cool reader

the hardest thing about writing this post was coming up with a title

rather than dedicate a whole blog post to one film, i thought i'd try writing about all the films i watched this week, in a sort of anthology post, let's see!

two films from Kinji Fukasaku, and one from Teruo Ishii. i'm new to Ishii, Blind Woman's Curse (1970) is the first film of his i've seen, and i enjoyed it a lot. a young Meiko Kaji in her first starring role as the dragon-tattooed oyabun of a yakuza clan, facing off against a rival gang in a surreal mix of traditional period ninkyo eiga yakuza movie and weird grotesque ghost story. this is par for the course for Ishii apparently, some of the titles of his other films are definitely interesting! Horrors of Malformed Men sounds wonderful. Blind Woman's Curse is quite bloody in places, with lots of red paint spraying everywhere in that style common to the early '70s (Lady Snowblood is great for that) i really liked how Kaji's gang all had matching back tattoos that lined up when they stood in formation, with Kaji at one end with the head of the dragon on her back. she is such a badass

it's easy to see why Meiko Kaji went on to become a star. she just has this aura about her, that mesmerising quality that makes it hard to focus on anything else when she's on screen. if i was 20 years older i definitely would've had a poster of her on my teenage bedroom wall (tbf i'd put one up now if i could find one)

Hiroshima Death Match (dir. Kinji Fukasaku, 1973) is the second film in the Battles Without Honour and Humanity series, and is a slight departure from the first in that it mainly focuses on one character, the tragic yakuza hitman Shoji Yamanaka (played by Kinya Kitaoji) also starring Meiko Kaji (notice a pattern here) and Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba who gives an incredible performance as the psychopathic Katsutoshi Otomo. stylistically it's exactly the same as the first, which is hardly surprising as they were filmed back to back (the entire five film series was released in the space of two years) and features the same frantic fight scenes and documentary style that leaves you breathless. you remember how i said that i didn't know which of the five films was my favourite? well it might be this one, mainly because of Kaji and Chiba as they are both excellent

based on true events, with only the time period changed slightly so it would continue from the events of the first film rather than being set concurrently (plus production happened so quickly they couldn't rebuild one of the sets in time) Bunta Sugawara takes a back seat in this one. the real life Yamanaka was still held in great reverence by the yakuza of Hiroshima so screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara had to be careful and not change his story too much

i really love this series, there's so much density to it, so much to read about and learn, and it's a tragedy that it took so long to get the recognition it deserves outside of Japan

finally, this week i also watched another Fukasaku movie, Wolves, Pigs, and Men (1964) which has recently been released on blu-ray by Eureka. shot in black and white, this is a brilliant tale of the fallout of a heist gone wrong, starring one of the golden boys of Japanese cinema of the time period, Ken Takakura, playing a character called Jiro, who is an absolute bastard. quite a hard watch in places, this film is packed with social commentary about the downtrodden people forced to live out their lives in the slums of Tokyo, and their efforts to escape to a better life. one film that i am pretty sure was influenced by this masterpiece is Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs as they are quite similar in places (including some nasty torture sequences)

one word i would use to describe this film is “bleak” as there are no happy endings here, when a heist goes wrong things quickly devolve into paranoia and infighting, and when the yakuza get involved, well...

Fukasaku is quickly becoming one of my favourite film makers, everything i've seen of his so far has been fantastic, and each time they announce a new release of one of his movies it jumps right to the top of my must watch list. Arrow have one coming up, “The Threat” which is another one of his black and white earlier films, and i am looking forward to it immensely

excuse me while i gush about one of my favourite films for a few minutes

a few months ago i popped into my local HMV one lunchtime to have a browse, they were having a sale in their blu-ray section and i picked up an interesting looking box set from Arrow Video, three films by a Japanese director called Kinji Fukasaku that i vaguely recognised (had i seen one of his films before? i thought i had)

i'll probably talk about this particular box set in another post, but after watching the films inside i fell down a lengthy Wikipedia rabbit-hole where i discovered that the director had a vast and diverse career spanning 4 decades, had made over sixty films, and that nearly all of these were unknown outside of Japan. one that was mentioned over and over again was the 5-film Battles Without Honour and Humanity series from the early 1970s, coincidentally also available as a box set from Arrow. i picked this up the next time i was in town for £25. i've always done this, if i see something that i really like i'll try and find out as much as possible about the people who made it, what else have they done? who else did they work with? can you still buy it? are there books? very rarely do i watch something good, and then move straight on to something else. what usually happens next is i'll jump on ebay and try and collect everything i can, which is why my house is full of collections of tat from my various obsessions over the years (Misfits vinyl, 2000AD, “Asia Extreme” DVDs, the Persona videogame series...)

anyway, i digress, back to the Fukasaku films: based on documented events, and with a meticulously researched screenplay by Kazuo Kasahara, the films are adapted from the prison memoirs of a real-life yakuza boss that were published as a series of weekly magazine articles in 1972, and were responsible for creating a whole new genre in Japanese cinema; jitsuroku eiga (“actual record films”)

the first film starts with a bang (literally) with the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima that brought about the end of World War II, and this is precisely what it did to my brain when i watched it. i'm guilty of overusing certain phrases in my writing (you'll probably notice eventually) and “mind-blowing” is one, however in this case it's entirely justified. i ended up watching all 5 films in the space of one long bank holiday weekend

i'd never seen anything like this

set in Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the end of the war, the opening half hour or so is an assault on the senses. shot documentary style with grainy footage, newspaper clippings, voice-overs, and with frantic handheld camerawork, it tells how various yakuza gangs formed in the chaos of the open air black markets during US occupation of Japan. the violence is brutal, and because of the way it's been shot with the handheld cameras you feel like you are right there

the remaining hour or so of the film is a gripping tale of honour and betrayal, double-crosses, and brutal revenge. it can be kinda hard to follow the plot in places, as there is a large cast of characters with complicated, shifting allegiances, but i have found this makes the film stand up to repeated viewings (i must've watched it four or five times now)

there are several scenes shot in the street, and in public spaces, including one memorable scene where someone gets stabbed to death at a train station in broad daylight, these were shot “guerilla style” with no permit, and genuine reactions from terrified members of the public who had no idea what was happening. and that ending, damn. Bunta Sugawara's character Shozo Hirono finally decides he's had enough of all the bullshit from the bosses, and sets things up beautifully for the next film Hiroshima Death Match

i have to quickly mention that soundtrack by Toshiaki Tsushima. man, what a banger this song has so much strut and swagger to it, it fits the mood perfectly

i'll talk more about what i find fascinating about the yakuza and their place in postwar Japanese society in another post (strokes chin) but it strikes me even with my very limited knowledge how open they were about being gangsters. becoming a yakuza is seen as a legitimate (if regrettable, so sad) career choice for impoverished young men. this film doesn't gloss over the violence at all, but does show the working class yakuza in a very sympathetic way (one of Fukasaku's earlier films is called Sympathy for the Underdog)

can you imagine seeing this in 1973? this is one of the most exciting pieces of cinematic art i have ever seen, even now in 2024

has Battles Without Honour and Humanity become my favourite film of all time? quite possibly. although it might be one of the other ones, i'll let you know after i've watched them all again, it's definitely one of them though

All's West that ends West

A boy named West is born. One of two brothers, in fact. Perhaps he has a promising future.

Life is good to the boy. Sunny skies and clear waters, some great days for sailing. He is going to venture beyond the horizon, he will do great things. Of course, no one wonders why the boy is rich, they just enjoy the wealth.

But the boy is not as kind as he seems. As it turns out, he is a sneak. The boy steals from his brother, East, quite regularly, and everything, in fact.

The boy, now a mighty officer in the Men in Green^tm decides he does not want to mix with the common rabble, so he creates his own walled off community. Inspired by his very colonizers, who he idolizes for some reason.

Happy Independence Day? How bothersome. As a Man in Green^tm, it is imperative that West make a show of liking East, no matter how much he loathes him. Things must look alright, after all.

The boy continues to rob and exploit his brother, but enough is enough. He is no more welcome. East is done with West, he is no longer related to him. West is sent packing, and he will never be close to East again.

Now that the free ride has stopped, West can no longer enjoy his old life. A new friend, Mr. World Bank appears. West hates Mr. W.B., because he is practical, and reminds West that money doesn't grow on trees, even though he forgets practically every hour. Silly Mr. World Bank, West knows money doesn't grow on trees, it's printed for free. All made up, he laughs.

West skimmed through The Communist Manifesto, and he has decided it is time to nationalize Pakistan. Despite the finance minister and all the cabinet warning him not to do so, West knows best. He nationalizes the industrial sector by kicking out the dirty privateers that have seized the economy, now he will seize the means of production from them. He feels a little guilty about doing so, but life must go on, you know. Russia is Red, and now so will be Pakistan. Of course, West is shocked to see, the very tiger that carried his burdens, also fell off the narrow bridge he was on. West had failed to account for the bridge's length, sadly.

His citizenry, once booming and leading happy, blissful lives, are shocked to be crushed by this thing called inflation. Where did all the money go? Why is everything expensive? West's move to nationalize everything had crushed them, quite literally. No more free money from East, and now, the organizations that had once been great money makers, were loss making entities, costing billions. They wondered why.

Of course, good old West does not feel the consequences of his actions, in his walled garden. West had this picture taken to celebrate his achievements in bringing about the demise of private capital, which was also coincidentally the economy, some time later. The headstone, and indeed the grave plot, was paid for by selling state owned assets, of course.

And even though 52 years have passed, the ghost of his achievements, and indeed the prime minister of that time (standing to the left of the headstone) still haunts Sindh (and the rest of Pakistan) to this very day, and for the foreseeable future. Take that, dirty privateers!

In the end, things ended much like they started for West, but far worse. In almost every way possible, he was worse off than he had begun.

And what of East?

East too, had his struggles, and in fact, is still struggling. But unlike West, he has a better life now, and his citizenry has a more promising future. He is happy to know they still stand up for their rights, when needed.

And finally

Life does not get easier for West's people, as they are about to be visited by many great floods, one after another. All he can do is watch since he did not plan or account for them. Who ever said water security was a thing?

so i decided to start a blog, and this is my first post. i've never had a blog before, and thinking about it i probably haven't written anything longer than a Mastodon thread since i left high school over 30 years ago, so please bear with me while i find my feet

to be honest i find this whole idea quite intimidating. will my writing be any good? will anyone read this? i figure i should just go for it, and the plan is to at least write something on a regular (weekly?) schedule to begin with, probably at the weekend

i'm going to start by writing about movies. i guess you could say i have unconventional taste in film, my current obsession is old Japanese yakuza movies from the 1960s and 1970s, specifically the films of director Kinji Fukasaku. there are a number of “boutique” blu-ray labels in the UK releasing a near constant supply of interesting films, and all their discs come with comprehensive extras, booklets full of essays, photo galleries. i am very into it

Fukasaku is largely unknown in the west, save from one film: Battle Royale (2000) what's sad about this is he had a 4 decade long directing career, and BR was his final film (he passed away while filming the sequel and it was completed by his son Kenta) for the majority of his career he worked under the Japanese studio system, mainly for TOEI, and to say he was a prolific film maker is a huge understatement, in the 1970s alone he directed twenty-five films

this won't be a chin-stroking blog about the history of cinema or culture, there are way better writers than me out there (some of them have degrees in this stuff!) but i know what i like and i will hopefully be able to at least string some coherent sentences together and maybe even convince you that these films are worth a look, i certainly think so. even if no-one ends up reading this at least i'll have a reason to watch all the films again

CW: NSWF. Descriptions of sexual organs and sexual arousal. Mild mention of kink and BDSM dynamics

This is gonna be messy. Not because I'm uncertain about my answers, but because I'm uncertain about best practices and accepted terminology. Bear with me. Rock with me. Suggest corrections. Comment.

So! The easy part is that I'm straight and cis. No surprise if you've read my other work. But I'm neither of those things by default. I've come to those conclusions after a lot more thought than I thought I would have to give them.

But I have good friends. They thought long and hard about themselves and their bodies and identities and desires. I followed suit. We've had fun, thought provoking conversations over the years.

Admittedly, I'm not LGBTQ+. It's not an identity or a community I can claim with any authenticity. I'm an ally to the whole community. Its members deserve peace and support and understanding and equity.

But this isn't about allyship or anyone else. This is about self-reflection. Exploring desires and fantasies.

Aight, peep. Realistically?

I'll never fully untangle how much of my identity is the gender I was socialized/raised to be and how much is innate, but I like the way “man” describes me, as in “grown ass man.” Thinking on it, I've never been uncomfy with the masculine terms people assume I use.

• 'Sup bro.'
• 'My nigga' ^[1]
• 'Husband'
• ^[2]

Those all sound about right to me.

I wanna touch huge tiddies and rub on a big soft ass and thighs. I don't desire to have either of those.

I like my broad shoulders and muscular thighs and trimming my moustache and the way my voice sounds when i cackle. I like the weight i put up when i bench press or squat. I like how heavy my dick feels when I'm aroused, the way it bobs up and down. The way my pecs bounce when I flex them. I've never wanted hips or breasts. I've always wanted to touch them.

I'm definitely a guy. A dude. A homie. An hombre. A brodie. Or whatever niggas is calling themselves these days. ^[3]

As far as being straight? That's a little more ambiguous. I'm straight enough to identify with the term but not 100% or exclusively so or anything. Maybe 85%?

i like the idea of being the bigger, stronger partner to someone who wants to lie on my chest and feel my muscles and feel protected.

I want someone who thinks of my dick and blushes. Someone who looks fantastic in a skirt and thigh highs and wears cute underwear and wants me to rub their body.

Someone who cackles and bullies me and calls me out when I'm on one. Someone who gets mad at me and makes me give them slow, submissive, love drunk, head. ^[4]

Someone who folds when i charm them with my dimples and my wit and those aforementioned broad shoulders. Some who whimpers in anticipation, waiting for me to give them what they so desperately want. Someone who wants me to rail them in the most loving way possible.

I want someone girly, but that doesn't mean they have to specifically be a girl. It means (somewhat stereotypical) femininity more so than any pronouns. It's mostly a vibe. It's partially fashion, partially the shape of your body, partially a few other things I'm still thinking through.

The femininity I'm attracted too doesn't mean being sweet and innocent or wearing pink or having a high pitched UwU voice. I love my wife and she's none of those things. Instead she's alternatively a couchbound snack goblin, a bookish combat witch, and a haughty, spooky supervillain with world domination aspirations. And I can't imagine being with anyone else.

But I like to think I could have dated a feminine guy had I not met her. Not sure if “twink” or “femboy” are offensive but that's the vibe I'm thinking of. Someone cute, goofy, girlish.

I'm also extremely married and so I'll likely never get a chance to test that hypothesis and more importantly have no desire to.

I think what complicates all theory and thinking is my persistent love for big, heavy, soft, squishy tiddies. I like curves more than almost anyone you know. I'm in the 97th percentile for massive breast appreciation. Curvy asses and thighs are amazing too. Peeking out of skirts. Squeezed by high shots. Ensconced by short shorts. Big ol' ass.

Aesthetically, that appreciation for big boobs and thick thighs usually leads me towards curvy chubby women rather than feminine guys, or slender women for that matter.

I'm a man who likes women and femininity or all other potential partners. “Bisexual” or “pansexual” don't feel honest when I say them. “Not entirely straight” feels like too much of an invitation. I'm straight enough. Straight-ish?

I should read more theory on all of this. I should do a lot of things. I'm smart enough but I'm no great thinker.

I'm just a straight. cis. man. One who's thought about what those three words mean and mean to me. I'm NaClKnight.

[^1]: I'm not responsible for your safety or wellbeing if you use this term without proper credentials. [^2]: I originally had “Motherfucker” as a cheeky double entendre here. I was confident enough about it that I'm telling you about it, but not confident about that one to keep in the text. Technically it implies fucking someone who is already a mother, rather than making someone a mother by means of coitus. [^3]: “The Boondocks” remains an integral part of my humor [^4]: Admittedly, I find meekly saying “yes, miss” sexier to me than “yes, sir”

#NSFW #NonFiction #Kink #BDSM #Sex #Gender #Sexuality

I am writing this from a hotel desk, where I am holed up for exactly one full day to try and get a messy first draft of an article pulled together from the transcript of a conversation and my notes about the conversation. The topic is 'validation in narrative therapy practice' and once I get this messy draft and some reflection questions written, I'll send it off to the four other people who were in the conversation, so that they can make changes, additions, etc. We are hoping to publish it either in a book chapter if we can find a narrative therapy book currently accepting chapters, or in maybe the Journal of Systemic Therapies or similar. Seems like good timing to start a little blog that I am not sure how I will use! But I have a ton of writing I need to do over the next while, so maybe a place where I write about what I'm writing would be good.

Before anyone gets any wrong ideas, this post is not a dig at America (I say this because my main readership is 100% American, population: one) for I know fully well the gaps in quality of healthcare, the ethics, the difference in service availability (one tertiary hospital here in Peshawar does not even have a cath lab, and hence no angiographies and so on) difference in FDA regulations and trial standards, among other things, though we do have our good institutes, too. It is rather a simple thesis, one that I have observed both sides of. And my own view is that, yes, all people of all nations should get state sponsored healthcare.

Simply, whether you are the richest, or the poorest nation, state sponsored healthcare is the most direct, and biggest investment you can make in the people. I do not care for any arguments to the contrary, for they are not humane.

Now, you may wonder how I have seen both sides of it. Well, in the previous government, the forcefully ousted Prime Minister had a programme called Sehat Card, one that ensured free health care coverage of essential procedures for all (and admittedly, the only flaw in this project was that the rich exploited this too, and steps are being taken to remedy this.) Briefly, when the average Pakistani, that laborer who wages war against his own body to make less than 4 dollars a day, suffers from an MI (Myocardial Infarction, heart attack in layperson terms) it is no longer a death sentence because he cannot afford stents (and trust me, no laborer can afford any serious procedure, many even struggle to buy insulin, even though it is on the cheaper side here). There are other ventures too, like the flagship National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases in Sindh where poor people can get state of the art treatment for free. The main hospital is in Karachi, and there are a further 9 satellite centres all over Sindh, with more to come. In fact, over 2.4 million patients, including those requiring surgeries, were treated free of cost at the National Institute of Cardiovasc­u­lar Diseases (NICVD) facilities across Sindh in 2023.¹

This is important because in Pakistan, governmental spending on healthcare per person, is quite low, lower than many developing countries, even Zimbabwe. Not only that, but the bulk of healthcare costs come from out of pocket spending, which means the poorer the person, the worse their burden.

Some data about it², to further illustrate just how much spending the Sehat Card curtailed (SCP here refers to Sehat Card Plus, all data is sourced from this report):

An independent evaluation team from Agha Khan University found that there was a significant reduction in medical care component of mean out-of-pocket expenditure for inpatient services for SCP users (PKR 1,006 ±9248) as compared with SCP nonusers (PKR 30,042 ±69014). As you can see here, the gap is astronomical. One is almost within the daily laborer's reach, the other is pronouncing a death sentence, almost.

The nonmedical component (transport etc.) was similar in both groups. The level of catastrophic health expenditure among households was significantly lower for SCP users (14%) compared to SCP nonusers (35%). The perception of economic wellbeing was higher among SCP users.

These tables should drive home just how impactful the programme is, no longer does healthcare have to eat the poor out of house and home. While the level of catastrophic health expenditure for all wealth quintiles and place of residence was significantly lower for SCP users as compared to SCP nonusers, note how those from the poorest wealth quintiles and rural areas especially are not incurring as many catastrophic health expenditures. Note also how those not availing state sponsored healthcare reported a more severe impact of hospitalizations.

I do not wish this to be a technical, jargon filled article so we will go back to the simpler side of things. Briefly, while there was poverty, there was also hope, promise of a future. With state sponsored health care, people need not die due to poverty, this was the easiest way of mobilizing the poor, downtrodden classes and it was working. However, after the ouster, the new government (let's leave aside the fact that they were not even chosen by the people) immediately froze the program for quite a while. Now, I have worked in the system for over a year (over two if we count my house job, which is an internship and three if we consider final year, which was spent in wards anyway) and I came into the system seeing the Sehat Card, saw what it did for people, and then I saw it frozen, and I saw the outcomes of it first hand. People with no money to pay, some were doomed to die due to poverty, others sold everything they had to get treatment (and that is in already subsidized government hospitals, where the government foots the bulk of the cost of most base line investigations – a basic panel consisting of a complete blood count, ESR, serum electrolytes, renal function tests, liver function tests among others, along with more specialized markers like Trop I, Trop T etc. – these cost the government way more, according to govt. hospital techs ) and many others simply avoid going to the hospital. Better misery and having some money than being left with nothing. The towering shadow of poverty cloaks every decision, and without state sponsored healthcare, it severely hurt socioeconomic mobility.

Some more stats from the previous document:

• Two-thirds of Sehat Card Plus KP users, at the time of discharge, did not report incurring out-of-pocket expenditure during admission. For the other one-third, the estimated mean expenditure was PKR 5,464 on medicines and PKR 3,519 on diagnostic tests.

• Average cost per admission was PKR 31,395, which was 20-40% higher in private hospitals. The KP government spent PKR 2.96 billion on 94,387 patients of which 0.83 billion (28.0%) were spent on treating cardiovascular diseases. The mean cost of treating cases of ischemic heart disease was PKR 89,919.

Now, government hospitals here often do not have all the facilities, they are also overcrowded, I myself did my housejob in one, and the chaos there is indescribable, we would be 10, 15 doctors dealing with over 400 patients in a day. I would often fall asleep in the doctor's room after being done with my shift at 8 PM, and go to my hostel room in the late midnight hours like 3, 4 AM despite it being a mere 5 minutes away. The real beauty of the sehat card lays in it allowing even the poorest citizen to get the best possible healthcare, at any facility of their choosing, even private.

Now, as per the report, there are concerns of its financial sustainability, but the health foundation is working on addressing those (the report is about a year old). They have gotten more aggressive with dis-empaneling of hospitals that try to exploit this, which is good to see, and started renovating more hospitals under public-private partnerships, which will be empaneled. They have even started working on upgrading the MIS (Management Information System) to integrate disease history, as well as financial means.

I will probably add more to this article someday, or I may not, part of me feels I sufficiently made my case, yet part of me wants to say much, much more, but alas there is no time nor energy. As always, Sayonara.

References: 1: Dawn News 2. https://sehatcardplus.gov.pk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Third-Party-Evaluation-Report-Sehat-Card-Plus-KP.pdf

She said she dated me because I had words when other men didn't. She said she fell for me because I had words that teased and taunted and tickled her. Words she had to think about for more than two seconds. Words she had to turn over and check for references and entendre and insight.

She liked the ones I wrote and the ones I spoke aloud.

She said I made her feel things she didn't think she was capable of. Like lust for a human in real life, or the desire for a man to rub her butt.

It took two whole years before she admitted that she thought was asexual, rather than demisexual, and for her to admit that her brain liked my words first.

And then her body followed.

I utterly love her. I love her like I love my life But that insufferable cliche is insufficient for the sentiment. I've loved her even, and especially, when I didn't love my own life.

Writing is a skill. A muscle to be clenched and relaxed. Trained and built. She likes a lot of my muscles. I love her.

When I sat down, I thought of this like a stretch for that muscle. Like touching my toes or wrapping my arm in front of my chest. Like normal though, my clearest thoughts are my second and third.

This isn't a stretch.

This? All of this? This is a Flex

The following is an excerpt from a larger story I'm working on; it's seen only rough edits for readability and represents an acceptable 1st draft. I already know which wide swaths of this chapter need to change. But in the meantime, enjoy magic, powers, teamwork, witty dialogue, and a tense battle.

---

Staff Sergeant Tiffany Couch had never been so happy to watch a man plummet from the sky. It was a curious thing to even consider. But as the wiry man fell towards the earth, his dirty blonde hair tousled by the wind, she couldn't shake the unmistakable feeling that their situation would improve dramatically once he hit the ground. The Army veteran hunkered down behind an uprooted tree and watched.

The man turned over in midair, righting himself right before he hit the tree line. A translucent purple haze covered his body, slowing his descent until his feet grazed the mossy carpet of the frosty Colorado forest. Sergeant Couch sprinted at him, trusting her squad to keep the attention of the monster they'd attracted.

“Glad to have you, Major,” she said, her voice low and tense. “Did Joint Command fill you in on the situa-”

“Jeez, you look like shit.” The new arrival interrupted her, looking past her and into the dense woodland behind her. “MC2 mentioned an 'unidentified hostile mage.' Something about 'hard light.' I'll figure it out as I go.” He shrugged.

“That's not just 'some mage.' That's Verdict, the religious terrorist.” She explained. “He's one of those Manifestations,”

“Like Gracia?” The man asked, wisps of majik still rolling off of him.

“Yeah. They're both Manifestations. But Gracia leads parades and stops riots; Verdict melted half a city block. We didn't expect him all the way out here, but as soon as we snatched the doctor, he showed up, threw up some barrier over the cabin, and shrugged off everything we threw at him. Only th-”

“Have you tried majik?” Impact interrupted again.

“I was saying that only the Soul Fists had any effect, but we're running short on those.”

“Dr. Adeseun is inside the cabin?” The Army Battlemaje looked through the clearing at a strange white dome a hundred yards or so from him.

When the Staff Seargent nodded, Impact kept talking.

“So, you got your ass kicked by a renaissance fair reject, the mission went FUBAR, and then you called for backup. Solid copy. You're really doing us proud out here, Sergeant.” The Major shook his head and looked towards the sound of gunfire and shouts. “Luckily... they sent me. Rest easy and find somewhere to hide while I put this freak on ice.”

“Get down!” Another soldier screamed, and Sergeant pressed her body against the nearest tree for cover. She watched Major Impact stick his hand in front of him, erecting a short, curved wall of the same purple haze that'd slowed his descent earlier. A spear—glowing as if made entirely of harsh white light— flew past her and deflected off of Impact's majikal barrier before it disappeared in the foliage behind them. Sergeant Couch observed fresh disdain cross his face, and the new arrival tugged on the sleeve of his padded bodysuit while advancing in the direction of the latest projectile. “Let's go earn some medals.” The Major grinned, blissfully unaware of the scowl growing on the Staff Sergeant's face

“Gauntlet One. Do you have eyes on Impact? Has he engaged the threat?” The voice rang out in her earpiece.

The veteran soldier pressed her finger to her ear and responded. “Affirmative. Impact is onsite. Dr. Addy's whereabouts are unknown.”

“Solid copy. That VIP and his data are priority 1. Assist Impact if possible, but we need the Dr and his data intact.” The man's answer did little to calm her nerves, but that's why they'd sent Major Impact.

Maj Max Impact ran towards the barrage of hostile majik until his feet no longer skimmed the ground, using his own majik to pull himself into the air through the air. The harsh purple glow of his telekinesis covered him, lifting him off the ground and shunting another incoming volley. Joint Command had mentioned some hostile mage, but Max hadn't expected a hulking titan, clad head to toe in glowing white armor more suited for a fantasy movie than a modern battlefield. But such was the nature of majik and the weirdos who so frequently wielded it.

The monstrous knight menaced him with empty hands, its face obscured by a full plate helmet. A cross had been cut into the helmet, but where Impact expected to see a face staring out at him, he found only a pulsing red glow. Impact didn't spare a thought for the meaning of the symbol, or the runes carved into the mage's armor. Instead, Major Impact swept his hand in front of him, collecting a mound of debris from the forest floor before flinging it at the monster the military had summoned him to subdue. Not content with his first barrage, he wrapped his majik around a felled tree and flinging the oaken pillar directly at the glowing threat.

“I'm supposed to tell you to stand down and come quietly, but I'm really hoping I'll get to beat you to a pulp.” Impact sneered as the tree slammed into the mage, hurling them off the trail and into a nearby thicket. “I'm Major Max Impact of the Liberated Republics of America, but you know that already. Just like you know that you're going to die here, freak.”

Max circled to his left, still a foot above the ground. He kept his hand on his firearm while searching for any sign of the mage. The soldiers chattered behind him, and he was thankful he'd lowered the volume on his earpiece before he'd arrived. Command's nagging was bad enough without adding panicked soldiers to the mix.

“I know who you are.” A voice responded, reverberating through the air, not through his earpiece. The knight didn't have a mouth to speak from, but Impact knew in a moment who was addressing him. “You're a pawn, a criminal, a sick joke. You're also an asshole, but-”

“Says the medieval reject...” The Major cackled.

The knight stood, surrounded by the armed soldiers, evidently prepared to fight them all with empty hands and white armor that radiated a harsh light reminiscent of fluorescent tubes. “The Creator placed the Angels over the Earth, to render their perfect judgment. The truth is simple: I am their Verdict.” His armor pulsed, stinging Max's eyes with a sudden flash that made him thankful for the sophisticated visor attached to his blue and white padded suit. He was less thankful for the earpiece built in, which now inundated him the sounds of panicked soldiers.

“That’s Verdict?”

“The terrorist?”

“Wasn't he the one who blew up Com Bank HQ last year?”

“Nah, he didn't blow up the building. He killed everyone inside.”

“I heard the janitors survived.”

“We are so fucked!”

“Cut the sanctimonious shit.” Impact yelled, using his telekinesis to grab a tree behind the boastful knight and bring it down right on top of him. Verdict lifted his arm and what Impact could only describe as a plate of hard light formed, catching, then shattering the tree. Instead, the knight dashed at him, covering the 10 meters between them faster than Max thought possible for a man—or creature—that size. This Verdict was even taller in person, and nearly as broad thanks to his bulky armor. Max's suit had been designed by military scientists and engineers for aerodynamic air travel, and sufficient protection to stop bullets, plasma, and spells, but Verdict's armor suggested that whoever had designed it had started with the loose idea of a medieval knight and freestyled from there. Red fabric like a bodysuit clung to the man beneath the bulky white armor, and black locs spilled from beneath the knight's round helmet.

A sword materialized in Verdict's hand as he swung it and dissipated just as quickly, particles of light forming from empty air and returning to the same. Max Impact employed his own majik to blunt the incoming strikes, letting them clang harmlessly against the purple miasma wafting from his hands. The knight raged, swapping from his massive scimitar to an even larger axe to a broad spear, wailing away at the military mage's defenses.

Max danced and dodged, leaning on his five years of majikal experience before he hurled himself through the air, cloaked in his majik, and finally bought himself enough time to reach for the firearm on his hip. The rifle hung in the air before it produced a burst of blue-white plasma that hurtled towards the rampaging knight. He watched the knight errant erase the hurtling plasma with a burst of light from his outstretched hand, then add insult to injury and punch his own burst, turning the spherical spell into a projectile of his own, now rushing towards Max. The telekinetic threw himself high into the air to evade the blast. His majik reached down to his firearm, still floating beneath him, and he pulled the trigger of the weapon from 15 feet away. spewing bursts of hot plasma as the Major hurled any debris big or small at Verdict, clobbering him with felled trees, large rocks, and anything else within the reach of his majik.

Verdict burst through the storm of debris carrying a massive plate of white light affixed to his arm like a shield. “Nice try flyboy, now hold this L!” Impact swore as the knight leapt toward him. The wild mage moved faster than anything wearing that much armor should. Impact swerved in midair, partially dodging the axe soaring Verdict's leaping punch and the axe swing that followed. The pain in his side sent Max crashing to the ground, kicking up leaves and debris as he struggled to right himself. Verdict tilted his heavy plate helm at the government mage, and Max noticed two notches above arm of the cross carved into the knight's helmet. The entire carving seemed to glow with an eerie red light that emanated from the center of the helmet, as if there were no head inside it at all. “Ready to say 'night night?' My steps are ordered by the Redeemer, the Angels, and the Divine Presence, not 4-star generals and politicians. You're out of your league, Chair Force.” Verdict drew a line in the air with his finger and a massive, curving sword manifested into his clenched fists.

Verdict swung the blade downwards, but the scimitar buried itself in the translucent purple miasma spreading out from Impact's hand. The hulking, luminescent knight recoiled too slowly to keep the haze from spreading along the weapon and covering his whole body. The Major clapped his hands together, but concern clouded his face when the knight didn't squish into a meatball, didn't even compress. “That's some kinda majik. Most people get crushed like aluminum cans.” Instead, the interloper crashed face first into a nearby tree, still tangled in the throes of Max's telekinetic majik, before the Major flung him over the trees and out of sight.

“Problem solved. Ok Sgt, now where's the... shit. What were you here looking for?” Impact called out, turning towards the tree he'd left the Staff Sergeant hiding behind. “It was a book or something, right? No, wait, it was....”

“We were here to retrieve Dr A-” A new soldier spoke up, eyes darting as if the towering knight might remerge at any moment.

“Don't tell me.... wait I got it. You were here to retrieve Dr. Addition or whatever. More importantly, who the fuck are you?” Impact narrowed his eyes at the unfamiliar man crouching besides the Sergeant.

“Captain Jake Basch, 72nd Recon Squad. I'm Gauntlet Actual. Thanks for the assist, Impact.”

“Major Impact. And you're welcome. Where were you when I got here?”

“Trying to see straight. That thing ambushed us; I took the worst of it. Knocked me clean out apparently.” He shook head in apparent disbelief.

“Figured I'd find the officer sleeping on the job.” Impact laughed, only laughing harder when he discovered that no one had joined in his mirth. “Fuck you, that was hilarious. Anyways, my orders were to neutralize the enemy mage. He looks neuched to me. Go do your jobs now.” He ran his gloved hand through his windswept hair and assessed the ruined forest surrounding them. “Which were what again? Rescuing Dr. Addition?”

“Dr. Addy.” The man explained, pivoting to point towards a nearby clearing in the woods.

“Sorry, Dr. Address.” Impact corrected himself.

“No, Dr. Addy. Short for Adeseun. He comes from the Republic of Freed Peoples. Lots of West African family names there.” The captain advised.

Impact dismissed the reminder with a flick of his wrist. “Didn't ask. Don't care. Where's the doctor?”

The Captain and the Sergeant both nodded and walked towards the clearing, where the path led up a hill to a small shack whose top was just visible above the tree line. Even from this distance Max could sense powerful majik radiating off the small wood structure. “Addy ran in there after Verdict ambushed us. Then Verdict sealed it up like that.” The Captain gestured towards the harsh fluorescent glove emanating from every orifice of the building.

“Blow the door off.” Impact explained, gesturing as one might to a large child.

“Tried. Whatever Verdict did to that place, we can't physically touch it anymore. Besides, Command wants the doctor alive. Otherwise, we'd have shot him when we found him. We asked Command about it, and they say the easiest way is to get Verdict to undo it or carry him far enough that it unravels on its own. Or...”

“Couldn't I just kill him? Would that unravel it?” Max reached for his carbine, checking the gun for jams and clearing the chamber with a flick of his fingers before snatching it from its spot hanging in midair. He secured the rest of his skintight, padded flight, including the two handguns he kept as sidearms. When the Captain nodded slowly, Impact lifted himself into the air. “Sit tight kiddos. I gotta go find our freak and ask him real nicely. Wonder what kind of medal they'll pin on me for this one.”

Captain Basch watched the mage lift higher into the air, buoyed only by the purple wisps of smoke emanating from his hands. As glad as he'd been to wake up and see a mage among their ranks, he'd be just as grateful to see Major Impact leave for good.

“I heard that the Major didn't have any before he joined the Air Force.” Basch remarked.

“I heard about some folks being late bloomers. Don't get any majik until their twenties or later. Maybe he...”

“Not a fucking chance.” The officer spat. “With majik like that? The only question is what the Air Force did to him, and why they picked that asshole.”

Impact hovered above the tree line now, looking for any sign of the rogue mage. He'd flung Verdict hard enough to buy them some time, but the cage of hard light surrounding the little wooden shanty was evidence enough the hulking knight was still alive and still in the vicinity. He flew for a minute, guns at the ready, majik primed to snatch anything and turn it into a projectile. Each swaying tree, each bush kissed by the wind was a potential threat.

He loved it.

This was what he'd signed up for. This is what the Air Force'd made him: a weapons platform. The scientists and researchers called him a near perfect match for whatever minor, dormant deity the LRA government had contracted: Enough power to make him great, but not enough to make him a god. Or so the official report said. Max saw the situation differently. In his eyes he was a one-man spellbound gunship. A hunter of predators and freaks. A symbol of hope for civilians, and heavy ordinance for struggling troops out of their depth.

The men and women of the 72nd Recon Squad disappeared beneath him. A minute later he heard the familiar voice of the Warrant Office assigned as his direct connection to the Command's leadership in his ear. “Got eyes on the hostile?”

“Negative. Just trees. And oh shit— Just a deer. Goddammit.” Max said.

“Copy that. Good hunting”

“Feels like Gloucester all over again.” Impact mused.

“Let's hope not. For everyone's sake” The voice in his head shuddered. “God, what a shitshow that was.”

Impact let the voice go silent and tried not to think about what happened that day in Southwest England, the last official mission of the team of mages assembled from a handful of nations for the ostensible mission of international peace, the Paragons.

It was their last official mission because it ended when the leader of the “Paragons” blew up a University and its hospital on international TV.

A bird cawed overhead and snapped the lanky airman from his reverie. A crow? A falcon? Some other, less cool bird? He had no idea. But majik was easier to recognize. For instance: a 2-meter-long javelin made of pure light, glinting against the trees as it hurtled toward him. Max whipped around, brought his hand up and nudged the air in front of him, majikal strong enough to shift the air molecules and shunt, not stop, the oncoming spell. The bolt of white majik slid off Impact's translucent haze and dissipated into the air above him.

Impact dove at the source of the bolt, banking to his left to avoid catching another one. Something else bright and hostile whipped toward him, and he batted away a spinning axe intended for his sternum.

“It hit your hands. Try catching it with your chest next time!” The knight laughed, an ominous rumble that felt like it only came at someone else's expense. Max watched him trace a light in the air and grab the axe that materialized in its wake, swinging it once, hurling it at the approaching airman. Impact moved to slow the axe, to snatch it from the air with his own majik and send it spinning back towards its sender. But the moment he plucked it from the air the translucent golden handaxe dissolved into golden particles that scattered through the air, landing harmlessly on Impact's majikal barrier.

Verdict stood before him, one hand outstretched above him, glowing with an intense golden light. Max feinted, strafed, and finally advanced, hurling one log at his foe and lifting another high into the air for a later attack. “So what's your plan, Verdict? Fight off the whole platoon and walk off with Dr. Addition?”

The tree exploded as it collided with Verdict, sending more particles of light splintering through the air. Impact watched Verdict abandon whatever ritual he'd attempted and resumed his stance, hands low, fists clenched. But there was something different about him. “The angels order my steps. I've never had a problem arriving where I'm needed. But the doctor has a higher calling than 'political prisoner'.”

“When the fuck did you get a cape?” Impact stared at the shimmering sheet of light billowing behind the rogue mage.

“Why is that the thing you're concerned about?” The knight roared, and Max detected new confusion in the taciturn knight's voice.

“Cause it's the only useful spell you've got. Everything else is just medieval bullshit and posturing.” Impact cackled. “Watch!”

Vedict caught Impact's next attack on his shoulder and shrugged it off like a stiff breeze. Impact slid back through the air but couldn't escape the knight's leaping punch, or the combination of blows that detonated against his chest with a final burst of hot white light that sent the military mage skidding along the ground like a stone skipping across a lake.

“People avoid me cause I'm dangerous.” Verdict reminded him, stalking towards Impact with heavy steps.. “But I'm not here to kill anyone. 'Pursue justice, love your neighbor, walk humbly,' and I won't exist. SImple as, kid. I'm only what you've earned.”

“Spare me the monologue. You're a zealot. A radical. You and the whole Creationist cult.” He scrambled back to his feet in a burst of deadly majik. “But if you unwind whatever spell you've got around the doctor, I'm willing to let you scamper back to whatever church you crawled out of...”

Impact's next projectile sailed high and he hoped the knight couldn't see behind him. The telekinetic airman charged at his target, drawing his majik into his own legs. He watched Verdict brace for the impact, then snatched the boulder he'd just thrown and and yanked it back toward Verdict. Max angled his own arc through the air, and his boot and the massive rock collided with the bellicose mage at nearly the same time. Verdict spat an expletive before the twin impacts sent him sprawling. The shining knight flew through a grove of trees before rolling to a stop on a leaf strewn hill.

“Did that majikal... barrier dissipate yet?” Max Impact asked into his earpiece.

“Negative.”

“How the fuck is he still alive?” Max groused, turning back to the apparently still living angelic mage.

“I'm old school like that.” Verdict staggered to his feet. “Don't quit, don't break, don't complain.” Both men noticed the dimmed or cracked plates in Verdict's armor, and the way that they filled in and rebuilt themselves at the expense of the angelic mage's cape. “Come get some, young blood.” Verdict menaced, fists raised.

“It's your funeral, freak.” Max sneered, charging ahead, majik churning around his entire body. He hadn't been given the title of the Liberated Republic of America Air Force's premier mage killer, he'd earned it.

---

Dr. Samuel Addy cowered in the small wooden shack, unable to see out past the hard white plates of majik that kept the soldiers from capturing him again. He hadn't remembered if they'd introduced themselves as marines or soldiers before they kicked the door down. He didn't know how they'd found him in the secluded Colorado countryside. All he knew was that his research had attracted the wrong kind of attention from the exact kinds of people he'd never wanted to see. Who knew asking questions could be so dangerous?

The advice to 'disappear until things died down' had been oddly prescient and also weeks too late. His sole comfort— save the hulking, glowing knight who'd come out of literally nowhere to assault his captors— was the hope that the other researchers and assistants were faring better than he had.

The shack, too small and too empty, was a prison of its own. He could not leave, but his military captors could not enter, and all that remained of the world outside was the occasional tremor through the ground,threatening to collapse the crumbling shack with himself still inside.

He'd analyzed the nature of his majik prison as best he could. All that remained was to wait for the spell to unwind and discover who be there to greet him.

---

“Nichols... I want every Soul Fist we have locked on Verdict. It's the only ordinance we have that even staggered that thing.”

The young man nodded at Captain Basch before scrambling to load the weapon. “It's like some kind of demon.” He muttered. “What the fuck...”

“Not a demon.” The Captain gritted his teeth. “We're not that lucky. Couch, any word?”

“They're still going at it.” Staff Sergeant Couch replied through her radio. “Did Command say anything about an artillery strike? Maybe some heavy ordinance? Shit, drop a space needle or something.”

“Negative, Couch. Command says that Impact is the artillery. That's the heaviest ordinance we'll get.”

“Solid copy.” Tiffany said, certain she'd heard the Captain sigh as he delivered his latest status report.

A deafening boom sprayed dust and leaves over everything and demanded the attention of each human in attendance. Whatever Impact and Verdict were doing, they were reaching an imminent conclusion.

---

Max Impact didn't need a mirror to know how ragged he looked— he could feel the air licking across each of the open wounds striping his arms and chest. He'd long since stopped using his majik to keep the air away from his cuts, not when he needed every ounce of soul he could muster to have any chance of winning this fight. The two firearms that still worked hung lazily in midair, firing intermittently each time he needed to distract, move, or pressure the resolute mage with the still too bright armor. Verdict called himself a manifestation, and a handful of similarly empowered mages claimed the same title, advocating for their persistent belief that a singular being had created everything, each human, spirit, and molecule of matter. Creationism didn't make much sense to Max Impact, but he'd never been paid to think. Impact was a problem solver, an achiever, and this obstinate knight was a problem to be solved.

They traded spells and blows, and for each gash and contusion Impact had earned he'd paid verdict back in kind. Much of the knight's glowing armor had dissipated into glowing white particles, leaving patches of ugly gray beneath. verdict had demonstrated an ability to regenerate his armor and his reserves of majik energy, and Impact had resorted to shooting him, or at him, each time he tried.

Impact faltered as he caught his breath, a momentary lapse in his mastery of his majik, and needed each ounce of his soul to deflect the scimitar that appeared from a ray of light drawn in the air and sliced through the air trying to separate his head from his shoulders. He pushed, pushed, pushed with his entire soul, forcing the knight back, and prepared himself to engage again.

“You don't have to die here, bootlicker.” Verdict taunted. “Fall back. Tell them I showed up, things got hectic, and -urgh!”

Two massive blue shells exploded in quick succession against Verdict's patchwork armor, sending the knight careening through the air and forcing Impact to summon whatever scraps of majik he could to keep himself steady in the face of the blast. Verdict, or what was left of him, landed face down, the lingering majik of the military weapons still sizzling against his armor and in the cloud of debris that hung over everything.

Impact immediately recognized the telltale blue glow of a Soul Fist, the military child of a malignant spell and a bazooka shell. He tore off the remains of his cracked visor and watched for signs of life from the knight. There was no telling what spell he might unleash with his last gasps of light if the spell hadn't totally obliterated him.

“Took you long enough with those Fists, Sergeant. What, were you waiting for an invitation?”

“Hit confirmed on the Soul Fist!” One of the soldiers yelled. “Target is down. Moving to-”

“The hell I am!” Verdict groaned, pushing up to his hands and knees, to the abject horror of every soldier and airman watching him. “I'm not down. I'm just... y’all play too much.” He gasped, drawing two short lines in the air in front of him. One produced a glowing plate of solid majik, as evidenced by the bullets that bounced harmlessly off it. But the second formed an object Max hadn't seen the knight make yet. He strained his eyes and finally recognized it as a horn or a trumpet. Whatever instrument it was, Verdict pulled it to his cracked helmet and produced the most terrifying sound Impact had ever heard, something like rushing wind and audible fury.

TacCom was in his ear a second later, instructing, demanding him to grab every soldier and vacate the area. Each of Max's protests were met with panicked shouts from the Command Post until he finally acquiesced.

The Major pulled every soldier he could see or hear into a single pile of wriggling soldiers and dragged them behind him as he lifted into the air. In his periphery he saw the gray clouds above him beginning to split, pouring forth a golden light. Then he understood the urgency from the command post, and why every fiber of his being had responded with fear at the sound of that trumpet.

“You've gotta be kidding me. No fucking... there's no fucking way!” Max shouted, pulling himself and his human cargo as fast as his faltering majik would carry them, traveling as close to the ground as he could manage. He didn't want to fall far to the ground if he couldn't escape what came next. He flew, and flew, ignoring the piercing, growling voice behind him, and the peals of thunder cracking the sky. Whatever was talking now wasn’t Verdict and didn't speak in English either. It was something else, something he didn’t understand and didn’t care to.

And then the light overtook him and the squad he'd been assigned to assist.

---

The opaque white shell surrounding the small shack that served both as Dr. Samuel Addy's prison and his refuge burst, dissolving into a million grains of glowing white sand. The doctor pushed past the front door, letting the ruined wood beams collapse behind him. Before him stood the same Manifestation of God's justice that'd saved him from the military earlier. But the Verdict that stood before him now was so much more diminished than he’d been an hour ago. He leaked dim and weathered, and altogether less menacing.

“Samuel... are you a praying man?” Verdict asked, his voice still low and accusatory.

“Sometimes?”

“Then put up a prayer for both of us.” Verdict growled. “N-need every drop of faith you've got.” Verdict's chest did not rise and fall with any sort of cadence, but his movements were more careful, as if he might falter at any moment.

The frightened doctor mumbled a prayer, and the fraying knight swayed on unsteady legs. Verdict's white armor frayed and dissolved as he stood there and the 40 year old doctor struggled to imagine what could have so grievously wounded his shining savior. Fear, hope, and exhilaration gripped the scientist by turns.

Verdict lifted his outstretched hand and a glow gathered in his palm, shining brighter with each syllable from the doctor’s mouth until it finally became too painful to behold.

“Good enough.” Verdict growled, “Order my steps!” The plea came as a shock to the doctor, and Verdict’s sudden shove sent the scientist stumbling backwards. Dr. Samuel Addy watched the Colorado forest grow further and further away as he fell, certain that he would die, dashed upon the rocks waiting below whatever cliff he must have fallen from. How else could he still be falling?

Instinct ripped a terrified scream from his lungs as his back finally hit whatever he'd falled onto. But the surface that broke his fall felt... plush? And his groping hands touched what felt like carpet. Dr. Samuel Addy rolled onto his stomach and found himself on the rug of a brightly lit room somewhere that was clearly not a chilly Colorado forest. A smiling woman greeted him and he recognized her face even before he saw the warm yellow light of the halo fixed above her head.

She was Gracia, and he truly was saved.

Gracia served as the heavenly manifestation of the Savior's grace and love and hope. Her glowing hair and wings of pure golden light identified her as a mage, but her warm smile and cheery countenance marked her as the continent's most universally popular hero, friend to the needy and the suffering and the faithful wherever they might be. Samuel clambered to his knees and offered a prayer of thanks.

“Don't get starstruck yet.” Behind him, Verdict's voice was a bucket of cold water. “We brought you here for a reason, Doc. We got work to do. All of us. My part was to get you here. Gracia, Wis, tell him what comes next.” The massive knight walked past the other two members of his group, shaking his helmeted head. “That flyer hits like a truck. Didn't think having a tree dropped on me would hurt that bad.” He muttered to himself.

Samuel noticed for the first time that of Verdict's hair glowed too, and that twisted locs spilled from the bottom of the back of Verdict's helmet. Could there be a head inside that majikal helmet after all? He resolved to ask him later, or more safely, to ask someone else who knew him better.

“We heard the news. Verdict, I thought we agreed you wouldn't blow Judgement's Trumpet?” Gracia turned to her fellow mage and put her hand on the fraying threads of his armored shoulder.

“No, you asked me not to. I tried. Things got.... wild. Pretty Sure Impact saved most of the boots anyways.” Verdict shrugged. “Doctor's safe. That's the important part.”

“Well, yes, but my research, and my laptop, they're still back in C-C”

“You're more important than your research, Doctor.” Gracia explained. “Dr. Sepulveda is in the back as well. Dr. Liao is still at large, or so we heard. Verdict's too blunt, like always, but I think you know why the LR wants you and your whole lab in custody. The real question is what they want to do with you once— or if— they have you.”

The Doctor nodded: it'd taken more weeks of sleepless nights to fight for his research and defend his dissertation. Why should fighting for his own life be any easier? At the very least, there hadn't been any angels at his side while he earned his doctorate in majikal studies.

---

“Captain Basch, do you copy?” The voice on the radio buzzed. One of the soldiers picked it up and handed it to him.

“Copy. I'm here. Dr. Addy is gone. One of my team retrieved the storage drive from the laptop,” He explained, flashing a thumbs up to the soldier who'd pulled the small solid state drive from their pocket. “But everything else is gone. I don't know what that sound, or that explosion was, but we need an evac, stat. I've got wounded here.”

“Recovering the data is a good start. Good work. But we need that doctor. And Captain, that explosion was the majikal equivalent of a million pounds of TNT. Same as what hit that bank's headquarters two months ago. Tell your team congrats: they just survived strategic ordinance. Majikal, strategic ordinance.”

“Can’t say I’ve had a nuke dropped on me before. I'm sure they'll appreciate knowing what we lived through.” He deadpanned. “Now where's-”

“Where's the Major?” The staff from the Command Post demanded.

“In the wind. We all went down after that blast, but he flew off immediately afterwards. Mumbled something about someone owing him a new suit and a good reason...” Captain Basch didn't need to hear the specifics of the shouting happening in the command post to understand that Major Max Impact's whereabouts were unknown to them as well. He'd heard that they put trackers on military mages like Impact, but knew better than to ask. “Now... about that evac?” He inquired, already hoping to never see another wisp of majik again.

---

Impact answered the radio in his suit on its 3rd attempt to reach him. Or maybe the 4th. He was too angry to remember or care.

“Major, Capt Basch said that you left the AOR. I expect to see you in my office in 15 for the debrief” The Colonel explained, half a warning and half an offer to the Major who was an Air Force fighter pilot in every way except for his lack of a jet plane.

“Sir, we can debrief here. I’m clear and the FOB is a 30-minute flight from here. These comms are secured for Top Secret, right?” He growled, sitting cross-legged in the air too high to be anything more than a blip in the sky, too low for planes to see.

“Besides, Colonel, I didn't know the terrorists had heavier ordinance than we do. Wanna debrief me on that? I didn’t know I was supposed to play nanny for a bunch of Second Lieutenants and Sergeants with peashooters. Fill me in there.”

“That's not how a debrief works, Max.” Came the stern reply. “You're going to-”

“Do whatever the fuck I have to keep this country safe, Colonel. I just wish I didn't have to do all the heavy lifting my goddam self.” He spat. “One of us can fly and one of us can shut the fuck up.”

The conversation only deteriorated from there, short tempers subsuming any semblance of reason or empathy. How could Max be expected to solve a problem like Verdict with minimal resources or assistance? How could the Command Post be expected to brief an airman who almost famously didn't listen? The former pilot turned loops in the air, growing more and more enraged.

“I'm just tired of being set up to fail, sir. Maybe that fucking disaster at Gloucester really was just standard operating procedure.” He growled, plucking the earpiece and the transmitter from his suit and flinging them towards the horizon. Major Max Impact would once again rely on the only dependable squad member he had: himself.

#Battlemaje #Volition #Action #Magic #FirstDraft

Part 1: Wimbledon, and the privilege of playing Mario Aces at work

Tennis has been on my mind recently. Partially, because one of my colleagues talks about the Wimbledon in the doctor's lounge to all of us during our breaks, as if it were some local cultural tradition (it is not, unless you are from the 1%) and then tells us all about player X or Y's personal lives, as if they are people we have known our whole lives, then she makes us watch the morning replays on the TV installed there. It is....pain.

It has also been on my mind because coincidentally, one of our new trainees has been bringing his Nintendo Switch and plays it during his breaks (which for us, are many and frequent, thankfully). Everyone has started calling him “kiddo”, because who plays video games in a hospital? He is just a nice, harmless guy who noticed me watching him play and, in front of our other colleagues, asked me if I wanted to join him. I realized if I said yes, I too would become known as “kiddo #2”.

But then I have always been content to go my own way, and so I said yes, admittedly it also had to do with the fact that quite a few of my colleagues think I am already strange for using Mastodon and watching anime (the former is a far bigger checkmark against me, oddly enough). I wonder what nickname I would get if they find out I keep a notepad file of untranslated games I would like to play someday.

Funnily, after the incident, one of my colleagues chided me “I didn't know you were so childish too.” It saddens me to see such narrow minded judgement. I always thought I had a positive image, as a techie of sorts, because almost everyone comes to me to find out what's wrong with their laptops, but maybe I'm viewed as nothing more than the most convenient troubleshooter they have access to, probably.

Anyways, after checking out a few games, I found Mario Tennis Aces on there, and we played. One of our colleagues even made a tiktok of us “goofs” where we were flailing around the joycons, thankfully it did not gain any traction. Mario Aces is more like a fighting game in the vehicle of Tennis, if that makes sense. There are lots of different mechanics at play, every character has enough idiosyncrasies to make them somebody's favorite. Were it not already so well known and written about, this article would be just that, me gushing over Mario Aces. But to be brief, I am a fighting game head, I love fighting games, and Mario Aces scratches that exact itch. I have tried Virtua Tennis too, as well as Top Spin (there may be another article on those, someday) but trust me when I say, Mario Aces is different.

Alas, Mario Aces has been gushed about far too much, and I do not personally own a Switch to play it as much as I would desire. And so, I began a journey. I was already familiar with the Gameboy titles, and I did not simply want to reexperience those.

So I did what any unreasonable man would do, and played every tennis game on the original PlayStation. It will surprise you to know, outside of one specific series, they were all horrible. Actua Tennis, Tennis Arena, Roland Garros French Open and many more. I even tried the Prince of Tennis game, which has some very interesting ideas, being a tennis strategy game, but is ruined by one simple fact, the game has zero flow, none at all.

Konami's Prince of Tennis, PSX

Briefly, there's a grid, though you don't move around on it, your player does so automatically, the arrows indicate where the ball will land, then you have a very short time window in which to react and move a marker/cursor to where you want to hit the ball. There's a very detailed Tennis Academy too, that teaches you about the ins and outs of say, net-play, or even basics like bringing someone in closer so you can lob them. It's a shame it hasn't been translated, because the academy contains some great nuggets of information, but the game overall is pretty awful, yet it remains interesting.

Anyways, let's talk about the main focus of the article, the only good series on the PSX, Namco's Smash Court.

Part 2: Smash Court, a Mario Tennis for the rest of us

I did not live the PS1 era, I started gaming during the PS2 era, playing older titles, mostly PS1 and SNES via emulation. But I can empathize with someone who did, imagining for a second someone who really wants to play Mario Tennis but cannot, in this case it would be Mario Tennis 64, a game with surprisingly satisfying ball physics, interesting characters with their own quirks and lots of ways to have fun.

But supposing that someone had a PS1, and bought every Tennis game? And almost all of them turned out to be mediocre? That's how sad things were, and it is in this context that one begins to understand just what made Virtua Tennis so famous.

What's not as well known, is Namco had a really good Tennis series on the PS1. Smash Court – the successor to their lesser known SNES Tennis game, Smash Tennis, also a fun title in its own right. Smash Tennis itself is linked to four other games, Namco's World Court arcade game (and its sequel) as well as Namco's Family Tennis for the Famicom, and it's Super Famicom remake titled Super Family Tennis. In other words, Smash Court has quite the storied pedigree, being essentially their 6th game.

Namco's World Court.

The second Smash Court game was localized as Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis. Get past the ugly graphics and you will find a surprisingly fun tennis game, though not one with as much depth or as many things to do, admittedly. Even today, you can have a good time, either playing the PAL version through an emulator setting it to 60 Hz, or the Japanese version (I myself have confirmed the PAL version is slower than intended, and it hurts the game feel a little)

Heihachi Mishima is not dead. He just got fed up of fighting, and went to play Tennis instead.

If that other guy looks familiar, it's because he is. That's Eddy Gordo, every button masher's best friend.

The ball physics is fun here, and it's extremely easy to get into. Whilst an arcade game at its core, positioning matters, placement matters, and you can't play stupidly and get away with it, like say in Virtua Tennis. I've had tighter games here than in VT, funnily enough, though one can obviously argue which one feels better, and certainly, VT takes the cake there, this game can have awkward hitboxes sometimes, besides the obviously rougher feel but it is also classic Namco at its finest, the stages have the sort of aesthetic one would expect from their fighting games, and soundtracks to match. Most of the stages ooze personality, and the ones that don't still have catchy tunes. My only issue with the game is how awkward the power shot feels, due to the time it takes. That's something they fixed in Smash Court 3, where it charges up very quickly making it viable, but still keeping the risk of using it intact.

Pakistan, circa 2030. The elite have blocked the roads so they can play some tennis.

This game is pretty much a celebration of all things Namco, you'll find art that pays respect to their older titles, easter eggs in stages, and of course, characters. Besides being a silky smooth, arcade quality tennis game that carries Namco's signature sense of style, it's also chock full of characters from their other games.

Police commissioner Pac Man got word that some people were playing Tennis on his roads, of course he also had to join in, it was his civic duty. Damn the people and their obligations.

Also included in the roster is Yoshimitsu, again from Tekken 3. Reiko Nagase from Ridge Racer, and Richard and Sherudo from Time Crisis also make an appearance.

A brief overview

Smash Court is, all in all, a game that can be quite fun for a few hours, though more multiplayer inclined. That doesn't mean you can't enjoy a good game versus the AI, but like many other titles, the lack of SP content is apparent. You do have some incentive, winning tournaments unlocks new characters, but I feel the entire process takes too long, and the characters you want are towards the tail end, like 4th win of tournament X and so on. There's also gear for you to unlock in Grand Slams.

The series found itself being reinvented on the PS2, as a more serious arcade/sim hybrid, a middle ground between Virtua Tennis's satisfying arcade gameplay and Top Spin's more simulation oriented gameplay, keeping Namco's trademark high quality arcade style feel and gamesense.

But what became of the original Smash Court style games? Well, they made one last title, and it did not get localized. I do not mean Smash Court 3 for the PS1, but Family Tennis Advance for the GBA, the last classic arcade style Smash Court game.

Family Tennis Advance is very underrated, it's basically Smash Court 4 (the original style) on the GBA, it plays as you'd expect and while barren on content, it is supremely enjoyable. Besides Pacman, you will also find Klonoa, Rick from Splatterhouse, Valkyrie and many other lesser known classic Namco characters. Along with some fun stages.

One stage has a gimmick, a car may pass every now and then

Well, that's about it for Smash Court, or at least what I have to say about it.

Sayonara! And remember, it's not Tennis without Heihachi.

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Recently, I have been looking into the inflation crisis of my country, and my deepest gratitude to my old school fellow for his patience and succinct explanations of everything as well as valuable data. He currently works in the office of the Accountant General of our province doing audits and the like – that province is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly the Northwestern Frontier. A province that is more like Afghanistan, in contrast to our other provinces. Punjab and Sindh, for instance, are far closer to India, both in culture, language, ethnically and so on. Then we have Balochistan which is perhaps even more of a separatist entity, their culture being strongly Iranic. This digression is merely to paint a picture of how diverse Pakistan is, essentially it is at least 4 major countries in one, and KP, formerly, NWFP has been historically wronged and deprived of much needed development, with funds going to other places, whilst our dams are the most valuable source of electricity for the nation.

Anyways, as for our inflation, it has been a thing since 1971, when Bangladesh split from Pakistan – formerly we were two, West (where I am) and East Pakistan (Bangladesh). As for their splitting, it is most justified and I am happy for them, but it would be too lengthy to go into here. We have been saddled with corruption, inefficiency and incompetence, and plain ineptitude for multiple decades. It started with the stupidity of nationalizing all the industries, and further corruption meant this nation has been in perpetual beggary since then. Foreign investors do not want to invest a penny here, and rightly so. The constant meddling of the (Men in Green, shall we say) in overthrowing governments for their own reasons make this a most volatile place to invest, would you put your money in a bank that was constantly changing all its employees, and you had to deal with a different manager and different biometric systems every time? Most of our bureaucrats are dinosaurs and they do not understand the first thing about doing business or making things convenient for the general public, every process here is a bureaucratic nightmare, perhaps by design to create a false sense of need for these bureaucrats but that would be giving these dinosaurs too much credit. In fact, they are too old and too out of touch.

And speaking of dinosaurs, one would be remiss to leave out our biggest dinosaurs (my sincerest thanks to the most kind Men in Green for giving him so many chances to utterly ruin this nation, despite being its so called custodians, lol)

See those two guys in the middle? Orange and blue? In just one term, both of them doubled our national debt, just like that. And guess whose parties are in charge again, against the will of the people, an undemocratic government. These two guys (insert roaring applause from my non-existent audience here)

Still, at least the man in orange was dealing with crazy amounts of terrorism, and his finance man kept our economy relatively stable in tumultuous times, until the famous Bin Laden debacle, where he was found in a house suspiciously close to an academy where they train men to become the next generation of the “Men in Green” so they too can play golf and lounge around talking about real estate, that's what all Men in Green are born to do, after all.

Mr Baldilocks, in blue on the other hand, is exemplary. Suppose there was a man who you gave your money to, to invest. He lost it all once. Fair, you'll never trust him again. But you're not the Men in Green, and they love him. They gave him the keys to the bank again, and he defaulted the nation again. Screw you and your money, they don't care.

And then, you couldn't bring him back a third time because you removed him to bring your other project to the fore, so you bring his brother instead, and his daughter who is about as qualified for CM as Team Rocket is to teach an Ethics course.

So, Mr Baldilocks' party defaulted the nation twice, and his party has been brought back again for a 3rd time, by force.

“If you are Pakistani, screw you and your vote” – Not me, but the Men in Green say this (they literally burned them and flipped the results anyway)

There's something special about how the Men in Green play golf and lounge around, talking about how they are going to bring an agrarian revolution and save the economy. This is akin to an insane man setting your house on fire while you are at work, and when you return he offers you a cigarette, and tells you “Don't worry, things will be okay, we will build better houses”

Then he leaves you with a cardboard box and a paper that says I.O.U (He owes you one making you disappear for good)

Of course, the Men in Green and the well off also love to tell people that they are being dramatic, and overreacting, and being thankless, and many other things. A common defense given is: It was always this bad, Pakistan was always poor and inflation was always a thing. This, of course, is classic gaslighting, and one that the stats disagree with. As this Consumer Price Index chart shows (and below, I will explain why even this number is actually a cooked underestimate, on the ground things are even worse) 2023 and 2024 are the worst years in Pakistan's economic history when it comes to inflation in the last 43 years.

Worse than almost every one of its 77 year history, in fact the only other time Pakistan had inflation like this, was when it split in two, and Bangladesh went its own way. The next 2 years had similar figures, but that was in the midst of a war, and a loss of various valuable industries. This time, there is no war, only a cavalcade of buffoons running the country.

Of course, the nation has not grown as expected, either. Pakistan always cycles between periods of artificial (cooked) growth – the booms – and the bust, negative growth or contraction. Pakistan has been struggling with boom-and-bust cycles for decades, leading to 22 IMF bailouts since 1958. Currently, the IMF is the fifth-largest debtor, owing $6.28 billion as of July 11, according to the lender's data.

Things are so bad, that almost everyone that can, is trying to leave. Yours truly is stuck here till the end sadly, perhaps he will be buried a ways down the road someday, if he is not taken by a flood, and perhaps many years later his grave will also become part of one of their golf courses, as is the way. When that happens, I will be sure to haunt them.

Addressing the earlier point about inflation figures being cooked, one of my rant loving colleagues revealed that our government's statistics bureau measures inflation by:

1. Calculating utility prices based on the lowest tariff, which is subsidized for electricity and gas. Note that due to consumption, no one is ever billed on the lowest tariff, they will almost certainly exceed it.

2. Prices of essential items are taken from Utility Stores, where the government subsidizes many products. Even if the products are unavailable, not of passable quality or even expired. Indeed, expired.

So when you read “Inflation went up so and so or down so and so” it is all data fudging done to make the really bad numbers look just a little more acceptable, most data from Pakistan is worthless, dishonest, cooked.

Now, the funny thing about all this poverty? Pakistan's problem is easily reduced significantly, if not solved, if one were to implement real estate taxation reforms. In this case, there is a very simple treatment, but this treatment would hurt the Men in Green's real business, their main source of income, the real estate market that is essentially a giant black hole for money laundering. The cartels and those of influence do not like being taxed, but even they cannot avoid it occasionally. The Men in Green, on the other hand, hold the leash. They can.

Now imagine a poor nation where the minimum legal wage isn't even paid to most of its people, your average guard working at a Government Hospital (which should be obligated to pay this, no?) makes 15,000 Rupees when the so called minimum is 32000. That's $54 a month, to make ends meet he does two shifts, one with my hospital at night and the other at the Gov Hospital during the day. Altogether, he makes $120. After bills, he is left with barely nothing, and we doctors often donate to these guards to help cover the rest. As a side note, one of our guards was suffering cancer quietly, he decided to use up what remained of his body (he had Stage 4 CA, we did not know) to work 3 shifts and never even sought treatment after his diagnosis.

To quote my old blog “It was only today I learned he had Stage 4 cancer, and he did not choose to seek treatment for it. The time he did spend here, he knew his diagnosis, but he wished to earn whatever paltry money he could for his family, rather than spend time getting treated.” Today in this context was well after his demise, sadly, may he be happy in heaven. I had been rather blunt about the outcomes of Stage 4, not knowing he had it, my apologies again.

The full article is here Link to my blog

This is mainly to drive home how desperate people are. Rather than implementing reforms on real estate (their piggy bank) and uplifting the nation, they are kicking more people into poverty daily.

To quote: “The poverty in Pakistan increased within one year from 34.2% to 39.4% with 12.5 million more people falling below the poverty line of $3.65 per day income level, according to the World Bank. About 95 million Pakistanis now live in poverty.”

Imagine so many more people being pushed below, that is Pakistan for you, or rather the Men in Green.

Source

This is from last year. Things are even worse now.

Note how the line is $3.65 per day, now we are at the really important stuff. 39.4% people were there in 2023, there are even more now, but let us stay with 39.4 for argument's sake. Have you ever worried about the cost of one liter of milk? If you have, you are now in the right mindset. If you haven't, picture it, you're the average Pakistani, part of the 39.4%, your daily wage is less than $3.65 (which is now more like $3 due to devaluation)

Ultra-high temperature, or UHT, milk now costs 370 rupees ($1.33) a liter in supermarkets in Karachi (one of our biggest cities). In Peshawar, where I am for my training, it is going for 390 PKR ($1.40). That compares with $1.29 in Amsterdam, $1.23 in Paris, and $1.08 in Melbourne, according to data collected by Bloomberg. An 18% tax was applied to packaged milk as part of taxation changes approved in the national budget last week. Previously, it was tax-exempt. Source: Bloomberg

Now imagine you make less than $3.65, and your family needs milk. No, people have just stopped buying it, what else will they do? That, by the way is milk. Similar things have happened to almost every food staple. All this in the midst of a world record heat wave, when basic essentials and utilities are now more expensive than ever.

Life is unlivable, government hospitals are full of those afflicted by poverty who ended their life, this gets even darker when one realizes Islam has explicitly forbidden it, for a Pakistani to take his life (and most are brainwashed by Islam to a radical extent, such that they would suffer rather than end it) things must be dire. Data for suicide rates here is lower than the ground reality, due to various reasons. Sometimes, families ask those in Government Hospitals to write “Heart Failure” or something similar in the medicolegal certificate (should they need one, many don't) because if people find out there was a suicide, they will not attend your funeral. Indeed, I have even seen cases where grieving mothers cried as fathers refused to hold a funeral, but some kind uncle or cousin took the initiative.

That is without even considering the case of the laawaris, the word being an Urdu one meaning one without an owner (a family, essentially). Bodies of such people who have no one end up in hospitals, often with no ID, and no one cares to determine how they died, they are just......discarded and given a funeral. It is a sad state of affairs, indeed many of these cases show clear signs of suicide, but again, not reported.

As for what's documented, it too is disturbing The News: Rise in suicide by youth Dawn News: Spike in suicides

“Shockingly, Pakistan is ranked 72nd globally, with a suicide mortality rate of 9.8 per 100,000 population. What is even more concerning is the year-on-year increase in the suicide mortality rate. According to the World Health Organi-sation (WHO), there were 7.3 suicides per 100,000 in 2019, which rose to 8.9 in 2020, and 9.8 in 2022.”

The epidemic is serious enough that the government was forced to reconsider its stance and decriminalize suicide – Dawn News due to the hard work of the Pakistani Psychiatric Society.

Also from the article: “The concerning rise of ‘kala pathar (black stone) poisoning’, caused by paraphenylenediamine, in districts like Rahim Yar Khan and Sahiwal is a significant public health issue, with a high mortality rate of 50.5pc among rural women.” Rural women have found their own ways of ending it, sadly.

Of course, when the health budget, educational budget and all other developmental spending is slashed for a defense budget for the Men in Green, what else can one expect?

The salaried class is protesting being squeezed to death in a fruitless peaceful protest. We will be squeezed until nothing remains, sadly. I myself am a doctor and only dare eat twice a day, and the meals are nothing special, though admittedly am underpaid due to my unique training circumstances.

The petrol mafia and the flour mafia on the other hand have stopped their supplying, which will have more results. They refuse to pay the prescribed taxes to the government, and they will get away with it. After all, who will pay for the politicians and their 1000 Liters of free petrol, their cars, their houses, their electric and gas bills? Not The Men In Green, nor the seths (landowners, business moguls)

No, it's the salaried class.

My most learned friend at the Accountant General's office (he will be going to greener pastures soon, good luck my friend) is convinced, as are most of our finance people, that this economy is dead. What is happening now is simply the looting of a corpse.

But hey, gotta play golf, amirite? After all, golf does depict the ultimate fate of this nation.

Credits:

1. My learned auditor friend for formulating most of the financial stuff, and explaining it all to me very patiently. I, like most Pakistanis from rural areas, was a financial illiterate until our economy crashed. I didn't know the ins and outs of our economy, or its problems, only that our elite lived egregiously subsidized lives.

2. My colleague whose insights into the data manipulation of the government were quite valuable, her knowledge of our political landscape and its history is almost professorial, I guess it is to be expected from the daughter of a bureaucrat family, that she is still acting like one even in a hospital, hahah. Not that she will ever read this, but you are wasting your time on Medicine, go be a professor of Politics :P

3. Forrest, who will not hand over my IP to the Men in Green if they ever find this article (I hope he won't, and hopefully they don't find it to begin with) and who should remember that the Men in Green are powerless to threaten him, and all such emails should be marked as spam, or perhaps replied to with memes.