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toothpastecanyon · 3 years

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A Name From the Mailbox, Chapter 1

Dipper finds out the author's name before Not What He Seems. It's not the person he expected.

See most updated version on Archive of Our Own.

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“Step right up to the Mystery Shack, folks! Name’s Stanford Pines, Mr Mystery!”

Dipper looked up as Stan came through the door. He watched his uncle shoot him a winning grin before turning it on a group of unsuspecting tourists.

“This right here’s the gift shop! I know this kinda place is usually the last stop at your museum or whatever, but we do it different here, folks! Look around; everything’s weird, and it’s for sale! Buy something. Seriously, we’re not moving on till everyone buys something.”

He looked at the tourists milling about the counters, and jumped slightly when Stan appeared next to him.

“How’s it hanging, kid?”

“Wh-what?”

“You look like you seen a ghost or a shower or something.” Stan flipped up his eyepatch. “You been staying up too late again? I told you you were working the till today.”

He stared at his uncle’s face. Underneath the table, his hands clenched a piece of paper.

“Uh, Grunkle Stan?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I… can I ask you somethi-“

“Hey, tourists coming your way.” Stan jumped up. “Tell me after the tour, eh?”

“But-“ Dipper watched him walk off. He made a face, and looked down to the note in his hands he’d taken from a mailbox in the woods.

WHO IS THE AUTHOR? It read.

THE AUTHOR OF THE JOURNALS IS STANFORD FILBRICK PINES.

“You like that shirt, kid? If you throw in another one, I’ll make it two for the price of three!” Stanford Pines stood before the line, leaning on his cane. “No refunds!”

Dipper frowned.

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“There’s no way he’s the author.”

“Aww, c’mon, Dipper!” Mabel swung her feet as she sat on her bed. “You said the same thing about McGucket, and look what happened there! Maybe Grunkle Stan really wrote it?” She grinned. “Maybe he knows about unicorns! We should ask him, Dipper! Dipperrrr!”

Dipper stood in front of his corkboard. He pressed Stan’s picture against the centre, and then hesitated. “It just… it doesn’t line up. If he’s the author, what’s the deal with the six fingers? And the whole Mystery Shack thing - why would he just drop all his research to open a tourist trap in the middle of nowhere?”

“Maybe he’s doing it in secret?”

“Maybe, but… it just doesn’t make sense that it’s him.” He rolled his eyes at the photo of Stan posing with his wax twin. “I thought that the author was gonna be someone who actually likes the supernatural, for one. Stan doesn’t even want to talk about it with me.”

Mabel watched him sigh, and slump against the bedrest. She came over, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, bro, maybe you should tell him!”

“Why? It took raising the dead for him to admit magic exists at all. I don’t think he’d admit to it even if he was the author.”

“Oh, yeah, karaoke night! We should do that again!” She giggled at his expression. “I’m joking, goober. But really, you should just ask him. He promised to be more honest with us, right? Maybe if he knows you know, he’ll know it’s okay to let you know what he knows, you know?”

“What he promised was that he wouldn’t keep any more secrets,” Dipper muttered, but he rose to his feet. “Fine. I guess it’s worth asking first. You think he’s in the living room?”

“Yeah, I saw him watching that weird fancy soap opera when I went to find Waddles. He tried to change the channel before I saw it, but he can’t hide anything from me!”

“Apparently, he can.” Dipper picked up the journal, stared at it for a moment, then put it under his arm. “Let’s go, Mabel.”

The two of them made their way down the stairs, and into the hallway. The light of the TV left a harsh glow on the floorboards as they stepped into the living room. Stan was sitting there in the dark; Dipper looked at his face, and for a moment he really tried to imagine Stan as the author, as the man who’d spent years in the forests of Gravity Falls, who’d made dozens of intricate illustrations and detailed notes on the oddities within…

Then Stan met his eyes, and he jumped. Stan jumped too, and quickly changed the channel.

“Oh, kids! I was looking for something to watch, but there’s, uh, nothing on.” He coughed. “You wanna put on a movie, or something?”

“Ooo, Dream Boy High!”

“Mabel!” Dipper shot her a look. “That’s not why we came down here.”

“Awww…”

“Oh yeah?” Stan scratched his chest. “What’s up, kid?”

Dipper took a deep breath. He clenched the journal against his chest. “Uh, Grunkle Stan?”

“Yeah?”

“You know the, uh, the journal, right?” He watched Stan’s face carefully. “I’ve spent - we’ve spent, um, all summer so far trying to figure out who the author of it is, and - you’ve lived in Gravity Falls all your life, right?”

“More or less.” He frowned. “Why? I told you, I don’t know nothing about that spooky journal of yours.”

“But we’re starting to think you do, Grunkle Stan! We think… you’re the author!” He waited for Stan to say something, but he just furrowed his brow and turned up the TV. “We found this - this mailbox in the woods that knows everything, and we asked it who the author was and it said Stanford Pines!”

Then Dipper saw it: a flash of something across Stan’s face. He stared at Dipper for a moment with wide, shaken eyes, and Dipper blinked.

“It… it’s true! You are the author!”

“Stanford…?” Stan shook his head. “Kid, I’m not the author.”

“But-“

“You found this out from what, a mailbox in the woods? Oh yeah, that’s a real smoking gun.” He chucked, but now Dipper heard something distinctly forced in it. “You really, heh, really found me out!”

“But Grunkle Stan-”

Stan stood up quickly. “Hah, listen, kid, the only thing I’ve been writing for thirty years is attraction signs, and I pawn most of that off on Soos! You really think I’ve got time to wander off into the forest and write all the stuff that journal’s talking about? I got a business to run!”

“But it was an all-knowing mailbox, it couldn’t be wrong…” Dipper clicked his pen. “What about that boarded-up room in the shack, with the mind-switching carpet? That doesn’t make sense, someone had to have made that, and you said you had this Shack built yourself!” He followed Stan into the kitchen. “And hey, why’d you build it so far out of town anyway? And right next to the secret bunker and where this journal was hidden?”

“Secret bunker?” Stan raised an eyebrow. “When’d you kids go down a secret bunker?”

“Like a week ago!” Mabel grinned. “We fought a shapeshifter and Dipper’s inner emotions!”

He frowned. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, you kids went down in some spooky bunker? I thought you promised not to go looking for trouble with that journal!”

“And I thought you promised you didn’t have any more secrets!”

“And I don’t!” Stan shook his head. “Yeesh, kid, I mean, I don’t know what to tell you! I’m not your nerdy author!”

“But-”

He grabbed the journal. “And I’m taking this stupid thing.”

“Hey, Grunkle Stan!”

“I should’ve done it the second I laid eyes on it. You kids get into enough trouble without a literal roadmap to all the weirdness in this place.”

“No! You can’t do that!” Dipper clenched his fists. “Give it back!”

“Whoa, Dipper, calm down, alright?” He stashed the journal under his arm. “Look, it’s for your own good. Your head’s getting way too wrapped up in this mystery stuff; I think you could do with a break.”

“But I’m so close to getting to the bottom of all the big secrets of this town! You can’t take it away now!”

“I’m sorry, kid, but I just can’t trust you with it!” He tried for a grin. “C’mon, how’s about we have some real summer fun rather than this conspiracy junk? Y’know, put on some popcorn, throw on a show… heck, I’ll even let you pick. Don’t get used to it, alright?” He chuckled. “So, what do you say, kids?”

“Yeah!” Mabel looked to her brother. “You should pick Dream Boy High, Dipper! Dipper?”

Dipper looked up at his Grunkle’s face for a moment, took a deep breath, and then spoke. “I say,” he started, “I’m gonna go to my room, and I’m gonna find out what you’re hiding from me, journal or no journal!”

Then he turned and walked out of the room. Stan watched him go, then looked to Mabel, who shrugged.

“I guess he’s not up for it tonight? Anyway, I’ll get the popcorn on, Grunkle Stan-”

“Hey, hey, hold your horses.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “You know, it’s gettin’ late and all. Let’s do this some other time, okay?”

“Oh, really?” She raised an eyebrow at him. “You just want to watch your old man soap opera, don’t you!”

“Heh, sure.” His smile faded a bit. “That’s my secret.”

“Okayyy, but I say we are gonna watch Dream Boy High together this summer!” She gave him a hug. “Night, Grunkle Stan.”

“Night, pumpkin.”

She made her way towards the doorway, and then stopped. “Oh, and Grunkle Stan?”

“Yeah?”

There was a pause. “Are you the author?”

“What?” He blinked. “No. I have no idea what Dipper’s talking about.”

Mabel grinned. “Yeah, I kinda thought so. It sounded really cool, but can’t see you writing that journal.” She looked up at him. “You sure you don’t know anything about unicorns, though?”

“No, kid. I had a horse with a cone taped on its butt once, though. The Corniune!”

Mabel giggled, and they both shared a laugh at that. She stepped away.

“You’re silly, Grunkle Stan. Love you, enjoy your old man show!”

“Goodnight,” Stan said, and watched her skip up the steps. He heard the attic door open and shut, and then sighed. The smile fell from his face, and he stood up, brushed himself off, and looked down at the journal in his hands.

Six golden fingers gleamed at him from the cover, and he rolled his eyes.

“All-knowing mailbox in the woods, huh.” he muttered. “Thanks for telling me about that one, Poindexter.”

#gravity falls #toothwrites #dipper #mabel pines #stan pines

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howtohero · 3 years

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#298 Taking Over the World

Hello? Is this thing on? Ah, perfect. Hello world, it’s me, Smuggles, the fiendish criminal who orchestrated the end of the Age of Superheroes and ushered in the Age of Villains, or the Age of Smuggles, my compatriots and I are still workshopping the name. Anyway, now that things are well and truly finished for your pathetic heroes and those who would try to guide them through life, I thought I might take a moment to explain to you all how all of this came to be, so that you might truly comprehend the absoluteness of our control and the futility of trying to stop us. And yes, I’m sure I know what you’re thinking, thanks to the mind reading flakes that Professor Brain-Scrambler mixed into every box of the aggressively marketed Cereal Flakes: Everyone’s Favorite Cereal and Favorite Flake in the world. You’re all thinking: Ooh is he really going to monologue now? That’s so passé, how gauche. But I feel as though I deserve this. You might have trouble believing this but this is actually my very first supervillain monologue. I don’t often succeed at my villainous plots, and even when I do, a successful smuggling kind of means there won’t be an audience for whom I can monologue. So excuse me if I feel like gloating for a bit.

Before I get into things though, I think it would be quite remiss of me not to thank those who helped me get to where I am now, starting with the real MVPs, the How To Hero team. The How To Hero team? Aren’t they good guys? Aren’t they victims in all of this? How could they have helped you? All good questions, to be sure, but they are indeed responsible for my meteoric rise to power. Of course they didn’t know it at the time. You see, three years ago I was nothing more than a petty thief with a costume and a codename. Barely a supervillain as some have called me. It was rare that I even saw superheroes, let alone did battle with them. Until June 8, 2017, when a certain blog told every two-bit would-be cape-fetishishist that I would be a good villain to test their crime-fighting chops on. Suddenly, I was being accosted nightly by every man, woman, child and giant badger with a hero-complex. It was humiliating, it was painful, and I vowed that I would get revenge on anybody who contributed to my nightly beatings, so, every superhero ever and also How To hero. I decided to start with the blog, as that seemed easier, and also they were the only ones on my revenge list who hadn’t already decisively proven that they could beat me up. So I began reading their guide, know thine enemy and all, and in time I discovered that while they may not be much of a superhero guide, they were, unwittingly, laying out everything one might need to be the ultimate supervillain. I reached out to an old accomplice of mine Perry the Pirate, who helped me hack into How To Hero’s database so I could access notes and drafts that they had yet to publish so I could glean even more information and tips from them. Apparently another lawyer in his firm worked closely with the guide and had a backdoor into their system on his computer. I pored over the information I found, sifting through thousands of unbearable puns and jokes to get what I needed, and thus, a plan began to form.

Historically speaking, the main obstacle in any villains way to world domination is the large contingent of heroes who love freedom and peace and living in a non-dominated world. They’re always spouting on and on about rights and justice and love, I know, they’re exhausting. But people tend to like them, and people tend to be inspired by them. Which often means that when a supervillain manages to take out one hero, somebody else will very quickly take up their mantle and continue their fight for them. So it is not enough to just pick off heroes one by one. In order to truly get rid of them, they, all of them, would need to be taken off the board all at once. And such an event would need to occur when a villain, or a group of villains, is ready to step in a take control, so that they may do so swiftly as soon as the heroes fall. This part, I realized, was crucial, no time at all could pass between the fall of the heroes and the rise of the villains. Any sort of grace period would allow for the rise of new heroes, and we would be right back where we started. So even though How To Hero had foolishly provided me with a roadmap to taking out the world’s heroes, I needed to put some pieces into play first. I needed to garner the support of my fellow villains.

Not an easy feat for the preeminent starter-villain.

Honestly, it wouldn’t be an easy feat for anyone, had it not, once again, been for How To Hero. You see, most villain team-ups fail eventually. The villains will always end up betraying each other or falling out over some petty reason like “who gets to control which coast” or “what are we going to name the henchmen”. The rate of decline goes up the more villains you add to your team. So if I was going to form a villainous alliance capable of taking out the heroes and taking over the world, I would need to find a way to overcome the virulent backstabbing and counter-plotting that often plagued supervillain team-ups. So imagine my delight, when How To Hero published a guide on fights between supervillains and how to resolve them. Armed with the tools I would need to diffuse any fights that might arise I approached Al “Da Boss” Marconi, a big time supervillain and crime boss.

A few things you need to know about Marconi, he is quick to anger and only speaks to people whom he respects. So my first attempts at meeting with him ended with me being hurled out of a fortieth story window. Thankfully, on the advice of How To Hero, I was wearing a parachute and ended up being just fine. I realized I would need to find a way to impress Marconi. If I could get him onboard, most of the villain community would be similarly swayed. So I set my eyes towards bigger fish... Oh, not Charlie, that was actually something else. You know what, I might as well talk about that now, while we’re on the subject.

If I was going to take out every hero in the world I would need engineer large-scale threat, but as I’ve said, I didn’t not have large-scale threat connections. In fact, after Perry the Pirate left the villain game to become a lawyer, my only supervillain contact was another low-level villain named Charlie the Fish Whisperer. He mind controls fish by whispering to them, that’s not exactly large-scale, world-threatening stuff. It is, what you could charitably define, as a lame superpower. But that’s ok, How To Hero has a guide to using lame superpowers to your advantage. It was all about perception. All I needed to do was make others perceive Charlie the Fish Whisperer as a world-ending threat. But how to do that? Charlie was only a semi-formidable threat in the water so what were we to do? Mount on attack on Atlantis? How To Hero told us we’d be fools to try. Besides, if we allowed the idea that Charlie was only threatening in the water to stick, he’d never rise to world-ending threat. I realized we would need to speak to a specialist.

Our world has nearly ended so many times, that there are several former heralds of the apocalypse just hanging around without much to do. I set up a meeting with a fellow called The Dark Harbinger who used to do some freelance heralding for folks like Karalaxus and The Living Ingestor. He taught Charlie and I what these big threat guys are actually like, and How To Hero taught us everything we needed to know about putting on a facade to trick others. But being able to talk the talk wouldn’t be enough. We needed a big dramatic action that would cement the new Charlie the Whisperer in the minds of heroes. Thankfully, How To Hero clued us in to another specialist we could speak to. A man named Ivan Karolov, aka Mister Immortal. Karolov agreed to meet with us, who can say why, I honestly think he was just bored. He had somehow found himself as the prime minister of Finland and I think he was itching to fake his death again and move on. Karolov used his skills and experience at faking his own death to help us make it look like Charlie the Fish Whisperer had killed him with a goldfish he had smuggled into Kesäranta. Charlie rebranded as Chuck and the heroes of the world became convinced that he was truly dangerous and locked him away in an alternate dimension. Obviously that’s not how I saw things playing out, but no matter. I had a world-ending threat that I could use as needed.

Now, to switch gears, I must explain how I finally gained the respect of Al Marconi and the rest of the supervillain community. To put it briefly, I went to Hell. Now, now, don’t give me that look, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as it sounds. In fact, How To Hero made it easy. All I needed was some peanut butter, and get this, I already had some! Just lying around in my cupboard. All I needed to do was put some out in a pentagram to attract a demon and we were in business. I planned on recruiting some Underworld bigwig to my campaign. How could Marconi not respect me if I had the legions of Hell behind my cause. The rulers of Hell are actually easier to appeal to than mortal villains. All I would need to do is pledge my everlasting and eternal soul to whomever was sitting on the throne that day and I would be given an army of ghouls and undead spirits to command. What do I care about my soul? Whatever demon I dealt with would only get once I died, and How To Hero had very helpfully laid out exactly how I could achieve immortality. Luckily though, I didn’t even end up needing to pledge my soul, once again How To Hero came to my rescue. While reading one night I came across a shocking diatribe against a man named Greg Greginski. Greginski is a well known talk show host who frequently talks about superheroes and their ilk, and rarely in a positive light, which is why How To Hero takes issue with him. Greg Greginski is not well-liked in the superhero community, but those of us in the supervillain community are privy to the fact that Greg Greginski is not simply a television host. He’s so much more. He’s part-time ruler of Hell, Greg the Skeleton King, and after How To Hero’s disrespectful remarks towards him, he was willing to throw his weight behind my crusade against the blog, free of charge.

Once I had Greg the Skeleton King on board, I went back to Marconi with an army of damned souls and he was very quick to endorse my movement as well, especially after being dangled out the window by a ghost who occasionally struggled to stay corporeal. Marconi agreed to spread the word amongst the rest of the villains and I moved on to the final phase of my plan. Taking out all the world’s superheroes in one fell swoop. As I alluded to at the beginning of my post, How To Hero handed me the perfect plan on a silver platter. All I needed to do was trigger a superhero/supervillain team-up. According to How To Hero, when a threat is large enough, superheroes will form temporary alliances with supervillains until the threat is dealt with. This makes sense, supervillains don’t want the world to be destroyed, who would they do crimes against if the world is gone. So heroes need no worry about supervillains pulling anything shady during such a team-up, unless of course, the villains knew that the threat was fake, and that there was no real risk to the world. Enter Chuck the Fish Whisperer, my very own personal world-ending threat. The only problem though, was that Chuck had already been defeated and locked away, earlier than I’d planned. Oh well, at least he was still alive, I just needed access to a interdimensional portal generator. How To Hero had already laid out to me how difficult it is to cross dimensions, the easiest way would be to use somebody else’s existing interdimensional portal generator. Luckily, I knew somebody who could help, Frederick Kaminsky aka Dr. Brainwave.

Dr. Brainwave was perfect, he had already built a portal generator, and he lived in How To Hero headquarters. He could be my man on the inside. He could be my partner in all of this. Or, well, he could have been. If he hadn’t been a world-grade idiot. It seems that, in his work with How To Hero as their supervillain correspondent, Dr. Brainwave had actually grown to like the team behind the blog. He had begun to think of them as his friends. He wouldn’t allow me access to his machine he told me, but as a professional courtesy he wouldn’t tell anybody about my plan to free Chuck. I let him think that Chuck was the brains and that I was simply his henchman, his sidekick. Brainwave didn’t think I was a threat, and so he didn’t take any steps to report me to the authorities. This ended up being his undoing. If Dr. Brainwave wouldn’t help me, then I would need somebody else on the inside. Unsurprisingly, Brainwave’s beloved guide held the answers. Allow me to quote from the blog’s guide to joining a team that has not invited you to be apart of it:

If you want to join one of these teams and there’s already somebody there with your powers you’re definitely going to have to sabotage them. We understand that sabotaging another hero to steal their spot on a superhero team isn’t a very superheroic thing to do but some things are just more important! [Don’t] Poison them! Depower them somehow (maybe with some type of ray and/or beam)! Humiliate them by beating them at Dance Dance Revolution at the next superhero dance festival and tractor rodeo which I’m nigh certain is a real thing.

If I wanted to join the How To Hero team, I would have to get rid of the person who already filled my niche. I wouldn’t do it with poison or Dance Dance Revolution though, I would do it with a bomb. A bomb that I had smuggled out of Brainwave’s own workshop when I had met with him. I mailed a bomb to How To Hero’s office. Best case I kill everybody in the building and then just waltz in and use Brainwave’s portal generator to unleash Chuck, trigger a superhero/supervillain team-up, and then have the villain betray the heroes once they’ve let their guard down. Worst case, I take out Brainwave and steal his job. I knew Brainwave always wore rocket boots, he was almost as much of an avid reader of this blog as I was, so I knew that if anybody was going to fly the bomb out of the office, it would have to be him. Afterwards it was just a matter of filling out an application and coasting on my reputation as a non-threat. Sure enough, those fools fell for it hook, line and, sinker. So here we are now, the superheroes are gone, and I and my allies rule the world. And it’s all thanks to this little blog.

That’s all for now, stay tuned for my first slew of villainous decrees and demands soon. Welcome to the new world order.

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aboyandhisstarship · 4 years

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SICON verse: we hereby withdraw

It’s the end of the bug war arc!

Watson:

The Alien pulled out a something about the size of a dinner plate holding up, Churchill whinnied As Ericson eyes went wide sprinting forward tackling he Alien yelling “CODE 9 authorization Dagger 1 Alpha PI 9”

The ships light went red as he demanded “Sargent get them out of here now!”

Francis dragged the squad out as the door sealed behind them with a clunk a few seconds later the ship rocked with an explosion

The PA system crowed “Warning code 9 has been initiated, a hostile presence on board the Watson Security teams follow your planned routes…”

Francis tuned out the Pa as he said “Depoint!”

The medic was already grabbing an emergency kit saying “ready Sarge.”

Francis wheeled “Futuba!?”

The Techy was already working on the door panel “working on over riding the LT’s command codes and getting in there.”

Francis nodded “Abebi!”

The handler was already nodding saying in Dutch “Churchill Check!” the dog started to sniff moving to a different part of the ship leaving only T’Mai and Kvella not doing anything.

Francis sighed “Hitchhiker what was that thing?”

T’Mai answered on a daze “Fuilgrtum.”

Francis frowned “excuse me?”

T’Mai sighed “it’s a mining explosive…not accessible to the public.”

A couple of security personal arrived and Francis sighed “Take these two to holding.”

Kvella said “Sarge!”

Francis answered “it’s for you own protection…the council just tried to bomb an SICON ship do you know what that means!?”

Before either Alien could answer Francis stormed away saying “I have to brief the captain,” he looked at Depoint “make sure he lives Corporal.”

Depoint nods “yes sir.”

SICON Command:

A General stepped into the Main room of The Strategic Coordination center Saying “Sir, we received a transmission from the Watson.”

The Prime minster of the Strategically integrated coalition of Nations looked up “must be something serious if you involved me Bill.”

The General nodded “yes sir it is…” handing over a data pad.

The Prime minster read it over saying “is this Legit?”

The General “It has been verified by the Ground team that was given it, the Ship it self and ourselves…it is real Sir.”

The Prime Minster sighed “the implications of this…are massive.”

A Yeoman ran in saluting “sirs…The Watson has just been bombed by a council Intel officer.”

The Prime Minster took a deep Breath “Cover up?”

The General nods “seems likely Sir.”

The Prime Minster nodded “Bill…”

The General sighs “you know what you need to do sir.”

The Prime Minster sighs “Get me our ambassador to the Council, Bill Get our people out of there.”

The General asked “full with draw?”

The prime Minster sighs “bill we might be about to fight a war with the Council.”

The General nodded “yes sir.”

Watson: Captain Hernández walked down the Corridor saying “Confirm orders?”

The Officer walking to her says “we are to withdraw from Council space and detain all Aliens until no more Sabotage can be confirmed.”

Francis cut in “Ma’am Specialist T’Mai and Kvella are already in the brig and Churchill is making a sweep now, but for the record I don’t see them trying to hurt us.”

Hailey nodded “Agreed, hold them there for now through…we don’t want any angry humans making mistakes.”

Francis nodded “The council officer was killed in the blast The Lt…Lieutenant Ericson is currently in Surgery.”

Hailey stopped touching his shoulder “I’m worried about Will as well but Depoint is with him.” Her face went serious as he spoke again on the record “Sargent you are currently the ranking Orbital Assault Core officer onboard this ship correct.”

Francis nodded “that is correct ma’am.”

Hailey nodded “I want you leading those sweeps not missing anything.”

Francis sighed “yes ma’am” as he went towards engineering as she kept walking saying “Commander how is our propulsion?”

The Galactic Council Floor:

The tension in the room was palpable as the Ambassador entered flanked on all sides by a detail of Orbital Assault core in full power armor, The ambassador Adjusted her suit as she stood in the middle of the room, A Kalber spoke “you have called this meeting Ambassador.”

The human took a deep breath before she held out a tablet causing the evidence of the council misdeeds to appear in holographic form in the massive room she spoke saying “this Evidence was presented to us at 1600 hours earth time. It has been verified and it shows clear intent to harm humans and use us for this council own ends. As Such Effective as of now The Strategically Integrated Collation of nations hereby withdraws from the Galactic Council , and all Person’s or things considered Assets of this government will be ejected from any position of Military or governmental power within SICON, including Intelligence officers, Exchange program Soldiers, Council sponsored News reporters among others, these Person’s will be returned unharmed to Council space, any attempt to harm any human will be met with extreme force…the joint chiefs of staff suggest that you do not test our resolve on this point…Good day.”

And without another word the Ambassador left the building where a ship was waiting to take her back to earth.

Watson Infirmary:

Futuba sighed “so that’s the word LT.”

Ericson Lay in his hospital bed Churchill in his lap as he saying “at least we did not declare war.”

Depoint adjusted the IV bag saying “Parliament did not approve that course of action.”

Will smiled “that’s always good.”

T’Mai and Kvella were escorted inside and armed guards looked they were going to say But Ericson said “you can leave”

The guard said “sir…”

Ericson sighed “That’s an order.”

The guards nodded “yes sir.”

Kvella said “LT…”

Ericson smiled at them saying “None of that, neither of you had anything to do with this mess your good people and it was a pleasure serving with you both.”

Francis stopped playing with his Paddle ball “so what now for you both?”

T’Mai sighed “I’m resigning my commission first chance I get…it can’t stay not after what I learned, maybe get a job on Kalbus somewhere.”

Kvella shrugged with her tentacles “they will chew me out, I’m going to quit…maybe go independent…the Council controls to much of the News service anyway.”

Depoint said “LT you need to get some sleep.”

Will sighed “right…hey listen if I cant be there for when you guys go back…I just wanna say…”

T’Mai smiled “I know sir, but honestly I should be thanking you. You saved my life and showed me something worth fighting for.”

Kvella took the LT hand saying “you won’t get out of being interviewed by me that easily Will.”

Will felt himself falling back to sleep saying with a chuckle “the hitchhiker and the Tourist…just be careful out there not everyone is as nice we are.”

T’Mai chuckled “you got it Boss.”

Kvella squeezed Wills hand Gently as Hailey entered the door, the humans snapped to attention but Hailey waved her hand “I didn’t interrupt anything did I?”

T’Mai shook his head “no Ma’am just saying our goodbyes to the LT.”

Hailey nodded “for what it’s worth I was very impressed with everything you guys did this last year.”

The guards reentered saying “you are going to have to come with us again.”

Fleet station nine:

Kvella and T’Mai approached the shuttle to see Dagger waiting for them. Francis stepped forward saying “T’Mai…Listen about what I said this past year…”

T’Mai stopped him “were good Sarge.”

Francis smiled handing him the Paddleball saying “something to remember our time among the death worlders.”

T’Mai gave Francis a slight hug as He turned to Kvella “hey look at it this way, no more being ordered not to fly your drone around.”

Kvella hugged him briefly with her tentacles, before the Irish man whiped away some tears saying with a smile “look I got to go file some paperwork cause the LT is laid out stay out of trouble huh?”

T’Mai shook his head “your one to talk.”

Francis walked way chuckling. T’Mai turned around to see a barely holding back Tears Futuba who says with a small voice “you will call right…”

T’Mai nods to Futuba saying “whenever I can.”

The girl lunches herself at him saying “I’m going to miss you!”

T’Mai adds “And I you.”

Futuba still hugging T’Mai says “Don’t just stand there Kvella Get in on this.”

The Squad like alien Adds her tentacle’s to the large mass Futuba said again “I’m really going to miss you guys!”

Kvella flexed one of her tentacle’s saying “it is not over yet, I have a feeling we will meet each other again.”

Futuba nods “I hope you are right.”

Futuba reluctantly Lets the two go allowing them to advance closer to their shuttle. Depoint says with a smile “Well looks like this is it.”

T’Mai nods “so it seems.”

Depoint reaches out shaking their paws/tentacle “Thanks for not getting hurt too often.” She finished with a chuckle

T’Mai returned “you already had the LT we figured you had that quota filled.”

Kvella flexed her tentacle “thank you, for what you told us on earth…for helping me to look at the stars not us as a simple place that exists but a roadmap of possibilities.”

Depoint shook her head “Happy to do it…even if you don’t have long to enjoy it.”

Abebe said awkwardly “I didn’t know you guys that long but still I’m sorry you lost your place here with us.”

T’Mai smiled roughly “it is alright, as you humans say all good things must come to an end.”

The two looked back at Fleet Station nine for a minute shuttle which wasted no time taking off and jumping into hyperspace.

Kalbus:

T’Mai wondered the streets of his home world most people didn’t look at him with anything more than whispers about him being among the humans, the word traitor was thrown around but T’Mai didn’t care. Just an hour earlier he had turned down the promotion they tried to give him and resigned his commission in front of the whole admiralty, he felt good laying out his displeasure with everything they have done before leaving without anther word. T’Mai looked up at the Night sky of Kalbus seeing the Gas giant his world is a moon of he sighed as he saw how close the stars were.

#HUMANS ARE WEIRD #SICON verse

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marilena-monachus · 6 years

Text

Claustrophobia: a SnK fanfic

Rating: M

Characters: Levi, Mikasa, Marleyans

Blurb: Nothing quite as claustrophobic as being thrown in your sworn enemy's underground cell with little to look forward to except a towel to wipe your own soiled self with, is there? What if there are two sets of pliers - for you and your comrade? Levi and Mikasa have been captured following the move on Marley. Their secrets are on the line. So is their sanity. Canon!compliant up to c104.

Pairing: Eventual Levimika, not of the fluffy variety, and you will have to wait for it.

Merit: None.

Link for the ff.net relics among you.

Claustrophobia

Chapter 1

i. One stone

The air smelled of fresh wounds and disinfectant and, strangely, citrus. The bright oppression of artificial lighting close to her face forced her eyes closed. People came and went, their elongated forms casting shadows over her eyelids like cardboard puppet theatre.

"Get the doctor, I want a word," a man spoke. As the haze of sleep lifted off her, Mikasa wondered if she heard a foreign accent on him and why she had the worst headache of her life. The fact that she had to ask both these things in the same setting did not bode well, she thought with a note of alarm. She noticed her left thigh radiating heat. Something was tethered to it. She tried to touch it but was held back by cuffs on her wrists and a sharp lashing of pain made her stomach churn. Turning on her side, she convulsed and let the acidly bitter tasting contents of her stomach out until she could muster nothing but dry heaves. A hand came to rest on her back; another one lifted the strands of hair off her forehead.

The white light had been knocked over when she lifted her head. Mikasa opened her eyes at the sight of her own vomit. Scanning the room with barely contained wariness, ready to pounce at the first opening, the details of her situation lit up like red ink on parchment. She was in enemy territory, Liberio presumably. Captured by Marley, she lay on a hospital bed; her leg was slashed open seven inches long and finely stitched. A brace was holding it in place because her luck would have it be broken too. A military man sitting upright in a chair by the window threw his unfinished tangerine in the bin. Her heart raced fast, her mind faster. She breathed deeply, painfully, and considered both escape routes, by window and door, with or without taking someone hostage, killing everyone, lying through her teeth or playing innocent.

The military man had twin pistols on his hips, wore a mean face, and this was clearly not his first rodeo. Mikasa would have risked her chances against him, even in her injured state, had she not been physically restrained at the knees and ankles. She also knew nothing of the layout and location of the building, the terrain and the fate of her comrades. She calculated her chances of achieving something positive through early action to roughly nil. Breathe in once, breathe out long. Perhaps, if the gods were favourable, the others would have escaped and none of this would matter.

"That's all right, child," said a matronly woman in many layers of white robes. She was the one that had stood over her and puller her hair out of the way. Mikasa noticed her starched cap and calloused hands. She must be a nurse. My helpful enemy nurse. There was a roadmap of lines on her face. "You are lucky to still have that leg but it will get you in a world of pain, don't you doubt it," she said, stooping low to clean the vomit off the tiled floor with a tired sigh. "How is your head feeling?"

"Now that she is awake, I really need you to get Dr. Mann," the military man barked. Everything on him was square, his jaw and nose, his shoulders and air. "I can't very well go get him myself and leave her alone." At that, Mikasa though she heard a note of real apprehension. All soldiers were dangerous, as they had proved with their blood-drenched operation on the enemy capital, but she was more so. Did her ill fated name precede her?

"I am keeping watch," the nurse said calmly and continued to go about her business of wiping up the mess. "The young lady is hurt and cuffed and seems like a smart girl. So, don't go causing trouble now, hear?" she said to no one in particular.

"Don't be stupid. This is no young lady, it's a stinking pest," he said. He was suddenly bridling with passion, overflowing like a box someone poured all their bad mornings into. "Do you know how many innocent lives you twisted devils took yesterday? It runs in the hundreds. Thousands. "

And yours runs in the hundreds of thousands, Mikasa wanted to retort but said nothing and refused to look at him for good measure. The situation was too unfamiliar and her gut feeling and training told her to be as interesting as a drying piece of jerky. She desperately tried to gather her thoughts but there were gaping holes in her recollection of what had happened after they sounded the retreat. More importantly, her heart ached with the need to know whether the zeppelin made it out of Marley safely. She knew she should never ask. She would not show any weakness before she knew what was up, and not even then. Only when they let their guard down, when the chink in their armour would glow bright as day, she would strike and it would be clean and deadly.

Her thoughts were interrupted when the man rose, crossed the room in two long strides and struck the kneeling old nurse with a kick strong enough to send her sprawling on her back. She yelped, a shrill noise that grated on the nerves. Mikasa gripped the sheets tightly, discreetly, and through sheer force of will did not move an inch.

"I told you to get the doctor, pig! I don't know why you'd want to care for the devil that has ruined the lives of your filthy race and caused the deaths of so many noble Marleyans. I shouldn't have to ask twice. I am thinking your family should get a one-way trip to that cursed island," the officer said, spitting at his feet.

The doctor, a slight and troubled fellow, stood at the door, his mouth slightly twisted. "Koslow, it is noontime and I am here, like I said I would. Other patients need tending to. Nina meant no disrespect. She is very serious about her job and has helped us save countless brave men," he said, coming over to help her up. Nina was doubled over her abdomen, but her eyes had undergone the most significant change, gone dull like a dead rat's.

"I am very sorry, officer Koslow. I only wanted to clean up this disgusting smell for you. We are grateful for all your hard work and can only hope you will be able to squash these vermin that make our children's lives so hard. Glory to Marley! Glory to the Motherland!" she rasped quickly, leaning on the doctor first, then the doorframe. "Please don't hurt my grandchildren. They are all I have left. They will give their lives for Marley one day."

"I sure hope so," said Koslow and, in that moment, bathed in the light of his own hateful determination, he seemed forged out of ultrahard steel. Mikasa did not know what the future held, but she had an idea or two. She braced herself for impact, all kinds of unforeseeable impact, all of which she would bear easily if it could keep Eren, Armin and the others safe.

The good doctor Mann had not put up a convincing argument for her continued recuperation at the hospital. She supposed that he wanted officer Koslow and his entourage out of his hair as soon as possible and she could hardly blame him for it. They had tied, blindfolded and manhandled her onto a wheeled chair and then they were off on what Eren's reports had called a "car". It was faster than a carriage and noisier by far, but it was no longer in her nature to be perturbed by odd experiences, if it had been ever. She did not keep count of the turns. Even if she could make her way back to the hospital, it would not help her.

"It is best if you don't push her too much until her leg and head injuries are mostly healed. Someone hit her hard with a piece of debris when she was captured and she came in with a severe concussion. It was touch and go for a bit," the doctor had said before they left. "She may not remember everything at once. Likely to faint if you pull and shake too much. Godspeed."

She really did not remember everything, at least after the commencement of their operation on Liberio. She did, however, remember every little bit and piece of information about Paradis, Eren and the Survey Corps that the military government of Marley would be interested in. The doctor's disclosure could buy her some time and maybe a modicum of lenience until she figured out what to do, if she played her cards right.

When they arrived at their destination, Mikasa heard the familiar bustle of a town that was trying to return to normal after an unforeseen tragedy. A booming man's voice was calling out in the distance. "Newspaper, new issue! Newspaaaaper, our glorious Marley emerges victorious after sneak attack on civilians! New issue, two enemies captured by our brave military and warriors! Newspaaaaaper!"

Mikasa growled quietly in her throat. They had caught another one. Who was it? Was he or she all right? Would they play them off each other, hurting them in turns until they got what they wanted out of the weakest willed one? She would resist! She carefully mulled these dark thoughts over as the Marleyan officers lifted the wheeled chair and carried her down several flights of stairs. An increasing sense of foreboding mixed with the cold dampness in the air made her clothes stick to her skin, and she caught herself labouring over the mental image of hurt Eren or terrified Armin being tortured before her eyes, pressing questions boring into them, knots unravelling everywhere as she broke her silence and told them –

The blindfold was ripped off her, tossed aside along with her restraints, and she was picked up from the chair and thrown into a cell. She landed on her injured leg and bit her cheeks mournfully to keep from shouting out. This Koslow was clearly not one to defer to anyone else's advice, even the advice of a doctor. She looked at the men. There were three of them – middle-aged, probably mid-ranking except Koslow, entirely hostile.

She turned her gaze to the cell, noticed how hard it was to breathe down there as though a cool, thin goo settled over her lungs when she took breath. The walls to her back and left side were of stone, big and smooth chunks overflowing with dungeon moss. On her front and right side were tall, rusty iron bars, sparse enough for a hand to go through, too tight for a leg or head. The artificial Marleyan lights in the corridors glowed dim orange. There was no sunlight – there wouldn't be any, she guessed.

In the musty oppressiveness of this place, Mikasa had a very human thought. I don't want to stay here. Would that someone could come and help – but no. Not. She could handle this on her own, she should. For her sake and that of her captured comrade's. She was stronger, firmer than the others, better equipped…

A taut invisible string was trying to pull her throat, heart and the pit of her stomach in alignment.

"Think long and hard what it is you're going to say when Commander Magath interrogates you," Koslow growled after they were satisfied there was nothing in her reach except a wooden washbasin and some straw. "He is a man of manners. Personally, I think manners are reserved for humans only, but he may disagree. Don't mistake it for weakness." The lock on the cell's door turned with a clink and she remained still until well after the men's footsteps had faded up the stairs.

ii. two birds

Hours passed. After she picked herself up and tried to have a thorough look at her surroundings, she discovered that her leg really was in rough shape. Limping and wincing would have to do, as she was already doing her best to ignore the deafening pounding sensation in her ears every time she bent her head low or at a sharp angle.

The cell was no bigger than two cots long and wide, and that was a strange way to think about it, Mikasa admitted, because there was no cot in sight. Only straw, a layer so thin she could see through it. Some of the large rectangular stones on the wall were cracked but none seemed weak enough to be pried apart without a pick, and even if one was, there was no guarantee that the whole wall would not collapse under a mountain of debris. The washbasin water was murky and contained more than a few drowned spiders. Not for drinking, she decided. Was it for that other business then? The time would soon come when she would need to relieve herself. She preferred to do it in the water than outside.

The right-hand side bars… that was most surprising. Her cell seemed to form one half of a bigger cell parted down the middle with them. She could see little on the other side except that no one was in it. The design allowed for visibility, communication and limited contact with another detainee and made little sense to her strategically, unless the captors wanted to listen in on said communication above all else.

Not long after, she heard footsteps coming down the stairs again along with some light but persistent shuffling.

"That fucking shrimp," murmured someone with long, blond hair who came in first and opened the door of the other cell wide with a reverberating bang. "Get him in here, fast."

Mikasa watched intently as they dragged him in by scruff of the neck. He was gagged, hands cuffed behind his back, legs cuffed so that he could barely walk and visibly beaten… yet, there was no mistaking that stature or the furious eyes that peeked under his hair to shoot daggers at the Marleyan officer kicking him forward. With rising discomfort, she realized they had captured not one but two Ackermans and dealt a great blow to the manpower of their forces, knowingly or not. What had happened on the way to the zeppelin that neither Captain Levi nor she could have escaped?

"I have half a mind to keep that gag on you," the first person – a woman – said, as the officer kicked him again and he tumbled inside the cell. "You have quite the sewer mouth. It was entertaining hearing you say those things to Koslow, I'll admit." The grin did not reach her eyes. "And I'm sure you'll live to regret every single one of them."

Levi collected himself and sat on his knees as best as he could. He tossed a glance at the direction of her cell and Mikasa wondered if he could see her at all. She crept a little closer. From underneath strands of bluntly chopped black hair, he met her gaze briefly. Then he turned away, and Mikasa understood that he was already expecting to find her there. He most likely had not suffered a concussion from having his head collide with a rock; therefore he must know exactly what happened.

"Mmffmm."

"Take it off, Pieter. Watch your fingers."

The officer named Pieter took out a pocket knife and cut the rag with a sharp movement that nicked Levi's jaw. No one tried to remove his cuffs before locking him in.

"You speak a lot, little man, but you don't say the right things. We'll be back, so why don't you try harder next time? We even brought you this lovely girl to keep you company," the woman said with no emotion in her inflection. "Reiner Braun told us you've known each other for half a dozen years now, so you must care what happens to her at least a little bit, no? Or maybe you are a heartless little shrimp that would still like to "take a dump on baldy's head" even as we're pulling out her teeth. And nails. And innards, God forbid. Oh no. But maybe your comrades will strike a deal to save you both." At that she laughed and turned to leave. "The boys and I have a wager on who'll break first, you know."

Levi scooted backward and leaned against the stone wall not far from Mikasa. He tilted his head back. Under the orange fluorescence of their prison, Mikasa could not see his eyes, only the outline of his jaw and throat swelling slightly, his breath regular and calm. Calmer than hers, she'd have to admit. She tried to mimic his unruffled disposition, schooled her mouth into a line, and stripped her eyes of the spark of life. They would both need to bring their best calm game, if they were to have a single chance of getting out of this alive and with their country's secrets intact.

Levi murmured something.

"What?" the woman asked, and still he said nothing. "Spit it out!"

He turned to look at her ever so slightly.

"I said: good luck with that, bitch."

#fandom #fanfic #fanfiction #snk #shingeki no kyojin #snk manga #attack on titan #aot manga #levi ackerman #mikasa ackerman #levimika #rivamika #drama #angst #romance #prison #bad things

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sadistic-second · 6 years

Note

Proof of interaction, be it physical or mental.

Reno’s body was a roadmap of scars varying in severity and appearance. Most were faint, almost as if they weren’t there. Others appeared to be fresh and would hopefully fade over time. Some showed the observer just how close he had come to death. He did have pieces of perfect skin, but a majority of him was marred. The ‘perks’ of being a Turk. This job, it wasn’t all about bodyguarding and all that. He actually left for days, weeks at a time. A vast amount of his injuries were from fieldwork. Only a small percentage were from the office. He remembered the knife fight in the hallway to Rufus’ office. He’d suffered minor wounds from that, but one of the blades had also gone through his hand. He still carried that scar.

There were a plethora of stories to tell about all the scars that littered the body, but of the ones that tore across his mentality? Did anyone really want to hear those? Kidnapping, torture, deprivation, lack of feeling … It’s certainly a wonder as to how Reno hasn’t either snapped or killed himself. Chalk it up to great friends, amazing recoveries, a Boss that understands. Whatever one might want to call it, Reno has certainly survived a lot in the line of work that he’s done thus far.

Remember how it was mentioned that Reno is a storybook of pain? One such story takes us to a rehabilitation of one of the times that the redheaded Turk had been rescued from a serious kidnapping. While all kidnappings are considered serious, this one gets labeled as such for the procedure they went through to get him to be what he had become. Deprive a man of his senses long enough, subject him to pain, fear, mental instability long enough, he’ll become a mindless animal. A loss of his sense of self begins to shine and one can mold that new piece of clay into whatever they’d like.

In this case, a perfect weapon.

They had managed to work it into his mind that the only reason any of this was happening to him in the first place was because he had been abandoned. Rufus Shinra had done this to him in a backward sort of way. He hadn’t wanted the Turk anymore and had basically just told these people to have at him. Do whatever they wanted, keep or kill, it didn’t matter. Reno believed them. It was twisted, but he was so lost in this false reality that it hadn’t mattered. They shaped him into a weapon to kill the one man that Reno would never have had any reason to want dead in the first place. Had the Turks found him a lot sooner than what they had, this wouldn’t have been an issue.

But then again, it wasn’t until much later that the Turks realized they had only found Reno because they had been allowed to find him.

They had taken their friend back home, taken him in for medical treatment. He hadn’t said anything to anyone. He’d just let them lead him where he needed to go. He had no indication of even recognizing any of them. They handed him off to the medical staff; they would know what would be needed to be done better than anyone. They had him sitting on a table as they tended to the various wounds and minor burns he seemed to have. They could only imagine the things he’d been through. The Turks were all in the waiting room, one of them had made it a point to call Rufus to let him know that Reno was safe.

The man had actually decided to make an appearance to check on the Turk. Not the first day, he’d been busy with something. A couple days later was when he had arrived. Reno had refused to be hooked up to machines of any kind. They were lucky he let them put the IV in. They were monitoring his condition, making sure that he wasn’t going to just keel over and die. So far, everything had been stable. He still wouldn’t speak. Months of isolation from everything he had known had done its damage. He would need time to heal.

This and more had been explained to Rufus, but he wanted to actually see the Turk for himself. After much debate, Tseng and Rude accompanied Rufus into the room. He didn’t answer when either Turk spoke to him. Didn’t even seem to realize there were people in the room with him. He had his back to them, sitting on the edge of the bed. He was just staring at the ground, watching an ant crawl from one side to the other.

Then Rufus said his name. Everyone observing noticed the immediate response. The once slouched posture was almost too straight to be real. The blond repeated the redhead’s name again and began to walk towards him. No one saw it at first, but the Turk’s fingers had curled into the mattress. The moment the two were face to face, Reno was upon the other, hands gripping his throat. There was something moderately heavy next to them. Rufus picked it up and smashed it against the side of Reno’s head.

Disoriented, he let go and staggered back. Tseng ran to Rufus, Rude ran to Reno. It was difficult to keep ahold of the redhead. He bit into the larger Turk’s hand and he was released immediately. The leader of the Turks was easily shoved off to the side somewhere and again, Reno made an attempt to strangle Rufus. A gunshot rang out and the redhead’s grip seemed to loosen. But only for a moment. It tightened back up and blood oozed from the wound. Right as Rufus passed out, the other two Turks in the room managed to knock the frenzied one out.

Doctors and nurses rushed into the room, taking Rufus to make sure he was alright. Reno was restrained, sedated, and had a series of tests run on him to figure out just what in the hell happened. They did, of course, remove the bullet from his shoulder and patch him up.

After the tests came back, they ran a few more. It was later determined that by altering his mind with a cocktail of drugs and torture, they had managed to rewire the Turk’s brain. While it was true that Rufus was infuriated at Reno for his actions, he was more infuriated with the men who had done this to him. He sent everything in his command after the group and he annihilated them. It was almost like they had never really existed.

But now came the long process of rehabilitating Reno.

Despite their first encounter, Rufus was adamant that he be there every step of the recovery process. Something about ensuring that whatever they had done to him to get him to be like this was gone. Every single trace of it. He didn’t want a relapse. A slip-up. Anything. Reno had to be one hundred percent his again. Well, he wanted the old Reno back, but he also wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to randomly decide to kill him again.

This whole process took about a year and Reno received a number of scars from Rufus as the man had to continuously defend himself until he managed to literally beat it into the Turk’s brain that he was the good guy here. He wouldn’t have done to the man what these poisoners had done to him. Aside from the concussion from that particular incident, the most notable scar came from the fist fight they’d had. At some point Reno had Rufus cornered and was about to do something. Rufus had come prepared, however, and produced a taser. That hadn’t been enough to take Reno completely down, which quite honestly was a surprise. To completely take down the redhead, Rufus had to use Plan B.

Plan B wasn’t exactly how he had planned it, but it had done what it had been intended for. Now one might be wondering how in the world Rufus got a shotgun into the room in the first place. Then one has to remember just what kind of man he was. It had been hidden from view until the moment it was needed. The taser had stunned the Turk just long enough for the blond to retrieve it. Since he didn’t want to kill the other, he fired it off to the side first. A waste in his opinion, but it had done what it needed to do. By the time the other was upon him again, he pressed the searing muzzle against his chest. A screech like he had never heard before echoed through the room, the heat burning through the outfit the Turk was wearing and leaving a permanent mark on his skin. The pain was enough for him to pass out, the President rolling the Turk off of him.

But finally. After about a year, give or take a couple months, Reno was back to his old self. He had vague recollections of what had happened to him within the last two years, but nothing concrete. At least all his memories up until he had been kidnapped were intact. Though some were still slightly distorted, Reno was back to being himself.

Several months after this, there had been some kind of board meeting. If not that, it was definitely a meeting of some kind. As per usual, all the Turks were in the room as well as the President. There were other men and women at the table, everyone dressed up all nice and fancy. They were discussing loyalties and there they lied and something about there being a traitor? Or the threat of one such thing. The eyes of every non-Turk in the room were on Reno. Of course, they were. How could anyone not remember what had happened previously?

And of course, someone had been stupid enough to mention him by name. As if indicating him with a gesture hadn’t been enough. Said Turk in question was irritated, but he said nothing. Rufus, sensing trouble, allowed for the Turk to speak up for himself. Reno made a show of standing up. He wiggled out of his jacket and unbuttoned the shirt he was wearing the rest of the way. He threw it to the ground and began his show and tell.

“Ya see these two things? These two things in particular?” He indicated the first gunshot in his shoulder from the hospital when he had first been recovered. Then he made a showing of the shotgun burn just below it. “I’ve had my loyalty tried and tested. And guess what? I passed. I fuckin’ passed. If at any point Rufus thought I was unreliable or broken or what had you, I wouldn’t be here.” He sat down, but he didn’t dress himself back up. He wanted both of those scars, as well as the rest of them that he bore, to be completely visible. “If anyone else has any other questions or concerns about my loyalty, you can bring that up with me personally. In my office.”

There was an eerie sort of silence that filled the room. A hint of a smirk was starting to spread its way across the President’s lips. He let the air of the room sink in just a little bit more before he continued on with the deliberations as if such a display hadn’t happened.

But at least no one dared question Reno’s loyalty again.

#send “proof of interaction” for a starter where my muse has a scar that your muse gave them #meme #starter thing #starter meme thingy thing #its basically me writing an essay again :v #ivory-paragon

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divinebird · 6 years

Text

edge of the universe | sheith | 2.7k | Keith searches for Shiro in a dead world.

aka TLOU AU that @brighteststarus and I talked about ^_^

Keith stares up at the medical research facility with trepidation, thumb brushing over the raised lines of his Firefly dog tags—a soothing habit that’s been with him as long as the tags.

He spent about two weeks traveling to get to this place, going by faded roadmaps and blood-splattered signs. Keith expected to see some guards patrolling the area, since it was a Firefly base after all, but all he’s seen so far is a few infected here and there.

“I hope someone’s in there,” he mutters, forcing himself to take a step towards the front doors.

I hope he’s in there.

Releasing the pendant and tucking it beneath his shirt, Keith pulls out his machete to be prepared.

He slowly pushes one of the doors open and peeks inside, only heading in when he sees no infected stumbling around. Even if he didn’t spot them right away, he would have as he headed deeper into the building—their glowing eyes always shine brightest in the dark, and the raspy moans and monstrous snarls echo throughout the buildings. Runners and Stalkers, the easiest to kill since they’re the weakest stages of infection.

If he hears clicking, then he knows it’s time to be careful and silent. Clickers are dangerous with their use of echolocation, but all he has to do is make no noise as he takes them out from behind or sneaks around them.

Kill them before they kill you.

Keith steps around the pieces of broken glass that came from the skylight, ignoring the smears of blood across the floor as he moves towards the door that’s just past the front desk.

It leads into a long hallway that has doors leading to different offices and test labs, none of which have what he’s looking for. Trying not to feel frustrated, Keith hopes for better luck as he climbs the stairs to the second floor.

He almost cheers in excitement when the fourth unlocked room he checks has something, crumpled up papers and folders that are signed with the name that beats in time with his heart. Keith also finds a small recorder in one corner of the room, settling down on one of the stools and readying himself for whatever he’s about to hear.

“Please,” he whispers as he presses down on the play button. “Tell me where you are.”

Like all the other recordings he’s heard, the voice comes out loud and clear—low and smooth, exhaustion clear in the tone.

“Log number… something, I’ve lost count. The Fireflies have been conducting more tests on people who have been bitten, promising them a cure when we all know that there isn’t one.” A sigh. “I thought I would be able to see this job to the end, that I would be able to gather up enough information to take them down from the inside, but I can’t bring myself to be a part of this anymore. I have to leave.”

Keith hears the telltale sound of a door opening in the recording, followed by a rustle of fabric that muffles the audio. Keith taps his nails along the desk in front of him as he waits, perking up when the voice returns.

“I’ll be heading west where the Fireflies have yet to spread. This is Takashi Shirogane, signing off.”

“West,” Keith breathes, a smile stretching across his face. “Shiro went west.”

It’s the most he’s gotten since he first set out to search for his best friend, combing through countless abandoned Firefly bases for any clue. All he’s found so far are recorders like this one, Shiro logging what the Fireflies have been doing in their quest to find a cure for the infection.

He’s about to shut the recorder off when he hears the sound of his name, the softness of Shiro’s voice making his heart ache.

“Keith,” Shiro says. “I know you’re out there, somewhere, and I hope you know that I’ve been trying my hardest to find you.” His voice wavers.“When I see you again I swear I’ll tell you that I—”

The recording stops there.

“Tell me what?” Keith asks into the empty room, staring down at the recorder. He plays it again, just in case it was a mistake, and slumps when it cuts off at the same place. “What do you want to tell me, Shiro?”

He pulls out the Firefly pendant and traces over the letters as he’d done so many times before, mouthing the name that is etched in the smooth metal and his memory for all of time.

Takashi Shirogane.

“I’ll find you,” he promises, metal growing warm when he curls a hand around it. “I’ll never give up on you.”

☆ ☆

“Dammit,” Keith mutters, staring at the spores that fill up the room ahead of him. He ties his hair up into a ponytail with a rubber band and swings his backpack to his front, pulling his gas mask out and putting it on.

He doesn’t really need it, but he hates the feeling of the spores in his throat.

His companion, a wolfdog, nudges his side with a small whine. The animal is black in color, a long stripe of grey going from the back of his head to the tip of his tail, and white covering the top of his head and around his eyes. Keith found him as a puppy when he was traveling through a forest, and the wolfdog quickly grew to reach his waist. He hasn’t left Keith’s side since.

“I know, Cosmo,” Keith murmurs soothingly, scratching behind his ears. “I don’t know what the spores will do to you, so you’ll have to find a way around. Understand?”

Cosmo whines again and licks his fingers before edging away from him and running off. Keith knows that he understood, the wolfdog is much more intelligent than one would guess.

Keith cautiously makes his way through the building, going from room to room to search for any supplies. He scavenges up a pair of scissors and a few bullets for his gun, but what he finds in the seventh room is even more surprising.

A man is sitting on the floor, head turned towards him. He rises after a few seconds of staring, and Keith is quick to pull out his gun and point it at the man’s forehead, voice low when he says, “Step any closer and I shoot you to hell.”

“Okay, okay,” the man says, and that’s when Keith notices that he only has one arm—which is raised up in the air while Keith’s finger rests on the trigger. “I’ll keep my distance, I’m sorry. Just… don’t shoot, please? I swear I won’t hurt you. I don’t have any weapons on me.”

“Your word isn’t enough to prove that,” Keith says, but he does lower his gun after a while. He keeps it at his side to show that the threat is still there. “Why are you hiding out in here? You stuck or something?”

“Yeah,” the man answers with a weak laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “My friends and I got separated when a few Runners came after us. I hid in this room when I realized I was alone. I may have gotten better at protecting myself with just one arm, but I don’t think I can take on six infected and live.”

“Most people can’t,” Keith replies dryly and is rewarded with another laugh.

Now that Keith knows that there are Runners in the building, he swears he can hear them in the distance. If there are really six out there, then there’s no way he can take them on himself (even if he does have his secret advantage).

He sighs and holds out his gun.

“Take it,” he tells him. “Only shoot when you have to, I don’t like wasting bullets.”

“What?”

“Take the gun,” Keith says in exasperation. “I’ll lead you out of here, okay? I’m passing through anyway, might as well.”

“Oh!” The man shuffles forward and takes the gun, keeping a tight grip on it. “Um, thank you. Most people would have left me for dead.” He snorts. “Or killed me themselves.”

“Good thing I’m not most people,” Keith says, pulling his knife out from the sheath that’s on his lower back. “Stay behind me and wait for me to kill them, I’ll try to come at them from behind so we aren’t swarmed. Don’t make any noise or sudden movement, I don’t want to lose the element of surprise.”

“Got it.”

“Name?”

“I’m… Ryou,” he says hesitantly. It’s obviously not his real name, but Keith isn’t going to push.

“Akira,” Keith replies smoothly. He’s more used to giving out a fake one, because he’s learned that nothing good comes out of people knowing who he truly is. “Are your friends going to be right outside?”

“Probably not, but I do know where they’re going.”

Keith nods and walks over to open the door. “Then let’s get going.”

Ryou listens to his instructions, and also quietly informs him of how many Runners are in the rooms they’re passing through. Keith is able to kill the infected by coming up behind them and sinking his blade into their heads, carefully laying them out on the floor before moving onto the next one. It’s easy to do, but he fucks up and makes too much noise—causing a Stalker to turn his way and rush at him with a screech.

Keith has to kick it away from him, stumbling as he tries to get his footing back, and tries to pull out his machete when it starts charging at him again. Ryou comes in clutch and fires the gun when it gets too close, bringing it down with a bullet to the head.

“Thanks,” Keith mutters, receiving a nod in response.

There were actually eight infected in total, all taken care of with no bites or scratches, and they leave the building without any more trouble.

Cosmo is waiting outside for him and rushes forward with a happy bark, nearly knocking Keith down when he jumps up on him. Keith lets out a laugh and pets through his fur, commanding that he sit and giving him a treat when he obeys.

“He doesn’t bite,” Keith says when he notices Ryou standing farther away. “Cosmo’s a very good boy and he knows that I won’t give him pets if he’s bad.”

“That’s very reassuring,” Ryou replies wryly.

The wolfdog merely looks at Ryou and then proceeds to ignore him in favor of nudging Keith’s hand for more pets like the spoiled creature that he is. Still, Keith indulges him for a while before walking over to Ryou.

“I think we’re safe now,” Keith tells him, eyeing the area around them to make sure they’re clear of infected—they are, and even if he missed any he knows he can count on Cosmo for backup. “Where are you supposed to meet your friends?”

Ryou slowly turns in a circle, facing to the right of where they’re standing and pointing at a tall building that’s marked with the words ‘Red Lion Hotel.’ “Over there,” he says. “We’re going to stay there for the night and hunt the area for more supplies before moving on.”

Keith reaches up to pull his mask off when Ryou starts doing the same, removing the rubber band from his hair so he can shake it free. It’s almost long enough to obscure his vision, he’ll have to cut it soon.

He’s about to offer to take Ryou to the hotel when he looks up, breath lost once he gets a good look at Ryou’s face.

“Shiro,” he whispers in shock, eyes wide. His mask slips from his fingers.

Ryou—Shiro is staring back at him in equal surprise, looking so different with the shock of white hair and the scar across the bridge of his nose. “Keith!” he exclaims, visibly swallowing. He stammers for a bit and then stops to take a deep breath, looking at the ground. His eyes are warm when he lifts his head again, smile soft when he says, “You saved me.”

Keith can’t help but smile back at him. “We saved each other,” he replies, stepping closer.

He wraps both arms around him, relaxing when he feels Shiro’s single arm circle around his waist after a few seconds. His eyes slip shut as he breathes in the scent of his best friend and a lump appears in his throat.

Finally, finally, he found him.

☆ ☆

“So… tattoos, huh?”

Keith takes a big swig of his water and glances over at Shiro, who is staring at his exposed shoulder with a strange look on his face. He looks around to make sure that they’re truly alone. With the exception of Cosmo sleeping in the sun, they are—it’s just a force of habit by now. Keith sheds his hoodie, showing the tattoo that spreads from his right shoulder and down his entire right arm.

“Yup,” he says, turning to show off the ones on his left. “Got them to hide the scratches and bites. Didn’t want anyone to shoot me before I could explain.”

“Scratches?” Shiro asks in surprise. “Bites? What? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Keith is quick to reassure. Damn, he forgot that Shiro didn’t know. “Okay, look. This is going to sound crazy, but… I’m immune.” He turns his arm to expose the scarred skin on his right wrist. “See this? I got it a couple of years ago when I was sneaking out of the quarantine zone for some fun. Thought I was done for and waited to die, found out I was immune when I woke up the next morning.”

“Jesus,” Shiro exhales as he brushes his fingers over the healed bite. The touch sends sparks down Keith’s spine. “How many more bites do you have?”

“Another on my shoulder,” Keith answers, touching it with his free hand. “I got lucky, it wasn’t too deep. Coulda torn out my throat if I didn’t have my knife on me.” He kicks his left foot. “I have one on my ankle, too. Got it when I was still wearing sneakers and wading through water that went up to my chest. The scratches are mostly on my arms, so those are hidden beneath the tattoos.”

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Shiro whispers. He pulls away and pushes the sleeve up what’s left of his arm, revealing scarred skin. “Had to get it cut off after I got bit, didn’t want the infection to spread.”

“What?” Keith asks, heart stopping in his chest. “You got bit? And you’re okay?”

“I wouldn’t say that I’m okay, I did lose an arm,” Shiro says with a weak smile. “But at least I’m here.” He reaches out and grabs one of Keith’s hands, squeezing it. “At least we’re here.”

Keith gently frees his hand so he can throw himself forward and wrap his arms around Shiro. They fall back on the roof but he doesn’t care, he’s certain that they both need this right now.

“At least we’re here,” he echoes, burying his face in Shiro’s neck while Shiro’s arm snakes around his waist.

After a while, Keith starts to move away. He stops when Shiro’s arm tightens around him, peering down at him curiously. Shiro’s cheeks are dusted pink, and there’s an intensity to his gaze that makes Keith’s insides squirm.

He suddenly remembers the last recording he found.

“Shiro?” Keith says softly. “Your recordings, um. I found them.”

“Did you?” Shiro asks. “And you… listened to them?”

“Yup. All of them.” Keith doesn’t mention how he spent most of his nights playing them, wanting to hear Shiro’s voice again. “In your last one, you said that you were going to tell me something once you saw me again. Well… I’m here.”

Shiro’s cheeks darken further, eyes going wide. “Oh, um…” He releases his hold on Keith and shifts, so Keith sits up the rest of the way and helps Shiro up. They’re sitting across from each other now, and Shiro looks… nervous.

“I wanted to say—” Shiro starts, stopping and taking a deep breath. “I-I was going to tell you—” Shiro visibly swallows. Their eyes lock, and then Shiro is muttering, “Fuck it,” as he moves forward and captures Keith’s lips in a kiss.

Keith stills for a second, melting into the kiss once it registers and pushing him back onto the roof again. He eagerly dips his tongue into Shiro’s mouth, their desperate sounds muffled as the kiss escalates into a full on makeout session.

The world is in ruins and things may never go back to the way they were, but they’re together now—and nothing will keep them apart ever again.

#sheith #;writes #zomb au #mild gore;#mentions of amputation;#i loved this so much okay

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infosecwomen · 7 years

Text

Increasing Safety and Inclusiveness at Hacker Cons

This roadmap for addressing the problems which soured this September in Louisville is a collaborative work by numerous women… many who attended DerbyCon Legacy (some have attended every single year), others who came but left early, some who stayed away entirely because of the news of what was happening, and additional women who have previously vowed to not attend such events at all unless some of the deep-rooted problems in Infosec (which are not unique to any one specific event) can be addressed by conference leadership.

We appreciate the fact that Dave Kennedy, Martin Bos, and many of the volunteers from DerbyCon have engaged the public in a dialog regarding how to best provide for the safety and well-being of hacker con attendees in the future. It is wonderful, their willingness to take steps in a positive direction, and we accept their invitation for open discussion.

There are three steps we see DerbyCon proceeding through in the process of repairing their public image and improving safety for women at conferences. They are outlined here…

[= I. Adopt and Publicly-Post a Code of Conduct =]

Even though a small contingent of people have resisted this in the past, DerbyCon has made significant progress in this area recently. That’s wonderful. A Code of Conduct protects a conference as much as it protects the attendees. Many prominent speakers and sponsors won’t participate at events without one, and even the smallest and most far-flung of hacker cons have been adding them to their web sites and programs.

A Code of Conduct doesn’t have to be long, full of legalese, or kill the “friendly” feeling of an event. It really only has to do four simple things:

State that the event wants to be a welcoming and safe place for all attendees (DerbyCon already says this and has been telling the community that for years now)

Explain what behaviors are not tolerated (this, unfortunately, is where DerbyCon fails to be adequately specific)

Explain how people should report problems (DerbyCon, like many events, encourages people to “contact staff” but the preferred language would include an email address or other contact information that is monitored 24/7 during the con. (If someone is holed up in his or her room because of threats, they shouldn’t have to venture downstairs looking for a red shirt or scroll through Google results trying to find the right Security contact)

A commitment to enforce these rules. (DerbyCon claims to stand for the security of all attendees, but unfortunately we have seen that there have been some stumbles in the past when it comes to follow-up on problems)

DerbyCon can solve point #2 & point #3 with the addition of honestly just one or two lines of text.

At least one hacker con has summarized their Code of Conduct as, “If you are a jerk, we’ll ask you to leave." Examples of being a jerk include harassing, forcing unwanted interactions, or secretly replacing someone’s coffee with Folgers crystals.” Humor can be just fine here! (As long as the two most critical points of “don’t harass others” and “don’t force yourself upon others” are spelled out.)

The “contact” information can truly be an email like [email protected] as long as it’s being monitored throughout the whole event. DM-ing the conference Twitter can work but that requires open DMs (which not all Twitter clients support well) and forces a staffer to sift through a lot of messages, many of which will be just noise.

[= II. Sunlight as Disinfectant =]

This may be the hardest pill to swallow. Right now, we are not aware of any public-facing resolution or closure on these matters aside from Dave and Martin tweeting that things are going to get much better in the future. That alone will not mollify those with concerns nor will it make women want to start attending/proposing in record numbers.

There were two separate major incidents this year, and they were deeply inter-related. DerbyCon would be wise to make blog two posts on their site in which they discuss them frankly and offer clear public apologies for any ways in which they feel they didn’t live up to their full stated hopes of being a con for everybody in the hacker family:

Failure to condemn and expel harassers

While the mishandling of the matter relating to a trainer with a restraining order due to domestic abuse was deeply troubling, harassment is actually the wider matter at DerbyCon, and the issue that keeps women away so much. Given no Code of Conduct prohibiting harassment, a small but vocal group of angry voices targets their rage at people in an attempt to either make them stay away from DerbyCon or not enjoy DerbyCon if they attend. This angry group (to varying degrees) has at times included both staff as well as the general attendee public. While folk such as the former security staffer and his posse of associates represent the worst of it, plenty of things that the conference videographer has stated online cross the line into harassment, as well. Even one of the conference founders, generally a kind person, has threatened physical violence against people and profanely told women to be silent when they have criticized DerbyCon online.

This is a topic where DerbyCon has to dedicate extra care during the repair of its reputation, since it became public during the con this year that most of the hatred and abuse is generated within a Facebook group calling itself the “illmob” (a group apparently started and overseen by the fired security staffer) which includes the DerbyCon founders and several other conference staff as fellow members.

NOTE - This is not to suggest in any way that said Facebook group’s sole purpose is to harass women, but simply to point out that the creation of the harassing tweets, image memes, apparel, etc takes place here in full view of the DerbyCon conference staff. They cannot claim ignorance regarding the identity of the people behind the harassment.

The mishandling of reports of an alleged abuser of women

This is more delicate, and a private matter, but DerbyCon can speak to the problem respectfully and in a way that tells the public (a) what went wrong and (b) what they will do differently in future.

The earlier blog post, about the harassment issue, is harder to put into words but it would be good if it (1) acknowledges that attendees have been subject to online harassment in the past, (2) explicitly states that this is not what DerbyCon is about and that this is not OK, (3) apologizes for any statements made in the heat of the moment by the DerbyCon team which could be construed as harassment, and (4) includes a commitment to prevent this behavior in the future… a promise that staff will be professional and a promise to eject or bar attendees who harass others.

[= III. The Ramifications =]

So here’s where the rubber really meets the road.

Actions speak louder than words.

If DerbyCon is going to be taken seriously, and to satisfy Point #4 regarding a Code of Conduct as mentioned above, they must demonstrate their genuine commitment to:

standing by their updated Code of Conduct

handling reports of abuse/safety risks/etc properly.

DerbyCon has stated that they’ve “never banned anyone” and described how they feel that the community has failed if things get to that point. This is not so. It fails the community to have rules and policies but never actually follow through on them.

As hard as it will be for them:

* Will Genovese represents the most clear-cut violation of a Code of Conduct that anyone has ever seen. He has repeatedly harassed numerous people over the years (and reserves the bulk of his ire for women and their supporters) and this year went so far as to put DerbyCon at actual legal risk by harassing attendees and abuse victims while speaking on behalf of the conference itself. Even after he was fired he continued to harass attendees (and non-attendees who simply spoke about DerbyCon) online and at the conference. The DerbyCon Code of Conduct carries basically no weight if people who behave in this manner are allowed to attend. There are others who have said hateful or harassing things to a lesser degree… but Will has taken it to the point of publicly posting both text and images that do nothing but sow hate and discontent at DerbyCon. For the community (particularly women) to take even slightly seriously the notion that DerbyCon is trying to improve, Will would not be invited back to DerbyCon nor welcomed as an attendee.

* the individual subject to police investigations, an Order of Protection, and court filings for abuse would not be invited back to DerbyCon as a trainer nor welcomed back as an attendee. The fact that he was subject to an Order of Protection backed up by a report of physical violence should have been enough there (and Martin Bos claimed back on August 30th that an O.o.P. was more than enough reason to ban him) We are not talking about an Administrative Non-Contact Order (which basically anyone can get on anyone else for almost any reason) but an Order of Protection based on police-documented abuse. Once the police (not just courts, but the police) are taking things seriously, come on… that’s a person you don’t want at your conference.

* Bryce Case Jr. (a.k.a. YT Cracker) would not be invited to DerbyCon as an artist nor welcomed as an attendee. Again, this is someone with a long history of security violations and drunken abuse of women at other conferences. There are records of all this. It is unclear if the /courts/ were ever involved, so this individual represents a different standard of evidence… but he unmistakably is a known bad actor and if DerbyCon can’t bring themselves to prevent his attendance, it is a signal to the community (especially women) that DerbyCon is not a place where people are safe.

* The DerbyCon videographer is the hardest case here. He has engaged online in what is seen by many as harassment. It has seldom been /directed/ at anyone, however. Instead, his comments are broad and focused against women and their supporters as opposed to calling out a specific person here or there. Also, as his defenders have pointed out, some of this has become more managed in recent months. Our willingness to give him space to reform has nothing to do with his tireless work on video recording… there is no ‘hours of volunteer work / hateful behavior forgiveness’ exchange rate system. We are not without understanding; he could remain part of DerbyCon (where he is cared about by many individuals who are trying to help him improve himself) in a Volunteer role as opposed to being on Staff and this might placate the majority of the community. But there will always be a number of women who will not feel safe attending any conference or event where he is present as anything other than an attendee. (This is why BSides events sadly had to take the difficult steps that they did and remove him.) It is hoped that his behavior continues to improve and that DerbyCon will never have to bar him outright.

It is interesting that in the case of the trainer and the music artist, they aren’t actually in direct violation of the Code of Conduct, because nearly all of their misdeeds took place off-site and at other events. But barring them from future attendance is of course part of a greater safety management process… which needs to be addressed by internal policy: How do you decide that someone is a safety violation to your attendees? How is this researched? What counts as evidence? With whom does the final decision rest? All of this needs to be written down somewhere. Not necessarily posted publicly, but written down and made available in cases where parties request to see it. This is very important for DerbyCon to legally cover their butts and it’s astonishing if some policy like this doesn’t already exist.)

If DerbyCon makes good on these three key areas – a more fully-realized Code of Conduct, public posts describing the difficulties and apologizing to the community, and finally breaking with tradition by actually officially barring certain known bad actors from attending in the future – then this would be considered a welcome (and really big) step in the right direction for the conference. And for the hacker community at large.

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ablogofourown-blog · 7 years

Text

A Perfectly Ordinary Day

It was a perfectly ordinary, normal, mid-autumn day in the little village of Chawton. But then, you know what they say about extraordinary days – they have to have a good foundation of ‘ordinary’ to get going. That’s what’s so special about them. It’s very hard to predict when you’re about to wake up and have an extraordinary day. And it’s certainly true that Sara Body hardly expected fireworks over her cornflakes.

To give the day its credit, it did dawn quite prettily, light shining through brown and golden leaves, gently teasing at the slumbering teenager attempting to awake her gracefully from a night’s rest. And what made it even better was that it was a Saturday: no school, and while the dawn was pretty, the day was just as nice at ten thirty, when the light and noises of the day finally woke her. She squirmed under the sheets, pulling in her air-chilled arms and squinting into the light as she tried to get herself used to the whole being awake thing. It didn’t take too long, though, and a mere seven minutes later she was poking her toes out of the warm cocoon she had made for herself.

A grand total of fifteen minutes later she was downstairs, clad in a t-shirt and battered jeans, pushing herself up on to one of the kitchen stools. ‘Mum?’ she called, reaching for the waffles. No answer, but that wasn’t surprising – it was a nice day in autumn: she would be out back tidying up the garden. Personally, Sara didn’t see the point at all – nothing was going to stop those leaves claiming their brief empire over the neighbourhood. Whatever kept her happy, though. It just meant that there was no one there to tut as she pulled down the maple syrup for her waffles.

‘Hey poophead,’ a young boy’s voice broke the peace. In response Sara exaggerated an eye roll for the benefit of the toaster, which she was anticipating releasing her breakfast any second now.

‘Ahh,’ she grumbled, having completely ignored her little brother – it was good for his ego, after all, ensured he’d never been spoilt – as she pulled her waffles out of the machine and on to her plate. She licked her lips as she doused the whole plate in maple syrup, her stomach growling hungrily.

‘Haha, mine!’ the voice came again, much closer this time. The bright blonde-haired eight-year-old had clambered up on to the stool next to her and before she knew it, his gross, sticky hands were making off with the waffles she had so lovingly made.

‘Hey!’ she exclaimed, outraged. Honestly, the child looked like a goddamn cherub angel type, what with the golden locks and big blue eyes. But she knew the truth. He was the devil. Or at the very least a major demon, sent to her family to be a pain in her neck. ‘Get off those – they’re mine!’

‘Nuhuh,’ Toby managed to get out, his mouth crammed full of waffles, syrup leaking out the corners of his mouth.

‘Ugh, gross,’ she protested, recoiling, her good mood from the lovely wake-up evaporating with alarming speed, which only increased as the boy started cackling in amusement. He loved his big sister, to be sure, but that didn’t mean he didn’t like pushing her buttons. Especially if he got sugar-encrusted baked goods out of it.

She made to get up to chase him out of the door, but gave up almost before she started. She wasn’t lazy, per se, it was just that the waffle packet was way closer than her brat brother was. Plus she’d had eight years of his company - she knew the game. If she went and chased off after him their mum would be sure to come in just as she was teaching Toby a good lesson about the evils of stealing and somehow she would be the one to get into trouble.

Pulling the last waffle from the packet, she sighed. Her stomach was grumbling, sounding as grouchy as she was beginning to, clearly needing more than one to keep her going. What was worse was that the old toaster needed rest breaks between each round and she just wanted it to cook now.

‘Sara, did you just give your brother half a litre of maple syrup?’ came a voice from the doorway. ‘You know what he’s like when he’s had too much sugar - and it’s lunch time in an hour. Don’t start cooking anything else or you’ll spoil it.’ The middle-aged woman walked into the kitchen and placed a couple of gardening gloves into a waiting plastic bag to keep the mess off the surfaces.

‘I wouldn’t exactly call it “giving”, but I guess if that’s what he told you ...’ she murmured, crossing her arms over her chest and reluctantly returning the breakfast treat to the cupboard. She was still starving, but it didn’t seem worth it to argue the point. Now she was too busy sulking over the unfairness of it all.

And so she sat back, and watched quietly as her mousy-haired mother washed her hands and moved seamlessly into preparing the family’s lunch. Since her and Toby’s father’s death two years ago, Matilda had become an automaton of a woman, taking care of home, family and finances. It meant Sara had a lot of babysitting duty while her mum worked in the evenings and at weekends, but although she did sometimes get tired of doing it, she could appreciate the effort her mum was going to in order to keep the family together. In fact, she knew she ought to offer to help now, to take some pressure off, but lack-of-food-fuelled fatigue had set in. Stupid brother stealing her stupid food.

‘Mum,’ Toby called, coming in from the living room, extending the word out into a whine. ‘I don’t feel so good.’

Sara watched her mother’s shoulders rise, stay there a moment then uncoil as she breathed out. Ah, maybe it hadn’t been such a restful Saturday for her mum as it had been for her. Matilda turned round, giving her eldest a ‘significant look’, then surveyed Toby. ‘What did I tell you? Go sit down and be still,’ she insisted. ‘It’ll pass - you’ve just eaten too many sweets.’

That was her opportunity. Sara jumped down from her seat and put on a smile. ‘Don’t worry about lunch, mum - I can make it. How do omelettes sound?’

Matilda turned to her daughter and smiled. ‘You’re a star,’ she said gratefully, though her moment’s rest that Sara had hoped to give her didn’t last long, as the doorbell rang almost immediately.

‘I’ll get it!’ the young boy’s voice rang out, and Matilda immediately jogged after her son.

‘No, you stay sat down before you make yourself sick. What have I told you about answering the door to strangers?’ It seemed that she spent half her life telling her children things for their own good that they promptly either forgot or straight up ignored. Most of the time they were good, though, and neither had shown any nastiness so that was something.

Ten minutes later, Matilda returned to the kitchen, just as Sara was pouring the egg mixture into the pan. ‘What was that?’ she asked, stepping back as the hot pan spat some of the mixture back at her. She picked up a spatula and poked at it a bit.

‘Nothing much, just someone dropping something off,’ she said, a little vaguely. There was something odd in Matilda’s expression, but Sara was distracted by cooking eggs and didn’t push it. Instead, she flipped the mixture and pulled a plate closer. Soon enough she had lunch for three on the table and at last her rumbling stomach could be sated.

The rest of the day was fairly quiet for the teenager. Sara had gone back up to her room, as small and uninteresting as it was, and decided to have a sort out. Toby had been taken out to his friend’s birthday party, having recovered completely from the sugar overdose he had suffered, and Matilda was taking the chance to buy some more groceries while her son was otherwise occupied.

Midway through sorting out her desk, Sara sat on the chair in front of it and looked up at the noticeboard stuck there. Its contents she hadn’t touched for years. Two years and three months, to be precise - the very day that the policeman had come to the door to tell her and her family about her father’s death. She remembered the policeman had been a little odd and she found herself getting distracted constantly trying to figure out what it was about him that she didn’t like. But then she reasoned she was probably just trying to avoid what horrible news he had come around to deliver. There hadn’t been anything ‘special’ about her father’s death - there hadn’t even been anyone to blame. She had never really appreciated how hopeless the term ‘tragic accident’ was until that day. But what else could be said about an incident involving one man, his car and a tree? It hadn’t even been foggy or raining.

Still, that night she had done her noticeboard as it looks now. The entire thing had a scrapbook-like feel and depicted her family through the years: her parents on their wedding day (her mum with an adorable dimpled smile much like her own), her as a baby with her dad laughing, their first holiday all together (the picture was a little blurry but the waitress had done her best with it), Toby as a baby … She liked to think of it as a roadmap of her family’s life together. Although if you looked at it, you’d be forgiven for thinking she was still fourteen years old and that nothing bad had ever happened. She’d never consciously intended to stop working on it after that, but every time she had a picture in hand to pin up there something had stopped her.

‘Sara,’ came a soft call from her mother, who had opened the door slightly to check in on her daughter. That normally irritated Sara beyond belief, but she was feeling a bit reminiscent and sentimental just then, so she let it go.

‘Yeah?’

‘Toby’s just dropped off - I wondered if you could come downstairs so we could have a chat?’ Without waiting for an answer, the woman turned and padded down the stairs.

Immediately Sara mentally replayed the day, then the week, trying to figure out what the hell she had done wrong that her mum could want to have a private chat with her about. Normally there was some little thing. She suffered from an affliction of forthrightness combined with enough confidence to speak her mind; that usually was met with a certain amount of resistance from her classmates and teachers. But the last week had been pretty quiet. Plus it was Saturday, who would be tattling on her on a Saturday?

Slowly she got to her feet, pulling on her dressing gown and tying it up on her way out the door. Quite often she had the desire to run when a row was on the horizon, but over the years she had learned that it was wiser to face it head on. Plus at this point she was sort of curious to know what she had been accused of now.

‘Whatever it is, mum,’ she began, on the defensive as she entered the living room. ‘I actually really don’t know anything about it.’

To her surprise, her mother laughed quietly under her breath, shook her head and gestured to the sofa for her to sit down instead. Okay, so this wasn’t what she was expecting. Clearly she wasn’t in trouble, but why was this making her more nervous?

‘Sara, I hadn’t meant to do this like this but the visitor I had earlier ...’ Her mother trailed off and took a breath to compose herself. ‘He was a representative of your father’s estate. Not that he had an estate really, but … well apparently there was more to his … his effects than we knew.’

Sara twisted her fingers in her lap, trying to hide how uncomfortable she felt at this sudden turn of conversation. She had dealt with her father’s death two years ago - had adjusted well, so the raft of school counsellors had reassured her mother - but she hadn’t had to think about it so directly for a long time. It still packed a punch that threatened to stop her breath from flowing normally.

‘I swear I had no idea that there was anything like this left to come - he never told me about this legacy ...’ the woman trailed off and looked down. She added in a quieter voice, ‘I didn’t think he kept anything from me.’ Clearing her throat, she placed a carefully constructed smile on her face and looked back up at her daughter. ‘But you’re seventeen in a few days so it’s nice that you’ll have something from your father.’

Sara nodded, staying uncharacteristically quiet as she was passed a brown paper bag, marked for delivery on this day. She couldn’t help but think how weird it was that he’d scheduled to get this delivered to her today, of all days. Maybe if it had been on her birthday - and wasn’t seventeen a weird one to focus on anyway?

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ her mother prompted.

She looked down at the package in her lap, sort of unaware that she’d just been twisting it around, flipping it over. Sliding her eyes back to her mother, she continued to stall, though she had no idea why. ‘You don’t know what it’ll be?’ she asked.

‘No, like I said, I had no idea about this family legacy. It’s not even from the solicitor we used, and you know he never spoke much about his own background.’

Sara nodded, took a breath into her lungs and slid her forefinger beneath the seal.

‘It’s a bracelet,’ she said, her voice wavering peculiarly. She laughed at her own ridiculousness and slipped the trinket out of the packaging completely, allowing it to fall into her waiting palm. The coolness of the silver metal - slightly tarnished - surprised her a little, but it soon warmed to her touch. ‘It’s really pretty,’ she commented, warming up to the situation. ‘I always loved rubies - dad must have known before he-’ She trailed off, distracting herself by letting the deep red gems and smoky coloured stones reflect the light.

‘It’s beautiful, honey,’ her mum said, leaning over to have a look with a smile on her face. She hadn’t known what her daughter had been left - she hadn’t even seen the bracelet before - but this was nice. The uneasy feeling that had been assaulting her gut dissipated and she took the discarded packaging from her daughter’s lap. ‘We never knew much of them, but your father’s lot were always funny. Still, it’s nice for you to get an heirloom from their side.’

Sara looked up at her mother, who had just got to her feet, and smiled. ‘Heirloom? Wow. I figured the solicitors had just found this hanging round their office and made up the story so they didn’t look like idiots.’

‘It’s in your father’s writing - you know what he was like: he had his own funny ideas.’ Matilda leaned over her daughter, turning off the lamp behind her and placing a kiss on her head as she stood back up. ‘Now don’t stay up too late. I know it’s Saturday, but you don’t want to mess up your sleep schedule for Monday.’

‘Ugh, school.’ Sara wrinkled her nose for a moment then wiped the disgruntled expression from her face. ‘I mean, I won’t, mum!’

With that, Matilda retired to bed, for which Sara was grateful. She leaned back to turn the lamp back on,not intending to stay up for much longer, but wanting to have a good long look at the intricate little bracelet.

It was lovely - it really was. Three thin strips of the tarnished silver crisscrossed over each other, just that beat off perfect that meant this was probably hand made rather than mass-produced like every single other bit of jewellery she had. In every second gap between the twining, a gem was nestled, alternating ruby and the smoky stone. It was honestly not like anything Sara had seen before in her life, though there was something tugging at her in the back of her mind. No matter how much she tried to pull the memory to the fore, though, it just wasn’t forthcoming. In fact, the more she tried to think about it, the more it seemed to retreat, so she figured she would let it alone. With any luck, she would suddenly have an epiphany while she was brushing her teeth.

After about half an hour of peering at her new possession, she did decide it was time to retire. It had just gone midnight and if she wasn’t careful she’d while away the rest of the night down there. So she pulled herself up, placed the bracelet around her wrist, figuring she’d ‘trial run’ it before bed and then wear it properly tomorrow. Then it was just a matter of brushing her teeth in their little family bathroom and retiring to where the day had begun: her bedroom. She pushed her pale blue bed covers back and climbed in, yawning quietly to herself. Despite the quiet day, she was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow, the bracelet still sitting snugly around her wrist.

And there it was. That was the end of the extraordinary day. Of course, no one could tell exactly how special it had been just yet. Sara went to bed with a vague sadness that the next day was Sunday, which meant school was getting ever closer, but how could she possibly know the significance of what she had done? Of the importance of what now lay around her wrist, beating with the rhythm of her own heart, subtly and impossible for anyone to notice? Not even they could discern the difference that had fallen over the girl. And they had been watching her from the beginning - from the start of it all.

#this is a bit of a cheat #because it's an opening chapter rather than a short story #but I kind of suck at starting things off so actually it's a good thing to put out into the universe #I did write some of this aaages ago but heavily edited and added to it #and changed its direction slightly XD #so it may be a mess #genre: fantasy #genre: everyday life #type: wip #chrissy's writing #3062 words

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dailyaudiobible · 7 years

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01/23/2017 DAB Transcript

Genesis 46:1-47:31 ~ Matthew 15:1-28 ~ Psalm 19:1-14 ~ Proverbs 4:14-19

Today is the 23rd of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian and it is a pleasure and a joy, really an honor to be here with you today to take the next step in the scriptures this year. We’re kind of coming to this conclusion of Joseph's story. Of course, this story has been full of drama and twists and turns and today we find out if Joseph's father, whose name is Jacob, whose name has been changed to Israel, gets the word of his son's life, that he's still alive from the other children, the sons of Jacob, the first children of Israel. Genesis chapter 46, verse 1 through 47:31. We’re reading from the Contemporary English Version this week.

Commentary

Okay, so King David writes a psalm, a song and then later his son Solomon writes a proverb and they both just lay out a beautiful picture of what life can and should look like if we have a life of balance and margin. David starts out saying the heavens keep telling the wonders of God. He is saying look around you. The evidence is everywhere. There is nowhere to look that you cannot see the wonder of God. Without speaking a word they say more than can possibly be said about the wonders of the Lord.

And then he talks about the instructions and law of the Lord as being perfect, something that gives us new life, teachings that will last forever and give wisdom to ordinary people like us. God's instructions make our hearts glad. His commands give us light. Trusting in God's will, his decisions, his judgments is a good thing. They are right. They are correct. They are fair. They are worth more than gold. They are worth more than money and they are worth more than the best of foods. God's teachings warn us and by obeying them we are greatly rewarded.

And then Solomon says the lifestyle of good people is like a sunrise. It grows in brightness and gets brighter and brighter and more beautiful until it is full noon and it is full light. Whereas the lifestyle of the wicked is like total darkness and they don’t even know what makes them fall down.

So we’ve been given a roadmap and all we have to do is ask ourselves what the shape of our lives is. Is it murky? Is it dark? Are you tripping up? Don’t know where you're going? Or is life like a sunrise, like it is getting brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter? And as we contemplate that, well then we realize the road we are walking.

And here we are once again at a crossroads. The Bible continues to constantly bring us to the fork in the road and gives us a clear choice. It's a clear a path to what is right and it is a clear path to what is not in all of our choices. It's a matter of what do we want most? If we want the things that have kind of brought us darkness and have tripped us up but they have a lot of pleasure in them or for whatever reason, well then we can’t turn around and blame God for putting us in the dark because we came to a crossroads and we chose the dark, not God. He's not doing it. He didn’t do it. He's back at the crossroads saying, ‘You can come back. You can return to this point and choose a different road.’ But most of the time choosing correctly, because we get to these crossroads and we’re like, ‘I don’t know’ and we just kind of go with it, not necessarily choosing darkness on purpose, but this is life. This requires vigilance. This requires awareness. It actually requires participation. We have to be actively involved in our lives, choosing carefully the way that we’re going, knowing that everything that we do is a choice that goes somewhere and choosing wisely rather than trying to make the choice after we’ve already made the choice by the actions of our lives.

Prayer

Father, we need you. We need you in this. Well up within us, Holy Spirit, and show us where we are and where we’re going. We in our own hearts at this time echo the words that were spoken in song so long ago by King David. Let the words of our mouths and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing to you, Lord because you are the rock, the mighty rock, and our protector. Come Holy Spirit, we pray. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Announcements

Www.DailyAudioBible.com is home base. It's the website for Daily Audio Bible and it is where you find out what is going on around here, resources that are available in the Shop, events like the More Gathering for Women that is coming up here in April that you can check out, the Prayer Wall is there where people are posting and responding all the time, so be sure to check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible in the mission that we share to build community around the rhythm of the scriptures every day, then thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the home page. You can find it also in the app if you push the More button that is on the home page of the app, or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN 37174.

And, of course, if you have a prayer request or comment, we are a community here. (877) 942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian. I love you. And I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports

Good morning DAB family. This is Shirley in Southeastern Washington. Just finished listening to the DAB. This is January 17th. Brian and Jill, once again just want to say to Brian and his family, I'm praying for you at this time as you mourn the loss of your mom. I know exactly what you’re feeling so I'm praying for you. Also wanted to say welcome to the family, Amanda. Just became our sister in the family of Christ December 27, 2016. Amanda, just know that we’re praying for you and just know that you don’t have to carry this by yourself. We are here. We are listening. God is listening and he helps us through each and every struggle that we go through because he knows exactly what we’re going through. So just know we’re praying for you and we’re so happy that you’ve become one of us in the family of God. Just know that we love you and we’re praying for you. God bless everybody. Have a good day. Bye.

Hi, this is Sonya from Ontario, Canada. I just wanted to send a message to Brian. Dear Brian, I'm a six year listener and I’ve never called in before, but today I'm calling in to you because you have become a friend and inspiration to my life. You’ve encouraged me to strengthen my relationship with God. I'm so sorry to hear that your mother has passed and my prayers are with you and your family. Please remember that you are a product of every laugh she shared with you, every tear she shed for you, and every piece of wisdom that she passed on to you. That has made you the beautiful child of God that you are. You are sharing the word of the Lord to all who have ears. You have created a community of people who love and support each other in God's name. Her love made you who you are. Your mother is free of suffering and is smiling with pride and joy and dwells in the warm embrace of Jesus. Brian, to you and your family, I pray that God keeps you and blesses you for always and eternity because you have touched millions of people's lives. Millions. And I love the DAB. Thank you.

This is Judy from Florida. I have a message for Amanda who is dealing with unforgiveness. Honey, you can’t forgive out of feeling. It has to be an act of your will. In other words, no matter what you are feeling, you act nice and keep your mind on positive things. This is very hard in the beginning, but if you will continue, one day life will be a whole new ballgame. When I went through this, I used to have so much trouble thinking of positive things that one day I sat down and made a list of positive things to think about, songs to sing or scriptures to quote. When my mind was giving me a fit about unforgiveness, I would get my list and on purpose begin to get my mind off the negative and on to the positive. Eventually the unforgiving feelings began to leave and life was good again. I'm praying for all of you, especially Brian and his family during this time of grief. Goodbye.

Hi, I'm __________ Flower, __________. I’ve been listening for about over a year now. __________ the Hardin family __________ the death of his mother. I call on behalf of my husband. He has chronic pain. He has been in pain for at least six years now. He's always also had problems with insomnia and it's getting worse and he's getting depressed. And yet he still goes to work to support us. He really needs help. He is not a believer yet, so __________ for God to save him. Won’t you please? I don’t know what God's will is. He is good and I trust him but it is hard to see my husband suffer. Please pray for him. Thank you so much.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family. This is Dorothy from Destin and I wanted to thank Lisa and Christy for praying for me. I still have the shingles, but I’ve had a lot of time to think and pray while I’ve been laid up with this. Brian, I am so sorry to hear about your mother's passing. I got to speak to my mom today and she is a nursing home and she really doesn’t remember very much, but I did get to speak to her and she asked me if she could live with me again. I know that is impossible, but one thing I was able to do was just tell her about my back porch and that I have a special place for her here and I told her how lovely it would be and explained to her about the flowers in my backyard and the roses and hydrangeas and I just knew from that moment it made my mom feel so much better. So I just thank God for that. And I thank God for all of you because every time I listen to you all, it makes me feel so much better. So God bless you all and have a wonderful day. Thank you again. Love you all. Bye-bye.

Hello family. My name is Kimberly. I live in Albany, NY and I’ve been a member of the Daily Audio Bible since 2011. I’ve called twice only and both times for my brother, both times for issues with his lungs. He has emphysema and he had a scare for two months and both times you guys prayed and both times he's doing okay. But today I'm calling for myself. Today I had a CAT scan as well on my lungs and it came back abnormal. Now I'm not really positive what that means, but I have to go see a pulmonologist and in my family, my mother, my father, my brother, both my grandparents have passed away from lung cancers which is why I get regular CT scans every year, and so I'm just a tad nervous. I really don’t want to carry this myself. I would like for you guys please to pray for me for my lungs and for health. I just appreciate you all so much. Thank you.

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rolandfontana · 5 years

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Foreign Companies in China: What We are Seeing and Hearing NOW, Part 2

In yesterday’s Part 1 (of what is rapidly becoming a series) of Foreign Companies in China: What We are Seeing and Hearing NOW, we provided updates on what is happening in China relevant to foreign companies doing business in China or with China. The gist of that post was that many foreign companies that manufacture in China are leaving China, reducing their footprint in China, or looking to leave China or reduce their footprint there. Yet at the same time, foreign companies that sell products or services in China are forming WFOEs to go into China or if they are already there, they are growing their presence there, while at the same time, making sure that they are operating legally there.

We got two very interesting comments to that post, worthy of full responses. I will address the first comment today, and the other comment eventually. The first was the following:

If you actually have an increase in WOFE requests I have an FICE that I would be willing to sell cheap. My guess is all of my other friends who are leaving China with their businesses would be happy to sell theirs too. Most of them are just walking away though and not actually closing the business.

There are and will always be WFOEs in China looking to shut down and the number of these typically increases when times get difficult in China. The number of WFOEs closing during tough times is usually for a combination of two reasons: decreased economic opportunities and increasing compliance enforcement. In yesterday’s post I talked about how many of our clients are coming to us for what we call WFOE audits, which typically consist of our China lawyers doing some or all of the following:

Make sure their WFOE actually exists and is licensed to do what it is actually doing.

Make sure they have the proper entities and licenses to do business in every city in which it is doing business.

Make sure its trademarks and other IP have been filed in China.

Have us conduct an employer audit to make sure it is doing everything right on the employee side.

Make sure it is current with its taxes.

Review lease agreements.

Review contracts signed by the WFOE or by the parent company relating to China operations.

Due diligence on suppliers/manufacturers and distributors, retailers, and e-commerce platforms to make sure that those relationships do not violate home country (US or EU or Australian) laws and to make sure that those companies are financially sound.

If China is getting economically difficult for you and you are contemporaneously being hit with increasing regulations and increasing regulation enforcement, leaving is a logical choice and we are seeing that happening as well, but I forgot to mention that yesterday. Why did I forget to mention that? Because WFOEs leaving China is nothing new and we have not seen a massive uptick in that, with the possible exception of 1-2 person consulting WFOEs that had essentially stopped doing much if any business in China years ago. For the 101 on how to close a China WFOE, check out Shutting Down a China WFOE: Don’t Go There.

What about selling your WFOE rather than shutting it down. On the surface, this makes complete sense in that it allows you to make money by leaving China, rather than having to pay money to leave China. Unfortunately, for a whole host of reasons, it is extremely difficult to sell a WFOE, as we explained in Selling Your China WFOE: Yeah, That’s the Ticket:

The problem is that to buy a WFOE requires the buyer essentially want to do exactly what the seller has been approved to do. So for example, if I want to do a consulting business in Qingdao, I must buy a consulting business in Qingdao. And then I also have to make sure that the costs of my doing due diligence on the WFOE and the risks of buying into the liabilities and problems of the WFOE, do not outweigh the advantages of taking over a WFOE, as opposed to forming a new one.

It is indeed possible to sell a WFOE and our China M&A lawyers have been involved with a couple such sales and they are not difficult from a legal perspective, but they are usually difficult to justify from a business perspective. We sometimes see WFOE sales to employees (either expats or Chinese citizens or even combinations thereof) who want to see the WFOE keep going so they can hold onto their jobs. It is possible to sell a WFOE to a Chinese company or a Chinese citizen (and this would include to an employee) and then it converts to a Chinese domestic company. This too is not difficult legally, but such sales are rare because usually the employee knows exactly why the WFOE is closing and usually the employee can choose to essentially take over the WFOE after the foreign company has left, and do so “informally” and without any payment.

You can sell your WFOE to a foreign company looking to do business in China, but that too has many inherent difficulties, which we detailed in Buying And Selling China WFOE Shell Companies. Not In My Lifetime?

Those trying to sell their WFOEs usually tout them as liability free and therefore ready to go much faster and at a much lower price than forming a brand new WFOE For what it takes to form a WFOE in China, check out the following:

How to Form a China WFOE: A Roadmap

Forming a China WFOE: Scope is Key

Forming a China WFOE: Ten Things To Consider

How to Form a China WFOE: Choosing Your Chinese Company Name

How to Form a China WFOE: Revealing Investor Ownership is NOT Optional

7 Rules on China WFOE Registered Capital

The above posts show that forming and registering a WFOE in China is a difficult and time consuming process but buying an existing WFOE is in most cases not much easier, if at all.

To quote from a previous post we did on selling your China WFOE:

The thing about off the shelf WFOEs is exactly that: they are off the shelf and not customized. And that is where all of the problems arise. Let’s take as an example a WFOE that someone tried to interest me in many months ago. That company was in the IT outsourcing business in a second tier city. So right there, its only real potential buyer is someone who is interested in doing IT outsourcing in that second tier city. Because if the buyer of that WFOE is interested in doing anything other than IT outsourcing, it will need to petition the government to expand or change its business scope. Similarly, if the buyer is interested in doing IT outsourcing in some other city, it will need to petition the government to move its WFOE or it will need to set up a branch in that other city, and thereby have to maintain two offices. When you throw in the fact that anyone buying a WFOE will need to conduct due diligence on it to make sure it truly does not have liabilities of any kind (including, tax, employee, environmental, tort, etc.) you can quickly see why forming a WFOE is going to be safer and probably equally as fast and cheap as buying one. The biggest benefit in buying a shell WFOE would be speed, but it is going to be the rare instance where saving a few months will warrant the extra risk.

In the post, “How To Form a China WFOE. Scope Really Really Matters,” we discussed the importance of a WFOE having a proper scope:

BUT — and this is why I am writing this post now — if you under or overreach on the description of your business scope, you might find yourself in big trouble. We are getting an increasing number of calls from American companies in trouble with the Chinese government for doing things in their business that they did not mention in the business scope section of their initial WFOE.

In some cases, the companies have admitted to us that they were never “really comfortable” with the business scope mentioned in their applications, but that the company they had used to form their WFOE had “pushed” them into it as it would “make things much easier.” In some cases, the scope of the business changed after the application was submitted and the company had failed to secure approval in advance for the change. And in some cases, the company probably would never have been approved at all had it been upfront and honest in its application. In nearly all instances, the companies had managed to secure local approval but were now in trouble with Beijing, which constantly is auditing these applications. In one instance, the local government went back and changed its mind, probably after conducting an audit of its own.

I cannot go into any more detail on these matters, but I can give this advice: applying for a WFOE in China involves a heck of a lot more than just filling out a form and getting approval. It does matter for what you get approved and you (or whomever you are using for your WFOE application) need to know China’s foreign investment catalog inside and out before applying. You then must tailor your application to meet both the requirements of the foreign investment catalog AND the reality of what you will be doing in China. A failure to comply on both fronts will lead to, at best, a rejection of your application and, at worst, being shut down months or years later.

The odds of a shell WFOE’s city and scope lining up perfectly with what is needed by potential WFOE buyers are low and we are not aware of any website that tries to match up WFOE sellers with potential WFOE buyers.

Steve Barru, a former China business blogger, wrote many years ago about trying to “get out of his China WFOE” [his blog is no more but because we previously quoted him here, his words on selling a China WFOE live on]

When Barru learned how difficult it would be for him to shut down his China WFOE, he sought to sell it, which too proved difficult:

Selling the company, even for next to nothing, quickly moved to the head of the line. But transferring the business license and my legal person status to the wannabe new owner involved far more than filling out a couple of forms.

It was the buyer who had to jump through the bureaucratic hoops. For all intents and purposes he went through the same process one goes through to establish a WFOE. With one key difference – he did not have to invest new capital in the company. The original US $70,000 in registered capital (that I had put in and had later managed, for the most part, to take out) was all that was required. Since registered capital for a WFOE had increased to US $200k by 2005, there were demands for additional investment, but rather convoluted negotiations eventually got around this obstacle. Fortunately, the buyer was located in Nanjing. The need to move the WFOE to a new locale would have been a deal breaker.

Eventually, after several months of discussions and chopping forms, all the questions about registered capital, business scope of the company, the good character of the new owner, and the license transfer had been answered and the sale was complete. The price probably covered my express mailing costs and bought me a couple of dinners. But I was out from under what had become an enormous, very time consuming headache.

The same holds true today.

Foreign Companies in China: What We are Seeing and Hearing NOW, Part 2 syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

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sheminecrafts · 6 years

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Facebook poisons the acquisition well

Who should you sell your startup to? Facebook and the founders of its former acquisitions are making a strong case against getting bought by Mark Zuckerberg and Co. After a half-decade of being seen as one of the most respectful and desired acquirers, a series of scandals has destroyed the image of Facebook’s M&A division. That could make it tougher to convince entrepreneurs to sell to Facebook, or force it to pay higher prices and put contractual guarantees of autonomy into the deals.

WhatsApp’s founders left amidst aggressive pushes to monetize. Instagram’s founders left as their independence was threatened. Oculus’ founders were demoted. And over the past few years, Facebook has also shut down acquisitions, including viral teen Q&A app TBH (though its founder says he recommended shutting it down), fitness tracker Moves, video advertising system LiveRail, voice control developer toolkit Wit.ai and still-popular mobile app developer platform Parse.

Facebook’s users might not know or care about much of this. But it could be a sticking point the next time Facebook tries to buy out a burgeoning competitor or complementary service.

Broken promises with WhatsApp

The real trouble started with WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton’s departure from Facebook a year ago before he was fully vested from the $22 billion acquisition in 2014. He’d been adamant that Facebook not stick the targeted ads he hated inside WhatsApp, and Zuckerberg conceded not to. Acton even got a clause added to the deal that the co-founders’ remaining stock would vest instantly if Facebook implemented monetization schemes without their consent. Google was also interested in buying WhatsApp, but Facebook’s assurances of independence sealed the deal.

WhatsApp founder, Brian Acton, says Facebook used him to get its acquisition past EU regulators

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum quits Facebook due to privacy intrusions

WhatsApp’s other co-founder, Jan Koum, left Facebook in April following tension about how Facebook would monetize his app and the impact of that on privacy. Acton’s departure saw him leave $850 million on the table. Captivity must have been pretty rough for freedom to be worth that much. Today in an interview with Forbes’s Parmy Olson, he detailed how Facebook got him to promise it wouldn’t integrate WhatsApp’s user data to get the deal approved by EU regulators. Facebook then broke that promise, paid the $122 million fine that amounted to a tiny speed bump for the money-printing corporation, and kept on hacking.

When Acton tried to enact the instant-vesting clause upon his departure, Facebook claimed it was still exploring, not “implementing,” monetization. Acton declined a legal fight and walked away, eventually tweeting “Delete Facebook.” Koum stayed to vest a little longer. But soon after they departed, WhatsApp started charging businesses for slow replies, and it will inject ads into the WhatsApp’s Stories product Status next year. With user growth slowing, users shifting to Stories, and News Feed out of ad space, Facebook’s revenue problem became WhatsApp’s monetization mandate.

The message was that Facebook would eventually break its agreements with acquired founders to prioritize its own needs.

Diminished autonomy for Instagram

Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced they were resigning this week, which sources tell TechCrunch was because of mounting tensions with Zuckerberg over product direction. Zuckerberg himself negotiated the 2012 acquisition for $1 billion ($715 million when the deal closed with Facebook’s share price down, but later $4 billion as it massively climbed). That price was stipulated on Instagram remaining independent in both brand and product roadmap.

Zuckerberg upheld his end of the bargain for five years, and the Instagram co-founders stayed on past their original vesting dates — uncommon in Silicon Valley. Facebook pointed to Instagram’s autonomy when it was trying to secure the WhatsApp acquisition. And with the help of Facebook’s engineering, sales, recruiting, internationalization and anti-spam teams, Instagram grew into a 1 billion-user juggernaut.

Why Instagram’s founders are resigning: independence from Facebook weakened

But again, Facebook’s growth and financial woes led to a change of heart for Zuckerberg. Facebook’s popularity amongst teens was plummeting while Instagram remained cool. Facebook pushed to show its alerts and links back to the parent company inside of Instagram’s notifications and settings tabs. Meanwhile, it stripped out the Instagram attribution from cross-posted photos and deleted a shortcut to Instagram from the Facebook bookmarks menu.

Zuckerberg then installed a loyalist, his close friend and former News Feed VP Adam Mosseri, as Instagram’s new VP of Product mid-way through this year. The reorganization also saw Systrom start reporting to Facebook CPO Chris Cox. Previously the Instagram CEO had more direct contact with Zuckerberg despite technically reporting to CTO Mike Schroepfer, and the insertion of a layer of management between them frayed their connection. Six years after being acquired, Facebook started breaking its promises, Instagram felt less autonomous and the founders exited.

The message again was that Facebook expected to be able to exploit its acquisitions regardless of their previous agreements.

Reduced visibility for Oculus

Zuckerberg declared Oculus was the next great computing platform when Facebook acquired the virtual reality company in 2014. Adoption ended up slower than many expected, forcing Oculus to fund VR content creators since it’s still an unsustainable business. Oculus has likely been a major cash sink for Facebook it will have to hope pays off later.

But in the meantime, the co-founders of Oculus have faded into the background. Brendan Iribe and Nate Mitchell have gone from leading the company to focusing on the nerdiest part of its growing product lineup as VPs running the PC VR and Rift hardware teams, respectively. Former Xiaomi hardware leader Hugo Barra was brought in as VP of VR to oversee Oculus, and he reports to former Facebook VP of Ads Andrew “Boz” Bosworth — a longtime Zuckerberg confidant who TA’d one of his classes at Harvard who now runs all of Facebook’s hardware efforts.

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe steps down, will now lead PC-based VR division within company

Oculus’ original visionary inventor Palmer Luckey left Facebook last year following a schism with the company over him funding anti-Hillary Clinton memes and “sh*tposters.” He was pressed to apologize, saying “I am deeply sorry that my actions are negatively impacting the perception of Oculus and its partners.”

Lesser-known co-founder Jack McCauley left Facebook just a year after the acquisition to start his own VR lab. Sadly, Oculus co-founder Andrew Reisse died in 2013 when he was struck by a vehicle in a police chase just two months after the acquisition was announced. The final co-founder Michael Antonov was the chief software architect, but Facebook just confirmed to me he recently left the division to work on artificial intelligence infrastructure at Facebook.

Today for the first time, none of the Oculus co-founders appeared onstage at its annual Connect conference. Obviously the skills needed to scale and monetize a product are different from those needed to create. Still, going from running the company to being stuck in the audience doesn’t send a great signal about how Facebook treats acquired founders.

Course correction

Facebook needs to take action if it wants to reassure prospective acquisitions that it can be a good home for their startups. I think Zuckerberg or Mosseri (likely to be named Instagram’s new leader) should issue a statement that they understand people’s fears about what will happen to Instagram and WhatsApp since they’re such important parts of users’ lives, and establishing core tenets of the product’s identity they don’t want to change. Again, 15-year-old Instagrammers and WhatsAppers probably won’t care, but potential acquisitions would.

So far, Facebook has only managed to further inflame the founders versus Facebook divide. Today former VP of Messenger and now head of Facebook’s blockchain team David Marcus wrote a scathing note criticizing Acton for his Forbes interview and claiming that Zuckerberg tried to protect WhatsApp’s autonomy. “Call me old fashioned. But I find attacking the people and company that made you a billionaire, and went to an unprecedented extent to shield and accommodate you for years, low-class. It’s actually a whole new standard of low-class,” he wrote.

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Posted by David Marcus on Wednesday, September 26, 2018

But this was a wasted opportunity for Facebook to discuss all the advantages it brings to its acquisitions. Marcus wrote, “As far as I’m concerned, and as a former lifelong entrepreneur and founder, there’s no other large company I’d work at, and no other leader I’d work for,” and noted the opportunity for impact and the relatively long amount of time acquired founders have stayed in the past. Still, it would have been more productive to focus on why’s it’s where he wants to work, how founders actually get to touch the lives of billions and how other acquirers like Twitter and Google frequently dissolve the companies they buy and often see their founders leave even sooner.

Acquisitions have protected Facebook from disruption. Now that strategy is in danger if it can’t change this narrative. Lots of zeros on a check might not be enough to convince the next great entrepreneur to sell Facebook their startup if they suspect they or their project will be steamrolled.

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technicalsolutions88 · 6 years

Link

Facebook’s users might not know or care about much of this. But it could be a sticking point the next time Facebook tries to buy out a burgeoning competitor or complementary service.

Broken promises with WhatsApp

WhatsApp founder, Brian Acton, says Facebook used him to get its acquisition past EU regulators

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum quits Facebook due to privacy intrusions

The message was that Facebook would eventually break its agreements with acquired founders to prioritize its own needs.

Diminished autonomy for Instagram

Why Instagram’s founders are resigning: independence from Facebook weakened

The message again was that Facebook expected to be able to exploit its acquisitions regardless of their previous agreements.

Reduced visibility for Oculus

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe steps down, will now lead PC-based VR division within company

Course correction

Posted by David Marcus on Wednesday, September 26, 2018

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2NK2UdO Original Content From: https://techcrunch.com

#Technical Solutions #SEO #Online Earning #Youtube Marketing #Android Developer

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fmservers · 6 years

Text

Facebook poisons the acquisition well

Who should you sell your startup to? Facebook and the founders of its former acquisitions are making a strong case against getting bought by Mark Zuckerberg and co. After a half-decade of being seen as one of the most respectful and desired acquirers, a series of scandals has destroyed the image of Facebook’s M&A division. That could make it tougher to convince entrepreneurs to sell to Facebook, or force it to pay higher prices and put contractual guarantees of autononmy into the deals.

WhatsApp’s founders left amidst aggresive pushes to monetize. Instagram’s founders left as their independence was threatened. Oculus’ founders were demoted. And over the past few years Facebook has also shut down acquisitions including viral teen Q&A app TBH, fitness tracker Moves, video advertising system LiveRail, voice control developer toolkit Wit.ai, and still-popular mobile app developer platform Parse.

Facebook’s users might not know or care about much of this. But it could be a sticking point the next time Facebook tries to buy out a burgeoning competitor or complementary service.

Broken Promises With WhatsApp

The real trouble started with WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton’s departure from Facebook a year ago before he was full vested from the $22 billion acquisition in 2014. He’d been adamant that Facebook not stick the targeted ads he hated inside WhatsApp, and Zuckerberg conceded not to. Acton even got a clause added to the deal that the co-founders’ remaining stock would vest instantly if Facebook implemented monetization schemes without their consent. Google was also interested in buying WhatsApp, but Facebook’s assurances of independence sealed the deal.

WhatsApp founder, Brian Acton, says Facebook used him to get its acquisition past EU regulators

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum quits Facebook due to privacy intrusions

WhatsApp’s other co-founder Jan Koum left Facebook in April following tension about how Facebook would monetize his app and the impact of that on privacy. Acton’s departure saw him leave $850 million on the table. Captivity must have been pretty rough for freedom to be worth that much. Today in an interview with Forbes’s Parmy Olson, he detailed how Facebook got him to promise it wouldn’t integrate WhatsApp’s user data to get the deal approved by EU regulators. Facebook then broke that promise, paid the $122 million fine that amounted to a tiny speed bump for the money-printing corporation, and kept on hacking.

When Acton tried to enact the instant-vesting clause upon his departure, Facebook claimed it was still exploring, not “implementing”, monetization. Acton declined a legal fight and walked away, eventually tweeting “Delete Facebook”. Koum stayed to vest a little longer. But soon after they departed, WhatsApp started charging businesses for slow replies, and it will inject ads into the WhatsApp’s Stories product Status next year. With user growth slowing, users shifting to Stories, and News Feed out of ad space, Facebook’s revenue problem became WhatsApp’s monetization mandate.

The message was that Facebook would eventually break its agreements with acquired founders to prioritize its own needs.

Diminished Autonomy For Instagram

Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced they were resigning this week, which sources tell Techcrunch was because of mounting tensions with Zuckerberg over product direction. Zuckerberg himself negotiated the 2012 acquisition for $1 billion ($715 million when the deal closed with Facebook’s share price down, but later $4 billion as it massively climbed). That price was stipulated on Instagram remaining independent in both brand and product roadmap.

Zuckerberg upheld his end of the bargain for five years, and the Instagram co-founders stayed on past their original vesting dates — uncommon in Silicon Valley. Facebook pointed to Instagram’s autonomy when it was trying to secure the WhatsApp acquisition. And with the help of Facebook’s engineering, sales, recruiting, internationalization, and anti-spam teams, Instagram grew into a 1 billion user juggernaut.

Why Instagram’s founders are resigning: independence from Facebook weakened

Zuckerberg then installed a loyalist, his close friend and former News Feed VP Adam Mosseri as Instagram’s new VP of Product mid-way through this year. The reorganization also saw Systrom start reporting to Facebook CPO Chris Cox. Previously the Instagram CEO had more direct contact with Zuckerberg despite technically reporting to CTO Mike Schroepfer, and the insertion of a layer of management between them frayed their connection. 6 years after being acquired, Facebook started breaking its promises, Instagram felt less autonomous, and the founders exited.

The message again was that Facebook expected to be able to exploit its acquisitions regardless of their previous agreements.

Reduced Visibility For Oculus

But in the meantime the co-founders of Oculus have faded into the background. Brendan Iribe and Nate Mitchell have gone from leading the company to focusing on the nerdiest part of its growing product lineup as VPs running the PC VR and Rift hardware teams respectively. Former Xiaomi hardware leader Hugo Barra was brought in as VP of VR to oversee Oculus, and he reports to former Facebook VP of Ads Andrew “Boz” Bosworth — a long-time Zuckerberg confidant who TA’d one of his classes at Harvard who now runs all of Facebook’s hardware efforts.

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe steps down, will now lead PC-based VR division within company

Oculus’ original visionary inventor Palmer Luckey left Facebook last year following a schism with the company over him funding anti-Hillary Clinton memes and “sh*tposters”. He was pressed to apologize, saying “I am deeply sorry that my actions are negatively impacting the perception of Oculus and its partners.”

Lesser-known co-founder Jack McCauley left Facebook just a year after the acquisition to start his own VR lab. Sadly, Oculus co-founder Andrew Reisse died in 2013 when he was struck by a vehicle in a police chase just two months after the acquisition was announced. The final co-founder Michael Antonov was the Chief Software Architect, but Facebook just confirmed to me he recently left the division to work on artificial intelligence infrastructure at Facebook.

Today for the first time, none of the Oculus co-founders appeared on stage at its annual Connect conference. Obviously the skills needed to scale and monetize a product are different from those needed to create. Still, going from running the company to being stuck in the audience doesn’t send a great signal about how Facebook treats acquired founders.

Course Correction

Posted by David Marcus on Wednesday, September 26, 2018

But this was a wasted opportunity for Facebook to discuss all the advantages it brings to its acquisitions. Marcus wrote “As far as I’m concerned, and as a former lifelong entrepreneur and founder, there’s no other large company I’d work at, and no other leader I’d work for”, and noted the opportunity for impact and the relatively long amount of time acquired founders have stayed in the past. Still, it would have been more productive to focus on why’s it’s where he wants to work, how founders actually get to touch the lives of billions, and how other acquirers like Twitter and Google frequently dissolve the companies they buy and often see their founders leave even sooner.

Via Josh Constine https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

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cryptobully-blog · 6 years

Text

Exclusive: Paragon Post-ICO Interview with Cryptovest; SEC, Blockchain, Cannabis and More

https://cryptobully.com/exclusive-paragon-post-ico-interview-with-cryptovest-sec-blockchain-cannabis-and-more/

Exclusive: Paragon Post-ICO Interview with Cryptovest; SEC, Blockchain, Cannabis and More

Natasha: OK, welcome guys, welcome to Cryptovest post-ICO review. Today we’ve got Gareth and Jessica in from Paragon Coin. Jessica is CEO, and Gareth is Chief Business Officer. Welcome Guys.

Jessica: Hi! Thank you.

Gareth: Hi, thank you, Natasha.

N: So guys, first I want to congratulate you on an incredible ICO raise. A real achievement; seventeen million.

J: Oh, thank you for that. The number, though, we’re not really going to take congratulations for yet, because we’re still in the middle of doing our auditing. But, but thank you in general.

N: It was a good raise. I’m also going to commiserate [with, ed.] you guys because I did see that recently you’ve had a lawsuit filed against Paragon Coin for violating a securities law. And I don’t think there’s a founder out there that doesn’t have huge sympathy with you right now, knowing what a massively tricky area this is to create an ICO and you know, have to deal with the SEC legislation.

H: Yeah, thank you. I mean, unfortunately to me, to Gareth, to everyone in this company, it’s a norm for doing business in the U.S. Like, in a way, it’s this legal form of racketeering and in my personal opinion it’s unconstitutional for both sides of the lawsuit. Lawyers are clearly abusing this practice, especially in the U.S. For example, many of our community members just loved the idea described in our Paragon white paper and bought PRG tokens because they trusted what we were going to deliver and trusted what we promised to deliver, but there’s, like I said, unfortunately, lawyers that are just trying to bring this complicated nature of the securities laws that, uh, that we believe are not even applicable to our case in hopes of just getting a settlement. I mean, we know that that’s all they want.

They know that they’re not going to win, they want just some sort of settlement and I’ve seen a lot of ads on Twitter and on Google from these lawyers trying to find any plaintiffs to join their case against Paragon. And they’re talking about PRG purchasers losing money if they either – you know, it’s like they either don’t understand, or they’ just pretending not to understand that it’s not about the loss of money. It would be a loss of money if we failed to build what we promised, but so far we’ve been on track on with our road map and we’ve been successful in achieving everything that we’ve promised in our white paper to these lines, deadlines of our roadmap. Umm, and we’re optimistic that we’ll beat our own deadlines; to be honest, we’ve already done it with some of them. And frankly, I see this as abusive to our community, to us, to the team.

H: Well, how are you going to handle this? You know, [Are, ed.] you guys goin’ to lawyer up? You know, what’s your strategy on this to handle this?

W: Yeah, well, from the very beginning we took this extremely seriously and we strapped up with lawyers from the very, very, very beginning before we even announced what we were doing, so, we’ve been prepared and done everything that we can from the very beginning and with staying within regulation so we had lawyers then, we still have lawyers now. Some of our lawyers have even worked in the SEC before, so we’re not threatened or worried, or – we’re not worried about the securities laws that these other little lawyers are trying to come after us for.

N: Umm, I want to touch on a few different topics, yeah, the first one is your road map, yeah. So, I went and I had a look at the site and I can see that you posted a demo of the Paragon ledger, yeah. And for people out there, what does ‘demo’ mean. Is this a live NVP on the chain or this a just a mock-up, a click-through mock up.

G: Well, the supply tracking on blockchain, that was a sneak peak, and essentially what we wanted to do there is demonstrate our proof of concept of how this was going to work. Since wire contracts are relatively new, and storing data in them for a supply chain is also a new concept, what we wanted to do is show people how that worked, how we’re going to approach it and why it’s a better approach. Ahm, so it’s not a live demo yet that people can use, it was just a demonstration of how we’re doing that now today.

N: OK, so guys, how are you on your DAPS marketplace, where are you build-wise?

G: We’re currently still working on our beta, so our team is currently working on the development, that’s something we’re trying to expedite as soon as possible, but naturally we don’t want to end up releasing several elements in a slow paced manner. We’d rather get a full suite ready and release that in one go and make sure that functionality wise everything is right and we beta test it as much as possible.

N: OK cool. Guys, I want to ask you some questions around the team because there have been questions thrown out in the broader community. You guys have been questioned by leading ICO sites like verifiedico and aboutforex about whether your team has the experience, the skills, to pull this off. Jessica, you’re CEO, but you’ve got no experience previously in tech startup land, you’ve got no experience in tech accelerators, but you are planning to run an accelerator program. You’ve got no experience in the app space, but you’re planning to build an app marketplace, and you’re not really from the fintech industry and yet you’re going to be running a payment processing business with your wallet and coin. So I want to ask on behalf of the broader community, what do you think qualifies you to lead and scout Paragon?

H: Well, there are few things here that you asked, so one of them, the negative reviews from the sites that you had mentioned – unfortunately, there are… it’s a pay-to-play. This, thus requiring large payments to write good reviews, and I along with my team didn’t feel this was just journalism. A lot of the time, you can contact them and pay a review fee and they’ll update the review to a more positive one. We just chose not to do that. And, umm, I haven’t been to these ones, but that’s usually the case. And regards the credibility of our team.

N: Well, I’m specifically actually asking about you about your background.

H: OK, yeah, so. This is for me. I’m of this certain school of thought here, a very particular one. Any company that doesn’t see themselves as a tech company first is already losing. Any company I’ve been a part of, my outlook has been through this one type of lens. Furthermore, scale is a frame of mind. All masters of scale were at one time just dreamers with an idea. And you’ve mentioned about not – I can’t remember everything, but not from fintech, or a few things that you mentioned but I have an amazing…

N: No fintech, no app experience, no high tech accelerator experience.

H: So I have an amazing CTO, who owns this software outsourcing company in Ukraine. If you follow anything software developing, [sic] at least a little, you probably know that it’s in the best – it’s one of the best places for outsourcing. Umm, incredible talent, he’s got it all there. So, whatever I’m lacking, he’s able to find the people to support that.

N: I’m still gonna stay on the topic of the team, OK? So, you’ve got a Chief Creative Officer in the senior team. Now, forgive me, I’ve got no idea what a creative officer is doing in a startup trying to mainstream the cannabis industry. I’m trying to work this out. Is he going to be running your accelerator and your community? Is that his focus?

H: No, so the accelerator and the community, that’s coming later. Umm, you’re talking about our creative officer. He’s had a number of companies that he’s been a part of. So, he started his first business when he was sixteen years old, the first printed magazine called Planet Internet, I believe, and had a multi-million dollar exit that same year. He launched his magazine to promote the internet in Russia after the Soviet Union, which was pretty cool. Every time we go back, people are always talking about that. He was the second web design company in Russia, he even launched the first public wi-fi hotspot in Moscow, which I cannot imagine living in a place that didn’t have that option, ahhm, so he was ahead of his time. He later moved to the Dominican Republic and founded a company that was officially representing Apple, Bang & Olufsen, and not sure if you remember these Virtu phones in Latin America – another successful venture. In total he’s had dozens of business experiences and most of them were IT-related, which is what we’re doing now with Paragon, since we’re focused on the blockchain. Some failed, some were really successful, it’s just part of, you know, being a serial entrepreneur. But it gave him tremendous experience and that experience is helping him now with what we’re doing.

N: OK, so what is he doing as Chief Creative Officer?

H: He’s literally doing everything, to be honest. Any, anything that I have a question of, he’s the one saying “yes, this works,”, “no, this doesn’t work”. He has way more tech experience than I do, umm, he’s extremely creative, he has such a vision. So, this all kind’uv started because I had this cannabis company in the past, and I was having trouble trusting the transparency of the lab results I was getting and we’ve always been a fan of crypto and blockchain so I just said, “Do you think that this is something that could work? Could we put these lab results and data on the blockchain for me to track and trace it, basically, because I was getting lab results that were fabricated.” He said, “Absolutely, let me call my developers, let me see what we can do,” and we started going that way. So he’s been here since the very beginning.

N: Sure, so it sounds like he’s the strategy within the group, that like, he’s the strategic driver. It’s just that I’m not understanding the job title. Umm, it’s just a strange job title to, to put into any startup. I’ve never seen it in my nineteen years in the startup tech space. Umm, so I’ve obviously seen it in the marketing and digital agency space, but I’ve never seen it in the tech startup space. Hence my question.

(multiple speakers)

H: You take this one.

G:Nah, nah, indeed it’s not a very common title, absolutely, but then again this is also a new space that’s changing a lot of things including job titles, perhaps. Umm, I would say, to best describe Egor is [sic] he’s an extremely creative mind, umm, but on top of that, he’s great at blending strategy with actual operations, and taking ideas and turning them into an actual direction, which is…

(multiple speakers)

H: which is exactly what he did here. It was my idea, my thoughts, my dreams, and Egor just basically made it happen.

N: OK

(multiple speakers)

N: I’ve got a question around your biz dev hires, then I’m off the subject of team.

H: That’s OK

G: OK

N: Umm, so, in your white paper, it states that you’re gonna focus your biz dev hires on building business partnerships inside EMEA, which if anyone doesn’t know, means Europe, Middle East, Africa. But Paragon are U.S.A. focused, so I’m trying to work out what your biz dev people are going to be doing in Europe, Middle East, Africa?

H: Yeah, so when building my core team, I had no idea where we would headquarter, because we wanted the community to decide. Since this is a passion project of mine, I wanted to leave it up to the people that were going to be a part of this to decide where they want everything. Ah, to be honest, we could be headquartered on Mars and it wouldn’t make a difference. Ah, thanks to the internet, we’re all able to work remotely. As we told you earlier before this call, we’re travelling constantly. Umm, and like right now, we do link up in person quite frequently, but it’s not always in the same place at the same time. So, I created a team based on who I felt was best and not necessarily on where they were located. Ahmm…

N: OK, but it says your biz dev people were building partnerships in Europe, Middle East, Africa, and you’re headquartered in the U.S., your first workspace is in LA, so I’m trying to work out what sort of partnerships your biz dev people are building in the Middle East, or in Africa.

G: Sure. Well, we are definitely focusing a lot on Africa, Europe, and of course, the States. So just to, just to clarify, we also hired a new biz dev agent on top of the existing one in the States as soon as we found out that the voted location was Los Angeles. So we are expanding operations there. In addition to that the EMEA reps also work globally; they’re not limited to EMEA. Umm, however, we are seeing that there’s a trend towards cultivating cannabis in Europe as well as Africa, surprisingly, and we’re working with large partners there because we’re seeing now that countries where cannabis has been semi-legal like The Netherlands, for a long time now, it’s still not regulated properly. So we do see a lot of opportunity there and we’re definitely reaching out in these regions as much as possible.

N: OK, Can I ask you some questions around data privacy, yeah?

H: Mmm!

N: In your white paper, Paragon talks about creating a trust and reputation system, where everything across the cannabis industry is captured and stored on an immutable ledger. You guys are building on Ethereum, which is a public blockchain. And I assume that the sort of data that you’re planning to capture will be visible on the chain. So I have a few questions around the privacy of that. Won’t this cause problems for Paragon’s partners in countries where cannabis is still criminalized?

H: No, umm, a lab will not have access to patient data. A patient won’t be able to find the address of a farmer. None of this stuff is going to affect anyone in any way, creating any criminal activity in terms of where it is criminalized, if you think that the country themselves is going to cause problems. If cannabis is still criminalized I would guess no one involved would care to track and trace it there, unless, they wanted to use this transparency to prove to the government that it can be tracked, and it can be traced, and taxed efficiently with Paragon’s solution, which would be amazing.

N: You guys are planning to track cannabis shipments and delivery on the blockchain, according to the white paper. So, I’m just wondering – would your partners become more vulnerable to crime because of this?

H: Oh, no. No, on our blockchain, so – our blockchain is not tracking the delivery in real time. Smart contracts are signed when the package has finally been delivered and at its final destination. Because, honestly, it would be silly to add a million entry points to our blockchain, because it would not only be slow, useless, or expensive, but, it would also be spamming our own blockchain, so it’s not going to track anything live.

N: What about patients buying medicinal cannabis, how will they be identified on the blockchain?

H: Ahh, well, we follow this HIPA compliant, so patients, patients aren’t on our blockchain. You have an ID that patients will have, but their information, their private information will not be on the blockchain.

N: That’s great. That kind’uv answers my question, actually.

H: OK

N: Umm, I want to talk about funding. So, Paragon stated in its white paper that it was planning to use the bulk of its funding to buy property, and you guys explained that the reason you needed to buy property was that real estate landlords won’t rent to the cannabis industry due to federal law. My question is: You’re going to spend the bulk of your 70 million raised on buying property because of federal law in the U.S.A. But why don’t you move your business to a country where cannabis is legal, like The Netherlands or Australia, then you could rent space instead of buying it and sponsor startups in other parts of the world to relocate, and this would sure be cheaper than having to buy up a large property portfolio.

H: Ahhh, gosh. Well, there’s a few things, so let me know if I miss something. Well, The Netherlands and Australia, are… they’re not fully legalized. Same as the U.S. So we’d be facing similar issues.

N: Well, then a country that’s fully legalized, say.

H: If you move this to a country that’s fully legalized, I don’t… that can’t be cost effective to us. We can’t afford just [sic] bring all startups that decide they want to work at our co-working space to another country. I mean, you’re relocating families, you’re relocating businesses, you’re relocating products, I mean warehouses. This is, this is very expensive for these companies – that would cost us way too much. So, it would not work.

N: OK, so what you’re saying is the only way to do this is to buy property in the U.S…

H: No, it’s to buy property wherever the community decides. So, in this instance, the community chose the U.S. Ahhm, and the reason that we need to buy property is if we’re renting, then we’re creating the same exact problems that people are facing now. Right now, some of those problems I know firsthand because I was in this place when I owned my cannabis startup. You go somewhere, you have to legally let them know that you’re a cannabis company, startup or not. They instantly turn you down, because if you do anything illegal, they don’t only lose that one unit in that building that you’re renting, unit 250; they could lose the whole building, because that’s the federal law. They don’t want to rent to us. Another thing is if you do find a place that [sic] is willing to rent to you, it’s usually in a really dodgy neighborhood and ten times more expensive than the guy across the street or down the hall. Most startups can’t afford that. I couldn’t when I had AuBox. So, by owning this, we don’t have any obligations to listen to a landlord. It’s not like we’re growing weed in there, we’re not selling weed. It’s just for people to have a simple place to work, have an office meeting, chat with like-minded people, maybe let somebody smell this new crop that they grew. Ahm, different things like that. So if we own it, we aren’t going to charge a crazy amount of rent and we’ll be in a safe environment.

I think that’s a really good answer, ‘cause I know a lot of people have had questions around why you’re actually buying. I want to talk a little about your business model. There’s a little bit of confusion when going through your white paper. For example, in the white paper, you said 2016, the U.S.A. spent 53 billion on cannabis, and this gives the impression that you guys have got a huge global market, potentially. But I kind’uv went and had a look at this, and actually only seven billion was generated globally in cannabis through legal channels. Now, my understanding is that it’s the legal channel space that you’re going to be playing in. So I’m trying to work out of the seven billion globally generated in revenue through legal channels, how much of that comes from renting work space, because that’s your core business model.

H: So, when it comes to renting workspace, that seven billion has nothing to do with – that. That’s the number from sales of weed…

G: That’s the number of cannabis sales through legal channels. And albeit the market size is estimated anywhere from between 30-60 billion if you include all the illicit sales that are happening. We’re not going to be targeting that specific group in terms of cannabis turnover since we will not use our coin as a payment means for cannabis until it becomes legal to do so in all the jurisdictions that we operate. To put an exact size on how much of the coworking space industry we could take in a percentage is difficult at this point, ‘cause we’re gonna open up our spaces based on the needs of the community, and it’s difficult to put an exact number of how many spaces that will be in future years as locations obviously determine the cost and based on the cost we can only we can determine the seating plan and how much revenue we can derive from each unit.

N: Sure, but in your white paper, OK, you quote WeWorks’ 532 million revenue, as an example of how big your turnover could be. But WeWork operates across 110 locations in order to achieve that kind of revenue. To my mind, you can’t operate across that many locations. Your partners need to be in jurisdictions where cannabis is legal/semi-legal. At last count, that was eight countries. So, I’m just trying to work out, you know, how you guys are going to scale, in terms of your core business model, which is renting workspace.

H: Yeah, so, we gave that number to show how much of a role coworking spaces have played in our community. WeWork is focused on all companies, all startups, all over, versus Paragon is just focused on this niche mark, which is cannabis. So we don’t plan to be as big as WeWork, and we obviously will start with coworking spaces in countries where cannabis is legal, because, you know, well, that’s where they need it the most. Ummm

N: Is it… because it…if you’re gonna start in countries where it’s legal, then surely they don’t have any problems renting workspace.

H: Well look, it’s legal in the U.S., and I couldn’t even rent an office space. It’s like I told you it’s extremely

N: That point

H: An, OK, your platform is.also, ahhh, another revenue stream is gonna be payment processing and you guys said that you’re gonna take nought point hundred millionth of a transaction on your platform, and I think Visa’s best rate is nought point seven, so you’re millions of zeros cheaper than them. I’ve – why have you set the figure so low?

G: That’s because we ultimately don’t plan to be a complete for-profit when it comes to providing our white label solutions, or providing access. What we really want to do is give everyone access to this newly transparent market and help the industry sort of regulate itself. We’re going to provide them with the tools, and they’re going to be able to use them. And we want that to be as affordable and cheap as possible for everyone involved.

N: OK. When I thought about your rental model, guys, it reminded me, this is – might sound a bit strange, but it reminded me a bit of McDonald’s, because McDonald’s as a franchiser would buy up land, and lease this to the franchisee to build a McDonald’s and as a result over the years, McDonald’s has ended up being the largest commercial real estate developer in the world. Is this your end-game? Are you planning to do a Ronald McDonald?

H: I do love McDonald’s French fries, but no, our model is only particularly based on the co-working spaces. We’re focused on our blockchain, or it’s not only based on our co-working spaces, it’s based on our blockchain solution. So, the co-working spaces are a hub of innovation and allow like-minded groups to cross paths, but it’s not something that we’re focused on buying up tons of them, you know, it’s – it’s just something small here, it’s not our goal to buy every real estate office that there is for co-working.

N: Understood. And you won’t be serving French fries.

Maybe. Maybe we’ll be doing something with McDonald’s.

N: And I have a kind’uv left-field question, here, around your coin, actually, nothing too contentious. But, your coin has been trading pretty consistently at around 70 cents since launch, and then I noticed in December it suddenly spiked to $1.57, and when I went to look, I couldn’t see any press announcements around that time, so I’m wondering why it spiked.

H: I know, I go so many calls and texts for the same thing. It actually, at one point even did something crazier and higher, forget when it was. But we don’t control that, so I honestly can’t tell you what spiked it. I do see sometimes when I give an interview or some news comes out, more kind of is being talked about or moved around in there. But, I mean, there’s so many factors that could’ve contributed to this, however I honestly can’t tell you. I have no idea what happened.

N: Glitch in the Matrix, eh?

H: Yeah, there, you know, there’s people doing

G: Yeah, it’s the free market, so it could be a lot of things, right. You can’t control it, but it could’ve been, hypothetically, someone who just bought up the whole order book, for example, and just spiked the price up.

N: I’ve got a question around your accelerator. So, Paragon says 10 million Paragon coins will be set aside to fund startups building on top of your open source platform, and startups will get funded based on your community voting for them. Are you guys going to build a Kickstarter-type site for startups to list and pitch their white papers?

H: Umm, I’d say it’s, it’s like a mixture of Steema and Y Combinator. Applicants will pitch their idea to the community to get votes. In exchange – umm, in a similar manner where Steema posters earn crypto for creating content. Top ideas on our platform will not only earn PRG during such voting procedures, but will – well, us as a company, we will hand pick out of those and help grow their business one-on-one.

N: Cool! Last question, guys. What’s been your biggest learning curve since your ICO? What advice do you have for other crypto startups?

H: Gosh!

G: Do you want to go first?

H Yeah, I’ll go. So, we can both answer this. We were trying to take turns, back and forth, but I think it’d be cool – we can both. Umm, so for me, coming into this, I already knew a lot about blockchain, cryptocurrency and cannabis, but I would say I’ve definitely grown from someone with just a general level of knowledge to a much deeper and technical understanding of the blockchain, which is this amazing thing that’s coming up. Umm, I’ve come to see a pattern with regulations in regards to cryptocurrency around the world that I didn’t really see before because I was just focused on my coins that I had. And I’ve learned a lot more ever changing regulations, but, with this cannabis industry in different countries around the world then I’ve seen so many people that are so passionate about it. Ahh, I’ve just learned so many different types of people that use it, and gosh. The advice I would give to any crypto startup? I would say for those people to ask themselves if this is something that’s needed. For Paragon, I created this because it was something I needed when running AuBox, the monthly subscription for medical marijuana in San Francisco. Since it didn’t exist and I needed it, I decided to create it. So, only create something that’s genuinely needed, and if it’s something that you need, then others probably do, too.

G: I’ve got maybe a bit of advice to add on to that, I guess, from my experience. What I would advise any startup is to take security extremely, extremely serious. Because there are a lot of people out there that have the worst intentions and are going to try and extort money from any kind of project that’s in its early stages. So I would advise everyone to make sure that they’re fully locked up with two factor, and ensure that no one else has access to any of their units. That’s something that I would absolutely advise, as well as to take into consideration before paying anything to any members or third-parties, because people like to throw a big markup on as soon as they hear the word ‘blockchain startup’. So there’s a lot more negotiation involved.

N: I think there’s a really juicy story behind that two-factor security thing, you just said, Gareth. Maybe that’s a topic for another interview.

G: Maybe, yeah, that could be a good follow-up. It’s a really big deal, sometimes.

N: Well, guys, that’s, ah, that’s our post-ICO review finished, and I really want to genuinely wish you guys the best of luck in pulling this off. I think you’ve clearly identified a business need, and if you can do it, fantastic.

H: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us.

N: Thanks, guys!

ICO News

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ramialkarmi · 6 years

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BetterWorks lost employees and customers to a sexual harassment scandal — here's how its new CEO plans to win them back

Doug Dennerline, a veteran of Cisco and Salesforce and an experienced CEO, recently took the chief executive role at BetterWorks.

BetterWorks, a human resources software company, replaced founding CEO Kris Duggan after a lawsuit from June alleged that he sexually harassed an employee and fostered an inhospitable culture.

Now Dennerline is tasked with moving the company forward, and convincing employees and customers alike that he can correct the course of the troubled startup.

To start, BetterWorks is focusing on diversity and inclusion training for employees. Plus, employees have gotten new perks like paternity leave.

Doug Dennerline has spent most of the past 30 years as a tech executive and CEO, but this week he took on what could prove to be one of the most challenging roles of his career.

Wednesday was Dennerline's first day as the CEO of BetterWorks, a human resources software company that has seen employee and customer attrition in the seven months since a lawsuit alleging an inhospitable work environment, as well as sexual harassment on the part of his predecessor in the role, Kris Duggan.

A handful of executives left the company since July, including a chief marketing officer and the vice president of engineering — departures stemming from the impact the allegations had on the company and its culture, Dennerline says.

Around half a dozen human resources customers also stopped doing business with the company, fearful of associating with BetterWorks as it navigated the controversy.

Dennerline and his team have taken steps towards setting things right at BetterWorks: While Duggan remains on the BetterWorks board, he no longer comes to the office at all, says Dennerline. And the company has adjusted its corporate culture and code of conduct — for instance employees are now limited to two drinks, maximum, at company events.

With those changes coming into place, it's now up to Dennerline to convince employees and customers alike that his leadership represents a new chapter for the scandal-ridden startup.

Dennerline, who joined BetterWorks as chairman in October, has spent the last few months attending management meetings and figuring out what's going on at the company.

He talked with Business Insider in the morning of his first day as CEO. Here's how he plans to take the company forward.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Peterson: What's your first task now that you've started your new role?

Dennerline: One of the first things that we're doing is that I'm going to spend 30 minutes with every single employee here in the next four weeks. I actually feel like I have a relatively good idea of the product roadmap and the people in the organization.

It's just a matter of being able to set up a cadence — I call it a rhythm — for the business. We even spent sometime when I was a chairman to put in place a business plan for this year.

And I've been actively looking into some key personnel that I want to bring into the organization. I hired a woman that I worked with at WebEx when I was the CEO of WebEx internally at Cisco. She's now our chief marketing officer. We're now looking for a VP of engineering as another key hire. And we have some wonderful candidates in that space as well.

It's kind of business as usual coming in and being here and running the company.

Peterson: Were those roles left unfilled after Kris Duggan stepped down as CEO?

Dennerline: They were. Kris stepped down the day after I started, and the marketing person left about two days later. The VP of engineering left post the announcement.

The company started an 'open mic' and unconscious bias training

Peterson: You mentioned that you've started hosting an "open mic" where employees can ask questions to management. Can you give me a sense of how as a company you're trying to address cultural issues? How do you see the problem?

Dennerline: I don't even know that there is a problem at this point. People that couldn't get over personally in their hearts the impact of the event have largely left the organization. The culture — these guys have really attacked this problem head on. They've done diversity and inclusion groups. Lots of conversations around what that means.

We did a formal training where were brought an outside firm in to bring us through unconscious bias training. We put every employee through that training.

We're very transparent about anybody who has a question. We address that publicly.

And then there's the fact that when you go through a situation like this, you really do become hyper aware of your person, and how you show up and how you treat people. I believe that is a side benefit, if there is one, for having gone through a traumatic event like this company has had.

Peterson: I know Kris is still on the board. How do you think employees feel about him still being connected to the company?

Dennerline: I think they're mixed. He's got such a non-visible role that I don't think it's really impactful for anybody. He literally doesn't come. We don't even have the board meetings in the office, we do it at the office of our investors, Kleiner Perkins. So he's really non-existent for anybody. There's no interaction with employees. So it's as if he's gone.

We don't even have the board meetings in the office, we do it at the office of our investors, Kleiner Perkins. So [Kris is] really non-existant for anybody. There's no interaction with employees. So it's as if he's gone.

Peterson: Let's talk about the future of the company. You said that there were some clients that were dropped. How are you positioning yourself to new customers and how are you winning them back?

Dennerline: I've spoken with two or three who were contemplating whether to move forward or not, and there was no CEO. They didn't know how to deal with that.

I met with them personally and let them know that I was on as chairman and my intention was to come on as CEO, and that we had taken this very seriously. And I told them about the things we're doing internally so that we could do everything in our power so that nothing like this would happen again.

Peterson: Do you think that the half a dozen companies that did end up leaving were more concerned about being associated with the company, or do you think they were upset about the content of the two lawsuits?

I don't really know to be honest. I'm sure they all had different reasons. I spoke to two of them that went away. They just said they felt, for their roles, to be associated with a company that had been accused of harassment wasn't reflective of a company you want to do business with. And they parted ways.

Employees are now restricted to two drinks at work events

Peterson: You said you've made changes to make sure it won't happen again. Can you give me a sense of what those changes are?

Dennerline: It's the education. The knowledge. It's the individuals learning about what sexual harassment is and what harassment in the workplace is. They want it to go away as much as anyone else.

We weren't a harassment culture to begin with, so it's not like there was some dramatic change that had to occur internally. But having gone through this, they've seen the devastation of what it causes to lives and to people and to companies, and I think everybody here has learned from that and are behaving in a way that we want them to behave.

Now I can't ever guarantee that someone doesn't harass somebody. All of us in the leadership team are hyper aware of making sure we keep an eye out for that. And we will continue to do that.

Peterson: Have you made any of the changes that some other companies have made, like eliminating alcohol from work events and things like that?

Dennerline: We actually didn't have any statement in our code of conduct in regard to alcohol. We now do.

We actually didn't have any statement in our code of conduct in regard to alcohol. We now do.

We basically will offer you two drink tickets at a company sponsored event for you to have two cocktails. We also tell people if for whatever reason you end up with more than two cocktails that you find a ride home and don't get behind a wheel of a car and get home safely.

We also added what we thought were more progressive benefits for an HR company, like paternity leave and others. We want to lead the way as well.

Peterson: So it's not just about sexual harassment, you're trying to reduce sexism in general?

Dennerline: Completely. It's all about diversity inclusion.

Peterson: Did race come up as well as an issue at the company?

Dennerline: Currently in the company it has not.

Business was hurt, but nothing 'devastating' happened financially

Peterson: On the business-side, do you have any goals as a new CEO?

Dennerline: Well, it is day one. We did actually go off-site with the management team and put some goals in place for the organization that were just rolling out. I haven't rolled them out so I'd rather not share them until the people internally get to look at those. But they're pillars around growth, retention of our customers, direction of the product, and diversity inclusion being a core value in the company.

Peterson: Do you see the last few months as having any impact on financials?

Dennerline: From a revenue and a bookings perspective, we were off slightly on the plan that we put in place prior to the event, but it certainly has not been devistating or instrumental, so that's been encouraging.

Even prior to me getting here, they made a strategic decision to change directions a bit.

The company was formed on a goals-only application that we used fondly internally as OKRs — objective and key results. It's really the reason that John Doerr is so passionate about the company, because he worked for Andy Grove, who is the father of that term in Silicon Valley. And John has taught that term to Google, to Amazon.com. He's passionate about the impact that's had on companies.

What we've added to that, in the last year and a half, was the notion of continuous performance management. The annual performance review is a broken process. HR people hate it. The managers hate it. The people that get a performance review hate it. We're changing that so that we create an opportunity for managers and employees to not only have a conversation about what their goals are but what their personal aspirations are as well. We have a conversation capability inside the application, a peer feedback, we have a recognition wall. It's much more social than traditional performance management.

Peterson: In terms of the company brand, do you think that BetterWorks will be able to recover from this, or is there any conversation about rebranding?

Dennerline: We certainly had a conversation around that. We actually hired a company I've used in my past called WHM who I respect. They're doing some work for us right now to inform us by talking to employees, customers, people that aren't our customers any more, analysts about what is the perception of BetterWorks in the market, and inform a decision that potentially could rebrand.

I actually don't think that renaming is the direction we will head. We don't want people to perceive that we're trying to cover something up. That's not what we want to accomplish.

We get confused with FitBit, if you look at our brand today in terms of the icon next to it. So we probably will rebrand, but we probably won't rename. I'm waiting to be informed through data.

SEE ALSO: $1.6 billion cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase isn't adding Ripple after all — and it's obvious why not

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