Do Not Underestimate How Many Times I Can Listen To A Song In A Row

the four horsemen of the apocalypse

Chapter 10

Serendipity

Smoke surrounded the small space and Reyna suddenly realized just how claustrophobic she had become. Years of war and leading her armies out in an open space had taught her to utilize the free air. Now that it was limited, she wasn’t sure if her efficiency would be the same as it usually was. It wasn’t often that Reyna found herself in a pinch. There was always another way to get out of a tough spot and better yet another way to survive. This was a whole other story. Reyna let out a quick breath as she lunged at the first woman to her left.

She knew better than to try to take on more than one person at a time, but she also knew that her daughter’s fragile state would cause a hindrance to her own abilities. She had to do what she did best on the battlefield, think fast and act faster. There was only so much time before the dust settled and that would give her just enough time to do the damage and leave.

Aseria found herself panicking slightly at the brief moment of silence before all hell broke loose. The look Marisol gave her before the room gave way to smoke, the way her mother grabbed her by the back of the collar to pull her away from the goons running at her, the way her body stuttered at the sudden intrusion of a blade to her leg. The adrenaline coursing through her veins wouldn’t let her relent against her oppressors. With her back pressed to her mother’s and too much pressure on one calve, she let out a shriek of pain.

“I’ve taken a lot worse than this, c’mon!”

She half whispers to herself, angry that she couldn’t find the strength in her to push through her pain a little longer. Her blonde hair was starting to shed with the sweat, ash and blood that clumped themselves together due to her days of fighting and lack of showering.

If the wound getting infected wasn’t going to be her biggest problem, unknown germs from her surroundings would be. There was nothing her mother could say that would deter her from the fight, but she knew her mother wouldn’t let her make any haste decisions without a quick redirection.

Glancing to the door Marisol ran through, she saw the glint of a blade almost mocking her. Shoving past one of the men, she slid across the floor to reach, completely ignoring her own pain as she let the adrenaline pump through her. Aseria wasn’t as skilled as her mother with the sword by any means, but she at least knew that she could cause a distraction long enough for Reyna to regroup with her.

Throwing the two in front of her for a loop, she made an impulse decision to slam her shoulder into the bookcase beside her, causing dust and wood to obstruct their vision.

Reyna could only do so much at one time. With Marisol running away for some anklet, the smoke finally settling, and the realization that her daughter’s leg had been sliced open and she was nowhere to be found, she found herself struggling to juggle her priorities. It wasn’t until her daughter’s voice rang out in the room, yanking her back into the present moment.

“We need to get you out of here and we need to do it quickly.”

“You know I’m not leaving without you.”

“That wasn’t a request, Aseria.”

Tears began to leak from her eyes. Aseria couldn’t tell what exactly they were from, she assumed it was simply a combination of everything in the moment. The smoke in her vision, the pain in her body, the realization that her mother isn’t going to let her win this argument. Sliding the sword across the floor to her mother, she holds off one of the assailants with a strong kick to the gut.

“Mom I can’t leave you.”

“You’re going to have to. I will meet you in our old safehouse.”

Reyna grabbed the weapon and gave her daughter a quick kiss to the crown of her head, something she did before every battle, just in case it was the last time they were to see each other.

“I love you. Never forget that.”

“You’d better win.”

“I always win.”

She kept her sword in a ready position held in front of her, signaling to the oppressors around her that she was ready to keep fighting. She held the sword with expert precision with both hands, perpendicular to the ground. With the method she once learned that stayed in her mind, burned like the cigarette she lit before they came to this hellhole, she could move the sword side to side and up and down easily, blocking and landing blows in all directions.

Aseria gave her one glance before she began to back away towards the door. There wasn’t much she could do to help with her wound, and she knew her mother could hold her own, so regrouping and getting to the safehouse in one piece was the only thing she could do.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Reyna heard her mother’s voice.

“Hold the tip of the sword at a bit of an angle, with the tip pointed slightly toward your opponent. You cannot falter at a moment like this. Deep breath, now strike.”

She found herself quick to act, stepping up and into the blow, with her arms held against her body. Something her mother taught her when she was her daughter’s age, but with more vengeance than defense in mind.

She reacted quickly and against her more sane instincts, which screamed and told her to move back and save herself while she still had the chance. The fighter in her knew that she couldn’t hold back. Moving closer, she would be able to cut off the woman in front of hers power, meaning she could hold the upper hand while Aseria was running.

Aseria had lost the feeling in her leg as her vision began to fade. As much as she wanted to cry, scream and beg someone to help her, she knew she couldn’t. With the safehouse in view and her mother in the doorway, she let out a relieved huff of breath.

“Thank the gods, just the woman I needed to see.”

With her vision fading out, she found herself panicking a little more, unsure if she could make it to the door in time. She wasn’t sure why her mother wasn’t coming to help her, especially after watching her get wounded. But before she could register the features, she heard the voice of the woman she just escaped from.

“Welcome home, Aseria.”

#How Eddie became my favorite character with only 42 minutes of screen time

updated version of my last post because i can’t stop drawing vampire eddie 🦇

Curse!AU for the #StSgExchange21 on Twitter!

Shhhhhh we overlook those

Expect for the crimes Σ('◉⌓◉’)

Social Issues that Help with Understanding Buddy Daddies

Here are some political, social, and cultural aspects of Japanese culture that I think is important to keep in mind when watching Buddy Daddies. Please note: this is a super long post, with lots of pictures. 

1. Human Trafficking - Slave Labor

In Episode One, we learn that Miri’s birth father was involved in labor based human trafficking involving Southeast Asian individuals. This is currently a very big issue in Japan, since Southeast Asian immigrants (among others) are viewed as a cheap labor option and usually experience slave labor like conditions.

From The United States Department of State website:

Men, women, and children from Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Latin America, and Africa travel to Japan for employment or fraudulent marriage and are subjected to sex trafficking. Traffickers use fraudulent marriages between foreign women and Japanese men to facilitate the entry of women into Japan for sex trafficking in bars, clubs, brothels, and massage parlors. Traffickers keep victims in forced labor or commercial sex using debt-based coercion, threats of violence or deportation, blackmail, confiscation of passports and other documents, and other psychologically coercive methods.

2. Drugs in Japan

When I was living and working as an ALT in Japan, two ALTs (in a different district, but within the same company of my own), got caught with drugs. It was a big deal and ended up in the newspapers. The company I worked for had to do a lot of PR work with the elementary and junior high schools that they had contracts with, to ensure that the contracts would remain. As for me and the other ALTs? We had to sit through like five separate meetings within like two months about drugs and drug laws in Japan. 

The barebones takeaway is that, in Japan, weed is viewed as being on the same level as hardcore drugs. Charges can be steep and strict. Even just knowing that someone has drugs, and you don’t say anything to law enforcement about it, can get you in trouble. There is a grey area with drugs, which is stuff like bath salts and the like. Since the selling of things like that cannot be prohibited, so they are easily accessible to the public. 

Japan still has a very “90′s D.A.R.E.” approach to drugs. It’s catchphrase is 「ダメ。ゼッタイ。」or “No! Never.”

(Image from a Web Magazine called Nagasaki Press.)

When celebrities are caught with (what’s usually) weed, it can basically be the end of their careers, since recreational drug use of any kind (excluding alcohol, of course), is still negatively looked down upon in Japanese society. This is why it is still heavily left in the hands of the yakuza and drug kingpins, etc. Though there has been a recent increase in protests and ideology surrounding the idea of legalizing weed. Still, not much acceptance for recreational use is likely to come yet. However…

There may soon be some revision to the laws, which will allow for medical use:

Legislation changes scheduled for 2023

In 2021, the MHLW established an expert committee to review the Cannabis Control Act, and it is expected revisions will be proposed in a bill to be submitted in 2023. This will most likely allow for the use of medical cannabis. 2022/12/02

From: Euromonitor

So, something to keep in mind when Kazuki talks about a drug kingpin here is that this drug kingpin is likely not just dealing with super, hardcore drugs, but also softer ones too, like weed.

3. Child Protection Squad

There is this misconception in Japan that really young kids, like Miri’s age, can just roam free all around Japan and no one will find it odd. In Episode 1, we do see Miri roaming around the city without anyone really taking notice, but she also wasn’t in an area where there would be people that are trained to take notice.

In the above image she is at a park, which is likely close to a school somewhere. The man that approaches her here has a band around his jacket sleeve that says こども見守り隊 (kodomo mimamori-tai), which gets translated to “Child Protection Squad.” Basically, these are like crossing guards, in a way, because they do play a similar role to that, but they also do more than that as well:

(Image from the Japanese website: Nice Senior).

This people basically ensure that kids stay on the right paths on their way to school. Most of the time, when elementary school children head off to school, they will go in groups (with the 5th or 6th graders being the leaders) and there will often be older people outside their houses on their way in, keeping an eye on the children to make sure they get to school okay. 

And that’s talking about elementary school aged kids. For ones that are around Miri’s age, usually the parents (mostly mothers) will bring them by bike:

Or they will get picked up by a bus:

This one looks pretty boring in comparison to some others you might see though, like these:

(Image from the Hiyoshidai School Website)

Sometimes the daycare workers will also take them on little excursions outside using big strollers for the kids to travel around in:

(The image is obviously from a stock photo site called fotostock, but yeah, I’ve seen these before when I lived in Japan).

But a little toddler just sitting on her own at a mostly empty park with just a guy sitting at a park bench nearby watching her? That would raise attention and an eyebrow from someone who is essentially a crossing guard and whose job is to ensure the safety of kids as they travel to and from school. 

The rest is under a Read More.

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Ferb’s birthday is on February 29th (leap year day).