intelligence organisations possess intelligence

...in both senses of the word. KHR blog, CEDEF headcanons, mainly for the purpose of doing the unthinkable and exploring non-canon characterizations for Sawada Iemitsu and company. Based on the assumption that Lal has more self-respect than to work for an idiot asshole with no redeeming qualities.

[cedefaci]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

On hospitality

A prince of the Vongola has been assassinated. The spymaster suspects Timoteo's bastard son. In response, he sends his changeling agent to build a rapport with Xanxus's pet vampire, and a comedy of manners ensues.

Day 1 - Storm Day: Forced Proximity | Dark Fantasy AU

Basil/Belphegor

[despazito]

Crazy shit goes down in South America

[homunculus-argument]

It would be fun to learn a new language to the point that I could hone a specific manner of speech. Like being able to consciously choose a style to speak in and focus on mastering it, to the bafflement of native speakers. Like what if I want to learn Spanish, but specifically in a mixture of very formal, old-fashioned 1850s-ass language and wildly poetic, dramatic and romantic phrasings and figures of speech.

I want to be able to just casually say shit like "it is not only a fruitless effort to try to fight against my own nature, but I find that seeking to do so is a downright sin" before picking up and drinking from the For Dogs Only water bowl on the street in front of a tourist pub.

[neobiohazardus]

Every* Type of Kaiju

*Not Actually Every Type.

Ay it's the sequel. This was always meant to be 2 parts of a whole, since Kaiju and Mecha as genres have been pretty interconnected.

Once again, this just goes over common tropes I've personally found in kaiju design, but feel free to tell me which types I may have missed. Once again, tell me your favourites down below

[And in case you missed it: the previous chart cataloguing Mecha instead!]

[shamebats]

[feverdreamfigment]

[catasters]

[mockwa]

🐯 🐯 🐯

[bunjywunjy]

good morning everyone have an absolutely furious mongoose

[ari-nemera]

It’s cuter when you recognize that the lion with visible spots is a juvenile. There’s a very high chance the other lion that runs over to investigate is the MOTHER.

The first lion is asking for comfort because she was given a big spook!!! and she needs mommy to tell her it’s safe and ok!!!! (What’s cuter is that mommy clearly reassures her, and goes on to take the parent role of ‘deal with the scream rat in order to protect my large and easily frightened daughter’)

this is all in all an adorable video 10/10

[jooshthepunished-deactivated202]

SHUT

[bunjywunjy]

actually you’re completely right that the original lion is a juvenile, but it’s a male! his size and the fact that he still has some baby spots left also indicate that he’s a very YOUNG juvenile, equivalent to a human preteen!

so really what’s happening here is a fantastic mother dashing outside with a broom to defend her 13-year-old son from the angry opossum that he just found in the trash can while taking out the garbage.

[mugwomps]

And quite clearly neither know what to do, really.

[flyingfishtailoutpost1]

I love how mom looks into the camera like “are you SEEING this shit?????”

[nimiana]

House of Atreus Bhaal

Jan Kott, Hamlet and Orestes, tr. Bolesław Taborski / Aeschylus, Agamemnon, tr. Anne Carson / Tracy K. Smith, Ash / Ana Mendieta, Body Tracks / Adriana Varejão, Green Tilework in Live Flesh / Richard Wagner, Persifal, produced by François Girard / @filmnoirsbian, Why Am I Haunted? / @filmnoirsbian, [6 ways to draw a circle on wikihow] / @jrgdrawing-real / Richard Siken, Real Estate

[saphronethaleph]

Fascist, Thus Inefficient

“As you can see, my young apprentice, your friends have failed,” the Emperor said, triumph in his tone. “Now, witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!”

Luke looked at him in shock.

“Fire at will, Commander!” the Emperor said.

Fourteen months previously…

“Shipment IL-214-73 arriving,” a petty officer reported.

“Thank goodness,” muttered one of the technicians. “After the delays we’ve been having, we need to get those Khyber crystals into the third main focusing array. It’s been on the critical path for a week.”

He brought up the display, frowning. “All right, I think we can make up a bit of time if we just get them straight to cutting and installation.”

“Don’t we need to run them through the testing process first?” a more junior technician asked. “That’s on the list.”

“I know it’s on the list,” the senior tech replied. “But the list was written when they didn’t expect there’d be rebel attacks hitting our supply lines.”

He waved at the screen. “The testing process means heating each individual crystal up to eighteen hundred, even though we know Khyber can all handle temperatures of up to forty-seven-fifty. The cutting process doesn’t rely on heat tolerance either. Any crystalline flaws will come out in cutting, and we can just junk them. It means cutting takes a bit longer, but by going straight to cutting we can save at several hours on the overall process. And you know how much time we’ve lost already.”

The junior tech looked worried, then shook his head.

“All right,” he replied. “I guess so.”

“You need to learn how things are done in practice,” the senior tech said. “No big deal.”

Eleven months previously...

“I’m quite sure Rothana Heavy Engineering’s XJ-15 hypermatter feed systems will meet your needs better than the alternatives,” the Rothana representative said, as Admiral Jerjerrod examined the datasheet.

He wasn’t so sure. The newer units had better specifications, certainly, but they weren’t proven, and they were also somewhat more expensive.

“I don’t think that’s necessarily the case,” he said, out loud. “While I appreciate Rothana’s position, the Sienar alternative has similar flow rates and more proven applications.”

The Rothana representative nodded, sagely.

“I understand entirely,” he said. “However, I must point out that Rothana has some important additional information to present.”

He held out a credit chip, which Jerjerrod took and inspected.

“Owing to the XJ-15’s protracted development, we are willing to provide our test units at cost,” the representative went on. “That is in addition to having a higher production rate than our competitors and a less committed production output.”

Jerjerrod hesitated, then pocketed the credit chip.

“That all seems in order,” he said. “The XJ-15 it is.”

“Marvellous,” the representative declared.

Nine months previously...

“I’ve examined the records that exist from the first Death Star,” a senior technician said. “The amount of strain that was placed on the flash suppression systems was minimal to nonexistent. Even with the full firing that destroyed Alderaan, surviving records indicate that the flash suppressors had no more than a five percent load placed on them – an amount that can be handled by untreated durasteel.”

The other men and women in the meeting looked at the data on the screen behind their colleague.

“You’re suggesting we forego the duratemp treatment on the flash protection systems?” one of the women asked, cautiously. “I can see the advantages, but the downsides seem significant. I’d even say potentially destructive.”

“It is my position that the cost of including the duratemp treatment is unacceptable,” the tech replied. “It takes time and effort, including supervisory attention which cuts into the available man-hours on the project. We only have so much experienced manpower.”

That drew winces, though none of the humans in the room drew attention to the fact that they were spending a lot of that time in interminable meetings.

“In the following presentation, I’ll discuss my proposal and how it could shave as much as one week off the final completion timetable,” the senior tech continued, flicking to the next screen of his presentation. “This model shows how the flash suppression systems are built around the main weapon…”

Six months previously…

“There simply isn’t an option,” the head of personnel replied. “Our existing system is not providing enough technicians and operators.”

“This was quite sufficient for the first Death Star,” Jerjerrod protested.

“The first Death Star was a project that took decades,” the manager replied, shrugging. “It didn’t come up at first, sir – for that I apologize – but if we are going to redress the problem, we need to act now. There is no alternative.”

Jerjerrod rubbed his temples, thinking about the problem.

The fully functional Death Star was going to need hundreds of thousands of qualified technicians and operators, familiar with the systems of the vast battle station, and so many of the men who knew much about the Death Star at the moment were busy building it.

There hadn’t been many left after the destruction of the first battle station, because most of them had been working on it at the time.

“All right,” he said. “So your proposal is…?”

“We keep the same number of trainers for now, but abbreviate the course,” the manager answered. “Two months – at most. Then we have the new graduates train the next batch for two months, and so on. Exponential growth. At twenty students per instructor and a hundred instructors to start with, we’ll end up with eight hundred thousand in six months.”

That was extremely tempting… they wouldn’t be anything like the equal of what they should be, but they could learn on the job.

“All right,” Jerjerrod said. “Approved – see to it.”

One month previously…

“Next item on the checklist?” Commander Jaskier asked.

“Step one hundred and seven,” Technician Mils replied. “Self test.”

She pressed the self-test button, and the computer system clicked and flickered as it ran through the diagnostics.

Data results and readouts went up on the screen, and Jaskier and all the others in the control station watched the results.

None of them had any comment to make about the numbers. The checklist said to run the self test, so that was what they were doing.

“Step one hundred and eight,” Mils went on. “Sign off on results.”

She did that, as well, and Jaskier nodded.

“Good,” he said. “And I believe we’ve finished that half an hour ahead of schedule! Good work, everyone.”

Now.

The firing commands flashed out through the Death Star’s systems, triggering a cascade of further commands, and the whole massive battle station’s main superlaser woke for the first time.

Fifty XJ-15 hypermatter flow regulators controlled the flow of energy from the power core into the power collectors, and the energy being channelled into the system surged rapidly – rising to one hundred and eighteen percent of nominal, above what would have been anticipated, and greater than the one hundred and two percent that the older, more proven Sienar systems would have generated.

Thousands of high powered beams were generated, controlled and focused through an enormous array of Khyber crystals… a small but measurable fraction of which were cheap industrially grown diamonds instead, added to the shipments by subcontractors eager to stretch out their production from the strip-mined planet of Ilum without running so late on their deliveries that financial penalties were imposed.

None of the technicians who were in a position to spot the problem at this stage were actually capable of doing so. Their necessarily abbreviated training had mostly been on what buttons to push, and nobody had the deeper knowledge of the systems to recognize that the system was in an anomalous state.

Then some of the diamonds shattered under the load, allowing the beams free to damage adjacent systems, and in moments the whole of the energy drawn from the hypermatter core was unleashed.

The flash suppression systems were wholly, and fatally, inadequate.

“Watch yourself, Wedge!” Lando called, his head on a swivel, and banked the Falcon around so his ventral turret gunner could clear off one of the TIEs attacking Red Leader. “We’ve got to-”

Then there was a sudden blinding flash, and Lando did a double-take.

The Death Star’s protective shield was instantly, and dramatically, visible – because the entire inside of it was full of plasma and flame, lighting it up as clearly as Ackbar’s briefing had done back before the operation was launched in the first place. Then something blew up on the surface of the forest moon as the plasma followed the funnel of the shield, and the explosive force was no longer contained but began to drift out into space.

“...the kriff?” Lando asked, eventually. “What just happened?”

“Ow,” Darth Vader said, indistinctly, reaching up to feel his helmet, which had been crushed in by an impact with the ceiling.

The Emperor’s throne room seemed to mostly be intact, though there was an Emperor-shaped hole in the window nearest his throne, and Luke had his hands out to either side as he stood on the wall.

“Father, are you all right?” the younger Skywalker asked.

“What happened?” Vader replied. “I remember the Emperor ordering that the Death Star should fire…”

“I don’t know, it exploded just after he said that,” Luke answered. “It turns out that overconfidence was his weakness… do you have any idea where the nearest spaceship is? Keeping the atmosphere in is tiring me out a bit.”

[acet0xy]

Scolopendra Miku

[aletheyass]

buongiornissimo cattè

[important-animal-images]

[anexperimentallife]

[tuulikki]

This kid was channeling a 60-year-old court eunuch from three thousand years ago

[wizardarchetypes]

i think women should get into polearms in a big way. not a lot of women in polearms these days. would love to see women doing battle with polearms.

[anarcho-mom-unist]

So many sword women and yet so few appreciating the humble spear…

The devastating cavalry lance…

The imposing berdiche…

The zone-denying pike…

The elegant naginata…

The unforgettable glaive…

The ji, partner in combined arms…

Or the artful halberd…

[stormsthatrage]

Gokudera, lighting up a cigarette on the street, having it immediately ripped out of his fingers by a passing stranger wearing five hidden knives and a gun.

The stranger, before disappearing back into the crowd: "Sawada has enough shit trying to kill him without his Right Hand breathing cancer at him!"

Gokudera -- who grew up under ninth-generation rule -- staring at his empty hand mournfully: "I can't believe I'm being targeted by the mafia to stop doing drugs."

[stormsthatrage]

Tsuna is kind. Tsuna is compassionate. Tsuna, unlike many bosses, does not see himself as more than simply because of his station.

The only people who are capable of bringing out the entitled, spoiled, possessive Mafia Prince - the tiny piece of Tsuna's heart that is a stereotypically behaved Vongolian Sky - are his closest family. And even then, they can only manage it in very specific circumstances.

Allow me to clarify:

Imagine Tsuna, in a café filled with rubble and smoke, looking down at Hayato's fallen form. He stares at the blood seeping out from Hayato's chest - the chest that was torn open when Hayato jumped in front of a bullet meant for Tsuna.

(The assassin's corpse is cooling on the other side of the room, dead too late at the edge of Takeshi's blade.)

Tsuna keeps his eyes locked on Hayato. Hayato, who lies limp and motionless, no matter how much sun flame Ryouhei pumps in to him.

It feels like a dream. It feels fake. He feels detached from it all, like he's watching the world from far above and emotions can only reach him after traveling through a mile of cotton.

"Move," he tells his sun, his dying will flaring in the midst of his strange numbness.

His sun yanks his hands back, as instantaneously as if he were following a reflex instead of words.

Tsuna surveys the scene for another second, still through that mile of cotton, and then decides, "No. No, I refuse."

And, after all, does he not have a right to? He, the holder of the Vongola Sky Ring, the Guard of the Vertical Axis, the Sky of Skies. Is it not his birthright to seize hold of, to command, the threads of time?

He reaches out, burning, and undoes it.

An orange glow erupts around the two of them - his Hayato, and the assassin.

And then there is the assassin, alive again, aiming at a spot Tsuna is no longer at.

And there is Hayato, alive again, throwing himself to protect where Tsuna once stood.

Tsuna already has an arm raised, and sends a blast of power at the assassin. The assassin crumples. And then Tsuna is turning around, spinning towards Hayato, and he feels, within him, a hot, violent rage swell up. How dare he. How dare he.

He stalks over to his Right Hand, hands shaking with anger, and he spits, "You."

His Right Hand looks at him, all wide-eyed and taken off guard. As if he's not a fucking thief.

Tsuna snarls up at him, right up in his space, "Sit."

His Right Hand's knees fold. He just barely manages to catch himself against the table directly behind him, and it's not so much sitting as propping himself up, but Tsuna doesn't fucking care.

Tsuna's fists clench, and he stares directly into those green, green eyes. "You," he seethes, "took an oath, Gokudera Hayato." He feels himself burning, dying will an inferno on his skin. "You swore yourself to me, yes? Your life is mine. You do not have the right to take it from me."

His Right Hand, his storm, his Hayato, says nothing, eyes wide and face pale and lips parted ever so slightly in shock.

Tsuna feels incandescent with rage. "You dare-"

And then he finds himself losing the words, swaying in place as exhaustion slams down across him.

The last thing he feels is Hayato's arms coming up around him, warm and alive and oh so gentle, and the last thing he hears is Takeshi, saying - absolutely delighted, Tsuna knows that tone - "Oh, he is going to be so embarrassed when he wakes up."

And then darkness.

[hometoursandotherstuff]