#cyclones crush gets exposed!!!

[write4tomorrow]

Chapter 1: Zeus

Pairing: Jake “Hangman” Seresin x CIA Agent!Reader

Summary: During the training with Maverick for the mission, the pilots must also complete “hostile condition” training with a CIA interrogator (reader). Hangman thinks this type of training is a waste of time until the reader exposes him. Enemies to Lovers. 

Genre: Adventure / Fluff

A/N: This is the first in a six part series. I had the idea for this story and immediately wrote the first four chapters. More to come soon!

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Epilogue (Complete)

Maverick walked into the briefing room with Cyclone and Warlock, glancing at photos on the projected screen. Looking back at him were the faces of the best pilots in the Navy - including Rooster. 

“Is there a problem, captain?” Cyclone asked. Maverick looked at Rooster’s face.

“You know there is,” Maverick clenched his jaw and turned back to face Cyclone. 

“Bradley Bradshaw,” Cyclone nodded, “You flew with his old man.”

“I’ve known him since he was a kid. Don’t make me choose-” Maverick was silenced with a wave of Cyclone’s hand. He nodded at Warlock. 

“In addition to your flight training,” Warlock explained, “the pilots will be given what the CIA calls, ‘hostile environment’ training. We’re doing everything we can to make sure they’re ready for this mission, captain. Meaning the pilots will be equipped by the best to fly themselves home and to survive enemy interrogation tactics if they are forced to eject.” 

“You say ‘the best’ but who…” Maverick turned back toward the projector screen as a new face appeared. Maverick’s jaw dropped. “No-” Maverick hissed.

“You know her?” Warlock asked. Maverick nodded. Cyclone raised an eyebrow, but Maverick’s gaze was glued to your illuminated face.

“She’s been one of Rooster’s best friends since they were stationed together.” Maverick turned back towards Warlock and Cyclone. “She was doing work for the Navy. She has the best poker face I've ever seen. Nearly swindled me out of a small fortune playing cards. But y/n and Rooster - I’m not going to risk both of them.”

“She isn’t going with them, Captain. She’s just training the pilots.” Warlock said slowly. Maverick noticed the way Warlock kept glancing at Cyclone. 

“She’s the best. She’ll get the pilots ready.” Cyclone said, keeping his eyes on Maverick. 

“You’ve met her?” Maverick asked. 

“She’s my daughter, Captain.” Cyclone answered. 

The bar was so crowded. Even for a weeknight. Still, you were glad to be back at Top Gun and were practically giddy when you saw Penny behind the bar of The Hard Deck. When she noticed you, Penny’s eyes went wide. She slid out from behind the bar and pulled you into a crushing hug. 

“How’s your dad, kiddo?” Penny asked, pulling back to look at your face. Before you can answer, you hear your name from somewhere near the pool tables. 

“Go,” Penny says with a wink, “we’ll talk later.” She pushes you towards the crowd of young pilots and you rush right past the seated Maverick. 

“She didn’t even notice me,” Maverick muttered to Penny. “She still has that same smile, though.”

“What smile,” Penny asked. 

“The one that means trouble.” Maverick said as he watched you give Rooster a hug. Bradley towered over you and something in Maverick’s heart ached when he saw how familiar you two seemed. He was even surprised to see you hug a few of the other pilots. Harvard, Yale, Fritz. How many of these guys did you already know?

“Look who’s in town!” Phoenix passed her pool stick to Rooster to give you a tight hug. You hugged her back, feeling lighter than you had in a long time. 

“What are you doing here?” Rooster asked. You cleared your throat, wondering how much you were allowed to say. You settled for silence and gave Rooster one of your famous grins. 

“I guess the spy master still has her secrets,” Phoenix said, knowing what the look meant. But Rooster wasn’t going to let it go. He asked again and you knew you needed to tell him something. Luckily, someone interrupted you before you could even think of a good excuse. 

“Who do we have here, Phoenix? Don’t tell me you brought a friend to Top Gun.” You saw Phoenix roll her eyes before you turned to find the speaker. He was tall, just as tall as Rooster, with a grin that could rival your own. You marveled at how pristine his uniform, hair, watch, - even the stupid toothpick in his mouth - seemed to be. 

This one has an ego, you told yourself. Years of training and learning how to read people meant that you were very good at making first impressions. You knew what ego’s meant at Top Gun. Sure, they were a dime a dozen, but they were also dangerous. 

You decided to play into the man’s ego. 

“You look like you were made by the greek gods,” you said, giving the newcomer your most awed expression. Hangman’s smile widened as you bashfully glanced away. You heard Rooster groan from behind you. But your eyes briefly slid to Phoenix. The female pilot had a grin on her face, she knew the game you were playing. 

“We call him Hangman,” she said, nodding her head at the guy. You turned your attention back to him. He leaned in a little closer, placing his drink on the pool table by his hip. He leaned in so that his face was close to yours. 

“But you can call me Zeus. Let me buy you a drink,” Hangman said with a wink. “And you know what they said about the god of lightning-”

“Oh, so you’re an inbred kid,” you said, trying not to let your glee show too much, “Don’t worry, I’ll speak very slowly so you can understand me.” You paused for a moment to take in Hangman’s shocked face. Then, you flicked the toothpick out of his mouth before gently patting his cheek. There was laughter around you and you were pretty sure Rooster choked on his drink.

“Well,” you said, taking Hangman’s drink off the pool table, “my name is y/n and I’m about to hand your ass to you in this game of pool.” You winked up at Hangman as you took a sip from his beer. It wasn’t your favorite flavor, but the expression on Hangman’s face was delicious. 

“It didn’t take long for her to find trouble,” Penny said. She and Maverick had been watching you tease Hangman. Maverick found himself smiling, enjoying the way Rooster cheered you on as you began your game of pool. 

Maverick began thinking about the coming weeks and the training that would probably wear down on you and the pilots. 

“Why are you making that face?” Penny asked, turning her full attention to Maverick.

“This might be a long few weeks.” Maverick said with a sigh. 

Indeed, the next morning came too quickly and seemed to be drawn out for far too long. Maverick entered the room with the waiting pilots as Cyclone introduced him. It was by no means a warm welcome. Hangman groaned when he realized that he had physically thrown his new instructor out of a bar the night before. Rooster was staring daggers through Maverick. Even the awkward Bob seemed to pick up on the tension in the room. But Maverick continued to outline his plan for the week to the pilots. 

“So suit up.” Maverick finished, “We’re starting dog fights today.” He moved to leave the room, but Cyclone quickly stepped in. 

“Hang on,” he said, giving Maverick a glance, “You’ll have one more instructor.” Maverick listened to Cyclone explain that hostile interrogation tactics will also be part of the pilot’s training. Maverick couldn’t help but smile as you walked in, letting Cyclone list your credentials. He found his gaze going to Rooster who was giving you a small, understanding nod. Did he not know you were going to be helping the navy with this mission? 

Maverick didn’t have much time to wonder because his attention was quickly pulled to Hangman. The others had seen you by now and quite a few of them were whispering among themselves. Hangman’s shoulders dropped when he saw you. 

Your eyes locked with his and there was no hint of the playfulness you had displayed at the bar last night. Instead, you looked entirely professional, cold, and stared at Hangman with an evaluating once over.

“Today you will focus on flying,” Cyclone finished, “your training with Ms. y/l/n will begin tomorrow after she’s had a chance to observe everyone. For now, go get ready for dog fights with Maverick. You are dismissed.” 

Hangman was the first pilot to leave the room.

Part 2

A/N: Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think or feel free to give any helpful feedback.

#hangman top gun #jake hangman seresin #hangman x reader #jake hangman seresin x reader #jake seresin #top gun x reader #top gun imagine

[callsigndragon]

Desperate times, desperate measures | ch. 5: Texas

Word count: 2.5k

Warnings: mentions of death, alcoholic drinks, the whole squad not believing in Jake (poor guy), people having ✨feelings✨, jake's parents (yes, that deserves a warning)

A/N: changing the header until i decide what to do with the extra character that i have to eliminate and the one i have to add lol

It's okay if you like it and all, but please... a comment is also welcomed and if you reblog it? I'll kiss you on the forehead.

If you want to be added, comment down!

Masterlist

"There's no way you can keep it in your pants for a year," Bradley states, leaving his beer on the table. They're all sitting in one of the tables next to the darts  at the Hard Deck. It's their usual. Nobody sits there. 

Jake rolls his eyes, twirling the beer bottle in his hands. "I love some supportive friends." 

Mickey laughs, not raising his head while he scrolls on Instagram. "Jake, you like sex. I would say you even love sex."

"Yeah, what about it?"

The wizzo raises an eyebrow and puts his phone down. "You're gonna live with a hot girl for a year, with all that implies, and not be tempted to get laid even once?"

"I can do that." 

Is now Payback’s turn to show disbelief. "Man, chances are one day you open the bathroom door and she's there naked. That's gonna be frustrating." 

Jake’s leg bounces up and down. No, he's not imagining you naked. Not a chance. "Guys, this isn’t about me, okay? This is about Emma. And if I have to be a fucking celibate monk for a year, I'll be." 

"Sure thing, buddy," Nat says, getting up from her chair to get another drink. 

"Are we going to ignore the fact that you had a crush on her once?" Javy asks, making Jake widen his eyes, surprised at how his friend just exposed him like that in front of the rest of the group. 

"It was one time, and it was right before she dumped my ass.” Jake groans, looking away. 

“For her to dump your ass, you must have been dating in advance, and if I remember correctly, you didn’t even make it to the restaurant.” Rooster jokes, high fiving Payback and Fanboy. These three are always trying to find ways to mess up with the pilot. 

“I hate you all.” 

A comfortable silence falls over the table, all of them thinking about the way Jake’s life has changed so much in only a few weeks. Jake has always been a playboy, a ladies’ man, he knows he’s good looking and he has no shame in saying it out loud. But now he’s married and has a daughter. He could go out and hook with whatever girl he wanted. However, Jake is better than that. He has made a promise. By law, and by his own promise, he’s devoted to you. Not in a romantic way, but he respects you enough to know that you don’t deserve any of that. And he can’t go around fucking the first girl he mets if you are going to focus on emma for a whole year. 

“I’m taking the girls to my parents’ ranch next week.” 

This time, the silence is deafening. “Your parents. The same parents you don’t talk with after you broke the engagement with that rich country girl?” 

Javy’s words make everyone stare at Jake with open mouths. “You were engaged!?”

“Yeez, Nat, say it louder. I think even Cyclone has heard you from his office.” Jake should have known that this information would have been revealed sooner or later. But he wanted it to be on his terms—not like this. 

Rooster pushes his drink away, wiping a few beer droplets from his mustache. “Dude, you were engaged, you broke it off, and you’re going to show up there with not only a wife, but your best friend’s daughter?” 

With pursed lips and an unfocused gaze, Jake nods. He’s deep in thought, suddenly realizing that he is, indeed, going to rub it in his parents' faces about how he got married to another girl. Well, it seems like this is a win-win situation for everyone. “How I wish I could capture my dad’s face when he sees Page.” 

“Does she know about this?” Bob asks this while cleaning his glasses. 

Jake shakes his head. “I’ll tell her on the way there.” 

“Can I ask a question?” Payback says, raising a finger once he sees how the corner of Jake’s mouth twitches in an attempt to suppress a smile. “And don’t say I asked one already.” 

“Yeah, go ahead.” 

“Why didn’t you marry that girl?” 

For a second, Jake thought that he was about to ask what his feelings were toward Page. And he was afraid to think about it. It wasn’t love, that's for sure. But that infatuation he felt is becoming something more… and he’s not sure if he wants to or if he should, allow that to happen. “I didn’t want to.” 

“Was she hot?” 

“Damn, she was.” Javy says, and Jake is really close to throwing something at his friend for his running mouth. 

“Then?” 

“I didn’t love her.” 

The answer, as simple and logical as it seems, makes all the aviators in the table look at Jake with puzzled expressions, as if the words coming from his mouth weren’t his. “Oh, but you are able to feel love?” Natasha jokes, chuckling at her own joke. 

Jake knows it’s a joke, but he feels hurt. “I’m gonna go home and start packing things. Page is gonna start posting pictures of us on her insta, so it would be very helpful if you could comment on them, saying good things and how proud you are of us,” he mumbles while getting up. Bob looks at Rooster, telling him with only his eyes that he should go with Hangman, but Rooster knows better. Jake needs some time alone. “Oh, by the way. I am as able to feel love as anyone, in fact, I have been looking for it longer than any of you. I would appreciate it if you stopped thinking that I only go looking out for girls to put my dick in them.” 

And without leaving them time to reply, Jake leaves the Hard Deck. 

“I have to confess something.” 

Those are the words that Jake tells you once you’re on the road after landing in Houston, where his parents' ranch is. You didn’t imagine that those words would lead to him telling you how his parents wanted to marry him to this rich girl so they could save the ranch. Apparently, in the last ten years, the ranch has had more losses than profits, and this arrangement would have saved it. 

Now, however, nobody knows how much time there is until they have to close the ranch and leave that life behind. 

“I’m sorry to hear that, Jake.” You tell him, not knowing what more to say. 

Jake shakes his head, pushing his sunglasses up his nose. “Don’t be. I don’t want to marry without being in love.” 

You can’t hold back your laugh. Ironic, isn’t it? He breaks off an engagement because he doesn’t want to marry without love, and here you are. Mrs. Seresin in the flesh, and not a bit of love between you two. 

“Well, you know what I mean, Page.” 

“I do, of course. But it seems like life has pulled the biggest uno reverse card.” 

It’s a way of seeing it, Jake thinks. But if he had to choose between marrying you again or marrying that country girl, he would choose you. 

Every single time. 

“We have to play the lovey-dovey couple, right?” You ask, knowing the answer already, but somehow just wanting to keep talking with him. Either to kill time or just because way down you enjoy talking with him.

"Yeah, but I don't think that's a problem for you, Miss Hollywood." He teases, looking at you.

"Oh, so now that you know my intentions as an actress, Page is now Miss Hollywood?"

Jake thinks for a second, scratching his chin while the other hand stays on the wheel. "Nah, you're always gonna be Page for me."

You don't realize how your smile makes him smile too.

The ranch is less than an hour away from Houston, fronting the Brazos River. The house is bigger than you imagine, and just looking at it from the outside makes you realize that this is not a small ranch and that the house itself costs a few million dollars. White paint covers the gable wall in front of you, and it looks very new. Not even one of the tiles from the clay roof is out of place, making you rethink all the information that Jake gave you on the way here. Why would he lie to you? 

But seeing the expression on Jake’s face tells you that he didn’t know that the house was in such a good state... as well as the rest of the ranch. 

Why, then, were they so persistent in getting Jake to marry this girl for money?

When the car comes to a halt, an elderly couple walks out of the main house. The lady is a carbon copy of Jake. The same hair, the same eyes. Same smile. She appears to be the sweetest woman you've ever seen, but there's something in her eyes and the way she looks at Emma, who is being held by Jake, that makes you want to get in the car and drive all the way back to Houston to catch the first flight to San Diego. 

Jake's father, on the other hand, gives you the creeps. Call it female intuition; call it whatever you want, but you don’t want to be alone with him. He has white hair, blue eyes, glasses, and stubble. From this distance, you’d say that he’s the same height as Jake, maybe even a bit taller. He looks like a good man, but the way his fist tightens around the silver buckle on his jeans makes you wonder how many times he has unbuckled that belt to hit Jake or his wife. 

“Jacob, my son! We weren’t expecting you so soon,” Jake’s mother says, approaching Jake to hug him. The soft wind ruffles her golden locks and rippling the hem of her white dress, allowing you to see her brown cowboy boots. 

“Hey, ma. Sorry for coming so soon. I don’t know when I’m going to be deployed, and I want you two to meet my wife.” He says, stepping back from his mother’s arms and placing his hand on the small of your back. “This is y/n, my wife. And this is our daughter, Emma.” 

The heat that travels through your body from head to toe is not due to the hot Texan morning. He didn’t hesitate to call you his wife, or Emma, his daughter. Not even a second. It seems like he has finally come to terms with it. 

“Your daughter? That girl doesn’t look like any of you. And since when do you have a wife?” Jake’s father yells, scaring poor Emma. You take her from Jake’s arms, trying to calm her down. 

“It’s okay, baby girl. Don’t worry. You’re okay.” You whisper while kissing her head and rocking her in your arms. 

“Dad, she’s Luke’s daughter. Luke and Anne died in an accident a month ago. We’re her parents now,” Jake explains, opening the car to look for Emma’s favorite toy: a soft rabbit plushie. It calms her every time. Jake plays with the toy for a bit, making the rabbit kiss Emma’s chubby cheeks, and once she’s laughing and making grabby hands to catch the toy, Jake smiles and turns towards his dad. 

“Why didn’t you invite us to the wedding?” The older Seresin questions are moving dangerously closer to your small group. You take a small step back, an action that Jake notices. He grabs your hand in his, offering you some support. He said that his dad wasn’t an easy person, but you didn’t imagine that the first meeting would go like this.

“We married at the courthouse. No one came.” 

“Why? Is she an immigrant?” He looks you up and down, clenching his jaw at the thought of his son marrying someone like that. 

“What? No!” You protest, not understanding why his first thought is that you are illegal.

Jake takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. “She’s not an illegal, dad. And stop asking those questions.” 

“I just want to know why my son married someone like...her.” 

It’s impossible not to feel offended when someone refers to you with only a few words, but with a lot of meaning embedded in them. In his eyes, you’re not worthy. You’re not good for his son. And even though you don’t want to be worthy, because you couldn’t care less about their approval, it still hurts to be looked down on. 

“I don’t think I have to give you any more explanations than the ones I gave you already. You want to know how we met? I can tell you. You want to know how she is way too good for me? I can also tell you that. You want to know how we were supposed to marry in a few months? Yeah, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how I had to marry her early so we could adopt Emma. And the only reason I’m here is because I still have a bit of respect and love for you two and wanted to introduce you to my wife. She’s a famous writer and scriptwriter, and a wonderful, brilliant, and beautiful woman. She’s way out of my league, and if you have any other stupid commentary to say about her, I’m going to get in my car and drive away as fast as I can.” 

You can feel both males having a stare-down, waiting for the other to give in. Both of them are too proud to accept a loss. 

“If you make me leave, I swear to God, you won’t ever see me again.” Jake warns, opening the driver’s door. 

Jake’s dad moves his eyes away, losing the battle. He clears his throat. “I’m sorry, kid. I didn’t want to say those things. You know how stupid I can be.” He looks at you, takes off his Stetson, and nods. “I’m sorry, girl. I just want the best for my son, and I’m sure that you’re better than I could ask for. Come inside. It’s getting too hot for that little kiddo to be out here.” 

You look at Jake, giving him the choice to leave or stay. He places his hand on your hip, bringing you closer to hear him whisper in your ear. “He won’t say anything else to you, but say it, and we leave.” 

“It's okay,” you whisper back, caressing his cheek and acting like the loving wife that you were supposed to be. “Are you sure you want to stay?” 

“Darlin’, I’ve been living with them all my life. But you haven’t. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.” He grabs your hand and kisses your knuckles, his chapped lips contrasting with the soft skin of your hand. 

“Don’t leave me alone with him, and I’ll be okay.” You reassure him, smiling. 

“You’re not going anywhere without me.” 

You don’t know if he’s aware of the words he’s saying, how they sound more real than they should be, or how it makes your heart flutter for a small second. You have to remind yourself that this is all fake, that he is only being nice to you because you two need to convince his parents that this is a real marriage, and that you are not going to divorce in a year. 

This is going to be harder than you thought.

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[artcalledtattoo]

I Repr. Inalienable Rights I do I move I breathe I represent inalienable rights. But I am stuck at a border, we humans not created equal now are we Now I just want education, I’m female living in Middle East Regard me as child 6th year since born and I gunned down a teacher Next a Politician made into greater by voters, I fooled, left covid, assaulted Capital Death I’m Nature here, humans non-combating warming’s failing to kick; now I’m slipping, tornadic throwing’s, out of power cyclone of water u prayed last year through drought, blizzards compiling compelling metal a nue sound for a world landscapes, everything of meaning requires insurance..............did u purchase!? Abortion rights lost Free lunches holding on We will give until 18 What’s your choice? I’m still a (child somethang teen adult only after 18 for so many years to come Science granted after puberty in phys Ed in biology, a fleshy someone in human captivity capacity of emotions psycho abbreviations & drugs prescribed as child by doctor allowed by parent adult & im here as adult now, right! Drugged since I don’t know after my birth but the chemicals have gained control of my Me myself and i I have rights! Sorry no abortion here now There are means however look into past histories I’m sure you can find something online, my h20 is killing me News all around non corners of globe That infrastructure was laid deep before your time, how really is your mind? Call that service for pipes Get ‘em graffiti out (art so much problems) straight lines easy to follow, dig Earth lightly don’t puncture the pipe, remove land for exposed pipe, run down grab supplies for a leak, cut both ends of pipe throw in that coupler to stop that leak, now look at your drinking into body cut out of Pipe, you drink from that your taxes have been paying for. Vacations needed before all lower people I gave up my 2022 vacation days from managerial peer pressure just lost days Keeping fucks entertained My inalienable right Write Post Feelings Sleep if alive Repeat Not in the streets just yet but only who all around universally will know, choice chose or choose in a lifeline providing to humans without a voice of own I have a few bags of things? Do I have any Rights On a doorstep! Waiting on a doorstep It’s cold I don’t hear you, disrupting my dinner! Ignoring Rights! Topple that Statue of Liberty Down! Her words are meaningless in 2023 so far, ball and chain that material object having no meaning in the now Lady Liberty is an Alien Lady Liberty is an Alien Crush, demolish the Idols American Idols Looked at from other Planets Alienable ally able’s Foreign dirt on my door step, help it’s lining up needing a home No ET here Born human Non aborted Education job home family Not enough swallowing apparently by newbie parents, but those folks are keeping kids feed for a future In America No Praise or rewards for the journeys Since like beginning of 1900’s like movie Mi Famalia , denied by Amazon, Vudu, anywhere MoviesAnywhere just listened for first twenty half hour, long travelings Sit here wait like an American Pet Irritating my rights As I see my focused here in my vision correct eyes, thc connecting my sanity, you’re welcome, nicotine (kids should not be reading Tumblr) alchohol, porn for drainage non build up in pipes, thinking creativity some snapshots of mine in written photographic forms so others know me as some kind in delight or discourse it’s a LIFE (*) bro sis cuz aunt unc mom and dad to those parents before A glass is raised on your behalf’s Good or bad A human in a line of those wanting to change things For a better not some marriage supposed to get through the hurts A betterment in this life of * Living Infinitely Forever Energy

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[anonymous0writer]

how you get the girl | wonderland s.s

author: @anonymous0writer

wc: 1946

warnings: none!

a/n: i literally wrote this right after the first because i love this so much

summary: as the heat rises, so does the curious tension between a certain green-eyed beauty and a handsome dark-haired boy. the impending end of their idyllic last summer looms, prompting stiles to admit a long-held secret.

The pale, smooth skyline of azure and the sprinkle of voluminous clouds lay over the horizon, the air thick with early summer humidity, the only relief a tepid breeze that snaked through the trees and appeared in short bursts like a shy child. Summer had grabbed Beacon Hills in a sudden burst of a heatwave and refused to let go; residents of the town taking to smaller clothes and long hauls to the beach for a break of the unbearable heat. Windows were down in cars, letting the speed of the car create the racing breeze that offered peace and houses had their AC’s turned up, people huddling in rooms to keep the heat at bay.

In the particular case of Lydia Martin and her friends, refuge was found in the small, prettily decorated guest house positioned off the clear blue watered pool of the Martin residence. The teens were slumped along the edge of the pool, legs dipped into the cool water in an attempt to cool themselves down.

Scott McCall sat at the pool’s edge, his mop of dark hair stuck to his forehead in sweaty clumps, the boy mumbling a soft curse before he tore off his thin shirt and leaned forward, dropping into the gleaming, turquoise pool with a loud, attention grabbing splash. His friends, a collection of girls and a boy best friend added to their tight circle of companions rose their brows and looked on in mild amusement. Scott’s dark head popped up from under the water, his lips breaking into a goofy, lopsided grin.

“It’s so nice.” He entices, grin still slanting across his face.

Delaney, her tall figure hunched and her long legs plunged into the refreshing, cerulean water, returned Scott’s infectious grin. In a hurried movement, she scrambled to her feet, her dark hair tied closely to the nape of her neck and her patterned, red swimsuit hugging her generous curves. Stiles covertly watches his friend with amber eyes, the memory of her lips crushed softly against his and her candied taste rushing over him a sudden waterfall. The dark-haired boy is pulled out of his reverie by the flying droplets of chilly water produced by Delaney’s cannonball into the wide pool. Stiles shakes off the memory with a comb through his thick, unruly umber colored hair, telling himself the tall beauty was drunk and didn’t appear to have any recollection of the delicately passionate moment. Some minuscule part of the boy wished that his feelings for Delaney were somehow reciprocated, but the sharp tang of alcohol on her lips crushed any foolishly childlike hope. Despite accidentally overhearing the news of Delaney and Brett’s inevitable breakup, Stiles saw how much his friend liked the broad shouldered lacrosse player. He was a fool for ever thinking anything different.

“Stiles!” The shriek of laughter snaps Stiles out of his daze again, Lydia’s mouth forming his name again as she beckons him to join the rest of their friends. Stiles studies the idyllic scene of his friends in a sentimental attempt to burn the memory in his mind, wishing to stay in this short second of time forever. Malia, her light hair pulled into two tight, now soaked braids, is seated on a laughing Scott’s broad, sun-kissed shoulders as his hands grip the curve of her thighs to stabilize his girlfriend. The couple is laughing and splashing wildly at a howling Delaney. Her dark hair came loose of its tie, the curls floating in the water as she tries to move sluggishly through the water to escape Scott’s sporadic splashing. Lydia is behind her, her hands clutching Delaney’s as the girls try to shield themselves. Stiles' tan face breaks into a beaming smile, the edges of his mouth tugging up and showing off his dimples. An ache to live forever in this idyllic moment forms under the pulse of his heart.

“Stiles, c’mon!” Scott encourages, his dark ochre eyes soft and welcoming.

Delaney looks up, her sage eyes watching as Stiles peels off his half-buttoned blue flannel, exposing the pale, freckled chest of his wiry frame and the sharp cut of his hips. A fierce blush rises to her freckled cheeks as the boy nimbly climbs into the crystal water. The haze clouded memory of Stiles’s soft, fluffy dark hair in her grasp and the lingering taste of his salty lips flashed in her mind, making her cheeks reach hotter temperatures than the humidity of the air. She knows the dark-haired boy remembers the kiss, but she wonders if he meant to kiss her back or if he was just caught up in the ‘we’re all leaving, so what matters anymore’ rationale. Delaney swallows sharply, turning her attention to the game of chicken being organized. Stiles offers to carry Delaney on his shoulders, choosing her as a teammate without a beat of hesitation. Delaney meets his coffee colored eyes for a charged second before she grabs his freckle spattered shoulders, feeling the heat of his skin against her palm. Once seated on his shoulders, she tilts violently to the left, but Stiles steadies her with his hands. His long fingers dig into the tan skin of her thighs, laughing as Delaney pats his damp hair in a gesture of thanks.

The inseparable group dissolves into laughter, enjoying the cool water to beat the heat of the short summer. The lingering threat of their assured end is shoved in the backs of their mind, using it to push themselves further into the moment. The five teens were desperate to outrun their doom.

___

The embers sparked and hovered dizzily around the flickering orange flames, casting dancing and flickering shadows of gold on the ground. The day had crawled away slowly, finding a hidden place to stay as the night descended around the sky, blanketing it in heavy dusk. Delaney lay tucked sleepily in a chair arranged before the sultry fire, limbs folded and sweatshirt obscured face leaning against the fabric back of the seat. Her dark, still damp hair was tied at the nape of her neck and falling out from under the scrunched edges of her hood. Her hands played idly with the frayed strings of the Cyclone hoodie that didn’t even belong to the chartreuse eyed girl. It was Stiles, the boy having given her his worn, and former lacrosse hoodie when the girl expressed the chill of the night air years ago and she’d failed to give it back. Delaney tugged the sweatshirt up to hide the bottom half of her face, imagining the dark-haired boy’s heady scent still lingering on the maroon, velvet-like fabric. Part of her knew she never made a real attempt to give the hoodie back, liking the way it fit on her curvaceous body and the way she could carry a piece of her favorite person around.

“Hey, Del?” Scott’s soft, low voice floats over her, prompting Delaney to lift her exhaustion-heavy head and peer at her friend. “We’re going inside, it’s cooling down. Wanna come?”

Scott was standing tall, dark eyes warm and kind as Lydia fluttered at his side; Malia already retired to the house and deeply asleep on the old pullout couch of Lydia’s basement. Stiles was still seated next to Delaney, the two staring in relaxed silence at the flickering flames of the slowly decaying fire. Delaney’s pale eyes slid to the boy next to her, watching to see if he made any twitch to move into the house, and when Stiles gave a soft shrug and continued his supervision to the glowing embers, Delaney refused gently.

“I’m good. We’ll go inside soon enough to watch the movie.”

Scott gave a nod and turned away, leaving Lydia to grin at her curled up best friend.

“Alright. Don’t stay too long, you may fall asleep.” Lydia jokes, a slanted smile gracing her pretty, delicate features.

Stiles’s coffee eyes trailed over Lydia’s features, studying her softly and giving her a small smile before the red-haired girl danced into the house with a swish of her hips. His eyes lingered, his reverie of the fire broken for a brief second by Lydia’s glorious presence.

“Stiles,” A soft plea of a voice came from the brunette next to him, her eyes worrying over him.

Stiles turns, finding Delaney already watching him, no doubt catching his rapacious gaze on their cherry haired friend. His cheeks blaze pink lightly, barely perceptible in the thick dark of the night. Stiles plows a hand through the thick locks of his dark hair, still sodden from the sun-filled hours spent in the turquoise waters of the large pool. He watches as Delaney blinks, her dark lashes fanning over the smooth plains of her cheeks slowly before she lifts her eyelids; which seems to take a strenuous amount of work by the speed of the flutter. Stiles’s breath hitches, the way it does when something snatches your breath greedily, sneaking it away as you take in the sight before you. A flash of Lydia’s perfectly serene and porcelain appearance flickers in his mind, crashing with the charming innocence of Delaney and the exhaustion tugging at her actions. Suddenly, Stiles is caught between them two, suspended between the devoted years of yearning for the beloved ginger and the sense of serene happiness and unrelenting comfort from the dark-haired beauty. Stiles swallows thickly, forcing the war of attention from his mind and refocuses desperately on the flare of the dying fire.

“Do you want to play something?” Delaney’s soft voice lures him farther into the pull of her magnetism.

“Like what?”

“Twenty questions? Something that doesn’t require me to move.”

“Sure.” Stiles agrees, leaning further back in his seat, feeling the heat of the fire shimmer over him in pleasant waves. His sepia eyes flutter close, drinking in the night with his other senses. “What are you thinking of right now?”

Delaney’s pink lips quirked up at the corners, her dimples showing softly. Stiles loved to remake games, except this time these were just straight up questions instead of making it more complex. She leaned her own head back, closing her pale eyes and relaxed, letting the exhaustion from the day’s activities calm her.

“I’m thinking about you.”

“And what about me?”

“Is that another question, Stiles?” Delaney laughed, the sound sweet and short, hovering in the air. “You know you only have twenty.”

A beat of silence followed before Stiles’s soft, raspy voice answered. “What about me?” He repeated.

“Do you like Lydia?”

The question hung in the air, a pivotal moment of truth that could alter their relationship in ways they couldn’t have imagined. Delaney’s throat was tight, her question a risky plea that flew right over Stiles’s head. Stiles didn’t realize Delaney’s secret attempt at revealing her feelings despite how poorly she hid it; raw emotions and the truth written over her olive skin. Her sage eyes scan Stiles’s profile, optimism playing in her irises like a splash of black paint against a white wall; stark and obvious. Stiles turns to face her, russet eyes locking onto hers as they stare at each other. Hope catches in the girl’s throat, hard and dangerous. Stiles’s eyes run over his best friend, slow and steady as if he’s trying to figure out the answer from her face. As the brunette boy stares, he’s lost. Fallen in the depths of Delaney’s charm and small, gregarious smiles and easy nature. The boy can’t stop himself from getting pulled into her orbit, and at this moment, he doesn’t try to stop it. He loses the fight gladly, finding peace in the solidarity of his best friend. At this moment, Delaney is the only answer. Delaney is the answer.

“No, I like you, Delaney.”

#stiles stilinski #stiles fanfiction #stiles imagine #stiles stilinksi imagine #teenwolf #stiles x oc #stiles x delaney #stiles teen wolf #taylor swift #taylor swift 1989 #1989 era #songfic

[inu-jiru]

Tomoe, The Eastern Tigress - Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen - Reunion

Tomoe lifted her head, the yell carried by the mountain winds forcing her from her slumber. She stood up, her ear tilting towards the shed’s broken windows. It sounded like a voice, though she couldn’t be sure. It was already fading away. Tomoe’s sudden movements woke the dogs around her, Ken being the first to sit up.

“Eh, Tomoe?” the Dane asked with a yawn. “What’s the matter?”

“I...thought I heard someone…” The bitch replied. “Someone yelling…”

“Enemies?” said GB quickly, looking outside the windows with a look of fear on his face.

“I dunno, but…” Tomoe began squeezing her way past the other dogs, making her way outside. Her comrades followed behind her. The blizzard had calmed down again, leaving only the still air. Tomoe lifted her muzzle and took a sniff. Dogs. She could smell other dogs. Her heart fluttering in excitement, she began rushing in the direction of the scent. “This way!”

“Oi, wait up, little sis!” Kagetora called after her.

Tomoe ran until she reached a ledge overlooking a basin that cut into the mountain. As her nose informed her, two dogs were walking along the snow-covered trail, a Great Pyrenees and a little Akita mix. The other Ohu soldiers joined her, following her gaze.

“Who are they…?” murmured Ken to no one in particular. “That big guy looks like hell…”

“We need to help them,” Weed declared. Without waiting another second, Weed barked to the dogs down below. “Hey! Down there! Are you two alright?”

Down below, Hiro and Reika both froze, Reika pressing herself into the larger male’s body. They looked up, seeing the Ohu Army watching them from high above. At first, Hiro snarled, preparing himself for some sort of altercation. Then he noticed the two youngsters and their uncanny resemblances to the Ohu leaders. Hiro widened his eye in surprise.

“They found us…” Reika whispered in terror. “They found us, Hiro…!”

“No, Reika. Look.”

Despite her fear, Reika forced herself to look up. Now, she, too, Weed and Tomoe. She gasped.

“They look like…” she began in awe.

“I know,” said Hiro. Lifting his head, the Great Pyrenees called up to the group. “The little lady could use a place to rest. Mind if we come up?”

Hiro and Reika settled down together on the shed’s floor. Though the Pyrenees tried to hide it, the cold was starting to get him. He shivered as frostbite began settling in his wounded skin. Reika pressed herself against him. Even with her small body; it was the least she could do to try and share some of her own body heat. Hiro felt a warmth in his cheeks. After flashing the bitch a grin, Hiro looked to the Ohu dogs, who’d all gotten up and made room. Sitting closest to them were Weed and Tomoe. The Shepherd bitch was fidgeting, her nostrils flared as two familiar scents clung to the pair.

“You two were with our parents…” said Tomoe in an uncharacteristically quiet voice.“Hougen’s base...we’re close, aren’t we?”

“Mmm…” replied Hiro, nodding slightly. “Some Ohu dogs snuck into Hougen’s ranks and helped us escape. Gin should be on the western path. We were all meant to rendezvous in Shiga.”

“Ah,” Ken said, perking. “To Big Brother’s territory, no doubt. Weed, Tomoe, this is perfect. You’ll be able to meet Gin and John in no time!”

“John…” murmured Reika. She lowered her head, her eyes darkening. Hiro, too, had a dark expression. Tomoe felt her heart begin to race.

“My Dad IS on his way to Shiga, right…?” asked Tomoe. The fear was clear in her voice. Dogs behind her shared worried glances.

“...He stayed behind so that we could escape,” Hiro admitted. He lowered his head, his teeth biting into his lower lip and drawing blood. “He promised that he wouldn’t die, but--”

“What!?” Immediately Tomoe stood up, her fur bristling. “Where is he!?”

“You aren’t thinking of going alone, are you, Tomoe?” asked GB nervously. “What if that guy’s already…?”

“Shut up…!” The Shepherd bitch turned to glare at the Setter, her eyes blazing with rage, but also glossy with tears. “I’m not gonna let my dad die!”

“West…” Hiro panted. He began lying down as the frostbite began taking its toll. “Go back west and you’ll find him and some allies. There’s still time to...to…”

Hiro trailed off, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. The dogs around him gasped. Reika threw her forelegs around Hiro’s shoulders, shaking him frantically.

“Hiro…!” she cried. “Hiro! Wake up!”

“He needs warmth,” Jerome instructed. He turned to the other dogs. “Quickly, before his frostbite gets worse.”

Tomoe stood where she was, feeling her comrades brushing past her as they rushed to Hiro’s aid, throwing their bodies over him and licking at his wounds. Ken and Kagetora paused beside her.

“If you wanna go,” Kagetora barked. “We’ll come with you.”

“Mmm.” The bitch nodded. “Come on; we need to hurry.” Nodding, the two males began following Tomoe outside. As Hiro had told them, they headed west, following the path he and Reika had taken before. Tomoe took the lead, pushing herself as far as she could go. Under no circumstances would she allow her father to die. She’d never forgive herself if she did.

“John…” Tommy choked, coughing blood and bile onto the snow. He was seconds away from death; the nearby Rossi had already slipped away from his injuries. John, still unable to escape the many sets of fangs, could just barely crane his head towards the Kishu. “It was an honor...fighting alongside you…! Please...live on for us…!”

“Don’t give up!” John pleaded. “Hang on, goddamn it! We can still win this!”

“You’re not winning shit!” Matsu declared, bringing his paw down on Tommy’s head. He pressed his muzzle into the snow, blocking his nostrils. Tommy squirmed and squirmed, but, alas, he’d lost all of his strength. John could only watch, horrified, as the Kishu was slowly suffocated.

“Let him go!” John bit at a dog’s leg, his rage and grief building with each passing second. “You goddamned bastards!”

“Release him!” added a new voice. Everyone paused; even John’s eyes had to wander in search of the new arrival at the scene. Suddenly, Hook appeared, barreling into Matsu and knocking him away from Tommy. The Husky crashed into his allies, landing in a heap of fur. Free to breathe, Tommy just barely managed to lift his head.

“Hook…” the Kishu whispered with a weak smile. The Labrador mix looked down at him, his gaze gentle.

“You did great, Tommy,” replied Hook. “Leave the rest of this to us now.” Hook looked towards John next. “General! This is your chance!”

John, shaking himself from his shock, realized the grip of the other dogs had loosened due to their surprise. A new fire sparked inside of the Shepherd, and with a triumphant shout, John pushed himself up. He pushed the unsuspecting grunts away and joined Hook’s side, licking his chops.

“Thanks, youngster,” said John. “I owe you one.”

“We can finish this,” Hook said, though the slight shake in his voice made it clear that he was trying to convince himself rather than John. “Even if it’s just the two of us, we can win.”

“Mmm,” John nodded. “That’s the spirit.”

“Grrr!” Matsu had gotten to his paws and was now glaring daggers at Hook. “Another traitor? How many of you Ohu scum are hiding in Hougen’s army!?”

You won’t live long enough to find out, bastard,” John spat. Growling, he shot forward, his fangs locking on Matsu’s throat. Fueled by anger, John crushed the Husky’s throat in his jaws. Matsu was dead before he could even process what was happening to him. Holding tightly onto Matsu’s body, John began using it as a club, of sorts, delivering blows to Hougen’s followers while being able to keep some distance. Hook, meanwhile, bit and clawed where he could, never staying still in one place long enough to be swarmed.

“Hrah!” a soldier shouted as he leapt at John’s torn flank. He bit at it, sending another wave of pain through the Shepherd’s body.

“Gah!” John yowled, dripping Matsu’s corpse. His neck was now exposed, and dogs leapt at it, using their combined weight to force John down again, this time, onto his back. Hook paused, glancing over at the general in alarm.

“Sir…!” The Labrador mix prepared to rush over and help, but was stopped by John’s fierce bark.

“Don’t come over here! They’ll swarm you, too, like the cowards they are! Keep your distance, damnit!”

Hook gritted his teeth as he could hear more wounds being torn into John’s body. Even as the Shepherd kicked and bit at his enemies, his blood was still being spilled. Doubts began entering Hook’s mind, even as he continued desperately to avoid the jaws of enemy dogs. Was this all for naught? Were they just delaying the inevitable? With each dog they killed, a new one took their place. John was down, and he...he couldn’t keep dodging forever…

“Gyah!” Hook suddenly cried, his paw sinking into a particularly deep pocket of snow. He stumbled, tumbling over himself before lying flat and in a daze. The dogs chasing him sneered. Luck was on their side once again. Together, they jumped, prepared to kill.

“DAD!”

John froze. He felt the dogs attacking him pause at the sudden shout. That voice…! Craning his neck as best as he could, he could see a familiar cyclone-like figure just above the battleground: the Retsu Genmu-Battōga. Hougen’s dogs cried in fear; none of them had ever seen such a technique. It sucked them in one by one, penetrating their bodies with several deep, penetrating wounds. Dead bodies rained from the sky, forcing the remaining soldiers to back off in fear. They weren’t safe, however, for soon, they were also attacked. The Ran Daryushin-Battōga slithered from dog to dog, ripping out throats left and right. The Geki Sentsūhi-Battōga smashed skulls and exploded hearts. John sat up, looking around in awe. It was just as he thought; Tomoe, Ken and Kagetora were here.

“Those attacks…” Hook said in awe, watching as most of the remaining soldiers were cut down in a matter of seconds. Only 5 or 6 of Hougen’s dogs remained, and after what they’d witnessed, it was suicide to continue fighting. With terrified yelps, the soldiers turned and ran away. Kagetora looked after them, his lips curled back into a cocky grin.

“Oi, oi!” he called. “Leavin’ already! We were just gettin’ started!” Ken. meanwhile, padded to Hook’s side, helping the male to his paws.

“You alright?” the Dane asked.

“Yeah, I am,” replied Hook. He glanced toward Tomoe and John. The younger bitch had landed, catching her breath. The run from the shed, combined with her technique, had taken a bit out of her. The blood of her enemies dripped from her maw; she was too tired to lick it away just yet. “That’s…?”

“Mmm,” Ken confirmed, nodding. “Tomoe, John’s daughter. She’s come all this way to rescue him.”

“Tomoe…” said John gently, gazing towards his daughter. The bitch turned to face him, her eyes turning soft. For eight months, she’d only been able to see her father in her dreams and memories. But there he was now, a bit worse for wear, but alive. She padded up to him, hesitating for a moment, as if fearing he’d vanish from her sight the second she tried to touch him. With a loving smile, John lowered his muzzle, licking Tomoe’s head. Immediately, the young bitch’s tail started to wag rapidly. Tomoe buried her head beneath John’s chin, nuzzling him.

“Dad…” Tomoe cooed. She could feel fresh tears stream down her cheeks. She looked up at the older male, smiling widely. “I missed you so much…”

“I missed you too, kiddo.” John nuzzled Tomoe back, unable to hold back a tear of his own. Despite his brash and cocky nature, he had his affectionate moments. The same could be said for Tomoe. Neither Ken, Kagetora, nor Hook dared to interrupt the long awaited reunion. “I’m sorry you had to come out here. We really should’ve come back sooner, but that Hougen bastard…”

“We’ll take care of that guy soon enough,” promised Tomoe, her brow furrowing in determination. “But right now, we need to go to Shuga, like Uncle Gin said.”

“You know about that? Ah, you must’ve met Hiro and Reika.”

“Mmm.” Tomoe nodded. “We have some shelter not far from here. There’s...not much of Ohu left, though.” John’s smile slipped a bit. Nearby, both Ken and Kagetora’s ears fell as they remembered Kaibutsu’s dreadful reign.

“...What happened?” asked John.

“Some experiment the humans created: Kaibutsu. The bastard took over Gajou six months ago and killed almost everyone. The fucker even took my ear.” Tomoe turned her head slightly to show off her wound. John stepped back. During his moment of joy, he hadn’t even realized that Tomoe had been injured. A second later, he was snarling.

“If that bastard’s still there,” he seethed. “I’ll rip him apart myself.”

“Don’t worry; that asshole’s dead. Everyone that was left helped take him out, including the older old guys.”

“And your mother?”

“She’s fine; that guy never got the chance to hurt her.” Tomoe paused, glancing over her shoulder back in the direction of Hougen’s base. “We shouldn’t stick around here anymore. We should head back to the shed. There’s so much more I’ve gotta tell you, Dad, but I’ll fill you in on the way there.”

“Mmm,” John nodded. He then looked around, catching the bodies of Lefty, Rossi and Tommy among the dead bodies. Tommy had quietly passed away during the battle due to his injuries. Frowning, John bowed his head and sighed. “There’s something we need to do, first…”

After Hiro’s temperature had been stabilized, everyone settled back down into their resting positions. It was then and only then the absence of Tomoe, Ken and Kagetora had been noticed. Jerome and Weed exited the shed, only seeing footprints leading towards the west.

“They had to have gone to find John,” Jerome grunted.

“Without the rest of us?” Weed spoke with an exasperated tone. “We could’ve helped…”

“Don’t forget; Tomoe isn’t like you, Weed.” The bridge of Jerome’s brow wrinkled as he mentioned the other Shepherd’s name. “She’s too rash for her own good and has a heart for battle. Ken and Kagetora are loyal to her; I’m not surprised they joined her.” He paused, his nose quivering as he picked up a scent on the wind. “Mmm. It seems like they’re coming back. They’re still a bit far away, but I can smell them.”

“You think they saved John?” asked Weed.

“Mmph...perhaps. I’ve seen all three of those dogs fight in battle. They’re all capable, especially Tomoe. My own feelings about her aside, I can’t imagine she’d come back without John.”

“I wish you two would get along…”

“I wish she’d act more like you.”

Weed didn’t respond. He wanted to say that Tomoe was her own person, even if he didn’t agree with everything she did or said. He wanted to say that he wasn’t anything special. Yet deep in his heart, he couldn’t help but agree with Jerome. He wasn’t sure why, but he just did.

Why couldn’t Tomoe be more like him?

#ginga densetsu weed #ginga densetsu weed fanfiction

[goldstonegolem64]

Hope returns Book 1 Chapter  33 Vanguard part 1

forty five minutes earlier above Olkarion 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9HJV1Ben6k

A volley of ion cannons fire follow passed by the Castle of lion’s as it was flying away at it’s top speed as it’s particle barrier started to surround the ship as it dashed away from the fleet of galra warships and thousands of fighters that were chasing after it. In the bridge Of the Galra Central Command Zarkon Watched as the Castle of lions slingshot itself  into a  wormhole That had just appeared. Fury started to build in him as he watch his prize was about to escape him again. He watched as the ship Flow into the wormhole and out of his grasp again . He slammed his firsts into his Throne and let out A huge roar of Anger then Yelled  “Find them Now !!!!” He Yelled to his suburbanites. He closed his Eyes And focused on his connection to the black lion But with each passing minute it grow weaker and weaker“ My  Lord” A voice broke his concentration HE opened his eyes and glared at the person who was in front of him.Which was Haggar

“ What have you come to tell My dear” Zarkon asked 

“Project nemesis and Cyclone Are ready at your Command My lord”  Haggar replied “

“Good when we corner them I want the twin’s to bring me voltron”

“And what of the planet the just freed my I test out the cyclone and let Root rot have his fun?” She Asked 

“ No we will come back at a late date are main priority is capturing Voltron and The Valkyrie “ Zarkon replied 

“ But if we leave this planet free it will give them time to build up a defense and could call to one of the many reel cells out there for help.”  Haggar said

“ Yes that could happen but we will deal with that once we have voltron and the Valkyrie in are hands  then we will crush anyone left that stands against us. Now we most head to down to the quintessence extractor ” Zarkon replied as he go up from his throne  

Haggar felt anger starting to build up in her  and she felt a surge of energy in her hands.But she calmed herself down before she unleashed her fury on her husbands and everyone else here.“Will you at least send a small fleet to handle this problem while we chase after them then”? She asked As she and Zarkon started to walk out of the bridge 

“ If it make you happy I will” Zarkon said 

“  it would my lord “  She replied.

“ My lord who do you want to send to conquer this world?” a soldier asked

Zarkon turned and looked at the soldier and though about it before talking”  Send Sub commander Helner it’s time for her to prove herself. ” Zarkon said 

“ Alright Sir “ The soldier replied as Zarkon and Haggar left the room 

in the Hall the Zarkon and Haggar walked toward the elevator. As they walked passing by Soldier and druids stopped and saluted the two of them as they passed by. They entire the elevator then they started talking

“ So how are doing after your Altercation with the black paladin?” Zarkon asked His wife

It Had been about several days since she had fought the black paladins an she still felt pain in her stomach.It didn’t help that she had only a minutes after the fight fired a huge bolt of energy that corrupted the wormhole that the paladins were using to escape which felt her bed ridded to recover. “  I Am fine my lord how are you after your fight with the red an black lion?” She asked 

“ It will take more then a plasma bolt to kill me my love“ Zarkon replied 

Haggar stumbled a little after hearing those words she quickly righter herself. it felt weird every time she heard him say that to her but it was nice to hear it though. “ So who will you have pilot the other lion’s and the Valkyrie when we capture them and what will happen to their current pilots?” 

“ Seeing how strong The black paladin was after you experimented on him. I will leave them to you and when it comes to pilot’s for the other  lion’s I don’ t have a clue but for the Valkyrie I think I will bring him back to the fold.” Zarkon said

“ I don’t think that’s not a wise choose what if he use the Valkyrie against you” Haggar said .Zarkon when quite. She knew it hurt him to hear that because it hurt her to say it but it was true yell it need to be said .

“ if he tries I will kill him like anyone who has tried to kill me before .”  Zarkon replied as the door to the elevator open to the quintessence. They both walked out of the elevator and watched as a tank of quintessence was being loaded into the rejuvenator that had kept them both alive for the pass ten thousand years

“Let’s get this over with “ Haggar said as other druids Appeared in the room.

On Olkarion Ryner was watching  the Galra central command  from their forest base readying themselves for an invasion 

“ What are they doing?” Ryner Said to herself as she watched the screen. Something felt  weird about this. She had tried to contact the paladin but it seemed that the Galra central command had some sort of Signal jammer that blocked any signal to and from the planet. But there was one plus with  have galra central command hovering over her planet and that was She was able to Scan the entirety of it for structural weaknesses which she had found only and that was a small section that was under repair but that was heavily guarded.” This was bad this was bad  very very bad for us. But  we still had the cubes that are being reprogramed but that would take to much time but maybe if we focuses on one of the four we can get it back up and running and  that could  buy us more time to get the other three up and maybe just maybe we could stand a chance against the empire. Slim as it maybe it’ ” Ryner said to herself as she paced back and fourth. As She was brain storming the defensive of her world. She turned back to the screen and Saw that the entirety Of central command and it’ s fleet was gone expect for one warship. Ryner Hit a button on the console in front an activated  the bases Alarm systems worrying any olkari in the area that an invasion was about occur again. 

On the bridge of the warship Helner Stood there Smiling. “ This is great My first planet to conquer. Alright Man Lets man are empire proud!!!!” Helner yelled As she pointed her fingers towards The planet in front of them. 

“UUuuh Madam there seems to be a wormhole opening up near by” A soldier said as he look At the console in front of him

“  Show it on screen” Helner said  as her face turned from joy to a more   serious look . As a screen appeared in front of the room.” Maybe Voltron doubled back. Ready the Ion cannon ,” She watched the screen and what she saw confused her. It wasn’t the normal blue circle with Altean symbols around it That she was told to watch out for. But this wormhole was a dark green, it was triangular in shape and the symbols around it were of a completely different race. “ Get all fighters ready have them surround and fire on whatever comes out of that wormhole and contacted central command.”  She said not moving her eyes from the screen.As she watched the screen intently

 As  the upper half of a huge humanoid form seemingly crawled out of the it dwarf Voltron in size and as the rest of body came out it was clearly over eight hundred feet tall. It was  rusted with a faded blue, red and bronze color too it . it’s body was also covered in vegetation that was weirdly preserved in the vacuum of space.  It’s armor and helmet  looked like a Conqueror from ancient times and had a tree growing out of the side of it’s head . It had pieces of it’s armor  missing and it showed exposed wires and gears. She watched as the colossus  looked from side to side confused then she watched it look towards the planet and started moving towards it unaware or just not caring about the Fleet that near by Helner looked toward her subordinate and yelled “  Somebody shot that thing before it Gets away “

“ Yes ma’am. To all fighter open fire on the colossus” As the soldier said that al the fighter started opening fighter 

The bridge crew watched as a wave of red bolts flow through space towards the colossus but before the bolts could hit a green Barrier appeared blocking all the shots. 

The colossus turned to face what had shot at them. the slits where eyes would be started to light up with the color green as that happen it raised both of it’s hand and open then to show off it’s palms. After that the metal plate on the palms started to split  appeared to revel a glass like material that started to glow the same color as the eyes. After a few seconds Two huge beams erupted from the colossus’s hands. the two beams utterly atomized and fighter that was caught in it and Any fighter that was too close was basically melted of just explode from the intense heat that the beams were emulated. 

Helner watched as her fleet was being decimated by the colossus ‘s beams as it wiped it’s hand in there direction “ Get the shields up now “ She yelled as the ships barrier surrounded the ship just in time to block the beam But the blast from the beams meeting the barrier rocked the ship. knocking Helner to the ground. When she got back to her feet she saw that the ship’ s barrier was down. She then notice that the colossus had stopped firing and was seemingly venting steam from it’s arms as the steam stopped coming out. the colossus started moving toward them.” Fire the ion cannon !!!!” She yelled as the ion cannon fired. but it was stopped the colossus’s own barrier so the colossus kept advancing towards them “  Call for reinforcements “ She yelled as the ion cannon fired again still it had no effect on the Colossus as it’s barrier stopped the shot 

“ Were  trying but they’re but no one is responding “ One soldier said as they franticly started hitting buttons on the panels in front of them.

“ try harder Dammit ” Helner yelled as the Ion cannon fired again this one slammed directly in the colossuses causing a huge cloud of smoke that obscured her view of the colossus. But as she was looking into the smoke cloud a huge hand came out of it and grabbed onto the bridge. Helner eyes widened as she watch the glass around the bridge begin to crack and the sound of metal being bend. Fear entered her body followed by nothingness as the bridge was crushed.  

Ryner watched as the colossus crushed the bridge of the ship with no effort what so ever. Then she watch as a green barrier started to surround both the destroyed warship and the colossus and that was followed by a grey cloud that  come out of the holes in the armor as the cloud was coming out it moved over to the war ship. Ryner guess that the cloud was made up of nanites. She watch intently as the warship was being assimilated into the cloud Nano  and after a few minutes the only thing that remained of the warship were dropship that had what was left of the crew, After it was done the cloud started to completely surround the colossuses and after a few more minutes the nanite cloud dispersed to reveal that the colossus’s new look. the armor and Helmet had changed to look like Law bringer’s. the  colors had changed too. it was no longer a fade red blue and bronze. It had changed to a bright purple as the base color and the bronze had outlined symbol on the body that be covered up by the vegetation there were ten symbols across it’s armor. Ryner wondered what those symbols meant so she started to scan the symbols to see what they meant and also scanned the colossus to see what it was made of.But before she could start scanning the colossus. Another wormhole appeared in front of the colossus and she watched as it flow through it. As she did the door to the room she was in open an two other olkari ran in  . 

“Lady Ryner the first cube as been reprogramed and is ready to fight ” the first Olkair said huffing and puffing 

“it won’t be needed” Ryner replied

the two olkari looked at each other confused “ Why is that lady Ryner ?” the first one asked 

“isn’t there a fleet invading right now?” the other asked 

“ Not anymore “ Ryner began  to walk out of the room “But even if were not being invaded Keep working on reprograming the other three Cubes we might need them for whatever I just watch destroy that Warship” Ryner said as she pointed towards the screen as it replayed the whole fight between the Colossus and the Galra fleet. 

in the middle of space over a huge dust vortex

a badly damaged Valkyrie and Voltron  were surrounded by warship and fighters ready to fire on the as well as Two new robeasts One was the size of the Valkyrie and looked similar to her but it had looked like a griffin look to it and the other was the same size as Voltron and was build like a tank it had to should mounted cannon four arms each one held a different weapon. Both of the robeasts had Harlequin masks with huge sharp toothed smiles painted on.

“ So How do you think were getting out of this one Guy”  Jay said as he wiped sweat and blood from his forehead 

“ I don’t know but will think of something.” Lance said

“ Coran, Allura,Beau how long until the flux generator is ready? “ Hunk asked as he removed his cracked helmet 

“ It will only take a few more minutes so just Hold out till were ready” Coran said 

“ Well if we don’ t hold out till then it be fun fighting along side you guys and it’ s been an honor serving you Princess Allura and take care of the for boys for me .” Jay said as he readied the Valkyries bow and pointed at the bigger of the two Robeast 

“ It won’t come to that . Now get ready for what this two do next “ Shiro said

But before anything could Happened warning signs appeared a cross ever sceen on ever ship as a bright green triangular wormhole appeared in-between the four mechs as the upper body of the Colossus came out and looked toward both Voltron and the Valkyrie.

To be continued 

#voltron #first fanfic #au #oc #cannon divergence #kidgance #kidge #klance #plance #hunk garrett #keith kogane #lance mcclain #pidge gunderson #hunay #allura #coran #nyma #rolo #vld shay #adashi #vld adam #rax #takashi shirogane #matt holt

[beekeepingfiji]

18 ways to keep bees safe during and following a cyclone in Fiji

New Post has been published on https://www.beekeepingfiji.com/?p=4027

18 ways to keep bees safe during and following a cyclone in Fiji

Cyclones can cause strong winds that can push bee hives over and cause flash flooding which can wash bees away. Here are 18 ways to keep bees safe during and following a cyclone in Fiji.

During Cyclone Winston we learned that almost all the hives in the hardest hit areas topple over. The main difference between losing only 10% or 20% of bee colonies and losing 70% or more was whether the beekeeper roped or strapped the hives so that the hive bottom, boxes and lid all stayed together with the frames inside. Photo: John Caldera

Keep your bees safe during and following a cyclone in Fiji

Safety first. This is obvious, but remember that your life is more important than your bees. Never put yourself or other people at risk for your hives.

Start early. As with home preparation, it is better to prepare your apiary and beekeeping response sooner rather than rushing or panicking later.

Store some sugar. After the storm, your bees’ food supply may have been destroyed. You will want to be able to supply them with something to eat right away. Feed dry sugar and keep records of what comes into flower first after weather events.

Repair beekeeping equipment. Seal any cracks or holes in old bee boxes to reduce exposure to wind and rain.

Move bees where appropriate. If bees are located in high wind area or areas which may flood, it may be suitable to close entrances in the evening and move bees into a shed or other area for 48hrs while the storm passes. Don’t put bees in the house or in sheds near houses!

Mark hive location. If you want to return the hives to where they were before the cyclone, especially if you have a lot of hives to manage, take note of the position/location of each hive and write it down for future reference.

Reduce entrance as small as you can. If it’s not appropriate to move bees, closing the entrance fully helps prevent wind and water from getting into the hive but, depending on the season, may also create unsafe high-temperature conditions inside or prevent an escape by bees in the event one is needed. This is why it can be good to reduce the entrance as much as possible without closing it up entirely. In the event of rising water or the hive being knocked into water, this can give your bees a last-chance escape route. Additionally, after the cyclone, if you are not able to get to your hives immediately, this allows bees to exit the hives.

Move bees away from trees, power lines, and other hazards. You don’t want your hives crushed by falling trees or electrocuted by a live wire during a storm. If you can, move hives away from potential hazards.

Place them on high ground. One major threat to hives during a cyclone is flooding. Keep bees up off the ground, but note that placing bees higher means they are potentially more exposed to more wind.

Close up screen bottom boards. A broken window in a home during a cyclone can result in dangerous wind tunnels, and similarly, high winds during a cyclone are dangerous for bees and can create a high-pressure environment inside a hive. Many beekeepers make wind barriers with cardboard in order to help prevent a potential wind tunnel.

Tilt the hives. Tilting hives forward can be important, where possible. This will help water exit the hive in the event of water getting in.

Secure hives together and/or to a heavy object & strap hives down. You will need ratchet straps or rope and ground anchors (e.g., fence post/star pickets) to secure your hive. Securing the hives with ratchet straps or rope will help to keep it in one place and one piece. Consider securing the hives both horizontally and vertically, and securing them all together if you have multiple hives.

Put away all apiary equipment. Your apiary equipment should be stored away safely. You don’t want your tools to become dangerous flying projectiles…or to fly away and never be seen again!

[amydiddle-fanfiction]

Weatherby

This is another original story with another character that sprung from a fandom but it could be its own thing. Still not edited because I just finished writing it. 

Warnings: Death, Tornados, Amnesia, Body Horror (minor, dont describe it)

“My name? Do I have a name? …Well, I think…I think it started with a ‘W’ and then ended with a ‘Bee’ sound? Maybe…um…W…Weather? Weatherby? Yeah, that sounds right!”

This job was supposed to be the promotion that he had dreamed of. Moving out of the studio and out into the great wide world to search for the most dangerous natural disasters that plagued the world over.  Hurricanes, floods, blizzards, earthquakes, and, of course, tornadoes.

That was the mission currently when Wybie and his crew entered Tornado Alley. It was the season for the cyclones of death to be raging. He had even gotten reports of a possible cloud forming over the small town they had stopped but it turned out to be a false set of hope.

The sky above him was cloudy but the air was dry. There was no even indication that a normal thunder storm would even start the air was so…it was so dry.

Wybie kicked a random rock into the road. He had been walking for the past hour to clear his mind, so he could come to some decision in this Kansas town.

He could call the station and say that this location was a bust but that would have him one episode short of the requirement he was given. He knew they should not have skipped out on a blizzard, but he had wanted the vacation days. He should have expected this. Get so far, finally leave the studio to explore the great wide world in search of extreme weather, and he gets nothing.

Wybie took out his phone and scrolled through his contacts, a finger poised over the number for the news station back on the coast.

Maybe it would not be so bad? Maybe they would understand and give him an extension on the deadline to find a storm. One could not control the weather after all.

He did not think about it anymore; with a movement of his finger he pressed call. The ringing seemed to take forever, at least it seemed that way as the sky over him seemed to get darker. The man impatiently tapped his fingers on the side of his leg.

A breath of relief left him when, finally, someone on the other end of the phone picked up.

“Hello?”

“Ashton! Hey, man, it’s Wybie.”

“Oh, Wybie! How’s Kansas? Find yourself in Oz yet?”

Wybie laughed and scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, that is the problem. Apparently, we got here just in time for there to be a twister drought. Haven’t even gotten a warning.”

“Really?”

Wybie shook his head and gave a sigh.

“I know. I…I don’t really know what to do. If nothing shows up, then I don’t have any film.”

“Well that is not your fault. You can’t control the weather.”

Wybie looked up at the sky and frowned. The clouds had not been that dark when he had left the motel. The hair on his neck started to stand on end as a strong breeze blew around him.

“Yeah…It’s pretty dry here.”

Wybie looked down from the sky and around the open plain. This could not be happening right now.

“Wybie? You okay?”

“I’m-,” He cut himself off as he saw the very thing he had wanted to find his whole time in this place. A cyclone cloud about to touch down on the earth. What should have been an exciting sight was one of horror knowing he was exposed to the elements.

“Oh my God.”

“Wybie? What is it?”

The wind around the reporter began to get stronger and it seemed to snap him out of his stunned silence. He had to go and find a safe place. If he stayed out in the open, he would be crushed.

“It…there is a twister! It just touched down.”

“Really? Where?”

Wybie turned his back to the oncoming storm and started to run back towards the center of the town. The sirens could be heard blaring.

“Right in front of me…Oh God! I don’t think I am going to make it.”

“Wybie? You still there?”

The reporter’s lungs burned as dirt was kicked up from the winds. He could barely see where he had left the car. The roar of the twister was taking over all his senses and he could barely hear Aston on the other line.

“It is right behind me! Oh God…Oh God…Help!”

Debris flew past his head and Wybie was forced to duck down to avoid it. The strong wind ended up pushing him fully down the ground. A rock went and hit the back of his head making him woozy.

The phone had left his hands sometimes during the fall but Wybie could care less about that. He needed to find a ditch or a shelter. He needed to get somewhere safe before…before he was torn to shreds.

“Please! Please no! Please!”

Tears streamed down his face as he tried to crawl towards the town. His glasses were scratched up with dirt and he could barely see through them.

“HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME!”

The roar of the twister was getting louder and more debris began to fly. Something hard hit the back of his head and the world around him went dark.

The reporter woke up on the side of the road. His shirt was messed up, pants ripped, and glasses gone. His head hurt so much but he could not tell why.

He groaned as he sat up and rubbed the back of his skull, grimacing when he felt something wet.

The unconscious form of Wybie was pulled up into the air as the twister got closer. It got spun around and around and around. The high winds and the debris beating up the body badly. It was like a child with a rag doll.

If the person was not dead before they were dead now. Especially after the tornado spit the body out like an old piece of gum.

The man slowly stood up and wobbled on his legs. He knew he had to get back to somewhere, but he was no sure where. He was not even fully understanding where he was currently.

“Hello?” He called out to the empty street. The trees were the only thing that answered him. That did not seem right.

Wasn’t he somewhere away from trees?

The body laid out in the farm land for a week before anyone found it. A young boy had accidentally stumbled on it on accident which alerted the authorities. The skin was in tatters; so were the clothes. Bones broken from the high fall.

The crew that had come with him were not ones happy to be able to identify the body. But it was him; Wybie. His glasses missing and a scared look on what remained of his face. It was hard to call the studio to tell them of another tragic death that had befallen them

He stumbled along the road confused. The more he walked the more hopeless he felt.

Thunder rolled over his head and soon rain began to fall. The rain drops mimicked the tears that started to streak down his face. He did not know where he was, how he got there, or what had happened to him and now it was raining.

“Go away, you dumb sheep,” he mumbled to himself in hopes it would make him laugh but it did not. It just made him sniffle and the rain seemed to get harder with that.

Wybie’s funeral happened on a dry day. There was not a cloud in the sky and the world seemed just too happy.

He was only twenty-three. His mother was crying a river. His sister refused to look at the coffin.

In the distance he saw a light and began to run for it. The rain seeming to stop as the hope flared in his heart and the sun started to peak out from behind the trees.

There was a building. He felt in his heart that he knew that building.

The man did not stop running until he was at the door and knocking on it loudly.

“Hello? Is anyone in there? I don’t know where I am, can you help me?”

#Weather Jim #Jim #Weatherby #oc #original stuff #unedi #unedited

[jaegertango]

The Biggest and the Strongest

I haven’t written some Sigmaine in awhile. So here he is punching stuff with his best buddy in the Brawlpub. These drabbles always come out a lot shorter than I hope them to be.

They still hadn't fixed his seat.

Soren Sigmaine shifted about upon the metal bar stool once more, and it squeaked noisily at his slightest movement. For several months, he had not come to the seedy underdome of Bizmo's Brawlpub, and the dimly-lit club was still as filthy as before. Everything about the Brawlpub screamed that it was a den of violence, from the stained walls to the raucous individuals throwing bottles on occasion. The human had thought that, with the uprising of the Legion, that the gnome owner would find it upon himself to maybe go to church or change his socks. Unfortunately, it seemed like it would take more than an apocalypse to change Bizmo, for the tavern still smelt and looked like an amputated foot.  Even for the armor-clad warrior, the place had a reek that not even nostalgia could properly mask for him – he did not miss that stench at all.

However, the Draenei monk that was sitting beside him, he had missed greatly, even if Xolphiea was wrinkling her nose with the same minor distaste that Soren was behind his horned helm.

“I don'tremember this place stinking so badly,” she muttered, and took a swig of her drink. The tankard she held behind her calloused and roughened knuckles warned she was drinking, but the light sifts of steam streaming from the steel lip explained she was drinking tea. Sigmaine was surprised that there were beverages not drowned in alcohol, but he had to hand it to Bizmo: it only took the barkeep ten minutes to find a dirty case of tea leaves in comparison to the two seconds it took her to find the tap for Soren's ale.

“Gonna be okay?” The zealot rasped in a low growl, his voice crackling with the tone of a man who barely spoke. With a small smile, Xolphiea reached over and gently patted the top of Soren's helmet.

“This smell is strong, but I'm much stronger,” she responded confidently, though she was quick to hide her nose in the depths of her tankard once more.

Sigmaine nodded simply, his eyes leering to her bare shoulders. Once more, she was clad in dark crimson leathers meant to give her strong body as much room for movement as possible. It meant that her tough biceps were on display, as well as her even more powerful thighs. The vest strapped to her torso was open in a v-neck, exposing a great amount of cleavage that strained with the heavy weight of her breasts. Combined with the fact she only wore thigh-high leggings to shroud her broad hooves, this would have been distracting – to the Crusader, he saw only a warrior built on agility and power alike. Speed was something that he did not have much of; his smoldering, black platemail was extremely protective and bulky, but only allowed him to move in short  bursts of power. It was no wonder that the Draenei often won their spars.

“Name should be called s-”

“WHY DO I SIT?! C'MON, WHY DO I SIT?!”

Soren was interrupted crisply by a shrill shout from the lower level of the Brawlpub, calling out to nobody in particular. Xolphiea looked down towards her mug, groaned, and then looked over to Sigmaine in annoyance.

“I just got this!”

“We'll go fast,” the human grunted, setting down his own tankard on the bar.

“WHY DO I SIT?! OI, WHY DO I SIT?!”

The yeller was adamant about getting his message across, his piercing call echoing every three seconds in the tavern. Snickers and jeers screamed back at random, but both Monk and Crusader were silent. With a graceful leap, the Draenei did a soaring backflip from the open balcony, landing just before the human who was bellowing. Most of everyone in the vicinity flinched, only to hoot and holler at the Monk as she stood almost two entire feet over the caller's head.

“Why do I sit?” She asked curiously, cocking her head.

“Why do I sit?” Came the steady response, and the human clucked his tongue sharply, scratching at his parchment. “Couldn't have thought of a better name?”

Before the Draenei could respond, a much more thunderous crash of metal exploded beside Xolphiea, her companion who stood several inches shorter than her making a much noisier landing. The few that had tried to sneak up on the Draenei to get a closer look at her rear was immediately blown away by the sheer impact the zealot had landing next to her; all while she was unaffected.

“No,” he growled in answer for the Monk, craning his neck about readily.

The Brawlpub caller just shook his head, entirely unfazed by either of the two fighter's entrances. “Any sort of name for glory, and you do THIS. Bizmo knows how to pick 'em.”

The Monk merely shrugged and pointed towards the lowered pit behind him, the colosseum for the matches. “Can we-”

“Just GO, you wankers!” He hissed, and the Draenei smirked as she did another agile flip over the railing and into the pit. Soren was quick to follow, though it was with less grace and more metal crunching under his boots as he drew his familiar greatsword Koldraigzharr over his shoulder and circled his right arm around to loosen it up.

In the lowered area of the Brawlpub, just about every one of the dull lights were focused onto it. It made sure that every second of the fights could be seen as brightly as possible, that no inch of gore was spared from sight. Of course, it also revealed just how scarred the walls were, how torched the steel floor was, and overall how badly Bizmo cared for his Pub's death pit. The owner himself was flying above everyone else in his gyrocopter, the gnome's shining grin and curly mustache made less handsome by his shifty, dark eyes. The only thing less obvious than his unsettling smile was the racket echoing from the twin boomboxes jutting from the bottom of the hovering craft, allowing him to announce to the betters and participants as he always had.

“AllllllRIGHT, bets are closed and final!” He buzzed through the microphone merrily, and a pair of spotlights danced into the pit to signal another fight. A rowdy cheer swam through the fetid air, and more of the onlookers began to approach the railing. “Our next round is a crowd favorite! You know it, you love it, and I got paid BIG money to bring it back! So ready your pockets boys – it's the Tag-Team-Tussles!”

Another hooting cheer, and Xolphiea scratched at the back of her dark hair, looking down towards Sigmaine with a slightly-baffled look. “I don't remember this place being so fake either...”

“IN THE FIRST CORNER!” Bizmo boomed, twirling at his mustache as the spotlights focused primarily on human and Draenei. “Maybe ya've seen 'em, maybe they've given ya glory or empty purses! One's got enough kick to make our swill look like water, the other's living on a prayer – to rip and tear your guts! Get yourselves ready boys! IT'S – are you fucking kidding me – WHY DO I SIT!”

The next round of thundering calls were also scattered with whistles as Sigmaine steadied his claymore, helm focused on the other side of the pit. Xolphiea merely massaged her hands, propping herself into a more readied state.

“AND IN THE OTHER CORNER!” The Gnome roared, the spotlights rearing away from the brawling duo to center on the other side of the pit. “Two newcomers, proud to spread their gore-y! One's cunning but brutal! The other's brutal but cunning! That's right! They're mean, green and sure as hells aren't lean – IT'S KROM AND KROG!”

With the end of Bizmo's call, two monstrous forms suddenly rocketed from seemingly nowhere into the pit. Their green-skinned bodies were tremendous, the Orcs both far more muscular than Sigmaine's bulky form, and their eleven-foot frames towered over even Xolphiea. The few parts of their hulking frames that were covered were by scarred platemail, though the rest of them was left open to reveal their incredible girth. In fact, it was impossible to distinguish the two apart besides their two nameplates emblazoned upon their collars: one that read “KROM” and the other that read “KROG.” The Orcish dreadnoughts were quite proud of their size too, for their dull, deep laughter boomed through the pit like a thunder's snarl.

“DA STRONGEST AN' DA BIGGEST! DAT'S KROM-

“-AN' DAT'S KROG!”

As the two Orcs flexed prominently at the staring brawlers, Bizmo's voice bellowed from above.

“Same rules as always! One-on-one y'hear? Hold out your right arm to tag your second in. Let's have a good ol' fashioned bloodbath, eh?”

Xolphiea looked over towards Sigmaine, and he nodded simply, backing towards the closest corner of the pit and giving her the respectful option of the first punch. It took several more seconds after, but eventually the greenskin named KROG also stomped backward, still chanting and cheering at the same roaring volume as before. The raucous crowd had nearly doubled as they lined the railings, booze splashing around their lips as they did so. The air was a sweaty mix of heat and alcohol. Even as Bizmo bellowed out once more, his boomboxes seemed awash in the atmosphere as he called out:

“BEGIN!”

No sooner did he finish the n in that word that the Draenei was attacking. KROG had no reaction as she swiftly leaped at the Orc and brought her hoof across his jaw in a cyclonic kick. The wet, sickening crunch of the blow grossly crackled through the air and garnered several gasps from the audience half a second afterward, but the green giant barely noticed. He merely grunted, backing up a single step, and raised both of his arms up to crush Xolphiea under fists bigger than her torso.

“KROG CRUSH!” He howled, but at the apex of his smash, the Monk continued her attack. With another jump, she stepped up onto the Orc's tough stomach, and used the leverage to propel herself upward and uppercut the colossus of green in the jaw once more. It was another powerful blow that surged through the pit like a wave, but once more, KROG showed no sign of being affected too greatly. The warrior simply backed another stomp, and an irritated roar grumbled in his throat. The purple-skinned fighter was not stopping though, whipping her hands around the Orc's knifelike ears to circle atop of his head, and then use the same leverage to swing her body's momentum to his back. Even for how much weight her foe head, Xolphiea's strength was enough to unsteady KROG and hurl him to his back in a suplex. The Draenei monk landed far more lightly, exhaling softly as she readied to  bring her hoof down entirely on his face, but she froze as she swiveled around to her peripheral vision – and saw KROM cackling wildly as he rocketed towards her in a full-body tackle. She wound back her right fist to somehow defend herself and back away-

-and felt a light tap as Sigmaine came barreling from behind her, meeting KROM's tremendous bodycheck with his much smaller form. Despite the size difference though, the human was meeting every ounce of the Orc's strength, though that may have also been due to that the newcoming greenskin was also latched onto one of KROG's hands. The amount of jeering raining down upon both sides was enough to make Xolphiea scramble back to safety and let Soren fight his own battle as he silently stood his ground. KROM trumpeted furiously, and brought his free hand sideways to slug at the Crusader, but he moved faster. Revolving in place, he was able to shove off the Orc for just a second to swivel around and slash at the giant with his Koldraigzharr. For how heavy and long the blade was though, it was barely able to carve into the Orc, scratching the colossal brute minutely. Still, a shower of blood that was a shade too bright splashed out onto both the ground and the zealot himself, and KROM bellowed more out of anger than actual pain. The Orc was able to catch Sigmaine off guard with a savage backhand, but for how fast the blow was, the human was able to retreat only a few steps as he grunted gruffly in surprise. Keeping his sword slung low, Soren charged towards the Orc without a second breath, winding up to stab that offending limb into one of the walls with a powerful thrust. As KROM roared in actual pain, the zealot abandoned his sword to snatch onto either ends of the first wound he had slashed into the Orc, his fingers digging knuckle-deep into the flesh and ripping outward to tear the gouge even bigger. It would have been a horrendously-wicked display-

-had KROG not suddenly snatched at the human in one of his meaty hands. He now had two humongous Orcs bearing down upon him as KROG roared triumphantly, his clublike foot pinning the Crusader to the ground as he gripped at his ankles, intending to pull the human into two bloody chunks.

But he never got the chance. Before the towering giant could pull, Xolphiea came soaring from the heavens, bringing the back of her hoof down upon KROG's head and stumbling him with the sickening crunch of her mighty kick. Not even the Orc could keep his grip from the concussive force of such a blow, and Soren swiftly scrambled to his feet unharmed.

“IF YOU FOUR ARE GONNA BREAK THE RULES, YOU BETTER FINISH THIS FAST!” Bizmo roared through the speakers, only just audible above the rowdy cheers of the audience. Now Xolphiea stood beside her blood-soaked companion as both KROM and KROG leered at the two with absolute hate burning in their scarlet gazes, as bright as the blood drenching zealot and the pit.

“I'll handle the ugly one!” Xolphiea grinned widely, ignoring Soren's inquisitive stare as she rushed ahead, seemingly picking KROM at random and storming the Orc with a barrage of blows. Inspired by his guardian angel's enthusiasm, Sigmaine also charged, meeting the wounded Orc once more with Koldraigzharr alight. For someone with a stab in one of his palms and a leaking gash in his side, KROG was just as hearty as before, bellowing like a typhoon as he pounded the ground beside the zealot, and the shockwave was enough to make the entire pit shudder like water. Luckily, the human had thought correctly, and had instead leaped into the air at KROG'S toothy maw. Unaffected by the quaking ground, his boots smashed into the Orc's bare chest, and he cleaved at the giant's collarbone viciously. The human easily had enough power to separate most heads from their shoulders with such a strike, but in this colossal brute's case, it did little more than cut simply into him. KROG nonetheless thundered in pain, showering Soren with another dose of high-velocity blood spray and spit, but he refused to stop. Whipping his claymore downward, he did a short hop and wrenched his arms towards the giant's shoulder, attempting to drag it entirely down the Orc's side and at least remove one of those dangerous arms. While he succeeded at digging the steel two feet inside of KROG, the sword got stuck instead, and the Orc instead toppled in baffled agony. Not ready for it, the human fell aside clumsily as KROG bellowed horribly – and repeated it as KROM collapsed on top of him, Xolphiea's hoof just above his fist-thick jugular.

“THE BOYS ARE DOWN!” Bizmo yelled, and a true combination of cheers and curses swam in the fetid air. “WHY DO I SIT WINS!”

The Orcs groaned gruffly, still definitely alive, but not moving very quickly. Leering over towards the fallen warriors, Soren eyed up his blade warily, as it was still buried in KROG's shoulder but changed his gaze as he offered a hand to help Xolphiea down from her victorious pose.

“You're getting sloppy on me,” she chuckled, smiling to him as she took his bloodstained hand. “Hope my tea's not cold!”

Amongst the wild crowd, among which six different fights of fury and joy had broken out, Sigmaine followed Xolphiea's lead and moved back to their VIP bar on the second floor. Surprisingly, it took a minimal amount of shoving as the two made they way back, and the life fluids were still wet on the human's dark armor as he looked joyfully towards his tankard, straw still offering itself for him.

“Still warm!” The Draenei happily stated, already drinking from her mug as Soren reached for his own. “Well... maybe a bit lukewarm. Should've went faster, Sig!”

Soren merely looked up from his tankard, pulled the straw out of his mug, and blew a stream of air at the Monk's face.

“Y'know, it IS your fault it's cold. I need something warm for myself,” she pouted at him, crossing her arms over her broad chest. At her comment, the human turned towards the barkeep, but he couldn't even respond before Xolphiea was nearly sitting in his lap, smiling much more widely at him.

“I think I know something that's tasty and warm,” she purred, gently pulling up on the side's of Sigmaine's helmet as she almost straddled his bloodsoaked form. He flinched as his black beard and long mustache was revealed to the air, but nothing more to the world. With a coo, the brawler brushed her nose against Soren's own before warmly kissing him, a motion that he gratefully and awkwardly returned as well. Her tail wagged happily as the two of them kissed fondly, something that neither of them wanted to break soon.

His chair wasn't fixed – but he sure didn't want to move out of it now.

#jaegerwrites #also obvious gork and mork are obvious

[helloluckybouquetbearus]

1. IU Almost Drowned On Running Man   IU almost drowned on an episode of Running Man where she dived into a deep pool thinking she could swim – but actually couldn’t.   Thanks to the scary incident, she now has a deathly fear of water and says she actually trembles thinking about it.   When she landed in the water after diving from a high board, she suddenly realized she couldn’t swim.   Luckily the Running Man team were quick to rush to the rescue!   2. TWICE Jeongyeon’s Horse Accident   Jungyeon participated in Law of the Jungle in 2016 but was forced to leave the show early due to a debilitating injury.   She was horse riding during a challenge in New Caledonia and was kicked by another horse when the animals got tangled together!   Anyone who’s been around horses will know when they start to panic, it’s a very dangerous situation.   While she escaped with only a leg injury, it definitely could have been a lot worse! 3. Wonder Girls Yubin’s Stumble   Running Man strikes again! While participating in a sports challenge in 2015, Yubin was tasked with jumping on and over a large stack of crates.   She tripped and fell off the stack, tumbling forward to lie, hurt, in front of the toppling obstacle. The stack started falling forward and almost crushed her!   Jae Suk, Gary and Kwang Soo came running to the rescue and took the brunt of the force.   4. Kim Byung Man Got Diagnosed With Hypothermia   The comedian and chief of Law of the Jungle might be expected to ensure more hardships than the younger and more inexperienced members, but when the crew battled harsh conditions in New Zealand in 2017, he got dangerously sick trying to catch fish while exposed to strong winds and freezing temperatures during the worst cyclone to hit the country in 50 years.   The entire tribe was shocked and apologetic when Kim Byung Man got hypothermia.   GOT7’s Mark even teared up while talking about it. (The team also came super close to a shark which swam up to them while they were fishing, so New Zealand was especially hard!) 5. SHINee’s Minho Broke His Nose Due To Set Failures   While filming for Dream Team season 2 in 2010, Minho ran full speed at a hanging obstacle with the intention of grabbing hold.   Instead, he lost grip and fell, flipping into the styrofoam pit and landing sharply at an awkward angle.   He was rushed to the hospital for a CT scan to ensure he didn’t have any lasting head or spinal injuries! There were rumors he broke his nose and was forced to get surgery on it.   6. After School’s UEE Got Stitches On Her Head   Law of the Jungle is not a show for the faint-hearted idol! In an episode filmed in 2014, UEE was thrown back by a massive wave from the Indian ocean and hit her head hard on the rocks below.   She needed stitches to sew up the slit in her scalp. Luckily it didn’t require further investigation after the doctor checked for more severe internal injuries. (She recovered well, and even went back to Law of the Jungle in New Zealand!) 7. MB by Korea Stars TV

#IFTTT #YouTube

[lodelss]

Sarah Trent | Longreads | November 2019 | 22 minutes (4,920 words)

Jack Thomas was home in time for dinner, but he wasn’t really home. His head was still in the fire, gnawing on the details of what his strike team had accomplished, hazards they’d found, a care facility they’d partially saved from the flames. For 19 hours of their nine-day deployment, his team had fought to save those 25 senior apartments, which had somehow been spared when the wildfire tore through town. Thomas knew that if they could stop the fire at the building’s central atrium, these homes would stay standing. And they did.

Walking through his front door, in a suburban Santa Rosa, California, neighborhood the weekend before Thanksgiving, Thomas still smelled of smoke.

He had dinner with his wife, shared photos from the fire, and talked through their holiday plans. Afterward, he unfurled parcel maps across the table while his bags waited, packed, on the couch. After more than a week fighting the most destructive wildfire in California history, the Santa Rosa fire captain had just a few hours to study the maps and get some rest: His deployment on a fire crew was over, but hundreds of people were missing, and FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue Task Force #4 needed someone to help manage the search.

Thomas set his alarm for 3 a.m. He was going back to Paradise.

That night, the next morning, and for many days after, trained search and rescue professionals and volunteers from across California and beyond drove into the smoldering heart of catastrophe. The Camp fire, which started the morning of November 8, 2018, and within hours had overtaken the town of Paradise, was unprecedented: in size, pattern, intensity, damage, and number of people missing, which climbed as high as 1,300. It required the largest search in state history — in conditions few of the searchers were trained for. But to leaders like Thomas, it seemed a portent of things to come: Wildfires are becoming more common and worse. And other disasters are, too.

Rachel Allen got to Paradise two days before Thomas, after dark on Friday, November 16, joining the first wave of volunteer searchers responding to the call for mutual aid. It was the earliest she could arrive, leaving her postdoc research behind for the weekend. A member of the Bay Area Mountain Rescue (BAMRU) team since 2012, she has deployed to dozens of searches across the state, usually for one person missing in the wilderness: a snowshoer lost in a storm, a hiker injured and stuck off-trail, or a person with Alzheimer’s who wandered away from home.

She and her team spend hundreds of unpaid hours each year practicing specialized search and rescue skills. But in Paradise, little of their training in snow conditions, rope systems, or tracking was relevant. Allen wore a white Tyvek suit over her hiking boots and learned how to identify what was typically the only trace of people who hadn’t escaped the blaze: small fragments of bone.

When Thomas arrived Sunday morning, just in time for the morning briefing, searchers in a rainbow of high-viz red and orange agency-branded jackets filled the Tall Pines Entertainment Center parking lot: county search teams, mountain rescue teams, law enforcement, the National Guard, all ready for the day’s assignments.

Thomas joined the fray with USAR Task Force #4 — one of 28 teams in the nation equipped for large-scale disaster relief. Most USAR members, like Thomas, are professional firefighters. On top of a grueling season fighting record-setting wildfires, this was his team’s third urban search deployment in as many months. They’d been to the sites where Hurricane Florence made landfall that September. Where Michael had hit in October. And now this. 

New kinds of disasters require new response plans and training, and bigger ones need more people who know what to do.

All weekend, the air was thick with smoke and a pervasive otherworldliness. “If you had told me I was on Mars, I’d be like, ‘OK, right,’” Allen told me. She searched for two days, mostly in silence, wearing a mask she had to remove to speak. Her hiking boots sank with every step into ash up to eight inches deep. The sky was a murky orange. Trees were still green. Everything else was gray. It was a town like any other. But everything had changed.

In 2018, wildfires swept not only California, Australia, and Greece, but also the colder, wetter landscapes of England, Ireland, and Sweden. Kerala, India, was hit by one of the worst floods ever recorded, killing more than 500 people; a heat wave hospitalized 22,000 in Japan; and a series of tropical storms and typhoons affected more than 10 million across the Philippines. A bomb cyclone slammed the U.S. Northeast. Avalanches crushed Colorado. Mudslides buried Montecito, California. Record-breaking hurricanes battered the Southeast. As of this writing, what has come to be known as “fire season” is well underway in California, and fires blaze in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia. 

To climate scientists, the pattern of increasing extremes comes as no surprise — it’s in line with projections for life on a warming planet. And at 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit above average, according to NASA, 2018 was one of the hottest years on record. 2019 is on track to be hotter.

When disaster strikes, rescuers like Thomas and Allen drive toward the danger the rest of us are desperate to escape. They’re trained to find us when we’re stuck somewhere — lost, injured, or worse. But a changing planet has raised the stakes: Avalanches, tornadoes, fires, and floods fill news cycles with counts of the missing and cell phone footage of neighborhoods turned to wilderness. The U.N. warns that climate catastrophes are now happening once a week across the globe. And unpredictable shoulder seasons — the busiest months for search and rescue calls — are getting longer. New kinds of disasters require new response plans and training, and bigger ones need more people who know what to do.

Search and rescue teams train for the worst conditions. But the worst conditions are getting worse. Search teams are stretched. Rescuers are burning out. We are all less safe.

***

On a May 2013 day in Naujaat, in the Canadian province of Nunavut — an Inuit hamlet known at the time as Repulse Bay — the local search and rescue team was called after a nearby traveler activated an emergency GPS beacon. It was a day with almost 18 hours of sunlight, but blizzard conditions postponed the search.

The call itself was unremarkable — Nunavut search and rescue records are full of similar reports: emergency signals turned on in harsh weather, hunters who’ve run out of gas, a group trapped by moving ice. Nearly everyone is brought home safe. But one trend is nonetheless alarming: In 2016, researchers showed that search and rescue calls in the province had doubled over a decade.

The reasons were complex. More powerful boats and snowmobiles carried hunters, fishers, and travelers farther from safety; people’s preparedness for harsh conditions had not kept pace with their ability to travel so far; high costs to maintain equipment led to makeshift repairs and more frequent breakdowns. But one factor stood out: As the Arctic warms — and it’s warming faster than anywhere else on earth — weather and ice conditions have become less and less predictable. 

“It’s the perfect storm” for accidents and the ensuing calls for rescue, researcher Dylan Clark told a Canadian Senate committee in 2018. And this storm is anything but localized.

In Iceland, where tourism is booming and glacier driving tours are popular, the ice is melting, opening crevasses that threaten vehicles and people. A woman died in 2010 after falling into one with her 7-year-old son just a short distance from a tour jeep. 

In the Alps, retreating glaciers have changed popular climbing routes, increasing exposure and difficulty on nearly all alpine climbs. Where there once was snow, there’s now ice. Where there once was permafrost, there’s now unstable rock. One catastrophic rockfall in Bondo, Switzerland, killed eight hikers in 2017. Their bodies were never found.

Search and rescue teams train for the worst conditions. But the worst conditions are getting worse.

Eddy Cartaya, a Portland Mountain Rescue volunteer and expert on glacier cave exploration and rescue, says that across the Pacific Northwest, more and more people are exploring the backcountry. Outdoor equipment is better and less expensive than ever, cultural interest in the outdoors is surging, and longer summers mean more access to beautiful, wild places. 

Normally, “deep snow-pack insulates some of these locations from inexperienced people,” Cartaya said. But that’s changing. Hiking into areas with now-melting glaciers — in which ice caves are prone to sudden collapse, volcanic gas-filled fumaroles are becoming exposed, and flash floods of glacial melt can occur on the bluest of bluebird days — even an expert outdoorsperson is more likely to run into trouble.

Many of these hazards are new to rescuers, too, making operations riskier for everyone. Now, Cartaya said, his team trains in glacier caves — areas most mountaineers spend their entire careers trying to avoid. After two rescues in noxious fumaroles, the team has purchased new equipment to measure crevasses for hydrogen sulfide. And with a higher volume of calls than ever before — to a group of volunteers in an industry where burnout is already high (few last more than a couple of years) — they’ve increased their recruitment efforts, tripling their most recent cohort of trainees.

But you don’t need to be a backpacker, hunter, or mountaineer heading deep into the wilderness to require rescue from a disaster compounded by climate change. Increasingly, that disaster is coming to us.

In Switzerland, rockslides have buried villages and stranded residents. In Alabama, devastating tornadoes have cut swaths through towns and neighborhoods. Across the Midwest, floods have done the same. In Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean, residents have evacuated from record hurricane after record hurricane. And all of this, according to climate scientists, is at least partially attributable to a warming planet, in which ice is melting at record speed and rising levels of atmospheric water are strengthening storms and producing unprecedented rainfall. 

While the Eastern U.S. is inundated with water, the Western states suffer without it: As temperatures rise, the snowpack melts faster and forests dry out. By late summer, much of California is a tinderbox. Any spark — lightning, a barbecue, a faulting power line — can set the whole thing off.

***

Ten of the 20 most destructive wildfires in California’s history have occurred since 2015. They include the two most destructive (2018 Camp and 2017 Tubbs fires), the two largest (2018 Mendocino Complex and 2017 Thomas fires), and the deadliest by far: In Paradise, searchers found 85 people dead. Two remain missing. This is more than the previous three deadliest fires combined.

For Thomas and his team, the Camp fire set another kind of record and, leaders believe, a precedent: It was the first time FEMA USAR teams had ever been called to a fire. Thomas and others doubt it will be the last. The federal program, which launched in 1991, was designed primarily to respond to catastrophic earthquakes. But as the nature of disasters has evolved, USAR task forces have too. In 1994, teams deployed to the Northridge quake in Los Angeles. A year later, to the Oklahoma City bombing, and in 2001, to downtown Manhattan after the World Trade Center attack. 

In 2005, all 28 teams went to Hurricane Katrina, and as the size and severity of hurricanes have increased since, so have the calls to USAR: Sandy in 2012. Matthew in 2015. Harvey, Irma, and Maria in 2017; Florence and Michael a year later; Dorian this fall.

Thomas went to most of them. “We’re in the water business now,” he said. And the fires? “I totally think that’s going to be in our scope now.”

As a firefighter of more than 30 years who fought the 2017 Tubbs Fire in his own city and countless more around the state, Thomas knows firsthand the ways wildland fires have changed. “It never used to be like this,” he said. When he first started, he’d go to one, maybe two “mutual aid” calls (that is, requests to help other agencies) per season, fighting wildland fires to the scale of around 10,000 acres. “Since 2015 it’s just been non-stop with these major fires,” he said. 

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In 2018, between USAR calls and wildland fire response, Thomas spent 75 days working outside Santa Rosa County, including 21 days in a row at the Mendocino Complex fire. When he came home from that blaze — which burned nearly 460,000 acres before it was finally contained — he had just enough time to move his daughter to college before he was deployed again.

“It pulls on your heartstrings to go help,” he said. But every time he arrives at base camp for another wildland fire, he sees the same guys, grim with fatigue.

“You can see it in guy’s eyes,” he told me. “It seems like it’s more and more and more and more.” Between fighting fires around the state, flying east for hurricane missions, and expecting that USAR’s scope will grow, the effort is not sustainable, he said. “But you know the thing is, who are you going to call? With the amount of missing residents, the amount of destroyed homes — who’s going to do that work?”

Headquarters for Thomas’s team — one of eight in California — is tucked between I-880 and the train tracks in East Oakland, behind a city vehicle maintenance facility. On a cold March morning, a dozen men and women in dark shirts and caps emblazoned with their agency logos — Pittsburg Fire, Sonoma Fire, Contra Costa Fire — ambled from room to room, catching up and collecting signatures for their annual reorientation exercise. 

Each member checked the fit of their issued full-face air mask, re-upped their baseline EKG test, and verified, essentially, that they knew the drill: Every checkpoint is a step they’ll repeat in the hours before an actual deployment. In the garage, Thomas signed off on helmet fits and asked each member if their go-bag was ready. 

“97 you said?” He searched for Tracey Chin’s duffel among the hundreds of numbered red bags on the shelves surrounding the garage. He found it and pulled it down, and she unzipped the pockets to inspect what was inside. She checked the size of the clothing, in case it had changed, and the toothpaste’s expiration date. The team has just four hours to deploy when a call for mutual aid comes in, and they must be prepared for 72 hours of self-sufficiency. The “creature comforts,” as Chin calls these basic necessities, are nearly as important as a tightly sealed air mask.

She zipped the bag closed over carefully folded T-shirts, and Thomas snapped a red plastic lock seal through the zipper pull. Her mask fit. Her photo had been taken. Her sign-off sheet was full. Chin was ready to deploy.

And this team fully expects to — though until recently, that was far from their norm.

“We went eight years without deploying,” said Oakland Battalion Chief Robert Lipp, who leads the task force. But since 2017, they’ve fielded six calls. Now, come autumn, when hurricane and wildland fire seasons are both in full swing, he said he’s “more surprised if we don’t go somewhere than if we do.” 

To climate scientists, the pattern of increasing extremes comes as no surprise — it’s in line with projections for life on a warming planet.

As the need for rescuers goes up, the whole response system is stretched thin. Two Southern California USAR teams, which largely pull on members from one fire department each, were undeployable for USAR calls last fall while wildfires raged in Riverside and Orange counties. The Oakland team is more insulated from that pressure: Its 230 members — enough for three full rescue units — come from 15 different departments. The team has never had to turn down a call for mutual aid, Lipp said. “But we’ve been awful close.”

“When there’s a disaster, we all want to go.” But, he added, “anyone who says it’s not worsening is not paying attention.”

***

On the first day of SAR-Basic — required for anyone who hopes to join Bay Area Mountain Rescue — 15 recruits listened and took notes as veteran members explained the weekend training. Wearing an array of technical fleeces and down coats, it was obvious that they were the newbies: Every sworn-in member wore a red jacket — BAMRU patch on one shoulder and the San Mateo County Sheriff star on the chest — to insulate against the early morning chill.

The first lesson in every emergency response training — from first aid through wilderness paramedicine — is the same, though every teacher has their own way to phrase it: The most important person at the scene is you; don’t let someone else’s emergency become your own; your safety comes first. Adrenaline and the powerful urge to help someone in need can be difficult to overcome — and dangerous to everyone. 

Under the county park picnic shelter, Nathan Fischer sat atop a long wooden table, his gray waffle fleece and close-cropped beard blending into this year’s cohort of mostly twentysomething men. With one leg casually folded, he absorbed the morning lectures. He, like everyone seated around him, was there in part to fulfill that urge to help. “Other people adopt kittens or mentor kids,” he told me. “I’m awful with kids, but maybe I can stop the bleeding.”

An instructor addressed the group. “The first rule of search and rescue,” he said, “is don’t create more subjects.”

This year’s safety talk was unusually personal for the team. Just months earlier, a Ventura County mountain rescuer was killed and two teammates were injured in a storm while trying to help the victims of a rollover crash. The team was en route to a training exercise. The roads were slick. Another vehicle lost control.

At every training station at SAR-Basic, the safety talk was reinforced. Fischer and the other recruits learned to perform a fine grid search, crawling shoulder to shoulder looking for shell casings in the dirt and leaves — while also scanning for poison oak. They learned how to load and carry a person in a titanium-frame litter — along with effective communication to spread the load, and to lift and move as one. Navigation skills, radio skills, tracking skills. And then, finally, a mock search.

Fischer, leading a team of three, talked his group through the details of the briefing. Two trail runners were missing. Their team had been assigned a trail to search. They grabbed a radio and a map and set out for the trail, flanked by mentors.

’It’s the perfect storm’ for accidents and the ensuing calls for rescue.

The mock search is an audition of sorts, at which members and the soon-to-be can feel out their future colleagues. Trust, teamwork, and leadership are as important as technical skill and search savvy. Those who are accepted to train with BAMRU will start deploying on calls as soon as they wish: Trainees join searches while they work through a long list of skill sign-offs and training exercises that typically take a year to complete. The best lessons — and the hardest — will come in the field.

After a morning of searching for the “missing” runners, Fischer’s team broke for lunch. Mentor Eric Chow — just a year into his own tenure on the team — knew that the action would soon pick up. He pulled Fischer aside. “What do you have for PPE?” Chow asked, using shorthand for personal protective equipment — namely, in this case, nitrile gloves. Fischer had none. Chow found a pair in his radio chest harness and handed them over. 

Then the radio blared, cutting into the quiet on the trail. Another team had found the last missing subject. Fischer looked at the map. They were close. When they arrived on scene, his wilderness medical training kicked in. He went straight toward the subject — a woman who had fallen off-trail and injured her leg — and joined another rescuer assessing her injuries. He removed her shoe and checked the circulation in her foot.

Uphill, proctors were watching. One of them whispered: “Where are his gloves?”

Blood is a hazard. Smoke is a hazard. Needles, nails, cornices, rocks, hypoxic subjects, moving vehicles. The powerful urge to help someone can come at profound personal cost. Forgetting safety precautions in an exercise merely means failure. Being without them in the field can mean creating more subjects. 

Physical safety is paramount, but psychological preparation is important as well: The emotional costs can be just as high.

This team typically deploys to difficult, far-away searches — ones that have already gone on for days without success. Stopping the bleeding (or rescue at all) is not usually involved: Often, they recover bodies.

Veteran team member Alice Ng is haunted by the search for a young mountaineer crushed by an avalanche. The recovery of a body brings closure to everyone, but this one hit her hard: The traumatic stop of this boy’s life, while doing something she might have done too; his family, walking in circles around the airfield, with nothing to do but wait. The day after finding him, while chopping vegetables for dinner, she suddenly broke down in tears. The task was so normal, she told me: “That can be taken away from you so quickly.”

For Eric Chow, one of the mentors who took part in the mock rescue, one search near Lake Tahoe was especially memorable. “We were in our element there,” he remembered. It was high angle, high altitude, in avalanche conditions, a search for one missing person. It was everything this team trains for. The Paradise fire, on the other hand, felt like the opposite. There were scores of bodies reduced to bone fragments, cesspits hidden under the ash, and “widowmakers” — the precarious branches of burned trees — that could fall at any moment. “We don’t know any of those hazards,” he said.

***

It’s difficult to plan or train for what’s never been experienced before, and in climate-influenced disasters, nothing is as it was. The Camp fire was apocalyptic. Michael St. John, long-time leader of Marin Search and Rescue and newly retired from the Mill Valley Fire Department, deployed to Paradise on day five of the blaze to help Butte County search coordinators and state search and rescue leaders wrap their collective heads around organizing such a massive search.

“What’s your PPE plan?” he recalled asking the leaders at search command. He knew they’d need air masks. Tyvek. Steel-shanked boots if they could find them fast enough. And decontamination facilities. When a forest burns, the smoke is dangerous. When a city burns — with all its plastics, paints, chemicals, and more — it’s deadly. If not today, then perhaps years from now when the cancers start growing, St. John said. And while many teams like BAMRU and Marin SAR have limited county insurance for in-field accidents, volunteers don’t get workers’ compensation. They just get sick.

You don’t need to be a backpacker, hunter, or mountaineer heading deep into the wilderness to require rescue from a disaster compounded by climate change. Increasingly, that disaster is coming to us.

From search headquarters at the Tall Pines bowling alley, where cots were set up in the bar and a rec room was converted to mission command, St. John searched Amazon for boots. A dozen deputies raided every Home Depot in the Central Valley for supplies. The National Guard was called to set up mass decontamination tents. 

On the first day of the search, central command ran out of P-100 masks, which offer more protection than the N-95 masks the public was encouraged to wear. Some rescuers who couldn’t get masks in the first days of the search, before donations poured in, turned around and went home. The air was so thick with smoke and particulate matter that it choked out even the sun. Just a few hours in Paradise was too much for some: The personal risk was just too great.

Over the week, St. John and search leaders troubleshot challenges. They had state, county, and federal resources at their disposal, and while every one of them was trained in the same incident command structure — a logistics and hierarchy system built to scale to any emergency — each group had its own culture, communications, and even GIS mapping systems. 

Leaders struggled to manage the growing list of missing people — and to commit enough resources to sort all 1,300 reports, winnow out redundancies, and narrow the search. As best they could under pressure, they integrated lessons from failures along the way, improving the system a little bit more every day.

And every day, the massive search continued across 240 square miles, where homes, stores, schools, and retirement homes — more than 18,000 structures in all — were now gone. Just the grid of streets remained, along with stone, metal, and randomly spared objects. Chimneys stood like sentries. So did radiators. Mailboxes. The intricate metalwork of a headboard. Cars had melted by the roadside, their metal shells resolidified as river-flows on pavement. 

As a USAR search manager, Thomas worked “forward reconnaissance,” evaluating structures and triaging search efforts before larger teams were assigned to move through. Allen, with BAMRU, led one of those teams, each member carrying a shovel or rake. In full, hooded Tyvek, with double-canistered P-100 masks on or around their necks, they searched house by house, block by block, using rake tines to pick through the dense mixture of ash and nails and metal debris.

They’d been trained on arrival to look for one thing only: yellowed or charred fragments of bone, just inches long, and barely recognizable.

They searched most carefully near the remains of beds. The fire had begun around 6:30 a.m., and by 8, it had rushed into Paradise. Mattress coils were easy to spot. Bathrooms were recommended as focus areas, too, but toilets were harder to find. Somehow, Allen said, most of them were gone.

On Sunday afternoon, on their last assignment of the day, Allen led eight BAMRU members to Cape Cod Mobile Estates, two miles up the road from search command. The sign was intact at the entrance, and the office was still mostly standing. They parked on the H-shaped road of the park, where every other structure had been flattened, their corrugated metal roofs collapsed onto the nothingness of ash. The group moved through quickly, in pairs, spending a few minutes at each structure before they focused on two that a deputy requested. As they finished each search, one member spray-painted an X on the driveway: standard communication in bright orange paint. At the top of the X, the date. At the bottom, a zero. No bodies found.

It’s difficult to plan or train for what’s never been experienced before, and in climate-influenced disasters, nothing is as it was.

Allen drove home that night with teammates, her Prius covered in gray, toxic ash. Once home, she struggled to explain the experience. The fires are too big, she’d told her friends and, later, me. The resources — masks and people and insurance coverage — are just not going to be enough, she said. “Now I know how the world ends.”

A few days later, Thomas went home to channel everything he had left into hosting 20 guests for Thanksgiving. When the last one left, he collapsed. For two whole days, he felt awful, and it took weeks to recover. Next year, he told his wife, he’ll turn down some of the calls. But that’s easy to say in the off-season — that annual period of rest which is, of course, getting shorter.

***

Months after the fire, on a sunny day in April, Michael St. John, enjoying retirement, was home from an early morning run up Mount Baldy. His neighborhood — and all of Marin County — was lush and green from heavy winter rains, and while fire danger was no doubt out of mind for most, it was weighing on his. California, after all, doesn’t stay green for long. He searched the state website from his couch, and even he was shocked to see that the first wildland fires of the year had already begun — weeks ahead of normal. 

St. John worries that the lessons from Paradise can’t be integrated fast enough: The season is too much of a crush. He worries about the Santa Ana winds — those northeasterly gusts that every autumn fan the flames. He worries that his county, too, is at risk.

When I asked him where he most worries about being affected by future wildland-urban fires, he climbed onto a table to read the small print on a huge wall map of California. He ran one finger up the entire eastern edge of the Central Valley, reading out the name of every major town it crossed. Porterville. Mariposa. Sonora. Placerville. This state was built to burn.

The Santa Ana winds are blowing again. National Weather Service meteorologists have called this season’s gusts dangerous, extreme, and historic. Across the state, vegetation is parched, humidity is low, temperatures have hit record highs,  and some 60 miles north of St. John’s kitchen table, Sonoma County is smoldering. At the height of the October Kincade blaze, the evacuation zone covered some 180,000 people. 78,000 acres are black.  The latest Predictive Services report, released November 1, says large fire potential could last through the end of the year.

And in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, major storms are brewing. In Japan, Washington state, and the Gaza Strip, flood banks are breaking. Everywhere, rocks and mud and gas are being freed from the ice. And every town, like Paradise one year ago, is on a precipice: It’s a place like any other, in a world that has already changed.

***

Sarah Trent is a freelance journalist covering the environment, food systems, economic development, and the ways everyday people around the world are affected by the climate crisis and environmental degradation.

Editor: Kelly Stout Fact checker: Steven Cohen Copy editor: Jacob Gross

#IFTTT #Blogger

[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

U.S. Democrats and Republicans Can’t Even Agree on the Weather: Reuters/Ipsos

Only 200 miles separate Michael Tilden and Miranda Garcia in rain-soaked Iowa. But they are worlds apart when it comes to their opinion of the weather.

Garcia, a 38-year-old former journalist and Democrat from Des Moines, thinks flooding has been getting worse in the state, which just came out of its wettest 12-months on record. Tilden, a 44-year-old math teacher and Republican from Sioux City, thinks otherwise: “I’ve noticed essentially the same weather pattern every single year,” he said.

Their different takes underscore a broader truth about the way Americans perceive extreme weather: Democrats are far more likely to believe droughts, floods, wildfires, hurricanes and tropical storms have become more frequent or intense where they live in the last decade, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The divergence shows how years of political squabbling over global warming – including disputes over its existence – have grown deep roots, distorting the way Americans view the world around them. The divide will play into the 2020 election as Democratic hopefuls seek to sell aggressive proposals to reduce or even end fossil fuel consumption by drawing links between climate change and recent floods, storms and wildfires.

Nearly two-thirds of Democrats believe severe thunderstorms and floods have become more frequent, compared to 42% and 50% of Republicans, respectively, according to the poll.

About half of Democrats, meanwhile, think droughts, hurricanes and tropical storms are more common in their region, versus less than a third of Republicans, according to the poll.

Similarly, nearly seven in 10 Democrats said in the poll that severe weather events such as thunderstorms have become more intense, compared to 4 of 10 Republicans. And nearly half of Republicans said there has been no change in the intensity of severe weather over the past decade, versus a fifth of Democrats.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English between June 11 and 14 and gathered responses from 3,281 people. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 2 percentage points up or down.

U.S. government researchers have concluded that tropical cyclone activity, rainfall, and the frequency of intense single-day storms have been on the rise, according to data compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency.

For example, six of the 10 most active years for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin since 1950 have occurred since the mid-1990s, and nine of the top 10 years for extreme one-day precipitation events nationwide have occurred since 1990, according to the data.

“We do expect to see more intense storms,” said David Easterling, a spokesman for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

An overwhelming majority of scientists believe human consumption of fossil fuels is driving sweeping changes in the global climate by ramping up the concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. But it is impossible to draw a direct link between the changes in U.S. weather in the recent past to the larger trend of warming.

President Donald Trump has cast doubt on the science of climate change, saying he believes that research into its severity, causes and effects is not yet settled. Two years ago he announced the United States would withdraw from a global pact to reduce carbon emissions, the Paris Climate Agreement, a deal Trump said could damage the U.S. economy.

Still, a majority of Republicans believe the United States should take “aggressive action” to combat global warming, Reuters polling shows.

Some Republican lawmakers have offered proposals for “market-based” approaches to fend off climate change, such as cap-and-trade systems that would force companies to cut carbon emissions or buy credits from those that do.

Democrats are pushing more aggressive ideas. Nearly all of the party’s presidential hopefuls, who seek to unseat Trump in next year’s election, have put forward proposals to end U.S. fossil fuels consumption within a few decades to make the country carbon neutral.

Trump has slammed the idea, saying it would “kill millions of jobs” and “crush the dreams of the poorest Americans.”

PARTISAN GOGGLES

Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, said the divergence in the way American perceive the weather is being driven by factors including the news they consume and their social circles.

Liberals are more likely to expose themselves to news outlets and people who believe climate change is an urgent threat that affects current weather patterns. For more conservative Americans, the link between weather and climate change is “not a typical conversation,” Marlon said.

Last year, the Yale program – which carries out scientific research on public knowledge about climate change – set out to map the partisan divide on how people perceive the effects of global warming across the United States.

It found that 22% of Republicans reported personally experiencing climate change, compared to 60% of Democrats.

Scientists and researchers at the University of Michigan, the University of Exeter and others came to a similar conclusion in a 2018 study which found that political bias and partisan news reporting can affect whether people indicate experiencing certain extreme weather events.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Brian Thevenot)

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[theliterateape]

What's Beneath the Rhetoric? Mark Twain Answers the Question

America is an exceptional country.

Americans are frequently unexceptional.

That is because America is an idea not so much a concrete thing.  Americans are humans - flawed and childish.

America says all Americans are equal.  Americans are so terrified of being pushed out of control or privilege that they decide that some are more equal than others and create cliques and castes that define equal wholly unequally.

America says that government is for the people and by the people.  Americans decide which people the government is for and that the people with massive wealth are the ones who truly control it.

As we continue to stroll down the path of some of us in thrall with the myth of American Exceptionalism and a few others in disgust at the country we have become despite all the riches and advantages otherwise, it occurs to me that behind the rhetoric there is so much unspoken which reveals our darkest intents.

When you lobby for stricter immigration laws and enforcement, what are you really getting at in the depths of your advocation? When you cut & paste that “Medicare for All” post, what are you really saying in the undertow of human thought? When you champion reparations for the brutal history of systemic racism in this country, what are you genuinely accomplishing? If you defend the argument for more war in the Middle East, what is the true core of your prayer?

In high school, I won a bunch of Forensics awards for reading the following Mark Twain piece and the questions I’m asking are much better answered within.

✶

The War Prayer by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fulttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory with stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!

Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation:

God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest,

Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord and God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think. “God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, and the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon your neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain on your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse on some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard the words ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.”

…

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

✶

It would serve us all — in the collective united part of the country’s name — to reflect more thoroughly on the intent behind our rhetoric. When we advocate for a New Green Deal what comes with that is the loss of millions of jobs from families who have made their living working for Big Oil. When we argue against gender neutral bathrooms, the concomitant collateral that goes along with it is the continuation of cruelty to those among us who cannot live in our binary world.

We could all use a lunatic preacher to expose our hidden hearts.

#American Exceptionalism #Mark Twain #The War Prayer

[newstfionline]

Hurricane Maria churns through Caribbean as ravaged Puerto Rico takes stock of an ‘island destroyed’

By Samantha Schmidt and Sandhya Somashekhar, Washington Post, September 21, 2017

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico--After mauling Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria delivered a weaker but still punishing blow Thursday to the Dominican Republic with winds near 115 mph and driving rains as the storm carved an arc of misery through the Caribbean.

Maria--now a Category 3 hurricane--was expected to gather some fresh strength over open water before taking aim at the Turks and Caicos Islands, which were battered earlier this month by Hurricane Irma on its deadly path toward Florida.

But Maria may spare the U.S. mainland. The National Hurricane Center forecasts show it veering sharply to the north and spinning up the Atlantic in the corridor between Bermuda and the Atlantic seaboard.

On Puerto Rico, the full extent of Maria’s fury was still being tallied. But it was clear that the rebuilding process will be massive after the island’s power grid and other services were effectively wiped away. Maria on Wednesday knocked out 100 percent of the island’s electrical grid, toppled cellphone towers and left many towns cut off by landslides or floods of muddy torrents.

“Definitely Puerto Rico--when we can get outside--we will find our island destroyed,” Abner Gómez, director of Puerto Rico’s emergency management agency, told reporters on Wednesday as the storm engulfed the entire island. “The information we have received is not encouraging. It’s a system that has destroyed everything it has had in its path.”

It was the first Category 4 storm to strike the island directly since 1932. By midmorning, Maria had fully engulfed the 100-mile-long island.

First responders, including a fire-rescue team deployed from Fairfax, Va., had to ride out the storm for hours before emerging to help people late Wednesday. In the meantime, calls to emergency services went in vain. A family in the southern coastal town of Guayama, for example, reportedly pleaded for help as they were trapped in their home with rising water.

In Hato Rey, a San Juan business district, a woman sought assistance as she was experiencing labor pains. “Unfortunately, our staff cannot leave,” Gómez said at the news conference. “They will be rescued later.”

William “Brock” Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told The Washington Post that rescue and recovery operations are poised to help the U.S. territories--and had significant resources already deployed in the area as a result of Hurricane Irma, which hit the region just days ago.

“Right now we’re in wait-and-see mode,” Long said Wednesday afternoon. “We know that St. Croix took a tremendous hit, and we know obviously Puerto Rico took the brunt of the storm. Once the weather clears and the seas die down, we’ll be in full operation.”

Maria was the most violent tropical cyclone to hit Puerto Rico in more than 80 years. It had raked St. Croix hours earlier, just two weeks after that island was the only major land mass in the U.S. Virgin Islands that was spared Hurricane Irma’s wrath. Maria also produced flooding in St. Thomas, an island that Irma hit.

On the French island of Guadeloupe, officials blamed at least two deaths on Maria, and at least two people were missing after a ship went down near the tiny French island of Desirade. At least seven deaths have been reported on the devastated island of Dominica.

Del. Stacey Plaskett, who represents the U.S. Virgin Islands in Washington, said St. Croix had been a staging ground for relief efforts after Hurricane Irma devastated other parts of her district before Maria’s eye skimmed the edge of St. Croix on Tuesday night as a Category 5 storm with winds of 175 mph.

Puerto Rico’s vulnerability to tropical cyclones has been driven home in the past two weeks as first Irma and then Maria have howled into the Caribbean. The back-to-back nature of the storms has had one minor upside: Some 3,200 federal government staffers, National Guardsmen and other emergency personnel overseen already were in Puerto Rico when Maria approached.

In the San Juan district of Santurce, residents used machetes to cut branches from trees blocking the road. The sidewalks were rendered impassable by downed trees, metal roofing and power lines.

Anton Rosarios, 81, looked over what remained of the front of his wooden house, the walls of which had collapsed, exposing the interior. He said he was hoping that FEMA would show up: “They are the only ones who can help fix this neighborhood. God willing, they will be coming to help us soon.”

The home of his neighbor, Vitin Rodriguez, 55, had lost its roof, and all of his belongings had been ruined by Maria. A tree had fallen and crushed his car, and he said he had no way to check on the status of family members.

Further down the block, a small crowd gathered at an emergency shelter, as residents checked on friends and neighbors, some of whom had ridden out the storm playing dominoes.

#Hurricane Maria #Puerto Rico

[beekeepingfiji]

Cyclone Preparedness for Beekeepers in the South Pacific

New Post has been published on https://www.beekeepingfiji.com/?p=4017

Cyclone Preparedness for Beekeepers in the South Pacific

Impacts

Cyclones can cause strong winds that can push bee hives over and cause flash flooding which can wash bees away.

Cyclones also impact on available food resources for bees (flowering trees).

Being prepared and knowing what to do following a storm can help to reduce the impact cyclones for beekeepers and their bees.

Experience in Fiji suggests that the main difference between losing only 10-20% of bee colonies and losing 70% or more was whether the beekeeper roped or strapped the hives so that the hive bottom, boxes and lid all stayed together with the frames inside.

The hives will topple over, but can be lifted upright shortly after the cyclone and later put back on a hive stand.

Without a rope around the hive, the frames will likely be scattered outside the boxes and the bees lost.

A stable hive stand and not having hives too far off the ground will also help.

There are more elaborate and better ways to protect hives, but a rope (or two) cinched around the hive is a cheap solution that worked well in past cyclone events.

Secure hives together and/or to a heavy object & strap hives down. You will need ratchet straps or rope and ground anchors (e.g., fence post/star pickets) to secure your hive. Securing the hives with ratchet straps or rope will help to keep it in one place and one piece. Consider securing the hives both horizontally and vertically, and securing them all together if you have multiple hives

18 ways to keep bees safe during and following a cyclone

Safety first. This is obvious, but remember that your life is more important than your bees. Never put yourself or other people at risk for your hives.

Start early. As with home preparation, it is better to prepare your apiary and beekeeping response sooner rather than rushing or panicking later.

Store some sugar. After the storm, your bees’ food supply may have been destroyed. You will want to be able to supply them with something to eat right away. Feed dry sugar and keep records of what comes into flower first after weather events.

Repair beekeeping equipment. Seal any cracks or holes in old bee boxes to reduce exposure to wind and rain.

Move bees where appropriate. If bees are located in high wind area or areas which may flood, it may be suitable to close entrances in the evening and move bees into a shed or other area for 48hrs while the storm passes. Don’t put bees in the house or in sheds near houses!

Mark hive location. If you want to return the hives to where they were before the cyclone, especially if you have a lot of hives to manage, take note of the position/location of each hive and write it down for future reference.

Reduce entrance as small as you can. If it’s not appropriate to move bees, closing the entrance fully helps prevent wind and water from getting into the hive but, depending on the season, may also create unsafe high-temperature conditions inside or prevent an escape by bees in the event one is needed. This is why it can be good to reduce the entrance as much as possible without closing it up entirely. In the event of rising water or the hive being knocked into water, this can give your bees a last-chance escape route. Additionally, after the cyclone, if you are not able to get to your hives immediately, this allows bees to exit the hives.

Move bees away from trees, power lines, and other hazards. You don’t want your hives crushed by falling trees or electrocuted by a live wire during a storm. If you can, move hives away from potential hazards.

Place them on high ground. One major threat to hives during a cyclone is flooding. Keep bees up off the ground, but note that placing bees higher means they are potentially more exposed to more wind.

Close up screen bottom boards. A broken window in a home during a cyclone can result in dangerous wind tunnels, and similarly, high winds during a cyclone are dangerous for bees and can create a high-pressure environment inside a hive. Many beekeepers make wind barriers with cardboard in order to help prevent a potential wind tunnel.

Tilt the hives. Tilting hives forward can be important, where possible. This will help water exit the hive in the event of water getting in.

Secure hives together and/or to a heavy object & strap hives down. You will need ratchet straps or rope and ground anchors (e.g., fence post/star pickets) to secure your hive. Securing the hives with ratchet straps or rope will help to keep it in one place and one piece. Consider securing the hives both horizontally and vertically, and securing them all together if you have multiple hives.

Put away all apiary equipment. Your apiary equipment should be stored away safely. You don’t want your tools to become dangerous flying projectiles…or to fly away and never be seen again!

Secure hives together and/or to a heavy object & strap hives down. You will need ratchet straps or rope and ground anchors (e.g., fence post/star pickets) to secure your hive. Securing the hives with ratchet straps or rope will help to keep it in one place and one piece. Consider securing the hives both horizontally and vertically, and securing them all together if you have multiple hives

Caring for bees after the storm

Be prompt to clean up dead hives. Hundreds of dead bees will stink after just a few days. Don’t hesitate to clean them up. If bees have American Foulbrood Disease (AFB) this is a major issue that may impact on your entire apiary.

Don’t bother your bees too much. Put them back together, but leave bees to settle for a week or so as the bees will likely be cranky, hungry, and defensive after a storm. Be ready to use full protective equipment, including gloves, a bee veil and suit and footwear.

Feed your bees. After a storm, flowers, vegetation, and other things that the bees eat may have been blown away. Keeping sugar and water on hand for sugar feeding can prevent starvation after the fact.

Watch for robbing afterwards. Dearth created by all the flowers and plants being blown away will affect all hives (including neighbouring and wild hives) in the area.

Reach out to your local bee associations and departments. If you need help with your bees after the storm, your local bee association is usually a great resource. Or you may be able to offer a helping hand to another beekeeper in need in the aftermath

Cyclone Preparedness for Beekeepers in the South Pacific download pdf 180kb: Download

[helloluckybouquetbearus]

1. IU Almost Drowned On Running Man   IU almost drowned on an episode of Running Man where she dived into a deep pool thinking she could swim – but actually couldn’t.   Thanks to the scary incident, she now has a deathly fear of water and says she actually trembles thinking about it.   When she landed in the water after diving from a high board, she suddenly realized she couldn’t swim.   Luckily the Running Man team were quick to rush to the rescue!   2. TWICE Jeongyeon‘s Horse Accident   Jungyeon participated in Law of the Jungle in 2016 but was forced to leave the show early due to a debilitating injury.   She was horse riding during a challenge in New Caledonia and was kicked by another horse when the animals got tangled together!   Anyone who’s been around horses will know when they start to panic, it’s a very dangerous situation.   While she escaped with only a leg injury, it definitely could have been a lot worse! 3. Wonder Girls Yubin‘s Stumble    Running Man strikes again! While participating in a sports challenge in 2015, Yubin was tasked with jumping on and over a large stack of crates.   She tripped and fell off the stack, tumbling forward to lie, hurt, in front of the toppling obstacle. The stack started falling forward and almost crushed her!   Jae Suk, Gary and Kwang Soo came running to the rescue and took the brunt of the force.   4. Kim Byung Man Got Diagnosed With Hypothermia   The comedian and chief of Law of the Jungle might be expected to ensure more hardships than the younger and more inexperienced members, but when the crew battled harsh conditions in New Zealand in 2017, he got dangerously sick trying to catch fish while exposed to strong winds and freezing temperatures during the worst cyclone to hit the country in 50 years.   The entire tribe was shocked and apologetic when Kim Byung Man got hypothermia.   GOT7‘s Mark. (The team also came super close to a shark which swam up to them while they were fishing, so New Zealand was especially hard!) 5. SHINee‘s Minho Broke His Nose Due To Set Failures   While filming for Dream Team season 2 in 2010, Minho ran full speed at a hanging obstacle with the intention of grabbing hold.   Instead, he lost grip and fell, flipping into the styrofoam pit and landing sharply at an awkward angle.   He was rushed to the hospital for a CT scan to ensure he didn’t have any lasting head or spinal injuries! There were rumors he broke his nose and was forced to get surgery on it.   6. After School‘s UEE Got Stitches On Her Head   Law of the Jungle is not a show for the faint-hearted idol! In an episode filmed in 2014, UEE was thrown back by a massive wave from the Indian ocean and hit her head hard on the rocks below.   She needed stitches to sew up the slit in her scalp. Luckily it didn’t require further investigation after the doctor checked for more severe internal injuries. (She recovered well, and even went back to Law of the Jungle in New Zealand!) 7. MBLAQ‘s Mir Almost Got Carried Away By by Korea Stars TV

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