north London rivals: their players picketed in the approach the game in fight at being told by their chief, Jimmy Hagan, that they needed to prepare for it in shorts in spite of the outlandishly chilly climate (it isn't certain whether the solidifying conditions additionally blocked exposed headbutting yet Hagan in the long run arrived at a comprehension with the players, who proceeded to draw 4-4 with Spurs). The later past gives a superior pointer to West Brom's visit to the Emirates, obviously. What's more, according to West Brom's ways to deal with their large away games so far this season, we can depend on Pulis attempting to make this a troublesome counterpart for Arsenal and a nerve racking watch for everybody. PD

• Özil wins ownership more than you may might suspect

4) Moyes and co could make life hard for Manchester United

Give us a chance to stop with the 1963 examinations now. Truth be told, let us not specify the past by any stretch of the imagination, in case we carry a tear to the eye of David Moyes. Be that as it may, in the event that we should specify the Scot's past encounters at Old Trafford, let us focus on the successes he appreciated there during his 11 years as Everton director. Eh? In any case. Reveal to you what, let us simply think back to Sunderland's triumphant last match, a 1-0 triumph over Watford enlivened by Adnan Januzaj, who, oh dear, is ineligible for the prospective match against his parent club. Poor Moyes can't get a break when Old Trafford is included. Yet, his responsibility is to make his own karma regardless of the powerless hand he is managed, and on Monday that will involve picking an appropriate substitution for Januzaj. Odds are Moyes will stout for John O'Shea. Try not to giggle! The Irishman did well in a back three when Sunderland made life intense for Chelsea a fortnight prior and redeploying that framework appears as though Moyes' most obvious opportunity with regards to exacting hopelessness on Manchester United supporters, once more. PD

Man Utd close in on Benfica's Lindelof to fortify barrier • Ibrahimovic: the more seasoned I get, the better I get, similar to red wine

5) Memories of Brown group talk give light help to harsh test

It is accurately a long time since Hull met Manchester City on Boxing Day 2008 and Phil Brown significantly conveyed his half-time group chat on the pitch, with his group effectively 4-0 down. "I thought it was decent and cold and I figured I would keep the young men alive on the grounds that they looked as though they were dead," he stated, and the novel move sort of worked – they drew the second half 1-1, and the game finished 5-1. City were in the last three at the time, while Hull were 6th; via season's end City were tenth and Hull, who won just a single additional alliance game, stayed away from transfer by a point. Manchester City, who at the time had not completed in the main four since 1978, have just neglected to do so once since, when they came fifth in 2010. The knee damage continued by Pablo Zabaleta in the success over Arsenal implies that no overcomers of the 2008 game will show up in this one – Vincent Kompany and Joe Hart additionally played that day and stay on City's finance – however Hull may discover their errand is no less imposing. SB

• Snodgrass dismisses new Hull agreement and targets January flight • Touré: I need Manchester City to be greater than Manchester United

6) Carroll could have a whale of a period in Swansea

Swansea have been so devilish away – no, that isn't the correct word – so timid away that it is anything but difficult to overlook that they have been moderatelySo they are positively equipped for beating West Ham. In any case, that doesn't appear to be likely, as Slaven Bilic's side have shown proof of taking care of in ongoing games and, in Andy Carroll, have a forward who could unleash ruin against the gentlest focal barrier in the Premier League (once more). PD

• West Ham would prefer not to sell group's 'top player' Payet, says Bilic

Andy Carroll prepares himself for Swansea City. Photo: Avril Husband/West Ham United through Getty Images 7) When will Conte's Chelsea quit winning?

With Diego Costa and N'Golo Kanté suspended, is the end near for Chelsea's triumphant run? Michy Batshuayi would like to think not. Costa's one-coordinate boycott gives the Belgian striker, for whom Chelsea paid £33m in the mid year, a chance to demonstrate his value. It is up to Bournemouth, then, to demonstrate that without Kanté's security Chelsea's guard is unmistakably increasingly helpless. Bournemouth have been unbalanced out and about so far this season yet they succeeded at Stamford Bridge last term and Eddie Howe, and fanatics of a nearby title race, would respect a rehash of that outcome this year. PD

• Conte targets Bakayoko and Sidibé after £60m Oscar bonus • Chelsea to dismiss credit offers for appointee striker Batshuayi

8) A gathering of disappointing finishers at St Mary's

Disregard Mauricio Pochettino: what these two groups share for all intents and purpose is an incensing inefficiency. Both make a ton of possibilities, both will in general miss a large portion of them. Southampton gave indications of progress in their last match, that 3-1 win at Bournemouth, when they delivered a sharpness that they had frequently needed. They will presumably need to create that once more, and imitate the power and speed they appeared at Bournemouth, in the event that they are to dispense a third progressive away destruction on Tottenham Hotspur. PD

• Lloris signs new agreement to 2022 – taking him to age 35 • The changing substance of White Hart Lane – in pictures

Tottenham Hotspur's Son Heung-min passes up on an opportunity against Burnley at White Hart Lane. Photo: Ian Kington/AFP/Getty Images 9) Palace try to stop away spoil at Vicarage Road

Three thrashings in their last four games have seen Watford slip from seventh to twelfth, yet on the off chance that the sentiment of tensely investigating their shoulde

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teawaffles · 3 years

Text

The Fugitives from the Fire: Chapter 5, Part 1

Note: This is a long chapter too!

Gregson squared his shoulders as he walked.

“I don’t really want to team up with you; but anyway, we have no choice but to solve this quickly. Now it’s time for me to show my stuff after fighting crime day after day in this capital.”

“I’ve thought about it every time we’ve met — but where do you get that confidence from?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes as he followed behind him. Then, Gregson turned around.

“Oi, that big attitude of yours is probably because the inspector called you in; but I’m the one who messed up here, so I have to take responsibility myself. Don’t butt in unless you’re needed.”

“I know, I know.”

More than anything, the personality of this assistant inspector he’d come to know all too well brought Sherlock a sense of relief. In addition, his words and actions revealed his pride as a police officer, and Sherlock quite liked that.

“Come to think of it, did you really not find out anything during the interrogation?”

Gregson replied without slowing his pace.

“Well, I can’t say that we didn’t learn anything. He told us how he’d come to hide in that building, but refused to say a word on where his accomplice was.”

“So how did he arrive at the inn?”

“From what we heard, after they escaped, the two of them had been moving from place to place in the slums. They first laid low somewhere, but quickly got wind that the Yard was searching the area; hence, they ran off searching for a new place to hide — and ended up at that inn.”

“So does it mean that at the time, the Yard had been able to track them down to some extent?”

Gregson snorted in displeasure.

“Not a whit. It’s disgraceful, but so far, we haven’t been able to trace their whereabouts one bit. Right now, our only lead is that tip-off; in other words, the two of them were just misled by rumours that the police were coming.”

“…………”

Gregson seemed to be pitying the fugitives for the days they’d spent in fear, but Sherlock’s mind was elsewhere.

The criminals had been flushed from their hideout using false information, and ended up at a particular location. At the same time, information had conveniently come the Yard’s way, as if someone had meant for them to arrive at the same place. His intuition told him the situation could not be written off as a mere coincidence.

——Could the Lord of Crime be involved in this case? But if he was, then for what reason?

Sherlock began to think over that question; but before he could reach a satisfactory answer, the two of them had arrived before a different inn, located a short distance from the site of the fire.

“Now, the suspects have been gathered here on the ground floor — please be quiet.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Temporarily switching his focus, Sherlock replied half-heartedly. Then, with his sullen expression still intact, Gregson stepped into the inn.

Inside, there were several police officers, three men with bandaged faces, and a tall middle-aged woman, who stood firm with crossed arms.

Looking over everyone in the room, Gregson cleared his throat, and spoke in a loud voice.

“Well then, I’ll cut to the chase. ——The culprit is among us.”

“…………”

However, not one person reacted. He was simply stating a fact, but perhaps his entrance had been too sudden, and that pronouncement a tad abrupt.

Looking a little embarrassed after his brave proclamation, Gregson cleared his throat once more, and started again.

“……That’s what we’ve concluded after careful discussion. To begin with, let’s start from these three men gathered here.”

“——Hold on, Inspector! Before that, don’t you have something to say to me?”

“Hm?”

The middle-aged woman took a step forward as she raised her voice, and Gregson turned to face her.

“You are… the owner of that inn.”

“The very one that got burned down, yes! My name is Hillary Weaver — you’d best remember it, since it’s the name of the victim who'll eventually charge you people for expensive repairs.” [1]

Her high-pitched voice was almost akin to that of a witch casting spells. Gregson flinched, taking a step back.

“W-……Why do we have to pay for damages?!”

“Of course you do: the moment all of you came along, my inn disappeared.”

“That’s not true! The one at fault here is the arsonist — the Yard had nothing to do with that!”

“What’re you saying? I’m sure you people sparked it all off. Quit whining and give me back that place of comfort!”

“What part of that wretched inn could be called comfortable?! It’d be more pleasant being buried in straw! When we were interrogating the other man, the floorboards were creaking so badly I thought we were going to fall through the floor any moment!"

“That’s because all of you came in at once! Spare a thought for the building capacity!”

“Are you telling me your rooms reach their limit after just a few people step inside?!”

“…………”

As Gregson and Hillary — the inn’s proprietress — were engaged in a row that was completely beside the point, Sherlock turned his attention to the three suspects.

The first was a burly man. The left half of his face was wrapped in bandages, and his long sleeves were rolled up.

The second was a slim young man with short sleeves. The lower half of his face was bandaged down to his neck.

The last was a tall man of indeterminate age. He wore a thick coat, and his entire face was swathed in bandages.

Three men, three suspects. Right as the detective used his powers of observation on them, Gregson signalled his men to get Hillary to back down, forcing the argument to a close.

“……Dammit, was she silver-tongued. Now I’ve wasted energy.”

His shoulders were heaving, and Sherlock flashed him a cold smile.

“If the talk show’s finally over, then let’s get on with the questioning. We’re short on time.”

“I know! ……Well then, let’s start from the big man over there, and proceed in order.”

Gregson addressed the burly man.

“Tell us your name, the room you were staying in, and what you were doing when the fire broke out.”

“My name’s Mike Myers. I was in room 203, on the first floor. When the fire broke out, I was in my room reading a book. It was from one of my favourite authors, but all my belongings were destroyed in the blaze.”

The man answered in a deep voice that matched his appearance.

Gregson took down the information on a notepad, and moved on to the next man.

“Next, the slim man over there.”

The young man promptly sat up straight.

“Y-Yes, um, my name is Bruno Campbell. My room was…… number 301, on the second floor. At the time of the fire, um…… I was sleeping right until it started. Sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologise. Next.”

Gregson turned to face the last man.

“……Jerry Dorff. Room 101. I was asleep.”

The man who called himself Jerry murmured that in a low voice, uttering only the minimum number of words.

“101…… The ground floor, huh. So all your rooms were on precisely separate floors.”

Once he’d ascertained the suspects’ rooms, Gregson quickly sketched the inn’s floor plan on his notepad.

According to his diagram, on the ground floor, there was a staircase next to the reception desk, and three rooms in a row behind it. Starting from the one closest to the front desk, the rooms were numbered 101, 102, and 103. Further to the back, there was another set of stairs. The other floors had the same layout; it had been a simply-structured inn.

The reception desk, the front stairs, three rooms in a row, and the rear stairs. All the rooms had their doors on the south side of the building, and their windows on the north side. Sherlock craftily took a peek at his drawing, memorising the layout, and applied the locations of the three suspects to his mental picture.

“It seems all of you were in your own rooms when the fire started; but before that, did you stay in your rooms throughout?”

Mike spoke up.

“I never even took a step outside my room after you bobbies entered the building. After all, one of the criminals from that attack on the department store was lurking inside, right? I wouldn’t be able to bear it if I made a wrong move and ended up getting suspected.”

“I-It was the same for me: I tried to avoid moving around as much as possible.”

“Me too.”

The timid young man, Bruno, and the taciturn Jerry both agreed with Mike.

“So you all didn’t leave your rooms, let alone the inn. ——Is that certain?”

Gregson asked one of the officers standing beside him, and the man responded with vigour.

“Yes; I was standing in front of room 303 at first, and two others were standing watch in the ground and first floor corridors — we didn’t see a single person leave their room.”

Sherlock had been listening from the side, and now he pointed to the officer and Gregson in turn.

“So during the break in the interrogation, Gregson took over from you in standing watch outside the room.”

“Indeed.”

“Oi, Holmes. I told you not to butt in.”

Ignoring Gregson’s complaint, Sherlock made a deduction.

“So no one was moving around during the interrogation. Then during the break, the man was left alone in the room. Since no one heard any suspicious noises, it would be difficult to conclude that there had been movement inside the room. In that case, as I thought, the criminal must’ve made his move after the fire began.”

“A-As I was saying, don’t talk without permission.”

“……We don’t have time for that kind of thing. From what you said earlier, it seems you were standing outside the room until the fire began — were you also standing watch throughout after it started?”

Reluctantly, Gregson revealed his actions at the time.

“……No, when I got news of the fire, I went to the stairs nearer the reception to check out the situation. I climbed down until I could see the ground floor, and saw that the corridor there had already been covered in flames; so I quickly shouted for everyone to evacuate as I went back up to the second floor, in order to free the man we had arrested.”

“Did you go door to door when telling people to evacuate?”

“There wasn’t any time for that: the best I could do was to shout in every corridor as I rushed up the stairs.”

“I see. By the way, do we know where the fire originated?”

One of the officers standing to the side responded.

“I was outside the building at the time, but back then, part of the ground floor’s exterior north wall suddenly burst into flames. Though, I can’t say I had witnessed the moment the fire was set.”

“……Oi.”

The officer had readily given information to the detective he so hated, and Gregson glared at him. But as expected, Sherlock continued as if nothing had happened.

“Even so, the mob had surrounded the inn at the time, didn’t they? Was there really no one who saw exactly what happened?”

“The crowd had been rather large, so we couldn’t interview everyone who was there……” the officer responded briskly. “But we didn’t receive any eyewitness accounts of the arsonist.”

Even as he threw a displeased glance at his subordinate, Gregson thought hard.

“In that case, what if he used a device that automatically ignited the fire after a certain amount of time?” he offered.

“That’s one possibility,” Sherlock added. “It doesn’t have to be automatic either; he could’ve sprinkled flammable oil around the area beforehand, then sneaked out the window, climbed down the wall, and thrown a tiny spark — like the cinders of a match — through a window. Just like this, he’d be able to ignite the fire without drawing attention. It started from the north wall, right?”

“Yes, the wall where all the rooms’ windows are lined up,” the officer replied.

Sherlock gazed at the three men.

“In that case, that means any one of you could be the arsonist himself. But the question remains: after the fire began, how did the culprit manage to kill his accomplice in room 303, and create a locked-room murder case without anyone noticing?”

“…………”

In a way, this was the biggest ‘riddle’ in the case; all the officers, including Gregson, fell silent. In this situation, how should they proceed? Sherlock too pondered that question.

——“Oi, Sherlock. This is just my opinion, but……”

Amidst the long silence, the voice of Sherlock’s partner rang out in his mind.

——“When the fire started, Inspector Gregson went down the stairs until he was almost at the ground floor, right? During that time, there probably wasn’t anyone in the second floor corridor. Since Bruno-kun was also on that floor, I think he’s the most suspicious……. Hold on. If Mr Mike climbed up the rear staircase from the first floor, he would’ve been able to avoid the inspector and reach the second floor. Moreover, Mr Jerry was on the ground floor to begin with, so you could say he was in the most convenient location to start the fire……. Oh my, I’m starting to think all of them are suspicious.”

Sherlock could easily picture John getting confused by his own theories; gently, the corners of his mouth creased into a smile.

Then Gregson flashed Sherlock a bold grin as he spoke.

“Oi, Holmes. When I went down the stairs till I was nearly at the ground floor, there probably wasn’t anyone left in the second floor corridor. In that case, since he was on the same floor, Bruno would be the most suspicious. Fufu, as I thought, there was no need to bring you on this ca…… Hm, hold on. If Mike used the other staircase, he could’ve reached the second floor without me noticing. But Jerry’s room was on the ground floor, so it would’ve been easy to start the fire there…… Dammit, now we can’t narrow it down.”

“…………”

Strangely enough, the assistant inspector had unfortunately put forward the same theory, erasing John’s face from Sherlock’s mind once again.

Then, Mike also put forward his own theory.

“Hey, certainly, it makes sense that any one of us could’ve went up to the victim’s room. But wasn’t the door locked?”

“H-He could’ve been shot or stabbed through the door, but from what I heard, there wasn’t any evidence of that, right? M-Maybe after he killed him, the murderer locked the door again from the outside?”

Bruno also proposed a theory, but Mike was sceptical.

“The fire was going to burn everything down anyway, so why would he bother to do that?”

“I-In that case, maybe the killer opened the door to attack him, b-but the victim suddenly closed the door to try and protect himself?”

“Yeah, that might be possible. So when the wound proved fatal, it ended up looking like a locked-room murder. That makes a fair bit of sense; well, what do you think?”

“……I don’t know.”

Mike’s words had started a frank exchange of theories among the three suspects. Sherlock seemed to be listening with great interest, but Gregson seemed annoyed.

“Oi, don’t talk as you please: this is a matter for the Yard to examine. In the first place, it’s not clear whether it was a stab or shot wound……”

Hearing that, Sherlock spoke up.

“If he’d been done in with a gun, there probably would’ve been the sound of a gunshot. Though with a bit of effort, the sound could’ve been suppressed…… Did anyone hear any strange sounds?”

Bruno, who by chance happened to meet Sherlock’s gaze, responded.

“I heard someone shouting ‘Fire!’ from the outside, then flew out of bed, but I don’t remember anything after that…… Oh right: during the commotion, I think I heard something breaking once or twice.”

The timid young man had given an important testimony, but the burly man disputed that.

“Is that so? I was awake the whole time, but I didn’t hear anything?”

Even Mike’s usual appearance was intimidating; hearing that, Bruno shrank back.

“R-Right. It was probably just the sound of the wood snapping as it burnt.”

“……I can’t say either way. After all, everyone was confused and in chaos.”

Jerry also gave a vague testimony, and Gregson ruffled his hair in frustration.

“We don’t even know if there was a gunshot — it feels like we don’t have a single lead at all.”

“But if the killer had fired a gun in room 303, since he was on the same floor, Bruno probably would’ve heard it — though he himself isn’t clear on that.”

“……I knew that already; you didn’t have to say it.”

“Even though you’re making a face like that was a revelation?”

Sherlock poked a little fun at Gregson, then continued questioning the suspects.

“All of you are bandaged up rather pitifully — are they injuries from the fire earlier?”

“Yeah, I got burned while escaping; It’s not life-threatening, though.”

“It’s the same for me: when I reached the ground floor, it was already covered in flames, and when I tried to escape, I tripped and fell…… It was just my luck that the spot I landed on was aflame, so I ended up getting burned around my neck.”

Two of the suspects had explained how they got their injuries, but only one person remained in silence, his gaze slightly lowered. Of course, the detective probed further.

“Mr Jerry. Is your story the same?”

The man looked up at him. Then, after hesitating a little, he muttered briefly.

“……These are from an accident a long time ago. They have nothing to do with the fire.”

Saying that, he pulled his thick coat closer, obscuring his mouth. That caught Gregson’s attention.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, but only you’ve seemed rather reluctant to speak. It feels like you don’t want to have anything to do with this case.”

Sherlock had also gotten the same impression; in contrast to the other two, who had even made their own deductions, it seemed this man was trying to withhold information about himself.

As both the detective and inspector fixed their gazes on him, eventually, Jerry explained himself in a low voice.

“I don’t like people prying into my affairs. But that’s because of my own personal situation; it has nothing to do with this case.”

“Why’s that? Could you be hiding important evidence from us?”

“…………”

Gregson tried to press him further, but Jerry remained silent, his intentions unreadable.

His actions were clearly suspicious, but Sherlock’s intuition told him the man had definitely been telling the truth. Jerry had answered all their questions properly; in addition, he couldn’t sense any hostility to the police emanating from the man.

However, Gregson tended to interpret such behaviour in the wrong way. Sherlock had to steer the conversation down a different path before the inspector made any needless accusations — so he called out to the inn’s proprietress, who had been waiting silently in a corner.

Footnotes:

[1] No relation to Jackie Weaver, the unexpected star of the Handforth parish council: this book was published end-2020, and that incident was in early-2021. (The Guardian)

#moriarty the patriot #yuukoku no moriarty #yuumori #english translation #the girl who sees rainbows

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alonzochrist-blog · 5 years

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Aaron Carter Requires The Gloves Off Regarding Lindsay Lohan

There has been much speculation and numerous media reviews surrounding alleged quotes from singer Aaron Carter on the legendary King of Pop, Michael Jackson. When a reported interview made headlines over alleged estimates from Carter, the singer quickly denied that he experienced ever said any of the issues that he was being quoted as stating. According to a new update made by the singer via Twitter, Aaron Carter will reportedly be featured on E! News these days in an interview in which he will be discussing the Michael Jackson tale. But what Keara brings to the desk is not an additional fairly encounter with a nice voice - it is, instead, a unique mixture of musical skills that are adept far beyond her years, matched with a serene, but youthful, vitality that retains her relatable to audiences of all ages. With an R&B acoustic audio somewhat reminiscent of a younger feminine counterpart to Bruno Mars, Keara (or 'guitarprincesskeara' as she's known to her 3000+ subscribers on YouTube) is ready to deliver a new edge to teenager pop songs. I sat down with Keara just a few evenings in the past before an outstanding overall performance supporting click here for more at the Concert For Our Future in Manville, New Jersey, exactly where she opened up about her dreams and goals for her promising long term in music.

youtube

I'd never really noticed much of Mark outside of "Iron Chef," and he was actually a pretty enjoyable guy to view. He might have experienced the cheesiest presentation of anyone I've noticed to start the display, but he could move pretty nicely. The greatest issue for him will be staying focused on the dance. Tonight's magic formula ingredient is.dancing! (Okay, only kidding.) Mark ended up with a 21 and a second-location finish in the team waltz.

Aaron Carter Girlfriend

Another break. Blah blah blah. Then. more drama as the DWTS season nine bottom three became the formal base two. Louie Vito and Chelsie Hightower had been proclaimed safe, leaving Debi and Kathy in the bottom two. Samantha Harris requested Carrie Ann if she was shocked by the two women in the base two, and she stated she was shocked to see Debi Mazar up for elimination. Hmph. Cue the dramatic songs - it's time. Kathy Ireland and Tony Dovolani were given the boot.

The marathon: The 9 remaining couples danced simultaneously for the first marathon mambo. At stake: much more judges' factors. The first couple tapped out obtained two points, whilst the final receives ten factors. Mark Dacascos and Lacey Schwimmer. Mark Dacascos is best known as "The Chairman" and host of Meals Community's Iron Chef The united states. Can he consider the warmth on DWTS? His rebel partner is Lacey Schwimmer, who is in her 3rd period of DWTS. This award-successful dancer has been partnered with Steve-O and Lance Bass. The quirky combination of uniqueness and personality might consider this few much in the competition. Look out for this team.

Aaron Carter Boyfriend

Bruno aaron carter shaq stated, "It was like watching a small dancing hobbit." He noted that Vito lacked fluidity and fell twice. From there Bergeron labeled Vito: Louie Frodo. I started to write my typical "Dancing with the Stars" evaluation when I all of a sudden realized that I didn't really feel like performing it. For the first time since the ABC tv display started, I truly wasn't that interested in what experienced happened or even what was heading to happen in the subsequent weeks. That was a mild bulb second for me. Three women and 1 guy remain as we go into the semi-finals of Dancing with the Stars Season nine. Kelly Osbourne beat out Click Here last 7 days showing that getting followers may be much more important than getting abilities in this competition. Each few would perform three dances, including a "knock-out" dance that is meant to wow the judges and the audience.

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Aaron Carter Chris Crocker

Next we heard from the Dancing with the Stars period 9 professionals about the challenges of breaking the celebrities' poor routines. Meh heh. That should be enjoyable. We discovered from Lacey Schwimmer that Mark Dacascos talks to himself much too often, and Alec Mazo complained that Natalie Coughlin holds her breath too frequently. What a shocking factor for a swimmer to do! Tom Hold off. Truly? Does this mean we can expect a parade of disgraced politicians now? Is Jim Traficant that much behind (as soon as he gets out of jail, of course)?

Aaron Carter 2017

Dancing with the Stars Drop 2009's 3rd 7 days of competitive dancing, considered "the sexiest night of the season" by co-host Tom Bergeron, opened with a fast review of final 7 days's motion, and ongoing on with the typical introduction of the DWTS season nine stars. We quickly learned that the thirteen remaining celebs and their professional partners would be performing 1 of two dances: The Samba or the Rumba. We THEN discovered that former House Majority Chief Tom Delay's pre-tension fracture had progressed into a complete stress fracture; so would he compete? Tom and co-host Samantha Harris left it a large DWTS season nine week 3 unknown for now. How annoying. It's not as if I'd turn off the Tv if Tom Hold off and Cheryl Burke finished their tenure on the display. NFL star Michael Irvin and companion Anna Demidova had been subsequent up on DWTS with their Samba. Michael's really had a difficult time with the judging panels this period. The thing I appreciate about Michael is his performer's coronary heart: He appears to have enjoyable each 7 days, even when he's nailed by Len, Carrie Ann and Bruno. That said, it thought their Samba lacked a small. It seemed sluggish and just not exactly what I'm utilized to viewing for the style of dance. Bruno stated "sometimes you danced this like a tank" and proceeded to beat him down. Ouch. Carrie Ann stated "I certainly think you have rhythm but you're dancing too small". Len stated "it's a difficult dance for a big guy" and "I'm afraid it was a bit disappointing". Oof. Michael Irvin and Anna Demidova's Dancing with the Stars Drop 2009 7 days 3 scores: 5, four, 5 = fourteen. Bruno said, "It was like viewing a little dancing hobbit." He mentioned that Vito lacked fluidity and fell twice. From there Bergeron labeled Vito: Louie Frodo.

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deadcactuswalking · 5 years

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 7th April 2019 (Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X, Ariana Grande)

We actually have a pretty busy week to cover today, with five new arrivals, one of which is in the top five, another of which is a total meme that just hit #1 in the States. There’s also a tragedy less lighthearted we’ll have to talk about, but for now, let’s discuss the top 10, because there’s been somewhat of a shake up.

Top 10

That shake-up isn’t going to affect Lewis Capaldi still at the top of the charts for a sixth week, as “Someone You Loved” continues its reign. I hope it gets overthrown pretty quickly because the song is pretty painful on its own and it does not bear well with me after the overplay.

Our shake-up starts just at the runner-up spot, however, as from her worldwide #1 album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, debuting at number-two is “bad guy”, her fourth UK Top 40 hit, second Top 10 and first ever top five. We’ll talk more about it later.

This means that Rag ‘n’ Bone Man and Calvin Harris’ “Giant” is down one space to number-three.

Tom Walker was hit with an identical loss, with “Just You and I” down to number-four...

...as was “Sucker” by Jonas Brothers, also down to number-five.

Thanks to the album, “bury a friend” by Billie Eilish had a large boost up 14 positions to number-six, which is a new peak after its debut at number-seven.

Speaking of number-seven, Dave’s “Location” featuring Burna Boy is down one spot this week.

Steel Banglez’s “Fashion Week” with AJ Tracey and Mo Stack doesn’t suffer nearly as much as I thought it would this week, just moving down one position to number-eight off the debut.

Ariana Grande, the only real competition for Billie Eilish within the top 10, seems to have been hit more than anything else here, as her song “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” has been pushed down four spots to number-nine.

Finally, we have “Piece of Your Heart” by MEDUZA and Goodboys rapidly moves up the charts, up a whopping 22 spaces this week to #10, becoming each artists’ first top 10. I don’t know why, but I’m not necessarily complaining, it’s a good song, I’m just kind of confused about its incredible boost in popularity this week, maybe a commercial placement. That seems to help a lot of these EDM tracks from relative nobodies rack up chart points.

Climbers

There are literally no climbers outside of the two already discussed in the top 10.

Fallers

On the other hand... sigh, let’s sort this by genre as I try to do whenever we have a massive amount of losses.

In pop and dance, “Walk Me Home” by P!nk was walked down five hills to its home at #14, “Don’t Feel Like Crying” by Sigrid is also down five to #18, as is “Don’t Call Me Up” by Mabel at #21, while “Dancing with a Stranger” by Sam Smith and Normani is down six to #27. Ariana Grande’s “7 rings” also continues its fall down nine to #38.

In hip-hop and R&B, NSG and Tion Wayne’s “Options” is down seven to #17, “Wow.” by Post Malone exits the top 20 finally, down five to #22, “Disaster” by Dave featuring J Hus loses album release steam down eight to #23 (as does “Streatham”, also by Dave, down 11 to #33), “Keisha & Becky” by Russ splash and Tion Wayne is down six to #25 off the debut and “Please Me” by Bruno Mars and Cardi B is down seven to #32.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

“Nights Like This” by Kehlani featuring Ty Dolla $ign is out from #33, “Kitchen Kings” by D-Block Europe is out from #34, “Think About Us” by Little Mix featuring Ty Dolla $ign is out from #35, “MIDDLE CHILD” by J. Cole is out from #36 due to cuts to its streams’ importance on its chart placement, “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee is out from #37 and “How it Is” by Roddy Ricch, Chip and Yxng Bane featuring the Plug is out from #40. Good riddance.

Also, Billie Eilish’s “wish you were gay” returned to #13, reaching the top 20 at a new peak. Since this is the lowest Eilish song on the chart and it was released prior, that means there is no album bomb from Eilish; this, “bury a friend” and “bad guy” are the highest-performing songs and that’s all the UK chart allows.

IN MEMORIAM

On March 31st, 2019, a man named Ermias Joseph Asghedom was shot six times in the parking lot of his own clothing store, once in the head. Approximately 30 minutes after he was transported to the hospital, he was pronounced dead. That man was Grammy-nominated rapper Nipsey Hussle, murdered fresh off of the release of both his single “Racks in the Middle” with Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy as well as his album, Victory Lap, which had failed to grab the Best Rap Album Grammy Award the month prior, having his life at the peak of his career cut short unjustly by gang violence which he had since made incredible efforts to put in the past and distance himself from, making positive and charitable contributions to his hometown ever since, to the point where the Crenshaw and Slauson intersection has been named Nipsey Hussle Square in his honour. His memorial service has been held today, April 11th, and he’s since been buried, at only 33 years old, leaving two children from a long-term relationship with Lauren London behind to carry his legacy. While I was not amazed with Victory Lap, I thought I’d discuss one of my favourite tracks from his last ever record released in his lifetime.

“Dedication” – Nipsey Hussle featuring Kendrick Lamar

Produced by Mike & Keys, Rance and MyGuyMars – Peaked at #93 in the US

First off, this oily beat is pretty beautiful, with reversed and manipulated soulful vocal samples backing some really slick keys and piano loops, giving off a great West Coast vibe that was Nipsey’s signature style. Nipsey’s first verse is an intense way of introducing the listener to the subject matter, with an intricate depiction of Nipsey’s life as a youth trapped in the ghetto, with a nice beat switch-up in the last few bars. The short chorus is barely a hook, but Nipsey gives a surprisingly great singing performance on the track, and it has a drop of sorts where Alexandria Dopson and Garren Edwards show off some vocal power in the midst of Nipsey’s frustrated grunt-screams, which I like to think are representative of how he felt when he thought he could never make it out of the streets, but the chorus is about how he finally broke himself free of its chains – dedication, hard work plus patience, invoking imagery of the abolishment of slavery used as wordplay throughout Nipsey’s third verse. Kendrick’s great albeit oddly-mixed verse references his come-up as well, but also the death of his grandmother how when he was suggested to make a song with Nipsey Hussle because of how they were both Crips, he responded by emphasising how he’s not just a gang member, but a man too, and after his death and some of the negative comments I have seen about Nipsey mentioning his past, is a stronger message than ever. The best part of the track is when Kendrick’s verse is interrupted by some 808 stabs, and the instrumental transforms into a semi-chopped and screwed shell of what it was, with echoing vocals from Dopson fading out before Kenny comes and sings in a janky flow that is trippy yet also pretty elegant and makes sense considering how it transitions from Nipsey and Kendrick talking about their history in gangs and Nipsey’s final verse about how satisfied he is with how his music, or what he says are is spirituals, have brought him into fame and luxurious life after about 30 years of barely making it by. I love the line where he references not only his friend YG’s album but the popular local saying, “Stay dangerous”, as he was educated by the hood into believing that he had to be feared to be safe, as well as his bars about how him owning his own masters is his way of abolishing what had shackled him as a teenager and as a young adult. The song ends with another repetition of the anthemic hook as a book-end, as we are treated to a relaxed instrumental featuring piano melodies layered on top of each other and Nipsey laughing in joy as he’s finally “Made it out”, with sound effects of dogs barking and general civilian life surrounding the melodic finish to a fantastic song.

This the remedy, the separation / 2Pac of my generation, blue pill in the f***in’ Matrix / Red rose in the grey pavement / Young black n***a trapped and he can’t change it

RIP Nipsey Hussle, August 15th 1985 – March 31st, 2019.

Now, on a lighter note...

NEW ARRIVALS

#40 – “MONOPOLY” – Ariana Grande and Victoria Monét

Produced by Social House and Tim Suby – Peaked at #6 in New Zealand and #70 in the US

Why Ariana Grande seemed it fit to release this song as a non-album single on Monday, I’ll never know, but I’m not going to blag on about that as Grande released this single and its amateurish video as seemingly a joke, right? It was on April Fools, and was coined “a treat for the fans”, with a video that had a budget of less than $10, as well as being both sonically and visually meme-heavy, so I don’t think it should be taken any seriously and rather just as a fun celebration of Grande’s success, featuring rap verses from her lead songwriter and best friend for some reason. It’s Grande’s 20th Top 40 hit over here and Victoria Monét’s first ever credited appearance on the Top 40, and you can tell their level of success by just their performances on this song, as Grande gets to show off the vocal prowess and is provided with both the intro and outro as well as all the multi-layering, while Monét’s expressions of her personality are relegated to the singular actual rap verse (Which she still shares with Grande) and Auto-Tuned ad-libs that are literally just sped-up sentences, as well as a messy Nutty Professor reference. The beat is pretty lightweight, with a couple vocal samples and cloudy synths hidden behind a trap skitter, but it’s fitting to back the nonsensical lyrics here, all of which only work because of the charisma the girls ooze from their vocals, despite the imbalanced vocal production. And, yeah, the lyrics here are awful, as expected. First of all, the refrain/pre-chorus rhymes “Where you been?” with itself three times, barely fitting the lyrics into the meter by scrambling the word “GPS” into a Twista-like chopper flow for like a second until going back to the droning, saccharine delivery. Let’s look at some highlights.

Bad vibes, get off of me / Outta here with that f***ery

Sorry, I just love the visual in the music video of Monét and Grande literally swatting away the “F***ery”, it’s pretty cute.

I swerve both ways, dichotomy / I like women and men

This painful, forced reference to Monét’s bisexuality is so blunt and to the point that when Grande says it, it’s hilarious. Imagine coming out in a loosie trap single that barely counts as a song and not an interlude. I do kind of like how straightforward the line is, to be honest, it’s almost anthemic... maybe I’m thinking too much into this.

Then we hit the bank, making dumb investments, for the win

“For the win”? I didn’t expect a song saying, “For the win” to make the Top 40 ever, but, sure, let’s roll with it. What does Ari say?

And if they try come stopping me, I’ll show them my discography (Yeah, yeah)

Okay, that’s kinda clever—

Even though we gave up that 90%, for the win, go!

Nevermind, they said, “For the win”, again.

This been buildin’ up, I guess this friendship like Home Depot

Yeah, nope. Next song.

#39 – “Old Town Road” – Lil Nas X

Produced by YoungKio, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – Peaked at #1 in the US

Oh, great, another meme song. Well, at least I can say this – where were you when a country-trap fusion from a former Twitter comedian turned rapper that samples a Nine Inch Nails guitar loop and was later remixed by Billy Ray Friggin’ Cyrus became the most popular song in the entirety of Northern America thanks to TikTok memes and a racism scandal? The whole situation is so loony to me, but I respect Lil Nas X and YoungKio for being so relaxed and chill about the whole fiasco, especially when it started getting bigger and bigger, becoming the shortest number-one song in America since 1963, with a runtime of only one minute and 54 seconds, disregarding the remix of course. Is it a country song? I mean, obviously, it’s a country rap song, nobody’s arguing that, and that’s got country in its name so yeah, in my opinion, if Nelly and Tim McGraw count when they released what was essentially an R&B song, this counts, even if it’s essentially just a trap song about horses. It actually paints a pretty interesting lone cowboy story inspired by Red Dead Redemption 2 but, who cares? It’s a meme, alright, and for now it’s pretty funny. It’s got a really catchy hook/intro, with an effective refrain as well as verses that much like “MONOPOLY”, were probably written in less than five minutes but they work, and that’s all that really matters. I like how his voice sounds in the muffled outro, but really, there’s not much to it. It’s a fun beat with a great sample that Billy Ray Cyrus takes advantage of entirely and bodies. His flow is stiff but so is the stunted beat so it fits together quite nicely, and the additional choruses add some needed meat to the track, as does the banjo and the whistling at the tail-end of the outro... but we’re not judging the remix just yet, and on its own merits, “Old Town Road” is nothing all too special.

#26 – “Better Man” – Westlife

Produced by Steve Mac – Peaked at #2 in Scotland

Westlife released a second single in 2019, after their last single three months back debuted in the Top 20 and did insanely well in radio and sales... in 2019. This new single, produced by Steve Mac, has an orchestral version, and is set to be on their new album Spectrum which was announced to be released on 6th September, 2019. This new single is their second to reach the Top 40 in 2019. It nearly peaked at the top spot in Scotland, in 2019, and has had success all over Britain in the week of release, which may I add, was in March 2019. I refuse to believe Westlife will have a resurgence in 2019, and although I mostly believe that charts are ran by impressionable teenagers, this proves that Mom-pop is safe in the midst of the new British trap-rappers who talk about murder and drug trafficking, and of course Gothic art pop starlets that aren’t even old enough to drink yet... and I’m not here for it. No, the orchestral version is not better, get this manufactured waste of time off the charts.

#19 – “Your Mrs” – JAY1

Produced by Coolie

So, just as I was actually starting to lighten up on British trap-rap – seriously, Tion Wayne’s stuff, especially “Options”, has been growing on me immensely and I loved Dave’s debut studio album – this comes out and debuts in the top 20, and it’s bloody awful. It’s literally one piano chord. It’s literally ONE. FREAKING. PIANO CHORD. Through the whole song. There’s a trap skitter as well after the beat doesn’t transition to the drop after its intro and instead just fades out with a cheap pitch-shift effect, until we get to a developed version of the beat, and by that I mean it has two annoying high-pitched beep sounds and a bass that clips through the mix thanks to the vocals that are louder than everything else. For the most part it feels like it’s just JAY1 rapping over a hi-hat, and to be fair, that’s what most of it is. It’s not menacing, of course, because even if it was, literally in the first bar of the song, he’s joking. He won’t actually be luxurious enough to take your missus, as he says, and would rather just let the women watch him, I guess. He’s not interesting, and although there switch-ups to the instrumental that help make it more interesting, the more stretched-out flows he uses are absolutely painful. The subject matter is nonexistent, apparently he has an Australian side chick and NAV helps transport his cocaine. Oh, but do you hear that? There’s a flute... no, seriously, can you hear it? Because I can’t, really, I mean it’s just a pathetic loop probably stolen from some Creative Commons musician that somehow ended up in an official release, and it doesn’t last long. It comes back in the third chorus, where he’s multi-tracked with a pitched-down vocal and this would actually be menacing if he wasn’t just talking about how his girl has a big butt. If that voice was whispering about cold-blooded murder, then this song would be awesome... but it’s not. It’s weak flexing and bragging with a nonexistent beat from an incredibly uninteresting dude who doesn’t know to mix his bass properly. I hope to see this gone quickly, because this is dreadful.

#2 – “bad guy” – Billie Eilish

Produced by FINNEAS – Peaked at #1 in Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Norway and Slovakia, and #7 in the US

This is the big #2 debut, the one I’m supposed to care about most, but mostly I’m just feeling lukewarm on both the big single and Eilish’s album as a whole, which felt structure-less and lacking of much substance as she gets wrapped in her own metaphors. This new song has got a vivid, shocking and quirky video, but Dave Meyers stole it from an indie magazine called Toilet Paper’s photo shoot so I suppose that has helped this song increase in popularity – nothing like some good controversy. The dark, bass-heavy and reverb-drowned groove here is actually really nice, and I love Billie’s vocal melody, especially when it’s multi-tracked with the fake finger-snaps in the background that are incredibly flat, and that bassline when it hits in the chorus is insane. The lyrics are kind of funny if anything, as Eilish references her melodramatic, emo image as she claims herself to be a “make-your-momma-sad, might-seduce-your-dad type”, priding herself in the cynical bad guy personality among pop music’s cutesy stylings we’ve been accustomed to. The eerie flute-like synth melody is pretty creepy and I love how it takes itself way too seriously despite the lyrics that are basically just Eilish being an edgy teenager, even with a post-chorus where she says, “Duh”, in a deadbeat manner followed by high-pitched gliding chopped-up vocal samples, and it’s all good, right? But then there’s a beat switch that just doesn’t freaking work. The pause from the original beat lasts way too long, so the transition feels incredibly forced, and the trap breakdown/drop means the song loses all momentum, especially with that annoying bird chirping sound that starts it off. There’s no real transition here, so Eilish’s offbeat delivery isn’t interesting and endearing, just kind of janky, with the whispering not being creepy but forced and tryhard. Without the drop, this’d be pretty cool though.

Conclusion

Wow, what a mixed week. Sadly, I can’t give Best of the Week to “Dedication”, so it goes to Lil Nas X for “Old Town Road” because it’s probably the most fun song here, with Ariana Grande and Victoria Monét snatching Honourable Mention for the so-bad-it’s-good mess, “MONOPOLY”. Worst of the Week should be obvious as it goes to JAY1 for “Your Mrs”, but Dishonourable Mention is harder, so I’ll give it to Westlife for the sake of tradition. See you next week!

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someofmyfavoriteplaces · 6 years

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The Sydney Entertainment Center (Demolished)

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Sydney Entertainment Centre (later known as Qantas Credit Union Arena) was a multi-purpose arena located in Haymarket, Sydney, Australia. It opened in May 1983, to replace Sydney Stadium, which had been demolished in 1970 to make way for the Eastern Suburbs railway line. The centre was owned by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, which administered the neighbouring Darling Harbour area, and managed under a lease.

It was one of Sydney’s larger concert venues, licensed to accommodate over 13,000 people as a conventional theatre or 8,000 as a theatre-in-the-round. It was the largest permanent concert venue in Sydney until 1999, when the Sydney Super Dome opened at Sydney Olympic Park. The venue averaged attendances of 1 million people each year and hosted concerts, family shows, sporting events and corporate events. It was demolished in 2016.

As part of a redevelopment of the Darling Harbour precinct, the Sydney Entertainment Centre was demolished in late 2016. The Darling Square residential development replaced the Centre. Replacement facilities were built closer towards the harbour surrounding the Darling Quarter and contains a larger theatre with a seating capacity of 8,000, an exhibition centre and convention centre that is expected to be the largest in the world. The opening of the new facilities occurred in late 2016.

It was originally to be demolished in 2013, along with the surrounding buildings, but was granted a reprieve. The final concerts were played by Cold Chisel and Elton John on the weekend of 18/19 December 2015. Demolition began in January 2016 and was replaced as an inner city venue by the nearby 9,000-seat International Convention Centre Sydney Theatre, as part of a $3 billion redevelopment of Darling Harbour.

In December 1983, Cold Chisel played its final Last Stand concert.

In April 1985, Queen performed four shows as part of The Works Tour.

Elton John has played numerous concerts there over the years, including eight dates in 1986 with an orchestra at Haymarket Arena. The latter shows were the last he performed prior to throat surgery. He has played 46 shows at the venue and was final artist to perform at the venue before its demolition in December 2015.

John Farnham finished his run of a record 76 concerts at the venue over three decades with a farewell gig December 16, 2015. He joked he got to take home the 6-foot entrance sign to the green room, dubbed ‘The Farnham Room’.

The Wiggles gave 84 performances at the venue, including the classic lineup’s final show on 23 December 2012.

In 1986, Dire Straits finished its 1985–86 world tour by playing 21 consecutive shows at the venue.

Also in 1986, Elton John performed the last leg of his Tour De Force with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at the venue, playing 12 shows. Part of the last show, (performed on 14 December) was to be made into his next album, Live in Australia with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Genesis played nine dates at the 1986 leg of the Invisible Touch Tour (25–27 November and 15–20 December). Some of the songs were performed with an Australian string section. Archives 2 – disc 2 holds a version of “Your Own Special Way” recorded at SEC.

Billy Idol performed here in September 1987 as part of The Whiplash Smile Australasian Tour.

David Bowie recorded his performances on 7 and 9 November 1987 from his worldwide Glass Spider Tour for release on video and CD at the Entertainment Centre.

In 1990 Belinda Carlisle performed her Runaway Horses tour at the SEC.

On 16 and 17 November 1990 Eric Clapton two sold-out concerts in front of 26,500 people during his Journeyman World Tour.

On 12 March 1994 Depeche Mode performed their last show from the Australian Exotic Tour/Summer Tour ‘94, as of 2015, it has been their last concert in the country.

Janet Jackson performed on 10, 11, 12 and 15 February 1995 for her Janet World Tour, and again on 16 December 1998 for her The Velvet Rope Tour.

American rock band Pearl Jam played two nights in 1995 (10–11 March) during the Vitalogy Tour, three nights (9, 11, 12 March 1998) during the Yield Tour and another three nights (11, 13, 14 February 2003) at the venue during the Riot Act Tour.

Two of The Beatles have performed at the venue, Paul McCartney for three sellout shows in March 1993, and George Harrison made a surprise appearance at a Deep Purple concert in 1984.

Gloria Estefan performed 4 shows in November 1991 for her Into The Light World Tour and on 10, 12 and 13 April 1997 for her Evolution World Tour.

On November 16 & 17 and December 17 1998 John Farnham, Olivia Newton-John and Anthony Warlow performed sold out shows as part of their combined nation-wide tour The Main Event.

Mariah Carey performed on 2 and 6 February 1998, for her Butterfly World Tour, a one off concert in January 2013, and again on 10 November 2014 for The Elusive Chanteuse Show.

Shania Twain performed there on 12 and 13 February 1999, for her Come On Over Tour.

The cream of Australian music, almost every major music act of the time, including INXS, The Angels, The Divinyls, Dragon, The Saints and Roger Waters performed two shows during his In The Flesh Tour on 5, and 6 April 2002.

Cher performed three shows during her Living Proof: The Farewell Tour on 3, 4 and 7 March 2005.

Kylie Minogue has played 25 concerts there, she finished her On A Night Like This Tour, after playing 11 nights there and kicked off her Showgirl: The Homecoming Tour in November 2006. On 20 March 2015, Minogue performed as part of her Kiss Me Once Tour.

Pop rock superstar P!nk performed (a then record-breaking) seven shows there during her 2007 I’m Not Dead Tour. In 2009, with her Funhouse Tour, in support of the number one album, she played a record 12 shows. She recorded her current live DVD at the SEC.

It also hosted international circuses and shows, such as Disney on Ice and Hugh Jackman's The Boy from Oz.

Billy Thorpe’s (Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs) Memorial Service was held here on March 4,2007. A crowd of 7000 family, friends and fans gathered to hear Speeches and bittersweet yarns from the musician’s friends and musical tributes came from Max Merritt, with a rendition of Slipping Away from Me and Olivia Newton-John with Over the Rainbow.

It was used annually for the Schools Spectacular, which features over 3,000 young performers from across NSW as well as the Rock Eisteddfod Challenge.

Asian pop legend, “God of Songs" Jacky Cheung on 1 October 2011, as part of his Jacky Cheung ½ Century World Tour.

In 2011 and 2012, it played host to the Sydney judges’ audition stages of the Seven Network singer search programme The X Factor.

In June 2013, the venue was host to four sold out performances of the Andrew Lloyd Webber Rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar.

In December 2013, the Centre was to host a Bon Jovi concert. It was the band’s first show in the Sydney Entertainment Centre after many stadium concerts across Australia.

In January 2014, Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire performed the second headline show of its Reflektor world tour at the venue to a sell-out audience.

On 8 March 2014, American pop star Bruno Mars performed at the venue in front of a sold out crowd for his Moonshine Jungle Tour.

On 12 and 13 of September 2014, American rapper Kanye West performed at the venue for his The Yeezus Tour.

On 14 February 2015, Laura Pausini made her first visit to Australia with The Greatest Hits World Tour.

As a sporting venue, the SEC was best known as the home venue of the Sydney Kings who play in the National Basketball League (NBL) over 3 stints. The Kings moved from the smaller (5,006 capacity) State Sports Centre in Homebush in 1990 and remained until moving to the Super Dome in 1999. The Kings then returned to the SEC in 2002 and would enjoy immediate success winning the NBL championship in 2002–03, 2003–04 and 2004–05. The team remained until 2008 when they folded due to financial difficulties, but when the club returned to the NBL in 2010 they again made the SEC their home which lasted until the centre’s closing in 2015.

In 1995, the Entertainment Centre hosted Game 4 of a 5-game international basketball series between the Australian Boomers and the Magic Johnson All-Stars in front of a sellout crowd of almost 12,000 fans. Despite the All-Stars being a collection of former NBA players, and with Magic Johnson not playing due to a calf injury, the crowd was actually behind the All-Stars on the night. They were treated to a game that went into overtime with the All-Stars keeping their unbeaten record intact with a 97–94 win. Before the game Magic Johnson apologised to the fans from centre court for not being able to play and called the SEC "A good sized gym that they can be proud of”.

Other sports such as boxing, professional wrestling, tennis and indoor motor-cross have also been held. Australian boxer Jeff Fenech won a number of World title matches at the centre during the 1980s, While in July 2011, the IBO Cruiser-weight title match between Antonio Tarver and Danny Green took place at the SEC.

The SEC hosted the 1991 World Netball Championships, as well as games during the 1994 FIBA Women’s World Championship including all Finals games and 3rd place playoff game.

In the 2000 Summer Olympics, the SEC was the venue for volleyball.

#sydney entertainment center #sydney #music venue #australia #darling harbour #haymarket #demolished

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themastercylinder · 6 years

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While Swamp Thing’s “look,” thanks to the incredible Bill Munn’s costume, is an exact recreation of the image envisioned by Wrightson in the DC Comic, the producers were still looking for a “new” monster for their film. The opportunity came with the film version incarnation of Arcane. While human in appearance in the early stages of the movie, Arcane’s evil wizardry leads to his transformation into a creature who is as equally startling as Swamp Thing himself. The original second appearance of Arcane in the 10th issue of Swamp Thing’s comic book adventure, has the evil madman looking like one of Dr. Frankenstein’s rejects. While horrifying in its own right, it wasn’t what Uslan, Melniker and Craven were looking for. They found their image in Munn’s Arcane monster costume which is ” a combination of Lion, Lizard and Warthog,” says Uslan. Uslan is fond now of remembering the trials he experienced with Swamp Thing now that the film is going through its final post-production work.

SPECIAL EFFECTS

The highlight of the film, even more so than Barbeau’s au natural swim is expected to be the three monsters spawned by Holland’s growth formula: Swamp Thing; the Arcane monster; and one of Arcane’s henchmen, Bruno, who is transformed into a four-foot beast resembling a drowned rat.

The complex makeup requirements are being handled by 32-year old Bill Munns, who previously worked on SAVAGE HARVEST, where he created several “bodies” to be chewed up by lions, and THE BOOGANS, a forthcoming Taft International release. Munns was one of several makeup artists contacted by the producers, and his $80,000 bid landed him the job.

“Immediately when I saw the comic book I became fascinated by the character of Swamp Thing,” said Munns, who began work in January with a crew of nine. “I thought that the original artists’ design was quite exceptional. Some artists like to change things just to prove that they’re being creative. But in this case, I felt the character had to be created as faithfully as was technically possible.”

Originally Munns and Craven considered the use of a complex, full scale cable-activated head, which was soon abandoned because it wasn’t expressive enough. Instead, extensive facial appliances and a full-body foam latex suit were relied on, designed around the frame of 6’5″ stuntman Dick Durock. Not only was Durock big enough to be a monster, but his face was the right shape: they needed an actor with a small nose to match the flat physiognomy of the Swamp Thing.

The light, flexible latex suit was reinforced to handle the weight of immersion in water. But disaster nearly occurred when the suits were brought out to the swamps. The groves of cypress trees secreted a tannic acid, raising the acidity of the water: the rubber began to corrode after a short time. The solution? Spray an antacid onto the costumes before the plunge into the swamp, thereby reducing the corrosive effects.

Although Munns decided to stay close to the original strip when he designed the Swamp Thing, there was no guide for the design of the Arcane monster in the comic books. That’s because Arcane is an amalgam of three or four characters from the original comic book. Craven’s script called for a werewolf type creature that had been featured in an early episode, but Munns objected.

“Because so much werewolf stuff was being done,” Munns explained, “anything we did would be considered a follow-up to that, so we decided to go into a new area. I was given the freedom to submit a preliminary design, and once they saw the head and body sculpture in miniature, they accepted it without change.”

With the support of Craven and his producers, Munns designed a beast with the mane of a lion, the face of a bizarre boar with a reptilian body. Early stages of the transformation were simulated with body appliances, which took several hours to affix to stuntman Ben Bates. But for nearly all of the Arcane monster’s appearances, Bates wore a five-piece costume that slipped on, literally, like a suit: the lower half was worn like a pair of pants, and the upper half was slipped on like a jacket. The one piece head of the monster is partly mechanized, with tubes connecting to air bladders that enable Munns to make the elongated snout move and the facial issues contract, a most disquieting effect when one is holding the mask for a demonstration.

Arcane’s metamorphosis occurs in two stages. He drinks the solution and begins to alter. “Arcane’s hand begins to change and blister, “Munns explained. “He looks in a mirror and realizes he is changing. He begins to smoke and appears to be burning up from inside. A crust forms over his entire body, but later we find it was only a strange metamorphosis, and the crust breaks away and the Arcane monster emerges.”

A test design for the final stage of the transformation.

Bruno’s Transformation Begins

Bruno, the unwitting mercenary who drinks the growth serum at Arcane’s command, is another monster that does not have any roots in the original comic strip. Played by Nicholas Worth, the crazed killer in DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE, the character is sympathetic, almost mouse-like, which makes his transformation into a giant rat somewhat appropriate. Diminutive Tommy Madden plays Bruno in costume.

Bill Munns rigs Nicholas Worth for his transformation

The final makeup as it appears in the film

Although the original comic book lasted only a few years, DC Comics plans to bring Swamp Thing back, taking advantage of the publicity and interest they anticipate the film will generate. Original author Len Wein will serve as the comic’s editor, supervising a new writer-artist team.

Makeup artist William Munns and his small crew watched helplessly as the acidic swamp water corroded the rubber and bleached the colors of the head-to-toe foam latex costumes. Munns had been given only six weeks to prepare the complex makeups required by the script, and was barely able to complete the suits before they were needed on the set; no time had been available for testing them on location.

When shooting had begun in the South Carolina swamps last spring, Munns was horrified to discover that even simple movements would stretch and tear the fragile costumes. Keeping the suits in one piece had become a daily nightmare. When the suits were in the water, Munns’ three-person crew would stand on guard, ready to undo whatever damage the swamp had done.

But neither Munns, nor the actors inside his latex costumes, were fully prepared for the strenuous fight sequence. Dick Durock (Swamp Thing) and Ben Bates (Arcane) had to battle the swamp and their own soggy costumes as much as each other, and the combination was taking its toll.

Suddenly Bates rumpled to his knees and signaled for help, overcome by the heat that had built up inside his costume. Struggling for air, his cable-activated mask and foam-latex suit were literally torn from his body in the rescue effort.

Munns in the Arcane suit

Bates was out of action, but Craven still wanted to complete the fight sequence that day. “There was no one on the set who had any experience working in a suit,” said Munns, a burly, bearded 32-year-old working on his first major production. “It’s dangerous, especially in water where an actor can drown inside his mask before anyone realizes it.

“There was one young man,” Munns continued, “a local person, who was hanging around the stunt people, and they were talking about using him. I had nightmares about having another guy just drop in the Swamp. When you put someone in a suit that has never worn one before, he usually wants to show off and overexerts himself, paying no attention to his rising body temperature or that his breathing is a little more difficult in a mask like that. An inexperienced person can come pretty close to killing himself. I felt the only way we would get done that day was if I got in the suit myself and finished the scene.”

Reluctantly, Munns donned a duplicate Arcane suit and slipped into the swamp. His big moment in front of the cameras? Arcane’s death at the hands of Swamp Thing, complete with liquid urethane “guts” bubbling out from the middle of his foam latex chest. Somehow, it seemed appropriate.

Something of a neophyte in the field of makeup effects when he was first hired, Munns was called on to provide top-quality makeup effects at a bargain-basement price. He was hindered by a painfully short pre production period, poor planning on the part of his producers and inhospitable location conditions. And that’s not to mention the trauma of his impromptu death Scene. To say William Munns paid his dues on SWAMP THING may be something of an understatement.

“The mere fact that we finished the film was a major accomplishment,” he said. “It was a complex task, often confusing or frustrating, with frequent unexpected twists.”

One of the more unexpected aspects of the project was that Munns was contacted in the first place. Unlike most of his previous jobs, he doesn’t know who to thank or blame for recommending him to producers Mike Uslan and Ben Melnicker.

“They had contacted Dick Smith first, but he was committed to GHOST STORY and was, of course, unavailable,” Munns explained. “Mike Uslan then told me that they got the book, Making a Monster (which features profiles of 25 noted makeup artists), and went down the list contacting everyone who wasn’t dead. It’s possible that some of them might have passed along my name. By the time I got around to asking about it, they had forgotten.”

Working from an early draft of the screenplay, Munns began to prepare his bid. Presumably, other makeup artists around the country were doing the same, competing for the prize assignment. Shortly before submitting his proposal, Munns went to a shop that deal in used comic books and purchased a copy of the first issue of “Swamp Thing.” Munns was captivated by the powerful drawings of Berni Wrightson.

“As soon as I saw the pictures of Swamp Thing, I knew exactly what they were looking for,” Munns said. “I had a feeling that it was potentially a classic character, and it had to be created as faithfully as possible. The pictures in the original comic books were abundant enough and detailed enough—especially a full-page shot of the head that ran in the first issue that I felt I could work perfectly from that.”

On the day after Christmas, Munns met with Wes Craven to discuss the project. Munns explained that he wanted to duplicate in rubber and plastic what Wrightson had drawn with a pen, even though the comic character was never designed to fit on a normal human frame. “The profiles of Swamp Thing when he’s walking, and when he’s relaxed, show his head in front of his body, not on top of it,” Munns explained. “But it’s a physical impossibility to do that with a real actor.”

To remain faithful to the artwork, Munns wanted to take a muscular actor and build up his shoulders with foam padding an additional four to six inches. He then proposed building an oversized mechanical head, to be positioned in front and on top of the actor’s own head, to create the proper profile. “The real actor wearing the suit would look out through little mossy areas around the throat, and his nose would actually be the Adam’s apple,” Munns said. “That’s where we started off.”

Munns sculpted a life-size head based on his idea. Since the entire face would be a mask operated by a complex servo-motor system. Munns didn’t have to worry about fitting a human face inside the flat physiognomy. He also sculpted a foot-tall version of the creature, showing body details.

At the same time Munns was working to remain faithful to Wrightson’s Swamp Thing concept, he looked to his own inspiration to create the film’s second costumed character, the Arcane Monster. Arcane is the story’s villain, played without special makeup for most of the film by French actor Louis Jourdan. But towards the end of the film, Jourdan drinks the same experimental plant growth formula that has turned scientist Alec Holland into Swamp Thing, precipitating a dramatic transformation of his own. Craven’s original script described the Arcane Monster as similar to a werewolf that had been featured in an episode of the Swamp Thing comic.

With THE HOWLING and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON both in production at the time, Munns convinced Craven that it might be a better idea to think up something a little more original. Munns sculpted a full-size head and a foot-tall figurine, combining a reptilian body with a head of a bizarre boar, and sent them along to New York with his the sculptures of Swamp Thing and his bid of $80,000 to handle the film’s makeup effects.

A month later, Munns was selected to do the film. That’s when his problems started.

“They were still very leery of the mechanical head, largely because I couldn’t show them one that I, or anyone else, had done that was fully operable,” Munns said. “Wes wanted something that could walk from a long shot to a close-up, which would have prohibited the use of cables. I felt that servo-motor control would be better. But it seemed the more they thought about it, the more they built up a resistance to it. It was vetoed by the producers as untried, and by the director as not potentially expressive enough. They kept on asking, ‘Can’t you do it on an actor’s face?”

Munns could, of course, but only by sacrificing Swamp Thing’s unique profile, which no one wanted to do. It was agreed to keep the oversized head and shoulders for medium and long shots, using a muscular stuntman wearing a simple pull-over mask. To allow the creature to display a full range of emotions in close ups, another actor-Munns wanted one with large eyes and a flat nose to keep as close as possible to the look of the comic book-would have his shoulders padded and wear conventional appliance makeup on his face.

By mid-February, the dual-Swamp Thing approach had been agreed upon. The major problem remaining was the calendar: the film was locked into a late April starting date in anticipation of the threatened director’s strike, set for June. Even if Munns had been able to start work immediately, he still wouldn’t have had the full twelve weeks of pre production time he had originally requested. But the producers had not yet secured the film’s financing, and Munns had to sit idly for more than a month until the money started flowing. He was left with only six weeks to create the suits and other special makeup effects required by the script, including the transformation of Louis Jordan into the Arcane Monster, and of Nicholas Worth into a three-foot creature dubbed the “drowned rat.”

“Whenever prep time is so drastically reduced, the end result is no time to test and refine the suits or test rig the effects,” Munns explained. “Some of the latex pieces were literally taken out of the oven and put into the suitcases headed for the location while still warm.”

Working frantically to make up for lost time, Munns and his 10-member crew went to work. He took a full body mold of Bob Minor, a muscular, six-foot-two-inch stunt man and began sculpting the full-scale figure of Swamp Thing in clay, using as a starting point the original head design he had submitted to the producers months before. With the sculpture nearly done—and only three weeks remaining before the finished costume would be needed on the set Munns was stunned to discover that Minor had been replaced on the film by six-foot-five-inch Dick Durock, whose relatively slender physique was hardly suited for the muscular Swamp Thing.

With no time to start over.” Munns sighed, “and no way to pad Durock to resemble Bob Minor’s form, we had only one possible recourse, aside from quitting altogether. We broke down the body sculpture into twelve sections, as the negative molds, threw out the dupe positives and merely slush cast the foam latex ” thick in the negatives. This thin skin of latex foam was then form-fitted around Durock to produce the slender suit seen in the film.”

In other words, Munns was forced to wing it.

The late change put Munns in an unusual position for a makeup artist: if he had balked, the film might not have been able to proceed on schedule. “They asked me, realistically, if it could be done,” Munns recalled. “I told them, ‘Yes, it can be done. It won’t be easy, but it’s possible.’ They went right ahead and figured, ‘Okay, fine.’ At that point, I was hesitant to put my foot down and say, ‘You can’t do this,’ or ‘You can’t do that,’ because I knew that if they didn’t start up in three weeks the film just wouldn’t go.”

Switching the men inside the suit was more than just an inconvenience for Munns-it altered the very look and nature of the creature. “When they sent over Durock everything began changing,” Munns explained. “Because he was tall enough, they wanted to eliminate the oversized head. And then Wes Craven cast Ray Wise to play Alec Holland, and Ray had stipulated that if he got the part, he wanted to play Swamp Thing in the close-ups. They sent him over to me to take a mold of his face. As soon as he left, I got on the phone and called the production offices in New York and told them that he had the worst possible nose in the world to try to hide under a Swamp Thing mask.”

Munns warned Craven that using Wise in appliance makeup would require a major redesign of the face, moving it far from the comic book look originally planned for. But Wise was committed to the role, and Munns reluctantly reworked the head, fitting the actor’s nose inside. “I did a sculpture of a Swamp Thing type face on Ray Wise’s face mask,” Munns said. “They seemed to feel that it was satisfactory.”

Other changes from Munns’ original design were more, shall we say, sensitive in nature. “There was the curious matter of Swamp Thing’s genitalia,” said Munns. “From the start, Wes Craven wanted to avoid the sexless, neutered style of body suit so commonly done. We agreed that Swamp Thing had to have as much ‘reality’ as possible. Wes felt that since the creature was originally a man, there should be some remnants of his manhood remaining. So in my original sculpture of Swamp Thing, included a short, thick root amid all the other flowing roots of the torso. But when all concerned met to view the sculpture, the consensus was that it was simply too conspicuous. “The offending root was removed,” Munns continued, “and it was reluctantly agreed that if there was ever to be a Son of Swamp Thing, he’d have to be adopted.”

Creating the Arcane Monster was not going much better for Munns than his frustrating work on the title character. To meet his schedule, Munns had begun sculpting the body for the creature before any actor was even considered for the part. Since Bob Minor was six-feet-two (Dick Durock had yet to arrive on the scene). Munns sculpted the Arcane Monster on a 6’2″ body form left over from his work on an earlier job.

“Weeks later,” Munns recalled, “Ben Bates, a six-foot-five-inch giant of a stunt man, was sent to me for fitting. Naturally, nothing was even close to proper size. We found we needed eight more inches around the chest, and he needed his body piece to be four inches longer from shoulder to groin. Things like that. It took four full sets of pieces to make two full suits, and my material and labor budget took a horrible beating.”

Munns had begged the producers not to send him anyone who hadn’t already been signed for the film. So he was somewhat shocked when Bates casually mentioned he hadn’t signed a contract and was considering taking on another assignment. “His physique was so unusual with a very high waist and legs that looked like sequoia trees that if we fitted the suit to him in one piece, it would be impossible to find anyone to fit into the suit.” In anticipation of such a disaster, the suit was broken down into several pieces which could be easily, individually altered if the need arose. Naturally, Bates stayed with the production until his fateful day in the swamp.

Munns, of course, wasn’t alone in his struggle to meet the shooting deadline. His 10 person crew, including three graduates of the Los Angeles makeup school where Munns taught during the ’70s worked nearly nonstop for days at a time. Doug White was responsible for the more than 25 gallons of foam latex needed for the hundred or so molds used to create the suits. Dave Miller and Steve La Porte helped with the sculpting, including the creatures’ hands. Bob Bliss, Marcia Semones, Michelle Triscari and Gloria Carter were involved in various lab chores, including punching the hair tufts for the Arcane Monster’s face and chest and sewing the costumes together.

Before the Swamp Thing costume was shipped to the location, Munns spent a day testing it, suiting up Dick Durock to see how he and the costume would stand up to water. The tests went fine. But when it came time to perform on camera, things never went quite so well. For example, Munns’ top priority was figuring out why the suits were falling apart.

“Whenever Dick moved a certain way and stretched part of the suit, the rubber would literally break apart,” said Munns, who found that the problem was the swamp’s acidic water. “When Durock would bend his legs, the knee would start to open up. If he would bring his arms forward, the back of the shoulders would crack. Ken Horn, Esther Mercado and Deborah Schankle (Munns location assistants) were always standing around with a needle and monofilament thread and between every take they’d bring him over and sew up whatever had split open.”

Munns said that other problems with the suit were caused by poor planning, which forced Bates and Durock to suit up and sit around all day without working. “The wear and tear caused by these wasted hours and days was tremendous,” he said.

“Swamp Thing would sometimes spend hours thrashing around in the swamps doing master shots and then we would be told to get him ready for a close-up. By this time, the face appliance was so soggy and filthy that no glue would stick to it and no makeup would clean it up.”

Durock, of course, was never meant to do the close-ups. But that was all changed when Craven first saw Ray Wise in his Swamp Thing makeup.

“They decided the resemblance wasn’t close enough,” said Munns, who was commuting between the location and his California shop where he was still working on the Arcane Monster. “I tried to explain that any differences they might see were because they had the two of them side by side, outside of the dramatic context. I thought they were close enough so you would not know the difference. But all the arguments seemed to be in vain.” Weeks later, Craven decided to try the appliance makeup again to reshoot a lengthy dialogue sequence between Swamp Thing and Adrienne Barbeau, but Munns didn’t know which version would be used for the final film.

Suddenly, with that one possible exception Dick Durock became the one and only Swamp Thing, and his makeup, originally designed only for long shots, became the focus of intense scrutiny. Instead of using just two or three face masks for the five and a half weeks of scheduled shooting as had been planned, Durock was given a new face every three days. Unlike Wise’s makeup, which was glued directly to his face, Durock’s mask was attached to the back of the suit. While not as subtle as a facial appliance, Munns felt the mask was suitable. “Any time it was relatively snug to his own face, it transmitted facial movements very well,” he explained.

Durock was even called upon to play most of the creature’s dialogue scenes presumably Ray Wise will dub in his own voice later which were being constantly augmented as shooting continued. “In the first draft I read, there were no more than four lines of dialogue, with maybe two or three words each,” Munns recalled. “A lot of the writing was actually done when Wes was on the location. There were constant changes going on—changes in concept as well as dialogue.”

Munns worked with Craven on perhaps the most basic problem of all: making the suits look lifelike, instead of like soggy, foam latex costumes. Human and animal skin is elastic, able to stretch and contract to fit an infinite variety of positions. Foam latex is fairly rigid, and tends to buckle and fold in odd places, more like clothing than anything organic.

“Any suit that isn’t totally affixed to the body like real skin has a totally different sense of stretch and flex,” Munns explained. “I think that’s a problem that every person who has ever done suits has had to deal with. If you want something with almost no buckling, you have to have something which can be stretched in every direction so it has the potential for contracting instead of folding. You’d have to make the suit smaller than the person, and you’d have to make the material so light and so elastic that it would have to be like pantyhose. But you’d have a suit so fragile all a person need to do is breathe on it the wrong way to damage it.

“The suit sometimes looks like it’s loose,” Munns added, “but you’d be surprised how difficult it was to get Durock in and out of it. It took two or three people pushing, pulling and shoving just to get it on and off. If we had made it any tighter, I doubt we could have gotten him into it.”

Audiences who have seen early previews of SWAMP THING are somewhat mixed in their opinions of the makeup work. Munns admits that there are a number of things that could have benefitted from more time and more money, but he is satisfied and feels his producers were satisfied, with his performance. “I know there were some points where they were worried things weren’t working out right,” said Munns. “There was also some disappointment in how long it took to suit up the characters. Other than that, I think they were very pleased. I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.

Swamp Thing Suit

In his original proposal to director Wes Craven and producers Mike Uslan and Ben Melniker, Munns sculpted this full-size head (made of slip rubber and filled with polyfoam) based on the drawings in the “Swamp Thing” comic book. Munns wanted to build a fully mechanical head-including remote-controlled eyes—to be operated by sophisticated servo controls. The idea was vetoed by the producers as untried, and by Craven because he didn’t think it would be expressive enough, forcing Munns into a more conventional route.

Michele Triscari, Marcia Semones G. and Esther Mercado (1-r) take a full-body plaster cast of 6’2″ Bob Minor, originally selected to play Swamp Thing. Molds of his head and hands were taken separately. When the dried plaster is removed, it forms a “negative” impression of Minor’s body, from which “positives” can be made. Munns sculpted the body of Swamp Thing in clay over a fiberglass positive.

Doug White prepares several of the more than 100 molds needed to make the suits for Swamp Thing and the Arcane Monster. Normally, latex pieces are created in a two-part mold: the inside is a “positive” of the actor’s body, and the outside is a “negative” of a clay makeup design. But since the stunt men for the film were signed so late, a process called “slushing” was employed. White merely poured liquid foam latex into open “negative” molds of the clay sculpture. Munns had to mend, chop and glue, literally forming a new suit around Durock’s body.

Munns actually made suits for two Swamp Things: Dick Durock (shown having his face mask painted by Ken Horn) and Ray Wise, who plays Dr. Alec Holland, Swamp Thing’s alter ego (inset). Wise, who was to play the creature only in close-ups, hugs his suit, which extended to his waist. The face was a separate appliance, glued to Wise’s face. But Wes Craven didn’t think the two Swamp Thing’s looked alike, and used Durock almost exclusively.

Deborah Schankle (kneeling), Ken Horn and Esther Mercado fit Dick Durock into his full body costume, a daily three-hour ritual. Horn concentrates on the creature’s face, while the others secure and blend the edges on the other six pieces of the suit. Note the two extra masks at lower right, one already used and one still unpainted. Durock needed a new “face” roughly every three days.

Esther Mercado uses a commercial, urethane based carpet adhesive to glue down the edges of the Swamp Thing suit. Munns figured correctly that if it was strong enough to keep carpets glued even after they’re washed, it would be strong enough to survive the South Carolina swamps. To test it, Munns suited up Durock and had him float around in a California reservoir. The “moss” that covers Swamp Thing’s body is actually the same material used for bushes and similar details in model railroad set-ups. Besides its decorative quality, it helped hide the seams in the suit.

Cast

Ray Wise as Alec Holland

Adrienne Barbeau as Alice Cable

Louis Jourdan as Anton Arcane

Dick Durock as Swamp Thing

David Hess as Ferret

Nicholas Worth as Bruno

Don Knight as Harry Ritter

Al Ruban as Charlie

Ben Bates as Arcane Monster

Nannette Brown as Dr. Linda Holland

Reggie Batts as Jude

Mimi Craven as Arcane’s Secretary (as Mimi Meyer)

Karen Price as Karen

Bill Erickson as Young Agent

Dov Gottesfeld as Commando

Tommy Madden as Little Bruno

REFERENCES and SOURCES

Cinefantastique v11n04

Cinefantastique v12n02

Fantastic Films #27

FANGOR1A #15

FANGORIA #17

Swamp Thing (1982) Retrospective Part Two While Swamp Thing's "look," thanks to the incredible Bill Munn’s costume, is an exact recreation of the image envisioned by Wrightson in the DC Comic, the producers were still looking for a "new" monster for their film.

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duhragonball · 6 years

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Vento Aureo Reread, JJBA Ch. 448-456

One of the things that frustrated me about reading JJBA in manga format was that the volumes never lined up with the story arcs. For example, this arc, where Giorno meets Bruno’s superior in the gang for his initiation, is broken up across volumes 2 and 3. Sometimes the volumes manage to break a story up on a decent cliffhanger. In this case, volume 2 ends with Giorno defeating Black Sabbath, but still wondering if he’ll pass his initiation into the gang. Most of the time, though, it just feels like the editors are only looking for a certain page count, regardless of where the story leaves off.

With that in mind, I decided to break this up into story arcs, now that I can do that without spoiling myself on the story. The first time I read Part 5, it felt like this continuous slog, with no real break in the action, but now that I’ve looked it over more carefully, and dispensed with the volume numbers, I can break it down pretty well.

At first, I tried to sort it all by location. Coming up soon is a mission on Capri Island, followed by an assignment in Pompeii, but once I actually looked at a map of Italy, I found those are all pretty close to Naples, which is where the story starts. So I can lump the first section of Vento Aureo as the “Naples” part, which is then followed by a section set in Venice, then Sardinia, and finally Rome. It just helps me keep everything straight. I suppose I needed the same kind of clarity with Part 3 and Part 7, but my knowledge of U.S. and Asian geography is a lot better than anything I know about Italy.

In this arc we meet Polpo, the Passione Operative who runs things in Naples. Passione is the name of the gang. There’s 756 members, including Stand Users like Bruno Bucellati, and guys without Stands, like Leaky-Eyed Luca. Giorno soon realizes that Polpo has a Stand when he visits him in prison and he starts eating his own fingers.

One of the things that always bugged me about Polpo is how he seems to have completely different abilities in his cell, as opposed to the ones we see when his Stand is formally introduced to the story. Polpo isn’t just morbidly obese; his head is bigger than Giorno’s entire body, and he seems to barely fit in his cell, prompting Giorno to wonder how he ever got through the door. Also, he has all these hidden compartments in the cell, and he can somehow hide his enormous body from plain sight.

I finally got a clue when I noticed a couple of things on the reread. First, Polpo’s fingers don’t just reappear at random. When Giorno sees Polpo’s bloody stumps, a cuckoo clock goes off, causing him to look over to it, and when he looks back, Polpo’s fingers are back, now holding a lighter. As we see later, Polpo’s Stand, Black Sabbath, travels through shadows, so I think it’s reasonable to assume Polpo was actually reaching into a shadow to retrieve the lighter. He uses similar tricks to hide himself and other objects in his cell, and he can probably leave the prison altogether just as easily. Bruno hinted as much when he led Giorno to the prison, but, as Giorno deduces, Polpo is probably safer in jail, and Polpo seems content to live out his sentence and run his gang business from inside.

Of course, that doesn’t explain the blood we see on Polpo’s “stumps”. This may simply be wine he surreptitiously spilled on his hand to confuse Giorno, or maybe he really does bleed whenever he moves his body into the shadow dimension his Stand uses. Or maybe he’s got real blood stashed with the lighter, but that seems kind of extreme.

Anyway, Giorno’s initiation test is to take Polpo’s lighter and keep it lit for twenty-four hours straight. He almost whizzes it twice. First, he has to be searched before he can leave the prison. Since he can’t hide the lighter, he uses his own Stand, Gold Experience, to transform it into a flower. It does not, however, transform the flame.

Next, Koichi breaks into his dorm room to steal back his passport. Giorno hides, but worries that Koichi will snuff the lighter if he happens to notice it. So he turns the wiring into a snake, which bites into the loaf of bread he put the lighter in, and tugs on the cord to lift the whole thing out of Koichi’s sight.

I’m trying to keep track of Giorno’s powers as the story winds on. So far, I’ve got the following:

Gold Experience can transform inanimate objects into living things, and back again.

If these creations are attacked in any way, the attack will be reflected back upon the aggressor.

At first, Giorno claims that his creations have wills off their own, but he seems to have at least some influence over their actions, or perhaps he simply has an intuitive understanding of what they’ll do.

When Gold Experience strikes a living being, their perceptions are accelerated, causing them to think the world around them has slowed down. They also become extremely sensitive to pain.

What we see here is Gold Experience transforming inanimate objects only partway. The lighter becomes a flower, but there’s enough of the lighter left unchanged to keep the flame lit. The cord becomes a snake, but only on the end Giorno needs to grab the bread. The other end of the cord remains a cord.

Despite Giorno’s best efforts, the lighter goes out anyway, and a friendly janitor relights it. Giorno had assumed this was impossible, since there would be no point in the test if the lighter could simply be re-lit. As it turns out, this is precisely the point, as re-igniting the lighter summons Polpo’s Stand, Black Sabbath. Black Sabbath’s only function in this situation is to yank out the soul of its targets and stab their souls with the arrow in its mouth. This is the same kind of arrow as the ones from Part 4, which either kill on contact, or activate latent Stand abilities. Black Sabbath’s targets are anyone who re-ignites the lighter, and anyone who witnessed the lighter being re-lit. The janitor dies to the arrow, while Giorno is injured by it, not once...

Not twice...

But three times, when the arrow pierces Gold Experience. I find this conspicuous, now that I know how the story ends, but I’ll worry about that later.

Basically, Polpo’s initiation is rigged. Of course, if an applicant actually managed to keep the lighter lit for the full 24 hours, he would pass the test and be accepted into the gang, since Polpo admires trustworthiness. However, the real idea is that the initiate will succumb to the temptation to relight the flame, at which point Black Sabbath will either kill them or give them a Stand power. We can infer from this that this is how Bruno got his own Stand, Sticky Fingers. It’s also plausible that Leaky Eye Luca actually kept the flame lit for the full 24 hours, which fits his stubborn personality. Or maybe Luca passed some other test.

What Polpo’s test never seems to take into account is that the initiate might already have a Stand. Black Sabbath is essentially automated in this fight, so it doesn’t know that it’s fighting Stand Users here. It’s just trying to stab Gold Experience (and Echoes, when Koichi jumps in to help), just like it stabbed the Janitor’s soul to kill him. Presumably, this means Polpo is willing to kill Stand Users unaffiliated with the gang, perhaps because he sees them as potential threats. What he wants are kids like Bruno, who only get a Stand by joining Passione.

Ultimately, Giorno defeats Black Sabbath by using his own body as bait. While B.S. wrestles with him, hampered by Echoes’ 3-Freeze ability, Giorno manages to accelerate the life of a nearby tree, causing it to wither and die within seconds. So chalk that up as another application of Gold Experience. The tree was the only thing protecting Black Sabbath from the sunlight, so it faded away to return to its master.

At first, Giorno thinks the presence of Black Sabbath means that Polpo has discovered his failure of the test. He also thinks that defeating Black Sabbath killed Polpo, until Koichi explains how remote, long range Stands work. And that was the other half of the puzzle for me. I couldn’t figure out how Black Sabbath’s demonstrated powers would explain Polpo’s abilities in his cell, but they don’t have to be consistent. When Koichi explains Black Sabbath’s ability, he’s comaring it to his own experience battling Yoshikage Kira’s Killer Queen in Part 4. But Killer Queen had multiple modes. The one Koichi fought was Sheer Heart Attack, which could attack foes at long distances based on very specific parameters. But when Kira wasn’t using that mode, he could use Killer Queen more creatively than that.

I think it’s reasonable to assume that Black Sabbath works the same way. In person, Black Sabbath allows Polpo to move from shadow to shadow, and he can store objects for safe keeping, like the lighter and the arrow, or even portions of his own body. But he can also reconfigure B.S. for an automated mode that hides inside the ligher, with the arrow hidden inside its mouth. That version works like Sheer Heart Attack. We could call this “Paranoid” or “War Pigs”, for the sake of argument.

Anyway, Koichi wants to contact his friends immediately, now that he knows there’s a Stand Arrow in Naples, but Giorno convinces him to keep it to himself, since the enemy is an organization, and he can’t afford anyone leaking his plans. We never see Koichi again after this scene, and while he appears to accept Giorno as a righteous person, we never actually hear him agree to Giorno’s request. For all we know, he returned to Japan and blabbed his head off to Jotaro and everyone in Morioh. Once again, there’s ambiguity over whether Giorno is to be trusted, and ambiguity over how the other heroes feel about him. We’re left to wonder if Koichi vouched for Giorno, or if he raised an army to oppose him.

When Giorno return the lighter to Polpo he somehow turns one of Polpo’s guns into a banana, which fires when Polpo tries to eat it. I still can’t figure out how Giorno did this, since the gun was on the far wall off the cell, which looks to be out of Gold Experience’s range. Assuming it was in G.E.’s range, then it’s no problem. Giorno could have moved it through the walls and touched the gun without Polpo seeing it, and then it would just be a matter of moving the gun into the refrigerator with the rest of the bananas.

I’m also not sure how the gun went off. Giorno has some control over his creations, but bananas can’t move on their own, and I don’t buy that Polpo just happened to have his thumb where the trigger would be as it changed back into a gun. For a second, I thought maybe this was a case of what happened to Luca. Polpo bites down on the banana, and the “attack” is reflected back upon him. But if that were the case, he would have a big bite mark on his head, not a gunshot wound. In any event, Giorno arranged this trap to avenge the old janitor, whose needless death offends Giorno’s sense of honor.

Then Giorno goes with Bruno to meet the rest of their team, and he drinks pee. OR DOES HE?

The better translation made this scene a lot clearer, in that Giorno was visibly aware that Abbachio had filled his cup with urine, and the others knew that Giorno knew it. So it wasn’t a thing where Giorno was pretending to play along. Abbachio was trying to trap him into either getting mad at his new teammates, or actually drinking pee and looking like a dope. Giorno used his Stand to create a third option that would impress them all, which I suppose is worth touching pee with your lips.

I don’t quite understand how Giorno can get his tooth back, though. Does he have to extrude the jellyfish first? Maybe it’s best not to think about that.

I remember being so irritated about all these new guys being introduced at the same time. I still have trouble remembering the names of Part 4 characters. But in color, it’s pretty easy to keep track. Doily Hat, Dick Helmet, Baby Idiot, and Dressed in the Dark. But I’ll have more to say about them later.

#jojo's bizarre adventure #vento aureo #spoilers #vento aureo reread #naples #giorno giovanna #polpo #urine luck

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