#the vast majority of severe crashes and fatalities are men

[ms-hells-bells]

my sister is going on a trip and i asked him “can you make sure she has a woman uber driver” and he’s like “She’s gonna crash her and they’ll both die and never make it to her location” and my sis and dad both laughed and i wasn’t laughing and he said “Cmon it’s funny. Don’t you get it? it’s because women can’t drive” and they laughed again, like NO SO SHE DOESNT GET FUCKIN ASSAULTED.

say 'guess men are stupid as well as bad drivers, because they cause the majority of crashes, not women, but they just blame everything on us as usual and take no responsibility'. watch them get mad despite making the same claims at you.

#some studies purportedly show that women are involved in more crashes than men in relation to distance travelled #BUT #women's crashes are extremely less likely to be their fault or cause fatalirty #the vast majority of severe crashes and fatalities are men #and it's usually their fault with reckless driving #country also plays a big part #shitty roads few following the rules cars not designed for women etc. #sex age difference also matters #the majority of crashes are young men #overall men cause about 70% of crashes in western countries

[jarmes]

History of the Golden Valhalla Tournament

Some worldbuilding/history for Double Elimination

The following was taken from the official Tournament website on the third of May, 2234.

Of all the sport and entertainment available to citizens of the WGC, none have had quite the impact of the Golden Valhalla Tournament. A no holds barred showdown between the world’s greatest warriors for the ultimate reward, a wish from our glorious Goddess Marilyn Maia, the Tournament has grown to become more than a sport; rather, it has become a core part of our society’s identity.

The success of the Tournament can be traced largely to its core difference from other combat sports: the Tournament features few rules about what is and is not allowed in a fight. Unlike other sports, where you will see who is the best at punching, or who is the best at swordplay, or who is the best at wind magic, the Golden Valhalla Tournament shows who is the best at combat period. The Tournament determines who is the best at a core human concept existing since time immemorial: combat.

In spite of its current greatness, the Tournament came from rather humble origins. The beginning of the Tournament can be traced back to 2176, when Tournament creator Jayanta Asturias attended the Assembly of 99, a yearly dinner where governmental officials, business executives, and entertainers are invited to meet with Marilyn Maia. At these events, each guest was given an opportunity to ask Maia a single question.

During the 2276 Assembly, similarly to Assemblies both before and after, a majority of the questions fell into predictable categories. Some members of the Assembly asked for guidance. Some asked for blessings. Some asked grand questions about the universe. Bolder assemblymen asked Maia to use her grand abilities for their own benefit. These requests were almost always met with apathy, with only the most selfless requests being answered.

At the 2276 Assembly, Jayanta Asturias, then just a popular sports announcer and journalist, asked Marilyn Maia a question no mortal had ever asked her before: How are you feeling? A hush fell over the room as Maia stared down Asturias. Asturias took a deep breath and continued speaking, saying It must be hard, taking care of the entire world.

Maia laughed. We all must take the hands we have been dealt, she said with a smile. She then asked her own question to Asturias, Would you like to have dinner sometime? Three days later, the man and the Goddess met for dinner and spent an entire night talking, starting a friendship that would last for the rest of Asturias’s life.

In the years following his meeting with the Goddess, Asturias’s intellect and natural charisma led to incredible fame and wealth. In 2189, Asturias used his fortune to create his own television network named Butterfly. Asturias, a lifetime fan of combat sports, began work on a live fighting tournament to air on his network. This tournament eventually became the Golden Valhalla Tournament.

For his humble First Tournament, Jayanta Asturias recruited sixteen men and women from various cities around the globe. The tournament was held in the Chrysalis Gardens, a five thousand seat sporting arena in downtown City 49. It began on May 15th, 2191. The First Tournament took five days, with three matches occurring each day. Unlike later Tournaments, the First Tournament featured no loser’s bracket and had strict rules against killing. Although the early matches only gathered around four million viewers each, the First Tournament’s popularity skyrocketed on the fourth and fifth days, with the final match gathering fifty million live viewers.

The viewing public weren’t the only ones sucked in by the First Tournament; Marilyn Maia fell in love with the Tournament from its very first match. After the third day of the Tournament, Maia announced that she would use her vast magical abilities to grant a single wish for the Tournament’s winner, in recognition of the incredible heroism shown in battle.

Unfortunately, the First Tournament is primarily remembered nowadays for its disastrous final match. The final battle occurred between Regina Diefenbach, a mercenary with the ability to turn any object she touched into a bomb, and Gallus Silvano, an elderly man with a criminal record who used magic to create sharp swords out of light and temporarily boost his strength, speed, and stamina by entering a state called Sage Mode. Although code names were not used during the First Tournament, modern fans usually refer to Diefenbach and Silvano as Bombshell and Sage respectively. The battle between Sage and Bombshell went out of control, with the two fighters exiting the arena and battling in the stands. Twelve spectators died during the chaos. Ultimately, the battle ended with Silvano killing Diefenbach by stabbing her through the eye.

Two days following the fight, Marilyn Maia announced that she would not honor Silvano’s wish, on account of his numerous rule violations, including: exiting the arena during a match, endangering the lives of spectators, and killing his opponent. This decision was quite controversial both then and today. Silvano, who wanted to wish for eternal youth, spent several months appealing this decision. Ultimately, his appeals were denied. Since then, Silvano has disappeared from the public eye.

The First Tournament was, by most accounts, an absolute failure. Asturias’s credibility, wealth, and relationship with Maia all fell apart in the final moments of his Tournament. Still, Asturias saw something remarkable in the First Tournament and began work to create a new Tournament. With Maia’s approval, Asturias recruited 32 fighters for the Second Tournament, which began on June 6th, 2294.

In addition to having double the competitors of the First Tournament, the Second Tournament featured much stricter safety standards to protect live spectators. Interestingly, the Second Tournament changed the elimination rules from its predecessor; while the First Tournament allowed for matches to end via forfeit or countdown, the Second Tournament limited methods of elimination to solely include knockout. According to Jayanta Asturias, this change was made to allow fighters to fight for as long as physically possible, something they deserved the right to do, considering the stakes of each fight. This rule change was widely popular and appeared in all subsequent Tournaments. In an attempt to avoid repeating the debacle of the First Tournament, killing was permitted. Despite the rule change, no fighter dared kill another, making the Second Tournament the only Tournament with zero fatalities.

The Second Tournament’s winner was Shevaun Howard, aka Cobalt, a mutant liberation activist with blue skin and the ability to teleport. Cobalt’s controversial political beliefs made her a base breaking fighter. Still, her determination and overwhelming power allowed her to win the Second Tournament, beating out runner up Collider in the process. Cobalt used her wish to bring her husband Sindri, who had been murdered by anti-mutant terrorists while his wife was fighting in the Tournament. Unfortunately, Cobalt and Sindri were both killed four years later, during the early days of the Invasion.

The Third Tournament, beginning on July 1st, 2297, continued the success of the second tournament. The Third Tournament featured heavy competition from several powerful fighters, including Wyvern, Striker, and Zombie. Ultimately, the Third Tournament was won by Miro “Vulcan” Caiden, an engineer who fought using a suit of heavily armed power armor. Caiden used his wish to greatly increase his intelligence, becoming the smartest man in human history. After the Third Tournament, Vulcan’s small tech startup, Vulcan was acquired and expanded by EWC. Vulcan went on to become one of the chief inventors of technology for the World Government Coalition military and played a critical role in fending off the Invasion.

The Fourth Tournament was originally scheduled for June 23rd, 2300. Expectations were high, with many predicting that the Fourth Tournament would be the best one yet. Unfortunately, the world changed two months before the Tournament. On April 10th, 2300, a 400-meter long pillar of metal and glass crashed down in the center of City 32. The resulting shockwave killed thousands, but was only a precursor for what would come next. Panels on the side of the pillar slid open and released hundreds of hulking alien monsters.

After ten hours of fighting from the local police, WGC Military, and even Marilyn Maia herself, the threat was finally quelled. But, the battle was far from over. Analysis of the ship by Miro Caiden revealed that the pillar that crashed in City 32 was a mere scouting vessel, and that the rest of the fleet would be arriving in two short weeks. During the scramble to prepare for the Invasion, the Fourth Tournament was quietly canceled. Still, the preparations for the Fourth Tournament were of some use; all of the fighters scouted for the Tournament enlisted in the WGC military without a second thought. Delta Squad, a team led by several of the Tournament’s most anticipated fighters, including Redwing, Arcane, Justice, and Quicksand, played a pivotal role in several key battles and became a symbol of hope for the helpless citizens hiding in their bunkers. On December 17th, 2302, after two and a half years of fighting, the Invader mothership appeared in the sky above City 82. Marilyn Maia, using her vast magical abilities, tore a hole in the side of the mothership, allowing several members of Delta Squad to destroy the ship to put an end to the war once and for all.

When it was announced that the Fourth Tournament had been rescheduled for May 2304, many were skeptical. The world had just gone through the bloodiest war in human history, who would want to see more violence? Maia and Asturias pushed past these short-sighted critiques and gave us a spectacular event that honored those who risked their lives for our world. In doing so, they helped to bring a fractured world back together.

The Fourth Tournament began on May 17th, 2304. It was held at Valhalla Coliseum, an arena built by Vulcan on the small pacific island of Fitafita and featured 32 fighters. The final match was fought between Metrophanes “Redwing” James and Jude “Patriot” Romilly, two members of Delta Squad. Redwing, out of loyalty to his friend and comrade, forfeited the final match, making Patriot the fourth Champion. Using his wish, Patriot helped to fix the lasting damage of the Invasion.

The Fifth Tournament, beginning on June 28th, 2307, doubled the number of fighters to 64, doubling the Tournament’s length in the process. Like the Fourth Tournament before it, the Fifth Tournament was won by a member of Delta Squad: Kulap “Quicksand” Trueman, a soldier with the ability to telekinetically manipulate sand. Quicksand was unable to fight in the Fourth Tournament due to injuries sustained during the Invasion. She used her wish to restore her damaged body. Quicksand spent the next ten years hunting down anti-government radicals in the Outlands, founding the elite group known as the SPARTAN Squadron. In 2317, she perished at the hands of an unknown opponent, presumed to be related to the terrorist organization Ragnarok.

The Sixth Tournament, beginning on July 1st, 2310, continued the trend of doubling the size of the Tournament and featured 128 unique fighters, the most of any Tournament before or since. Unfortunately, this led to the average fighter being much weaker and resulted in a Tournament that drug on for far too long. Although the Sixth Tournament featured a large number of fighters, discussions of the Sixth Tournament are almost exclusively centered around its controversial Champion: Adelais “Hellfire” Stendahl.

Hellfire possessed a versatile palette of powers, including enhanced strength, flight, near-immortality, and the ability to summon cursed black fire that created unhealable wounds. The source of Hellfire’s terrible strength was revealed at the end of the Sixth Tournament’s final match; in reality, Adelais Stendahl was a vessel possessed by Lucifer, one of the five Ancient Gods and older sibling of Marilyn Maia.

When Maia confronted Hellfire about this following the final match, Hellfire attempted to kill Maia. Maia survived, but sixteen spectators were killed by Hellfire’s flames. As punishment, Maia revoked Hellfire’s wish, and instead gave it to Jayanta Asturias, who used it to imprison Hellfire on a desolate island called Devil’s Rock. Hellfire stayed imprisoned on this island for the next thirty-three years.

The Seventh Tournament, by comparison, was far less noteworthy. Beginning on June 29th, 2313, the Seventh Tournament returned the number of fighters to 64, a decision kept in later Tournaments. Notable fighters of the Seventh Tournament include Lion, Matchstick, Lovecraft, and of course, Legion. Arastoo Van Rompaye, the orphaned son of a Federal Chancellor killed by Ragnarok terrorists, fought at the young age of seventeen under the name Legion. Using his ability to create duplicates of himself, Legion won both the hearts of the audience and the title of Seventh Champion.

Rather than using his wish for personal gain, Legion wished to become Marilyn Maia’s knight and protector. Honoring this wish, Maia amplified Legion’s duplication abilities and entrusted him with her personal collection of Magical Weapons. Legion was assigned to work as Maia’s personal bodyguard. In the years since his victory, Legion has become both chief General of the WGC Military and head of the SPARTAN Squadron.

Tragedy struck the final night of the Seventh Tournament, when Tournament creator and chief producer Jayanta Asturias was murdered by members of the terrorist organization Ragnarok. Marilyn Maia called for a national week of mourning, honoring the death of one of history’s greatest minds. He was sixty-eight years old. With Asturias’s death, the fate of the Tournament was left uncertain. Out of dedication to her fallen friend and to the people of her world, Marilyn Maia continued the Tournament, announcing that the Eight Tournament would begin on schedule in 2216.

Still, the question of who would host the Tournament remained. Hundreds of prospective hosts were personally interviewed by Marilyn Maia. Ultimately, she decided on Faustino Nash, a popular comedian and talk show host. Reception to Faust was mixed. But, to be fair, reception to any new host would have been similarly mixed.

Two months prior to the beginning of the Eighth Tournament, Marilyn Maia made a startling announcement. The Eighth Tournament would feature a new mechanic called the Redemption Bracket. After the ending of the Main Bracket, the Tournament would continue, with willing fighters joining a new bracket. Unlike the Main Bracket, the matches in this new bracket would only end when one of the two competing fighters fell in battle. According to Maia, this idea was originally pitched by Asturias during the planning of the Fourth Tournament, but was rejected by her due to fears of negative reception.

The response to this new bracket was controversial, with many critics writing the Tournament as barbaric and cruel. Maia assuaged these fears with her famous “What is cruelty” speech, given live from Fitafita as millions watched.

What does it mean, to be cruel? I have been called cruel many times over the years. I ended war and brought peace and prosperity to this world, I have cured diseases and stopped armageddon, I have dedicated myself to others, yet they call me cruel. When I united the world, they called me cruel. When I fought off the evil that was the Priests of the Damned, they called me cruel. When I created the Golden Valhalla Tournament, they called me cruel. Again and again, they have called my kindness cruelty.

This is not a critique of my results, for the greatness of my deeds is plain to see. Rather, it is a critique of my methods. There are those out there who have not faced strife who look down upon me with contempt for my willingness to do what is necessary. Those who wish for me to limit my power and do nothing to stop the festering evil threatening to destroy the world that I have built, out of reverence for the monsters that wish to burn our cities to the ground. These people would rather I sit back and watch as a terrorist guns down a hundred innocent souls, for it would be cruel for me to interfere.

I do not care for these people. They are not just foolish, but arrogant, treating themselves as saints for their willingness to judge others. I do not let the concerns of these people dictate my actions.

Once again, these people have turned their crosshairs on me and called me cruel. Cruel for offering salvation to those willing to give everything for it, cruel for giving my fighters the opportunity to seek their dreams, cruel for honoring the wishes and legacy of a departed friend. The critics are not brave enough to step foot in my arena. No, they are academics and activists, people who have lived lives dedicated not to work, but to criticizing those who have strived to improve society. They do not understand the importance of the Tournament. They do not care about those who fight to cure diseases or to revive fallen loved ones. They see our Champions and call them barbarians.

If someone is willing to die for their dreams, is it not right to give them a chance to fight? Is it not moral to allow people to decide for themselves when they have had enough? This Redemption Bracket is not something that people are forced to compete in; entry into the second bracket is completely voluntary.

So again, I ask, what is cruelty? Is it cruel, to allow people to chase their dreams? Or is it cruel to strip that choice away, to deprive others of their freedom for the sake of our own moral compasses? The answer, I pray, is obvious.

The Eight Tournament began on June 30th, 2216, and began a new era for the Tournament. The setting was switched from the arena atop Fitafita to a massive flying stadium floating by the island, designed by Miro Caiden. Ten fighters ultimately signed up for the Redemption Bracket. When the dust cleared, the last fighter standing was Nitya “Phantom” Babineaux, a cat-burglar with the ability to alter her body’s density, allowing her to increase her physical strength and turn intangible to phase through attacks. Babineaux wished for wealth and became the second richest person alive in an instant. Babineaux continued working as a thief for several years before switching to a career in politics. In 2229, she was elected to the position of Federal Chancellor of the WGC, a position she still holds.

Although the Eighth Tournament was mostly a success, with praise thrown towards the new arena, ruleset, and spectacular fights, Faustino Nash’s role as announcer received criticism. Most of said criticism was aimed at his absence of combat knowledge, leading to the fights having the in-depth, insightful commentary of Jayanta Asturias. Starting with the Ninth Tournament, Seventh Champion Arastoo Van Rompaye was given the role of co-host. The dynamic between Faust and Legion brought back many fans who left following Asturias’s death, and finalized the format of the Golden Valhalla Tournament.

The Ninth Tournament, starting on July 1st, 2219, continued the success of the Eight Tournament. Its Champion was Herman Wayne, aka Pharaoh, an engineer and protege of Vulcan who fought using a tank-like suit of armor. He personally requested for his wish to be kept a secret. The Ninth Tournament featured no major problems, but faltered in the ratings for unknown reasons.

The Tenth Tournament, beginning June 28th, 2222, was marred by a scandal regarding the identity of its Champion. Benesh Monet and Sigal Monet, a pair of twin mages who disguised themselves as a single fighter called Gemini. This blatant destruction of Tournament rules, covered up and abetted by Tournament executives close to the Monets infuriated Maia, who stripped the Monets of their win and removed the executives responsible from their power. Following the Tenth Tournament, Marilyn Maia significantly slimmed the size of the Tournament staff, leaving major decisions in the hands of herself, Faust, Legion, and Vulcan, to prevent a similar event from occurring in the future.

The Eleventh Tournament, first airing on July 1st, 2225, continued the ratings drop beginning with the Ninth Tournament and exacerbated by the Tenth Tournament. At the time, Marilyn Maia considered ending the Tournament. However, a series of steller final matches, including a heartbreaking battle between star crossed lovers Vigdis “Maelstrom” Underhill and Iustinus “Renbar” Reilly, saved the Tournament.

Maelstrom, with her ability to control the weather, ultimately won the Tournament, becoming the Eleventh Champion. Using her wish, she brought Rebar back from the dead. Following the Tournament, Maelstrom was tasked with using her abilities to manage the Coalition’s farms. Tragically, Maelstrom passed away in November, 2233. The circumstances of her death are currently under investigation.

Although the Twelfth Tournament, starting May 30th 2228, featured a variety of exciting matches, it has become overshadowed in the public zeitgeist by an infamous match occurring in the fifth round of its redemption bracket. A fifteen-year-old fighter by the name of Swiss, then the youngest person to ever fight in the Tournament, died a painful death as millions watched. Swiss, who had been fighting to cure his sister of a fatal illness, became a martyr for critics of the Tournament. It should be noted that Swiss was not the first, nor the last fighter to die in the Tournament, making the public outcry of his death somewhat hypocritical.

Swiss’s final opponent, Helena “Wanderer” Pasternak, ultimately won the Twelfth Tournament. Wanderer, a centuries-old mutant with the ability to heal from any wound, used her wish to modify her mutation, giving her the power to heal others in an instant. Wanderer joined the Tournament Staff as their chief medical officer for the Thirteenth Tournament.

The Thirteenth Tournament, beginning June 28th, 2231, initially drew in poor ratings due to a boycott inspired by the Twelfth Tournament. Despite this, the Thirteenth Tournament ended with the highest ratings in Tournament history. The Tournament’s revitalization can be traced to a single man: Seong-Su Schuyler, aka Dreadnought.

Dreadnought, a cybernetically enhanced warrior equipped with super strength, energy blasts, rocket punches, and near invincibility, took the world by storm through his raw power and endless charisma. Dreadnought’s mentor, Fourth Tournament runner-up Redwing, finally achieved victory when Dreadnought handily won the Thirteenth Tournament, winning each match without allowing his opponents to score a single blow.

Instead of using his wish for personal gain, like some Champions, Dreadnought requested that he be placed in charge of the rules for upcoming Tournaments. With his new position, Dreadnought rewrote the entire Tournament rulebook to ensure more exciting matches. Most notably, he removed the rule preventing former Champions from fighting again.

Over the past forty-three years, the people of this world have had the privilege of witnessing thirteen unique Tournaments and close to nine hundred different matches. The Fourteenth Tournament is set to begin on June 28th, 2234, and should end sometime in September. Although we cannot say for certain how the Tournament will go, the Tournament Staff has announced several of the fighters. Judging from the standout candidates chosen, the Fourteenth Tournament is sure to be an absolute knockout.

Notable upcoming fighters include Ramses, an android co-built by Vulcan and Pharaoh to be the ultimate killing machine; Harta Ximeno, the son of two Delta Squad mages widely thought to be the greatest wizard alive; Gwynn Galo, a former apprentice of Pharaoh’s fighting to prove that he can outfight any android; rock star Brunhild Eliot; several captured Ragnarok terrorists, including unofficial leader Terenti Abney; the last living Invader, who was captured back in December; boxer Ronalda Hendricks; famed supervillain Edison Vile; EWC Ceo Alexis Hanigan; and dozens more.

The most notable fighters, however, are familiar ones. After removing the restriction on former Champions, Dreadnought announced that he would return to the Tournament to defend his title. In preparation for the Tournament, Dreadnought traveled to Devil’s Rock and killed Hellfire in a duel, his greatest victory yet. Vulcan, Legion, Phantom, Pharaoh, and Wanderer all declined to face Dreadnought in the Fourteenth Tournament. But, one former Champion accepted the challenge: First Champion Gallus Sage Silvano. The Fourteenth Tournament will feature the First Champion, the most recent Champion, and sixty-two other warriors vying for the ultimate prize: a single wish, granted by Marilyn Maia.

Sage. Cobalt. Vulcan. Patriot. Quicksand. Hellfire. Legion. Phantom. Pharaoh. Gemini. Maelstrom. Wanderer. Dreadnought. Thirteen Tournaments, thirteen Champions. Who will be next?

#worldbuilding #writing

[aenigmaticdays]

Coda: Chapter 3 - Friction

A/N: I really, really thought this would have stopped here. It’s been hard, stripping Fitzsimmons down to the bare bones, but the pages grew and grew until I had to split this chapter up into 2. So no, it’s not quite the end yet.

Also on AO3 or FF.net

“Fitz?”

Is that…?

Her voice. Her voice.

What the hell...?

He has to be dreaming.

Fitz blinks once, twice and still sees the same thing. The same face.

Her face, those worried eyes. Hears her voice, calling his name.

There’s no fucking way that he’s blacked out beneath Jemma Simmons, when all he remembered was running to the nearest shelter before something detonated and something else heavy had hit him hard enough to pass out.

Waking up beneath Simmons in the worst way possible isn’t what Fitz had counted on. In fact, he hadn’t counted on ever seeing her again, let alone meeting her in this manner, months after he’d said his goodbyes.

And if Simmons is here, the rest of the team isn’t far behind.

The vague possibility of their paths crossing again existed, of course, something that he’d feared and hoped in equal measure. The overlap between the black-ops paramilitary stuff and the other kinds of missions that deal with potential extra-terrestrial activity Edwin takes on always make him edgy.

In the past few weeks, it has just been low-key risk management and technologically-driven security solutions, but being in Greenwich right now drives home this overlap of what the team’s doing with what they might run across in this mission.

Or rather, whom.

That worry as it seems now, is fully merited.

The rest of the boys have told him with matching grimaces that it doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it often involves some kind of fatality that no one can really solve—at least, no one whose knowledge goes beyond advanced weaponry and engineering. Their part has always been to provide more of the brawn than the brain and it’s Fitz, as they tell him, who tips the scales a little more in the latter direction and gives the team a wee bit more class.

For it to have happened in Greenwich—the place of yet another battle between humans and races determined to subjugate humans—is a kind of unpleasant reminder of being led back by the tip of his nose to the very things he’d been trying hard to move on from.

Bruised, dusty and too flustered for his liking, Fitz takes his time sitting up, too aware of the heat of her hands on his shoulders even through the thick fabric of his gear.

“Simmons? What are—”

Before he can have another word in edgewise, she starts babbling, something so familiar that a completely different kind of ache stops him short.

“—might be hurt when the blast happened and your head…there might be a concussion that I need to check—”

“Simmons! Stop! I’m alright.”

She finally does and moves awkwardly to the side as he sorts himself out, getting first to his knees, then to his feet.

However, the shock of seeing Jemma Simmons in the flesh fades enough for him to notice the rubble around them and their very precarious position just under a jutting pillar that’s in danger of toppling right over their heads.

“We have to move. Now,” he grates out and grabs her hand, starting to navigate clumsily over the debris when a chorus of voices reaches them.

They take a mere ten steps before Smithy emerges out of the cloud of dust with a torch and a weapon dangling loosely in his hand.

“Fitzy, you alright there?”

Shite.

It’s Smith who has come calling. Or rather, Smithy, the large Viking that Fitz dubs him in secret, with a penchant for telling the wrong jokes at the wrong times, which is why Fitz loves him too much and hates that he’s soon about to be the victim of a stray, throwaway line that will only make things more awkward.

“Yeah. The rest of the guys?”

A beefy finger points in a direction. “Outside. Waiting for you. Everyone’s good, considering the circumstances.” In the dim light, Smithy’s eyes widen in curiosity when it finally registers on him that Fitz isn’t alone. “And who do we have here?”

“Let’s get out of here first before story time starts, shall we?”

Fitz grimaces at the sharp, knowing glance that he gets in response. But he’d take his new team’s funny brand of shelter and protection over the dread of talking to Simmons again, despite the lad jokes the guys are certain to spring on him when the site’s secured and the place canvassed.

Simmons is oddly quiet as they make their way to where his team is and as Fitz had fully expected, garners wide-eyed stares when she stumbles out of the rubble after him. With her hand still tightly latched onto his and barely any physical space between them, he can only imagine what sort of picture he’s presenting to a team that is currently gaping at the both of them.

The surrealism of the moment strikes him hard, along with the urge to laugh hysterically at this twist of fate or whatever the cosmos has done this time by putting him straight where both his old life and his new one converge.

Avoiding her eyes, he gently disengages himself from Simmons and faces his leader. “What’s going on, Langston?”

Langston’s disgruntled shrug says it all. “Nothing that we should know about, apparently. Direct orders to stand down and move out.”

Classified information, then. Above their pay grade. Only those with the appropriate clearance levels have access, the knowledge meant only for a particular group of people within S.H.I.E.L.D. so the rest should buzz off. Fitz isn’t part of S.H.I.E.L.D. any longer, though he can probably guess what it’ll be about as he takes in the aftermath around them.

From where he stands, he finally sees May, Daisy, Hunter and Bobbi trying to contain the fallout, and with May’s usual efficiency, things get done quicker than most people can blink.

In some alternate universe, he’d be waiting in a lab awaiting the new toy or gadget that they’ll bring back.

Now however, he’s content to stay back, to watch with detached eyes.

But there’s still Simmons by his side, silently taking in everything and suddenly, he’s unsure what to do with her.

He opens his mouth to say something, but a vast chasm suddenly opens up between his mind and his tongue. All he knows is that what has been worth saying has long been said, which leaves the mundane and the banal.

So what’s really left but yet another cursory (and lame) adieu and a clean getaway?

(He’ll pray later to whatever higher being out there—even if the odds have never quite been in his favour—in the transport that’s arranged for the team, that this severing is permanent this time around.)

He faces her and aims for an evenness that he barely feels. “Simmons, I have to go.”

oOo

Jemma is entirely unprepared for this. Whatever this is, but it’s almost akin to a second-chance that she knows she needs to grab by the bull’s horns. But how rare is it that Fitz is—

“Wait!”

Her body functions apart from her mind for once, as she clutches his arm again and pulls him back.

The detonation, the weird hums, the blast…and Fitz. It’s taking a while for her to catch up—mentally and emotionally—but all she knows is that Fitz is turning to leave and that he simply isn’t going to flit out of her life the way he did all those months ago.

Between the force of her pull and her yell, Fitz jerks to a stop and so does his entire team.

Someone nudges Fitz’s side. “You know her?”

The man Fitz called Smithy earlier shoots her a meaningful look. “Looks like this isn’t over yet.”

His eyes flit to her then back to the group of men moving to stand rather protectively around him. “She, um…was someone I used to work with.”

Disbelief wars with anger. “Honestly, Fitz, someone you used to work with? Is that all we are? All we were?”

To his credit, he looks a little uncertain at her outburst.

But the euphoric excitement of seeing him again crashes with that muttered denial, melding with rising hurt and outrage that she can’t contain. There’s not a Simmons in any multi-verse that would willingly go on in life without a Fitz, she’s that sure of it now (how wrong she’d been all along), but hearing him so easily disavowing the weight of their personal history to a curious audience nearly puts paid to that theory.

“From the looks she’s giving him, I doubt that.” The tallest, blond one strokes an imaginary goatee and looks like he’s starting to enjoy himself to her chagrin.

“Now this is something the bloke’s never mentioned.”

“Quite a bit of drama here. Ah, is that why that thing you had with Amélie—”

“So, still waters and all, eh, Fitz?”

The men look as interested in their bickering as gossiping old ladies at a Sunday morning brunch, which makes her cringe. Thankfully, Fitz seems to feel the same—she doesn’t miss the glare that he shoots his team and the rife speculation that their untimely reunion seems to spark.

Beyond the surface irritation however, this Fitz is somehow…scarily indecipherable. Shuttered, with so much distance and a touch of coolness that she isn’t used to seeing on his face, more so when he’s talking to her.

Not so much of an open book any more, then. For all of his warmth and kindness that she’s used to seeing, to be the recipient of the other end of the emotional spectrum from Fitz, of all people, sparks a twinge of panic.

But just because she’s crossed some distance in her own head, or even jumped some major emotional obstacles, there’re still the physical ones to overcome with him. With the added complication of the last half a year of separation, this version of Fitz might as well be a stranger she’d be trying hard to reconnect with.

Unless, what they had before…it’s all irrevocably lost.

Had it taken all but 6 months to erase them completely?

“This is Agent Simmons.” Fitz looks at the men around him and introduces her curtly to them. “She’s with S.H.I.E.L.D..”

He gets a slap on his back and several nods of acknowledgement by the team with that revelation. Jemma doesn’t know much he has or hasn’t told them or just how settled he’s been in this new life but it’s apparently enough to bring out those looks of sympathy…for him.

She sighs, the painful edges of their stilted interaction rubbing salt into the wound of their broken friendship. “We can’t be doing this, Fitz.”

“—what the lady said, Fitzy lad,” Smithy chimes in with a smirk. The mischievous twinkle on his face suddenly reminds her of Trip, along with the nagging feeling that Fitz has found another team of his own to fit into.

Someone else—the team leader, perhaps—cuts right back in. “As fun as it is seeing Fitz in a domestic dispute, there is actually still work to be done. And those reports aren’t going to write themselves, ladies, if you’ve conveniently forgotten.” He pauses long enough for the loud groans to fade. “Wheels up in fifteen.”

The relief that shows up on Fitz’s face is stark. “Yeah, copy.”

The rest of his team reluctantly head out, leaving the both of them alone. Only a few feet separate them now, yet this awkwardness is as new as the man standing in front of her.

Jemma tries again, needing a solid footing with him but finds none. Her hand darts out to grab at his arm, yet again. “Fitz…it’s…it’s good to see you. I was hoping you could…stay and talk a bit?”

He’s silent for a moment as he stares at her. “I think we’ve said all we needed to say, haven’t we, Simmons?”

She doesn’t quite know how to answer that. There are in fact, a thousand things she wants to say, having imagined every conversation between her and Fitz nightly in her bunk, but seeing him in the flesh, so changed, so altered in a way she can’t recognise, leaves those words clogged in her throat.

“I—”

“You heard Langston,” he rushes on, looking in the direction where his team went. “It’s not the best time, I have to go, and I think May and Daisy will be looking for you. I’m sure S.H.I.E.L.D.—”

“Please, Fitz.” Her protesting plea comes out unbidden, causing him to pause.

The hardness in his face softens for a second, as he shakes his head with a small sigh. “I’m glad to see you well, Simmons. Take care of yourself.”

That goodbye tastes like a subtle and involuntary form of rejection. It’s not in him to be cruel at all but she feels the sharp sting of it just the same. The formality of his address is jarring—never in their years together had he spoken to her like that—, snagging the air in her lungs and widening the fissures in her heart.

Through eyes that suddenly burn hot, she watches despondently as he stalks out of the alcove and into the night.

The post-mission briefing goes by in a fog.

There isn’t much she can say about the 084 at the end of a hard week at the lab. That it comes with the power to influence human behaviour as well as the ability to tear open a dimensional rift that existed for all of 4.56 seconds when the blast happened are cause enough to get S.H.I.E.L.D. lab techs moving a little faster and more enthusiastically. Test results remain inconclusive, especially with the kind of dark matter they’ve been dealing with, which isn’t of the Earth variety, just to complicate matters.

But weak boundaries between realms, mysterious portals, inter-dimensional slippages are all quite beyond any of their expertise right now. Maybe they’ll just leave it to the self-styled Avengers to deal with those—Jemma couldn’t actually care less.

Kranz takes over from her with a technology update and she’s more than happy to sit back to let her mind wander to the previous week’s meeting with Fitz.

It’s new fodder that she obsesses over, and how wrong it’d gone in so many ways and how she might pull a mulligan. As she’d done the entire week with every spare moment she had, taking apart every facet of their brief interaction and putting every word and action under a mental microscope, the immutable conclusion that emerges each time is that Fitz had truly given up on them.

Her thumbs brush absently across the pages of the report she’d just given Coulson as her jumbled thoughts finally coalesce in an idea so reckless that it continually twists her insides in dreaded anticipation.

Only when the rest of the room clear out later does Jemma ask to speak to Coulson privately.

With a tight, tearful hug from Daisy, cheerful little twin smirks from Hunter and Bobbi and solemn nods from May and Mack, she walks off the Zephyr with her bags and into the dreary and muggy London evening.

There will be a ton of favours she knows she’ll owe Hunter by the time she’s settled. But he’s gone through hoops and hoops to get her here—something she suspects that he’s doing more for Fitz than her after his wry confession that he’s been in and out of Fitz’s corner since he’d left—by giving her more than probably deserves at the moment.

Pressing the button and the code that she’s been given at the entrance of the nondescript warehouse where Edwin has his team headquartered, Jemma waits until the opaque doors slide open to reveal an empty sitting area and an electronic barrier that requires a biometric scan before she can even step foot into its inner sanctum.

The barrier slides open silently before she can do anything else, the corridor ahead lighting up as she shoulders the bags with a deep breath and walks ahead.

She’s rustled the hornet’s nest. No turning back now for the stings that await.

It’s Edwin Sorcher himself who meets her halfway, the man whose name she can finally put a face to. There’s an assessing glint in his eye before he holds out his hand and she gets the uneasy feeling that he already knows way more than he lets on.

“Jemma Simmons, in the flesh. Welcome to Citadel.”

oOo

Housed in the residential zone of Edwin’s cluster of warehouses, her smallish bunk isn’t unlike the ones she’d lived in previously, except that it isn’t underground or on a plane. The squeaks and squawks of urban wildlife interrupts her first early morning, and along with the sunrise to regulate her body’s biorhythms, waking up in London’s backyard of sorts takes some getting used to.

It is far from a difficult change in routine really, the adjustment passably pleasant as far as transatlantic upheavals go.

But everything else lies outside Jemma’s comfort zone; she’s eking out a series of paths she’d never envisioned past S.H.I.E.L.D.’s grey walls since the Academy.

The induction here in contrast, is as quick as the one at S.H.I.E.L.D. had been bureaucratic and multi-tiered. Without mincing words, Edwin points out everything that she needs to know, gets her settled in Fitz’s small lab with a makeshift space of her own and then ushers her out of the building to look at the residential spaces of the place.

The discussion she had with Edwin the night before had instilled a new sense of hope, prompting her to wonder if this was what Fitz craved when he’d left: the exhilarating chance of a fresh start, the opportunity to forget and forge something entirely new on his own.

The bland terms of their agreement had been hashed out, rehashed and then renegotiated, until both were satisfied with what they’d put on the table. At the end of it, with her contract drafted, Edwin told her unhappily that she’d driven a very hard bargain, then ordered her straight to her bunk to get some rest after their signatures were put to paper.

Not for the first time, Jemma wonders just how presumptuous this move of hers to South London really is, depending as she is, on the assumption that the decade-long friendship with Fitz is more invincible than they’d both thought, and that Fitz would be willing to have anything to do with her after what she’d done to him. That he’d still have her around in any kind of capacity, even if he’s seeing someone else, as heart-splintering as that might be.

It isn’t a coincidence that her arrival is timed such that Fitz’s team is away on assignment for a week in Africa, thanks to Hunter, whose private conversations with Edwin (and Fitz) have probably paved the way.

In the lab, two days after her stepping off the Zephyr, Jemma takes a moment to centre herself. This small space, even without Fitz, is Fitz in every way, the tells (the slight quirk in the arrangement of his half-finished prototypes, the physical files, the tools) in this pristine, organised room only obvious to her because she knows—knew—him in and out. This ingrained habit of his hasn’t changed at least, as meagre a source of comfort as she has in putting together what she knows of him in his absence.

She’s on his turf now, attempting to piece back together their shattered relationship, or rather, to tell him how much she’d missed him beyond friendship, that she’d stop at nothing to show him how important he is to her—

The rush of footsteps into the lab cuts even that thought away as she turns to face, for the second time, shocked blue eyes.

It finally registers on her that he’s back early, still fully dressed in the same black tactical gear she’d first seen him in, with an atypical-looking rifle of sorts slung over his right shoulder and a backpack hanging on his left.

Five full days early, which meant the assignment hadn’t gone according to plan, leaving her as flustered and as unprepared as him for this unexpected meeting.

Just the thought of this sends her into a freefall. Like a week and a half ago, when that shock detonation had sent her careening into him, adrenaline and anticipation now flow through her veins, fusing into a mass of tumbling emotions she can’t separate from one another.

“Fitz,” she begins with trepidation, “I—”

Taking a tentative step into the lab, Fitz blinks twice and rubs a hand over his face as confusion slowly melds into irritation. “This has to be a fucking joke.”

She steels herself for the outburst, needing some courage for the specific and uncomfortable questions that are just around the corner.

“No, it isn’t, Fitz. You wouldn’t talk to me the last time we met, so I…I took matters in my own hands.”

“You…you took matters—what have you done, Simmons?” He stalks to his bench, dumps the rifle on it and unceremoniously drops his pack on the floor before turning to face her with his arms crossed over his chest. “Why are you here?”

It’s only now, in the harsh fluorescent lighting that she gets a good look at him. With a pang, she realises there’s so much she finds unfamiliar and yet familiar.

But it doesn’t matter that he’s slightly bulkier and more leanly-muscled and assumes some sort of distance between them like a protective coat of arms.

The hard introspection she’d put herself through had merely helped her articulate clearly what she hadn’t bothered to put into words before: that she has loved every iteration of him and probably always will, from the handsome, pasty boy in mismatched colours and odd cardigans, to the man who struggles with trembling hands and faltering speech…to the one right now who’s harder to read, who’s more confident in his own abilities, whose distrust now shines a little too brightly in his gaze.

The old hurt, however, lingers in his eyes. That vibrant blue which she loves, becomes a faded and dimmed version of what she remembers as he looks at her, now hooded and fortified by the mile-high walls he had constructed for himself in the intervening months.

There’s so much timidity in her voice when she ventures a question of her own. “How…how have you been, Fitz?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t—I…I…just, don’t make this any harder, Simmons. Just answer the question.”

“I’m trying not to, I swear.” She’s fumbling around, hating this stilted, awkward moment that has barely just begun. It’s infinitely harder to be brave, she finds, to do the right thing, to say the right words, and later, to stick around, than to run away and call it the convenient solution to problems. “I just wanted to be your friend again, Fitz, if you’d let me.”

He stiffens noticeably on her emphasis of that word.

Not the best of beginnings, then.

“You’ve come a long way for that,” he says flatly, his hands already busy with dismantling his vest and weapons, stopping only when he finally notices the new setup of his small lab and the space sharing that he’d be required to do in the future. “What’s this really all about?”

“Can’t you tell?” She asks softly, desperate to erase the wariness that laces his response. And to set that initial course of action, she knows that he rightfully needs an explanation—no, her full disclosure—of her sudden insertion in a space that’s probably sacred to him. But her frantic thoughts, rushing at a mile an hour, prove to be tiny snares that refuse to settle into logical coherence.

“Can’t I tell…? No, I can’t, Simmons!” He gestures wildly around him, his escalating distress manifesting as a trembling hand and a raised voice. “All I know is that we’ve just returned from Africa, I’m bloody tired and…and…there’s…there’s this! You!”

Mutely, she watches him pace with a fist pressed to his mouth, anxiously trying to find the words other than sorry.

“Fitz, please, please listen to me.”

He stops abruptly in a corner of the room, fighting for control as much as she is.

“I—I know I’ve made an unforgivable mess, Fitz. I know that. You have every right to be angry. I took advantage of our friendship, your affection and your attention…I just…I just wish I saw it sooner before and—”

“And so here you are, trying to apologise?”

“It’s more than that, Fitz. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms—”

He interrupts her with some annoyance. “At the risk of rehashing a history that I’d rather leave alone till the end of the universe comes, I don’t recall ever trying to make you feel bad about it. I offered to do those things and you know damn well too that I did. To give you the oxygen. To bring Will back.”

“I know! And I wish you weren’t so noble—”

“Because that wouldn’t give me the chance to play the hero?” He cuts in bitingly.

Frustration pools deep at his insistent interruptions, at his deliberate dodging of the conversation that she’s been trying to steer them into having. “That’s not what I’m saying!”

“Is that why you’re here?” Fitz stubbornly repeats the question, the pinched look on his face growing with each punctuated syllable. “If this is some effort on your part to—” He paces in a tight circle, gesturing at her then at himself, seemingly at a loss for words. “There’s no need to make amends, Simmons. I did what I, no—we did what we had to do, and that’s it, okay? We both made choices and now we live with them.”

“That’s just it, Fitz! I can’t live with them!” Some deep-buried instinct born of emotional turmoil tells Jemma that this is their last chance. Mess this up and there’ll be nothing more left of them to salvage.

He tilts his head upwards and sighs. “Some things are best left alone.”

“This isn’t!”

Conversely, his agitation spurs her on. It’s the only thing that she’s hanging onto right now—any show of emotion, any kind of reaction from him—because it’s the only indication she has that he hasn’t turned completely indifferent to their friendship, or whatever he’s willing to restore to them both.

“What about S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Fitz demands suddenly.

He’s raking his hand through his hair, rubbing his hand over his mouth—all the signs of increasing agitation that she wants to take away, but only exacerbates.

“Indefinite leave of absence,” she tells him simply, feeling the burden of the past few months shed immediately, as though giving voice to those words could make that fact more concrete than it really is. “And a temporary place here with Citadel.”

The shock that rolls off him is like a tangible wave of disbelief and incredulity. “You what? Coulson allowed that?”

“I told Coulson that I needed to go. And with some help from Hunter, I did. They both understand.”

“It’s been six months, Jemma!” He finally yells, the agony so clear now on his face that it hauls her back to the very day he’d left. “I’ve only had six sodding months away from you…that’s like a magical number isn’t it? Six sodding months to get over you and I really thought I was on my way there. And then you waltz in here after all this time like nothing’s out of place, wanting our friendship back like nothing ever broke it in the first place—”

“No, that’s not it at all!” She puts in urgently as tears start to burn at the corner of her eyes, as the pressure on her chest grows with the revelation he’d just tossed at her. If the months of separation have brought such a different outcome for her, and as eager as she is to talk out her personal revelations, it’s harder to accept that Fitz isn’t even willing to meet her halfway.

“I…I couldn’t come to terms with what your leaving really meant, Fitz. For six months, I wondered and struggled with how I’d done everything wrong such that you had to leave. Then envisioning a future without you…I couldn’t do it.”

“Really? When you came back from Hydra, when you chose Will…that was you moving onto a future without us.” Fitz stalks up to her, forcing her back against the lab bench as he leans in, heedless of her personal space. “I did nothing, Simmons, that you didn’t already first do to us. I left because there was nothing else there for me. Maybe it’s the coward’s way out, but it was the only option I could stomach back then.”

His mirthless chuckle and flinty stare dissect her as he delivers blow after blow of hard truth that feels like a blade in her ribs.

“Is that what you wanted to hear? I helped bring Will back to you, because it was him you wanted. Will, the man you said you loved! You’ve made that abundantly clear. So tell me, why are you here, in South London, when you should be at S.H.I.E.L.D. with Will Daniels at your side?”

The anger that pours from him shouldn’t be unexpected. But everything shifts yet again in a fundamental way, condensing, shrinking around her despite the conclusions she’d come to in the months they were apart. Hearing everything from Fitz’s perspective merely confirms how her words about Will, tossed out in a fit of despair and confusion, had merely raked over festering wounds and left them with such prominent scars.

Time might have passed, but the current of grief and hurt remains. Jemma knows that full well. But to adequately convey that it’s him that she’d really ever wanted or needed or that she’s beyond sorry for playing too big a part in making him feel that he could never measure up, is a momentous task she’s clueless to undertake.

“Will isn’t even in the picture.”

He retreats hurriedly as though she’d burned him and hikes a thumb backwards over his shoulder in challenge. “Everything you’ve said and done previously contradicts that statement.”

She stops short for a few seconds.

Fitz had always held his own in an argument, their competitive natures always providing the creative fodder that had driven them forward together. But this man…this man, unmoved by her half-baked confessions and still full of questioning doubt, makes her feel as though Fitzsimmons is truly over.

This man in front of her, programmed by betrayal and holding her up to relentless scrutiny, is terrifying.

Never had she wished more than now that she could take back that thoughtless statement said so long ago; evidently, it’d torn Fitz up more than he’d let on and just…why hadn’t she looked past her own confusion to see how devastating this would have been on him?

“Don’t you want to know what happened after you left?”

His scoff is loud in the enclosed space, his knuckles already white from the death grip he has on the lab bench which he’s leaning against.

“It’s none of my business, Simmons, what you do now.”

“You’re hearing it, anyway,” she snaps in return, tired of hitting her head against the Fitz-sized-wall repeatedly for all the lack of progress they’d made. “Will…left. Those first few days after you—I can’t remember them too well, only that I couldn’t stop obsessing over why you went away and how big a part I’d played in it. I think he tried to talk to me, but all I could think about was you and the gaping hole you’d made when you left. So he…all he could do was to walk away a week later and I can’t even blame him once for it.”

Fitz is already shaking his head as she barrels on ahead in a rambling glut in order to quell the doubts and hurts that he’d been sequestered with, panicked that she’s on the verge of losing him again when she’s so close in laying the first, small brick in their wrecked foundation of mutual respect and trust.

“I missed you, Fitz. I don’t know what to say to convince you, but you’re really all that I want. In whatever way you want me back. You’re the only one I could love in the way you need me to. It’s you, Fitz. I just need you by my side, Fitz, in whatever way you want us to be. I’m…sorry I took so long, I’m sorry I couldn’t figure it out earlier and made you suffer. I need you to believe me. If you couldn’t trust anything I said before, please believe me this time.”

The light-headedness that sweeps in after her clumsy, inelegant confession leaves her shaking and wrung-out.

He flinches instead, his scepticism almost a tangible entity as he hangs his head. “Did you come to this conclusion only after I left?”

Involuntarily, the question makes her think back to the days and weeks that had greyed out everything else and brought to the fore the mind-crippling fear that she’d truly lost him.

“If I can forget those months apart from you, it wouldn’t be soon enough. If I thought Maveth was my greatest nightmare,” she pauses as he briefly turns shimmering eyes to her, “the last half a year surpassed that a million times. I don’t know how else to convince you, Fitz, because I know this probably sounds flaky and glib and…and hollow and empty. But could we, please, have this chance again?”

Fatigue and defeat wash out the anger in the slump of his shoulders.

“It doesn’t work that way. We can’t just turn back the clock, Simmons and you know it. There’s no such thing as starting over, no reintroductions or the pretence that we’re both 16 years old and achingly shy and completely out of our depths in a whole new world in an Academy too unprepared for us.”

Not when the following years have left them out at pasture too long for the scars to be erased. It’s what Fitz doesn’t say but what she hears all the same. He’s merely echoing what hadn’t already occurred to her.

Still, her voice cracks as his implication sinks in. “You…you don’t want to try? Not at all? Not even as colleagues?”

He fiddles anxiously with a spare part on the bench before putting it down, as though mulling his next words. When he finally looks up at her, the conflict and guilt written on his face break her all over again.

“This—this is not what I wanted at all, Simmons. Not someone who…who suddenly realises I’m worth something more only after I left, but hasn’t been sure of it when I was around for years.” He waves that bit away, as though it’s an insignificant detail that he shouldn’t have bothered with. “The point is, I wanted you happy and I’ve long accepted that it wouldn’t be with me. So you don’t have do this only because Will is gone.”

Her denial is sure, this time. “You don’t understand! I’m not—”

“—and honestly? I…I don’t know what you’re really saying right now,” he squeezes his eyes shut in consternation, “I’m not ready to…I can’t process this, alright?”

Caught at this impasse, misery lodges itself as a lump in her throat. Floundering in an area where there’s no specific scientific method to follow, no easy answers waiting at the end of the line, she’s steering a ship into a treacherous storm without any navigation markers.

It takes her a few tries to find her voice, as impulse prompts her to move towards him and grab both his hands tightly in hers.

“You were once my best friend. But you’re also much more than that.” He snaps his eyes back to hers as the familiarity of the words washes over the both of them. “Please, Fitz, please let me show you.”

#Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D #AOS #Marvel #Marvel: AOS #Fitzsimmons #Fitz x Simmons #Leo Fitz #Jemma Simmons #fanfic #fanfic au #My writing

[bountyofbeads]

In Iraq, Where Beauty Was Long Suppressed, Art Flowers Amid Protests https://nyti.ms/2RR5PSs

This is a wonderful story that shows the healing power of art 🎨 and the human spirit's need to express itself. Please take time to read and view the photojournalism.

In Iraq, Where Beauty Was Long Suppressed, Art Flowers Amid Protests

Painters, sculptors and musicians are rallying to Baghdad’s protests, and the capital is overflowing with political art.

By Alissa J. Rubin | Published Feb. 3, 2020 Updated 10:09 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 3, 2020 |

BAGHDAD — Hollow-cheeked and shivering slightly in jeans he had outgrown, Abdullah stood in an unfinished parking garage, transfixed in front of a mural whose meaning he was eager to decode for a visitor.

“See, the man in the middle, he is asking the security forces, ‘Please don’t shoot us, we have nothing, nothing.’” Abdullah said the final word twice for emphasis as he earnestly studied the black-and-white image on the wall.

Drawn in charcoal in a socialist realist style, the mural, more than 12 feet long, showed a group of men walking forward and carrying their fallen friends in their arms. The men depicted were unmistakably Everyman laborers, with rough clothes and strained faces.

Abdullah, 18 — a former cleaner in a hospital who asked that his surname not be used because he feared retribution for his involvement in anti-government protests — is now an unofficial art guide to one of the most unlikely galleries imaginable: a 15-story shell of a structure, known locally by all as the Turkish Restaurant building, that looks over the Tigris River. It is the self-declared stronghold of Iraqis who oppose the country’s current leadership.

Covered on all sides by banners with messages to the government, to the security forces and to the world, the building looks like a ship about to set sail, with the slogans written on white cloth ballooning in the wind.

The first five floors have become one of the half-dozen major art venues that have sprung up in Baghdad around the protests as painters — trained and untrained — have turned walls, stairwells and littered parks into a vast canvas.

Where did all this art come from? How is it that a city where beauty and color have been largely suppressed for decades by poverty, and by the oppression or indifference of successive governments, suddenly came to be so alive?

“You know, we have many thoughts about Iraq, but no one from the government ever asked us,” said Riad Rahim, 45, an art teacher.

The city’s creative hub is Tahrir Square. Art covers the underpasses that run below it, the green space behind it, and the streets leading into it.

The paintings, sculptures, photographs and shrines to killed protesters are political art of a kind rarely seen in Iraq, where art has been made for at least 10,000 years. It is as if an entire society is awakening to the sound of its own voice, and to the shape, size and sway of its creative force.

“In the beginning this was an uprising, but now it is a revolution,” said Bassim al-Shadhir, an Iraqi-German who goes back and forth between the two countries and has participated in the protests. “There is art, there is theater, people are giving lectures and distributing books — giving them away for free.”

Mr. al-Shadhir, an abstract artist with a degree in biology, painted his contribution to the scene on a wall on Sadoun Street, one of the capital’s broadest thoroughfares. It shows a man shot by the security forces, the blood pouring out of his heart in a vast pool, too large to be hidden or washed away by the masked military man standing behind him.

Nearby a mural begs the United Nations to rescue Iraqis. Another shows a map of Iraq inside a heart and says, “Oh my country, don’t feel pain.” There are two or three murals depicting lions, a symbol of Iraq dating from the Assyrian period and one that protesters have adopted.

There has been little if any new anti-American messages in the paintings in recent days, even though there is more anti-American feeling in Baghdad since the United States last month assassinated Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds force who was visiting Iraq.

One reason may be that there are already several murals that have anti-American and anti-Israeli messages. Another is that by now, there are so many walls covered with art, that it is hard to find empty space to add anything new.

The artistic subjects and styles on view show how much a younger generation of Iraqis has been influenced by the internet, discovering there images that resonate with them and then drawing them with Iraqi touches.

Rosie the Riveter has an Iraqi flag on her cheek; Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” has the Turkish Restaurant building in place of a cypress tree. Some paintings feature comic book characters, but wrapped in the Iraqi flag, the uniform of the protesters.

There are echoes of 1960s Pop Art in a painting of the Turkish Restaurant building with a red tuk tuk flying out of the roof. The tuk tuk is the protesters’ mascot, a diesel-fueled, three-wheeled vehicle that requires no license to drive and has become the unofficial front line ambulance, bearing the wounded to the first aid tents.

More than 500 protesters have been killed and thousands more have been injured.

Trees are another common subject, with painters in different locations in the Turkish Restaurant building drawing images of falling leaves.

“This tree is Iraq and I am going to write on each leaf the name of one of those martyred by the security forces,” said Diana al-Qaisi, 32, who trained as an information systems engineer but now works in public relations.

“Its leaves are dropping because it is autumn and those who are trying to kill the tree are trying to kill the revolution,” she said. “Even if they try, some leaves stay in the tree waiting to be born.”

Zainab Abdul Karim, 22, and her sister Zahra, 15, had a darker vision. Their tree is a black silhouette standing in a cemetery, each grave representing one of the protesters killed by the security forces.

More individualized portraits of those killed are also a common subject.

The small park behind Tahrir Square has been divided by tents, one of which has become a steadily expanding portrait gallery with photographs of those who have been killed by the security forces. People walk along the memorial quietly, looking at each of the faces, occasionally tears welling up when they see one they recognize.

The country is witnessing an expressive flowering in more than the visual arts.

More than a dozen songs have been written for the protests and circulate nonstop on social media. Luminaries of the Iraqi arts — actors and actresses, as well as musicians, painters and sculptors — came together to record a tribute to the fallen protesters.

Recently, Mr. Rahim, the art teacher, was working with his friend, Hussein Shenshul, 41, who runs a clothing store, on a low-budget, high-concept sculpture project. They were painstakingly carving archaeologically accurate maquettes of six famous Iraqi sites, three ancient and three modern.

They had finished three — the Al Hadba minaret in Mosul, which was destroyed in the fight with the Islamic State; the ziggurat of Samarra; and the Turkish Restaurant building. They were working now on the Ishtar Gate, which once stood in ancient Babylon.

Their tools were foam, toothpicks, box cutters and spray paint for the background color, paintbrushes for the calligraphy.

“We want to express what the Iraqi civilization means,” Mr. Rahim said. “We want to send a message to the world that this is our culture, we are educated, we are painters and poets, musicians and sculptors, this is what it means to be Iraqi.”

“Everyone thinks Iraq is all wars and fighting,” he added.

Outside the still unfinished Turkish Restaurant building — so named because some 25 years ago it housed a Turkish restaurant on the ground floor — Hussein Abdul Mufsin, 25, was finishing a mural on Sadoun Street. He had already painted four others — a far cry from his usual work as a house painter.

Two murals depicted silhouettes of protesters trying to scale the barriers that divide them from the security forces. But today his primary painting goal was not art, but life. He was painting the lines that delineate the street’s edges to keep cars from veering onto the curb.

“I brought my reflecting paint today from home because at night the government turns off all the electricity and the tuk tuks carrying the injured cannot see the edge of the road and could crash,” he said.

Why was he doing this? Shouldn’t it be the city’s responsibility?

“You could call it self-financing,” he said, looking down shyly. “Or maybe this is patriotism.”

______

Falih Hassan contributed reporting.

*********

Home at Last From China: A Foreign Exchange Student’s Travel Ordeal

A tense nighttime drive along deserted roads to an empty airport, then a scramble to join the rush of passengers leaving China amid the coronavirus scare.

By Miriam Jordan | Published Feb. 3, 2020 Updated 11:32 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 3, 2020 |

LOS ANGELES — When Jaden Taylor, 17, pulled a mask off his face at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday morning and smiled at the customs officer, who gave him a thumbs up, it was much more than the end of a 12-hour flight from Shanghai.

He was taking the final step in a weekslong scramble to get out of China, where he had been an exchange student caught in an outbreak of coronavirus, which was rapidly spreading and causing fatalities.

“Oddly enough, the officer didn’t ask me a single question,” said Jaden, after exiting the airport. “I feel lucky, I thought I was definitely going to be quarantined but it was so fast.”

His struggle, involving canceled flights, frantic negotiations across two continents and a series of checkpoints where the authorities checked his temperature, was playing out for countless travelers trying to leave China as the world tries to seal itself off from the fast-moving virus.

Jaden, a former high school student from Portland, Ore., may have been among the last Americans to get out of China and clear security with ease. By Monday morning, American air travelers who had been to China in the last 14 days were being routed through one of 11 airports to undergo enhanced health screenings, with the possibility that they could be quarantined.

Each year, thousands of Americans and other foreigners travel to China on student exchange programs. Since last month, these students have been among those caught up in the widening health crisis. Because of the nature of their studies, often embedded with families across China, some of them are hundreds of miles from a consulate or embassy. Many students have had to find their own way from far-flung cities to major airports for the return home.

American Field Service sent more than 300 students from all over the world to China, including about two dozen Americans, during the current school year. Jaden was the only American student placed in Anhui province, which borders Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak.

The nonprofit organization canceled all programs in China on Jan. 31.

‘IT SEEMED LIKE A FUN ADVENTURE’

Bored with high school in Portland, Jaden had hatched a plan to learn Mandarin and graduate early so that he could spend a year in China before college.

“It seemed like a fun adventure to a place that was completely foreign to me,” he said. “I would not know what to expect.”

He made the move in August, becoming the third generation in his family to go abroad as an exchange student.

In the city of Wuhu, he settled in with a host family and started school, planning to remain until June. He made Chinese friends and tried new foods, like turtle and cow stomach. As trade tensions between the United States and China escalated, he took it in stride when taxi drivers turned him away because he was an American.

It was early January when he first heard that the coronavirus had struck. Emails streamed in from his Chinese teachers informing him about an illness spreading in Wuhan, the capital of the adjoining province.

Around Jan. 15, the local coordinator for American Field Service and Jaden’s host family ordered him to remain inside at all times. “I was reminded almost everyday not to go outside,” he recalled.

By Jan. 20, the virus had crossed international borders. China had reported hundreds of infections, and the death toll jumped from three to 17 in a matter of days.

Two days later, Jaden’s grandmother, Christine Berardo, sent him a WhatsApp message saying that she had been reading about the virus and felt sorry that it might affect his travel plans for the Lunar New Year.

“The virus has been found in my city so everyone is wearing face masks,” he told her.

‘HAVE SOME GRIT,’ HIS MOTHER SAID

On Jan. 23, Wuhan, home to about 11 million people, was placed under quarantine and Chinese authorities closed off the city. “I was seeing images of borders shutting down and people not being able to leave Wuhan,” Jaden recalled. He began to worry.

So did his mother, Karin Berardo, 51, an investment manager in Washington, D.C. But she did not want to let on.

In a WhatsApp exchange, Ms. Berardo told her adventurous child, “to suck it up. Have some grit,” she recalled. “He had always been eager to conquer the world.”

Wuhu, about 300 miles northeast of Wuhan, was not officially quarantined but it might as well have been. Instead of celebrating the Lunar New Year with fireworks and festivities, people locked themselves indoors.

Except for those trying to stock up on food and masks, the streets were deserted; store shelves were almost bare. People glared at anyone who coughed, Jaden said. The images of a city in fear began to haunt him at night, and he had trouble sleeping. “I became very paranoid and anxious,” he said.

Friends from Portland, Berkeley, Baltimore and Abu Dhabi, places where Jaden had lived, were reaching out on Snapchat and WhatsApp to express concern about the risk of staying in China.

With ample time on his hands, Jaden scanned news reports on Reddit and waited for emails from the State Department. Chinese friends shared information they were gleaning from Chinese media. The news was getting worse with each passing day, it seemed.

Back in Washington, his mother contacted American Field Service to get their assessment of the situation.

“They said they were in close contact with A.F.S. Beijing and were advising the students to just stay inside,” Ms. Berardo recalled.

On Jan. 26, after learning that 56 million people were under quarantine in China, Ms. Berardo contacted a program representative in New York to request that her son be returned to the United States as soon as possible.

TRYING TO FIND A WAY OUT

The next day, program representatives had a tentative plan to get Jaden out. It involved flying out of Shanghai, about 215 miles away. But there was no one on the ground to escort him there, Ms. Berardo was told. “They said they could put him on a train, but he would have to figure out how to get to the airport in Shanghai,” she said.

Ms. Berardo feared that her son might end up stranded in the one of the world’s largest cities, where many cases of the virus had been reported.

Still, in a conversation, mother and son agreed to give it a try. Ultimately, program officials found someone to drive Jaden to Nanjing, about 60 miles from Wuhu, where he would catch a flight to Shanghai.

Jaden was booked on an American Airlines flight that was to leave on Sunday. But on Friday afternoon, the carrier announced that it had canceled the flight, as a spate of airlines began suspending their operations in China. He was rebooked on China Eastern Airlines leaving the same day.

“We calmed down for a minute,” Ms. Berardo recalled.

Jaden sneaked out of the apartment to say goodbye to Chinese friends and to take his last pictures of an empty Wuhu. His bags had been packed for two days.

He was scheduled for a 3 a.m. pickup but his host brother knocked on his door shortly after 11 p.m. A car was there to take him.

The only car on the road

His escort was concerned about potential delays if they encountered road closures along the way. Indeed, some portions were blocked, and the driver had to divert to side roads.

“I’m stressed and worried,” Jaden jotted down in a diary that he had decided to start to record his last hours in China. It was about 11:30 p.m. Saturday night.

“It’s pretty much pitch black everywhere and we’re the only car on the road,” he wrote. “I took my mask off for five seconds and the driver turned his head yelling.”

At multiple checkpoints, police officers pulled over the car and checked whether they were wearing their masks. Jaden’s temperature was taken with an infrared temperature gun every time.

Shortly after 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, as they approached the Nanjing airport, the police stopped the car. People in hazmat suits instructed Jaden to get out. They checked his temperature once, twice, three times. Every time, they said, his temperature was too high.

Jaden was not sure what was happening. He felt fine.

“I didn’t know what I would do if they didn’t let me go to the airport,” he said.

Finally, one of the health workers retrieved a different thermometer from their supply kits. This time, they said, Jaden’s temperature was acceptable.

Arriving at a deserted airport

Four hours after they had left, they completed the 60-mile journey and arrived at a deserted airport. It was just after 2 a.m.

When he checked in for his flight to Shanghai, three hours later, the agent told him that she could not check his bags all the way to Los Angeles because his flight might be canceled. Did he still want to go to Shanghai, the agent wanted to know.

Jaden figured there was no looking back at this point.

Once on the plane to Los Angeles, he tried to sleep, but it was hard: He kept thinking about the five months his program had been cut short, the lost opportunities.

At Los Angeles International Airport, he joined the swarms of people converging in the passport-control area after landing from all corners of the globe.

He entered the line for American citizens, pulled off his mask and waited his turn. In his pocket, he carried a booklet of the United States Constitution, in case he got pulled out of line by the authorities and had to reference his rights.

But when he got to the counter, the officer scanned his passport and returned it to him without asking a single question.

“At all the other kiosks,” he said, “anyone with a mask or who had traveled to China was being asked where they went and why. But not me.”

On the other side of security, his mother swooped all 6 feet 3 inches of her son into her arms. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “I’m tired.”

He strapped on his mask again briefly as they left the airport — before realizing that he was no longer in the middle of a virus emergency. He removed it, and they headed to a Chipotle, where he dug into two bean-and-cheese burritos. “This is heaven,” he said.

*********

Turkey Launches Deadly Airstrikes Against Syrian Forces

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that as many as 35 Syrian government troops had been killed, and he warned Russia against trying to prevent his country’s actions.

By Carlotta Gall | Published Feb. 3, 2020 Updated 10:08 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 3, 2020 |

ISTANBUL — Turkey deployed F-16 fighter jets against government forces in northwestern Syria on Monday, a sharp escalation of the conflict there after six Turkish soldiers were killed by artillery strikes.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said that as many as 35 Syrian troops had been “neutralized.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, said the number of military personnel killed was at least 13, while state news media in Syria made no mention of any deaths. There were also reports on social media of at least eight civilian deaths when a minibus was struck.

Mr. Erdogan warned Russia, which backs the Syrian government and which controls the airspace in western Syria, not to prevent Turkey from retaliating.

“It should be out of discussion to block us,” Mr. Erdogan said, before leaving for a trip to Ukraine. Describing the dead Turkish soldiers as martyrs, he added that, “It is not possible for us to keep silent” as long as his country’s troops were being targeted.

Mr. Erdogan has frequently met with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to discuss Syria, and in particular, the thorny problem of Idlib Province, which Moscow wants to bring under Syrian government control to declare victory in the war.

In a sign of the fragility of the relationship and of the high stakes, Mr. Erdogan adopted a sober demeanor as he announced the Turkish casualties, despite a dispute with Russia over whether the Turkish military’s moves had been coordinated with their Russian counterparts. Turkish reporters noted that Mr. Erdogan’s understated tone and remarks were free of the vitriolic rhetoric he often uses for opponents.

Syrian government forces have recently intensified their offensive in Idlib, in western Syria, the last rebel-held province. Turkey deployed several hundred troops to observation posts there in 2018, as part of an agreement with Russia to create a de-escalation zone in the area.

But Russian and Syrian forces have been conducting an offensive on the major highway through the province, prompting hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee north toward the border with Turkey.

Turkey has already taken in nearly four million people trying to escape the war, which started nearly nine years ago, and is concerned that the Syrian push into the area will create a fresh surge of refugees. It has closed its border with Syria to prevent more refugees from entering.

Nearly 700,000 people have been displaced since the Russian-led offensive began in Idlib last year — 140,000 in January alone. Many are camping in the open in increasingly desperate conditions.

The deployment of air power came after the Turkish Defense Ministry said that a supply convoy bringing reinforcements into the observation posts on Monday had come under fire, leaving six Turkish soldiers dead and several others wounded.

The movement of the convoy had been coordinated beforehand, the statement said, and Turkish forces retaliated immediately. “Those who test Turkey’s determination with such heinous attacks will understand they have made a huge mistake,’’ Mr. Erdogan said.

Moscow, however, disputed Turkey’s account about coordinating with other forces in the province, saying that the Russian Defense Ministry had not been told about the troop movements.

Syrian forces were trying to hit militants linked with Al Qaeda, the Russian Defense Ministry said, according to The Associated Press, and the Turkish forces were struck because they were in the area. (To justify their attacks, including ones that have killed many civilians, Russia and the Syrian government have consistently argued they must go on the offensive to eradicate terrorists.)

Turkey has always supported the opposition forces fighting against the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, including some radical Islamists, and has sought to delay the Russian-Syrian advance to take Idlib.

Mr. Erdogan has highlighted his good relationship with Mr. Putin and attempted to strengthen ties by  purchasing the Russian S-400 missile defense system against the wishes of the United States and other NATO allies. But those links do not appear to have won him any lasting concessions from Moscow over Idlib.

The Turkish Defense Ministry said that it was maintaining suppressive fire on Syrian targets for self-defense to evacuate the dead and wounded. “The perpetrators of this hateful attack will be brought to account and our right to self-defense will be exercised in the most robust way,” the ministry said.

The suffering continued for the civilians caught in the fighting. At least eight people, most of them women and children, were said to have been killed on Monday when their minibus came under fire on a rural road. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that nine people had died in that attack, including four children.

Ahmad Aslan, who fled with his family from the town of Maaret al-Numan, said in a video message that he would have preferred death to abandoning his home. “We prayed many times to die from rockets or from barrel bombs there but it didn’t happen,” he said.

“After the regime advanced, we were forced to leave,” he added. “We have been living under the rain and cold, we lack shelter and food.”

Video distributed on social media showed people setting fire to their homes before fleeing the town of Saraqeb, ahead of the advancing Syrian forces. “We don’t want to leave anything behind for the thugs,” a voice in the background says.

Abdul Kareem Thalji, from Iss, a few miles from Saraqeb, said, “The regime is advancing and I’m racing with time to find a car and house to stay in.” He added that he was being displaced for the seventh time. “If you ask me about hope, I will tell you my entire ambition for life has collapsed, people here have lost hope.”

_______

Hwaida Saad and Vivian Yee contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

*********

#u.s. news #politics #trump administration #politics and government #republican politics #us politics #peace in iraq #iraq #iraq news #iraq protests #syrianrefugees #syrian war #syria news #syria #turkey #middle east #middleeast #recep tayyip erdoğan #putinwork #vladimir putin #china news #china #china virus

[marijanafwspickardttp89insu-blog]

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New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/science-panel-backs-lower-drunken-driving-threshold/69101/

Science panel backs lower drunken driving threshold

WASHINGTON/January 17, 2018(AP)(STL.News)— Most women would need to draw the line at two drinks, and men at two or three if states follow a blueprint by a prestigious scientific panel for eliminating the “entirely preventable” 10,000 alcohol-impaired driving deaths in the United States each year.

The U.S. government-commissioned report by a panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine made multiple recommendations, including significantly lowering drunken driving thresholds. It calls for lowering the blood-alcohol concentration threshold from 0.08 to 0.05. All states have 0.08 thresholds. A Utah law passed last year that lowers the state’s threshold to 0.05 doesn’t go into effect until Dec. 30.

The amount of alcohol required to reach 0.05 would depend on several factors, including the person’s size and whether the person has recently eaten. The report cites studies indicating most women over 120 pounds would reach 0.05 after two drinks. Men weighing up to about 160 pounds would likely reach the lower threshold at two, and those over 180 pounds at three.

The panel, in its 489-page report, also recommended that states significantly increase alcohol taxes and make alcohol less conveniently available, including reducing the hours and days alcohol is sold in stores, bars and restaurants. Research suggests a doubling of alcohol taxes could lead to an 11 percent reduction in traffic crash deaths, the report said.

It also calls for cracking down on sales to people under 21 or who are already intoxicated to discourage binge drinking, and putting limits on alcohol marketing while funding anti-alcohol campaigns similar to those against smoking.

All the proposals are likely to draw fierce opposition from the alcohol and restaurant industries. The American Beverage Institute took out full-page newspaper ads opposing Utah’s new law that featured a fake mugshot under a large headline reading, “Utah: Come for vacation, leave on probation.”

The recommendation in the academies’ report for lowering the blood-alcohol threshold would “do nothing to deter” repeat offenders and drivers with high blood-alcohol levels, who represent the “vast majority” of alcohol-impaired driving deaths, the Distilled Spirits Council said in a statement. The council said it also doesn’t support the report’s recommendations for “tax increases and advertising bans, which will have little or no impact on traffic safety.”

The report points out that “alcohol-impaired driving remains the deadliest and costliest danger on U.S. roads,” accounting for 28 percent of traffic deaths. Each day, 29 people in the U.S. die in alcohol-related crashes and many more are injured. Forty percent of those killed are people other than the drunken driver.

Rural areas are disproportionately affected. In 2015, 48 percent of drunken driving fatalities occurred in rural areas.

The report says many strategies have been effective to prevent drunken driving, but “a coordinated multilevel approach across multiple sectors will be required to accelerate change.”

“The problem isn’t intractable,” the report said.

From the early 1980s to the early 2000s, there was significant progress as the result of an increase in the drinking age to 21, decreases in the blood-alcohol threshold, and other measures, the report said. But since then, progress has stagnated and recently has begun to reverse.

Action to address drunken driving can’t wait for the advent of self-driving cars immune to the lures of a cold beer or a fine wine — it will take too long for autonomous vehicles to replace all the human-driven machines on the road, said the panel’s chairman, Steven Teutsch, a senior fellow for health policy and economics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

“In the meantime, we have 10,000 people a year dying and we ought to do something about it,” he said.

The report cites studies that show the United States lags behind other high-income countries in preventing drunken driving fatalities. More than 100 countries have adopted the 0.05 threshold lower.

In Europe, the share of traffic deaths attributable to drunken driving was reduced by more than half within 10 years after the standard was dropped, the National Transportation Safety Board said in 2013.

The safety board has also recommended the 0.05 threshold.

Alcoholic beverages have changed significantly over the past 25 years. “They are more affordable, of far greater variety, and more widely advertised and promoted than in earlier periods,” the report said. The lack of consistency in serving sizes and the combination of alcohol with caffeine and energy drinks make it harder for drinkers to estimate their level of impairment.

The report was commissioned by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which asked the academies to determine which strategies for reducing drunken driving have been proven effective.

By JOAN LOWY by Associated Press, published on STL.NEWS by St. Louis Media, LLC (US)

#American Beverage Institute #National Highway Traffic #Rural areas #United States #Utah

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Each year automobile manufacturers produce tens of millions of automobiles, most of which will be bought and sold a number of times before ending up being crushed and recycled. Normally no one will notice that the vast majority of these vehicles ever existed, but once in a while an everyday automobile will end up playing a role in some great tragedy or historic event and so will live on in—so to speak—long after most of its contemporaries have been turned into scrap metal. Of course, which vehicles deserve to join that list is largely subjective, but here is my list of the top ten most historically or notorious automobiles ever to roll off an assembly line. NOTE: These are not famous Hollywood cars like the Batmobile or the Delorean from Back to the Future which, in reality, are little more than props. These are real vehicles that people could have owned—and did, often to their detriment.)

#1 Jayne Mansfield’s 1966 Buick Electra 225 What Marilyn Monroe was to the fifties, Jayne Mansfield was to the sixties. With her platinum blond ‘do and buxom figure, she even closely resembled the more famous Monroe, though she was never able to quite eclipse her better known rival. She would never have the chance to do so either when she was killed, along with her lover, Sam Brody, when the Buick Electra she was a passenger in ran into the back of a slow-moving truck in the pre-dawn hours of June 29, 1967 near Slidell, Louisiana. The crash took the roof off the car as it slid beneath the truck, killing all three passengers in the front—Mansfield among them—but miraculously leaving her three young children, sound asleep in the back seat, with only minor injuries. Reports that she was decapitated in the crash proved to be unfounded, though she did die of blunt trauma to the skull. The one positive thing from the tragedy was that to prevent cars from sliding up beneath the back of tractor-trailers in the future, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began requiring an underride guard (a strong bar made of steel tubing) on all tractor-trailers, which ultimately became known as a Mansfield bar. As for the Buick she died in, like James Dean’s Spyder, it too briefly went on display before ending up in the Tragedy in US History Museum in St. Augustine, Florida until the museum’s closing 1n 1998. What happened to it after that is anyone’s guess, though rumors abound that it was bought by a Mansfield enthusiast for a hefty sum of money.

#2 James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder Not a lot of people today may know who James Dean was, but back in the fifties he was a top name in Hollywood and a rapidly up and coming actor famous for his smoldering good looks and intense style. He was also famous for his love of racing and fast, European cars, so it wasn’t remarkable that he would end his life in one. And that’s exactly what happened when, on the afternoon of September 30, 1955, Dean and his co-driver, Rolf Wutherich, were involved in a head-on collision just a mile west of the town of Cholame, California. Colliding with a monster 1950 Ford Tudor coupe as it made a turn onto Route 41 directly into the path of Dean’s speeding roadster (thought at the time to be doing better than 85 miles per hour), Dean’s much lighter vehicle flipped into the air and landed on its wheels some forty feet away. Remarkably, both men were pulled from the smashed Spyder alive, but Dean died at the scene, abruptly bringing an end to a most promising career. As for the smashed roadster, it was shown around the country for several years afterwards as part of a driver safety display but has since disappeared. No one knows its whereabouts today, though chances are it’s probably stashed away in some wealthy collector’s secret warehouse somewhere.

#3 Princess Grace’s Porsche Rover P6 3500 In a graphic demonstration that royalty isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, on the morning of  September 13, 1982, former actress turned Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly suffered a stroke while driving down a curvy mountainous road in Monaco (a small principality on the Mediterranean coast of France) and plunged into a ravine. The crash left her unconscious and with serious internal injuries that she died from the next day. (Remarkably, her passenger and teenage daughter, Princess Stephanie, survived the harrowing crash with just a few scratches and bruises.) Not surprisingly, like the Mercedes Benz another ill-fated royal, Princess Diana, was to die in fifteen years later, (see No. 4) the wrecked Porsche was quietly “disposed of”–supposedly by being crushed into a cube and dropped to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

#4 Adolf Hitler’s 770-K Mercedes-Benz staff cars Some automobiles acquire fame—or infamy, as the case may be—by being a participant in some great historical event or grisly tragedy. In this case, however, Hitler’s staff cars were involved in neither (unless you consider World War II to be both) but are famous for being owned by arguably the most notorious figure of the twentieth century. Der Fuhrer ordered several of these massive, armored-plated behemoths to tool around the Third Reich in and, remarkably, almost all of them survive to this day. Perhaps the most famous of these is the one currently on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, Canada that was captured by an American soldier during the last days of the war. Confiscated by the army, it made its way through a succession of owners until finally ending up being donated to the museum in 1970, where it remains to this day. A second car was presented to Finnish Field Marshal Carl Gustav Mannerheim by Hitler as a gift and to cement the Finno-German alliance. Never a big fan of the German corporal, Mannerheim promptly had the car shipped off to Sweden for “safe storage” and promptly forgot about it. The Swedes eventually seized the car for back taxes  and sold it to an American industrialist in 1948, who used it for promotional tours and raising money for various charities. A third car resides at the Technisches Museum in Sinsheim, Germany while others reside in the private collections of several wealthy millionaires around the world.

#5 President Reagan’s 1972 Ford Lincoln Continental This vehicle became almost as infamous as President Kennedy’s Lincoln when newly elected President Ronald Reagan was shot while getting into the car in front of the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981. Unlike his unfortunate predecessor, however, the bullet proved to be non-fatal—though just barely—and “the Gipper” went on to serve two terms. The car was also at another presidential assassination attempt, this one involving President Jerry Ford back in September of 1975, when a woman named Sarah Jane Moore took a few pot shots at him from across the street as he was getting into the vehicle. Moore missed, however, and spent the next thirty years in prison thinking about it. Today the car resides at the Henry Form Museum in Dearborn, Michigan next to JFK’s assassination car to serve as a poignant reminder at just how difficult protecting a sitting president can be.

#6 Bonnie & Clyde’s 1934 Ford Model 730 Deluxe Sedan Few outlaws in history have managed to capture as much attention as did two young bank robbers, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrows, during the Depression years, and few cars remain as famous as the Ford V8 they died in. Ambushed by police just outside of Bienville Parish, Louisiana on the morning of May 23, 1934, the couple were cut to pieces before they could surrender (if, in fact, they were ever given the chance) and died as fast and furious as they lived. It is said that between the two of them, they were hit by as many as 160 bullets, though this is an exaggeration. The bullet-riddled car itself became an icon of the gangster era and was put on display for decades by numerous owners before it ended up being sold to the Primm Valley Resort and Casino in Nevada for $250,000 in 1988. According to the internet, it has since been sold to the Terrible’s Casino in Nevada and is now supposedly on display at one of their casinos in Saint Joseph, Missouri.

#7 Princess Diana Spencer’s (Lady Di) Mercedes-Benz W140 In a modern fairy tale gone horribly awry, the world was shocked when it woke up on the morning of August 31, 1997 to discover that Lady Diana Spencer, the former wife of Charles, the Prince of Wales and, had she not divorced him, a potential future queen of England, had been killed in a horrific automobile accident on the streets of Paris, France early that morning. In an event that still generates much controversy today, the official story is that she died when the car she was riding in with her fiancee, Egyptian producer and billionaire Dodi Fayed and two other men, slammed into a concrete support pillar at high speed while purportedly trying to outrun the always present paparazzi. The crash killed both Fayed and the driver instantly and left a third man and Princess Di critically injured. Though apparently conscious immediately after the accident, she expired a few hours later at the hospital from massive internal injuries. Though blame for the crash was officially placed on the driver—whom tests determined to have had an extremely high blood alcohol level at the time—others blamed the paparazzi (several of whom were arrested but later released) for being a factor, though later investigation showed they were not near the vehicle at the time of the accident. Conspiracy theories that she was killed by British Special Forces at the behest of the royal family quickly spread and, though they have never been substantiated, they continue unabated today. As for the smashed Mercedes at the center of the affair, it appears to have disappeared immediately after the crash; most likely it was quietly “disposed of” in deference to the royal family and to keep it from serving as a morbid relic of the truly tragic event.

#8 Rosa Park’s Number 2857 1948 General Motors TDH-3610 City Transit Bus In one of the defining moments of the twentieth century, on the afternoon of December 1, 1955, a 42-year old African-American woman and Montgomery, Alabama resident by the name of Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger and was dutifully arrested. Little did she realize that her simple act of civil disobedience would start a firestorm that over the course of the next decade would not only end segregation throughout the south but would result in the sweeping civil rights legislation of the 1960s. The bus remained in service until it was retired in 1970 and was purchased by a gentlemen who left it parked in a field behind his home and used it to store tools. His descendants decided to sell it in 2000 and, after having it authenticated as the actual bus Mrs. Parks was on, eventually sold it via an internet auction to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan for a whopping $428,000 (about 250 times what the bus cost new in 1948)! Restored to its original condition and looking much as it did in 1955, today it is available for public inspection as one of the most historically famous vehicles of the century.

#9 President Kennedy’s 1961 Ford Lincoln convertible A participant in one of the seminal events of American history, few cars are as famous as the dark blue limousine President Kennedy was riding in when he was struck down by an assassin’s bullet on the streets of Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. In fact, few images are more iconic than that of Secret Service Agent Clint Hill clambering onto the trunk of the limo as it picks up speed in an effort to prevent Mrs. Kennedy, who had crawled onto the truck of the car, from falling off the vehicle. The car underwent a major facelift in the aftermath of the shooting—including turning it permanently from a convertible into a very hard top—and other major cosmetic changes that made it look considerably different than it did that day in Dallas. The car went on to be used by four other presidents before being retired in 1977 and today sits in display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Because it looks so different from the car they remember seeing in the video of the assassination, many people walk right past it, never realizing for even a moment how historically important the vehicle is.

#10 Franz Ferdinand’s 1911 Graf & Stift Double Phaeton I’ve chosen this vehicle as number one for one simple reason: it was the scene of arguably one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century. The sort of car built exclusively for royalty, this was in this vehicle that Austro-Hungarian leader Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were riding in when they were gunned down by assassins on the streets of Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914. Due to the political tensions in the region at the time, the deaths became highly politicized and led to rioting by ultra-nationalist residents against local Serbs. In a series of one diplomatic miscalculation after another, the incident eventually escalated into full-blown war when Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia (whom it held partially responsible for the assassination), which was reciprocated a day later by Serbia’s chief ally, Russia, declaring war on Austro-Hungary. This, in turn, induced Austria’s ally, Germany, to declare war on Russia, which triggered declarations of war by France and England against Germany, until soon pretty much everybody was at war with everybody else, the result being the First World War and 16 million deaths. While urban legends swirled around the fate of the car (it was supposedly involved in numerous fatal accidents and bad luck for subsequent owners) none of these proved to be true. Instead, the car was put on permanent display in the Museum of Military History in Vienna, Austria, along with assassin’s gun and other related items, where it remains to this day to stand as a mute reminder of how very large fires can be ignited by a very small spark.

Source: TopTenz

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