Julius makes Yami and William switch squads for a week due to Julius Reasons™
Thought about writing this But I'd rather talk to people about it so you're getting it in outline format.
William shows up at the Black Bulls base the first night and is generally very nice and polite, so they immediately decide he's just a pushover (he kinda is, but not in the way that any of them can work because it makes them feel guilty).
Finral is being a more or less competent knight, and so he introduces everyone and their magic to William and shows him to his room (which Finral had prepared because he figured that was the nice thing to do for a visiting captain).
Most of the squad doesn't care (read: they don't notice)
Some of them are excited/nervous at the prospect of the Golden Dawn's captain leading them for a week
Luck immediately volunteers to fight him, to which William easily agrees, having mistaken this as a request to spar and not a death battle. Vanessa (not very drunk yet) stops this
For the most part William is glad that there aren't so many people, because it gives him a chance to actually keep track of them all
Yami shows up at the Golden Dawn three hours later than he was supposed to. Langris greets him with thinly veiled annoyance. Yami begins exclusively referring to him as Finral's younger brother. The squad isn't expecting much.
Yami refers to all of them exclusively by nicknames, and makes sure he's met all the members present, even if he doesn't actually seem to want to know them
They try giving him tea
He sees David's dice and asks if he likes gambling
Anyone in the squad who didn't already know how to play cards now knows
He gets Klaus to deliver him files on all the members
The entire squad goes to bed by 11pm and he is Very off put by this
Mostly he's just happy he doesn't have to worry about them killing themselves or others
Henry has been considerate of William and moved his room as far away from the squad as he could so that he could sleep. Because of this, when William gets up at five, he is Very Confused.
Finral had been planning on finding him in the morning, but he hadn't counted on how early the captain would get up
Queue William spending an hour wandering around the base and discovering multiple traps, some random magic items that really should have been turned in to HQ, the beasts, a straight up skeleton, and more
This is when he learns that the magic stone is in the base, but he leaves it be to avoid suspicion
Eventually he stumbles into the library, complete with a Scooby Doo-style bookshelf that turns into a stairwell. The stairwell leads him into the common room, where the bulls are now gathering for breakfast
They're all very welcoming? In the Black Bulls way
Finral is like, "I was just about to go wake you up" to which William replies, "Actually I've been up for hours. By the way, what's up with your base? Oh the walls move? And it repairs itself? How nice."
Cut to William five minutes later restraining several of the Black Bulls with his magic
"You guys have a lot of energy. We should put it to good use."
This is when they realized how much they loved Yami.
The Golden Dawn is expecting Yami to take a pretty hands-off approach to being their temp captain, a fact that only seems to be confirmed when they don't see him until noon.
Unfortunately they were wrong.
He's decided that they'll all be taking turns in one-on-one training sessions with him
He spent all night going over their information and formulating plans
No one knows when they'll be pulled for a spar and, while at first they laugh about it, the outcome of the first few sessions teaches them to take this far more seriously
Some people learn Cool New Stuff™
Others just get beat up
At some point in the week, he takes them all to go have actual, legitimate, good tea
They like it, but not enough to change the tea at the base because their captain picked it and they love him
Yami didn't want to like these guys but several of them are growing on him and his mind is screaming at him to abort
Eventually towards the end both squads get into major battles and the captains are very cool and badass and earn their respect.
They both consider stealing several of the other's knights. Yami almost succeeds, if only because certain members think the Black Bulls have more fun.
@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks
[ID: A collection of texts, one of which includes an image.
Image 1: "I think ultimately you become whoever would have saved you that time that no one did"
Image 2: "I ask god to send a swordsman / and god says 'look at your hands'"
Image 3: "Sometimes I really believe it, that I / am going to / save my life / a little."
Image 4: A blue drawing of a person in a scarf and sweater walking to the write. Text is written around them that says "I'm going to the forest to kick my own ass"
Image 5: "Go ahead and live with your head held high. No matter how devastated you may be by your own weakness or uselessness, set your heart ablaze. Grit your teeth and look straight ahead."
Image 6: "Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself."
Image 7: "I can do this, I thought. Then: And even if I can't, I have to."
Image 8: "Something in me will save me from utter ruin no matter what comes."
Me: Exercise does not cause weight loss. This is a fact that has been demonstrated so robustly in research that even doctors, who hate and fear evidence, are grudgingly starting to admit this.
Someone reading that post: Cool, but have you considered that exercise leads to weight loss?
does it? not if you want to see an effect size of greater than 1 kilo (2.2lbs)
does it? not if you'd like to see a maintained loss greater than 3.3% of your body weight
does it? not for people with type 2 diabetes
does it? not for people exercising for their non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
Interactive computer-based reminders to diet and exercise are useless.
I mean, I literally went to Cochrane Reviews, one of the best-respected sources for massive meta-analyses, and I just input the keywords "weight loss" and "exercise," and I'm tooling through the results. Every one of the damn things shows that we do not have high-quality research indicating that exercise leads to weight loss. So no. I'm right, and you need to adjust your worldview--ask yourself, if not for weight loss, then why? Re-read those sources: exercise improved muscle density, insulin sensitivity, and cholesterol. It's good for your blood vessels, it's good for your strength, it's good for your brain.
But it won't make you thin. Maybe two pounds, maybe five, but that's about it. If you're looking at short-term, like a year, sure, you can lose weight--but the effort will almost always result in your body going "oh shit, we're living in a famine" and you will regain it, and now, with your body at a new set-point, losing it will be harder. Regaining will be easier. Welcome to the life-destroying yo-yo.
Exercise and eat lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains because those things will keep you healthier longer, regardless of how much you weigh, and pick up your pick-axe in the ongoing horribly slow and frustrating fight of chipping away at the idea that being fat is a bad thing that means you’re a bad person. I recommend the book Fat Talk for a good place to start.
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