…or, Mack On Her Ass
Thaumatology came and went without giving me a single reason for being there, other than saving a few points on my grade. My brain was rotting out of my skull by the end of the ninety minutes. I was out of my seat in a flash when the period ended, anxious to get out into the open air and do something.
Out at Hauldhagen Field, a lot of the skirmishers and other experienced fighters hadn’t waited for class to begin to box their weapons and get to sparring. I went ahead and got my weapon mocked so I’d be ready, but sat back and just watched what the fighters were doing. After a minute, murmurs from the newbie side caught my attention. I turned around to see the girl they called Mack—the demon girl of Harlowe, the girl at the center of the drama that had sent Barley packing—wandering onto the field. She hadn’t been present the week before. Had she transferred in, or just blown off two days’ worth of classes?
She looked dazed as hell, no pun intended, and mousier than ever. She was way out of her depth. She was watching a couple of the advanced girls sparring with an axe and a mace, and her eyes were on the weapons. Her hand had gone to the knife on her belt, but not to the hilt. It was like she was trying to cover it up with her hand. I wondered if she knew she was doing that.
She looked overwhelmed. Completely out of place. If I could have made myself forget that she was a half-demon and that she’d screwed Barley over to impress her friends, I might have run over to play hero.
Even knowing her heritage, I couldn’t see any malice in her. Ignoring that knowledge, I could see her being easy prey for a clique of bullying dykes. Taking it into account, I had to wonder if she was really being manipulated, or if she was doing it herself. Barley’s reading of her being desperate for love and attention didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t a monster.
Callahan showed up, and the Harlowe girl’s reaction to seeing her looked to be about the same as mine had been. It would be so easy to empathize with her. Her grubby t-shirt and her permanent slouch didn’t do her any favors, but it made her less intimidating.
Was it possible that was all a pose?
“Anybody seen Johnson?” Callahan asked, looking up from her roster. If she was taking roll, that meant she knew everybody in the huge class by sight. That was impressive. “Fuckin’ Johnson,” she said, when nobody said anything, then whispered something like “Kill that faggot,” under her breath.
That was when the name clicked: Johnson, Steff—the obnoxious half-elf. He was from Harlowe. That raised some interesting questions. Was he skipping because he knew Mack would be there?
Regardless, Callahan’s homophobia (or athanophobia, or whatever it was) was starting to get on my nerves.
She looked at Mack without much interest, then looked at her again. Her eyes scanned the sheet on her clipboard and then narrowed a little. She did a very discreet double-take.
“New girl. Mackenzie?” she said.
Mack sneered a little, but she hid it quickly. I think Callahan noticed it anyway.
“I’d prefer ‘Ms. Blaise’,” she said, stepping forwards. “I was raised human.”
Maybe the stunned bunny look had been an act. This girl had big adamantine balls, the kind that came from knowing she could knock the head off even a seasoned fighter with a single punch. If Callahan hadn’t called her “new girl”, I would have bet money she’d just blown off the previous sessions.
“Fine, then,” Callahan said, unimpressed. “You ready to wow us today, Blaise?”
“Ms. Blaise, if you please,” Mack said.
Adamantine balls.
“Look, I’ll call you Daisy the Magic Rocking Horse if that’s what you want, but I expect you to earn it. I’ve already extended you a line of credit, but don’t push your luck,” Callahan said. I wondered how much information the school gave her about her students’ backgrounds. She was tough, but would she really push back that hard if she knew she was addressing a demon?
“It’s a rule,” Ms. Blaise said. Her eyes were full of contempt. Her voice was mostly calm, but there was an excited quaver in it. She looked tense. There was a small tremor in her hands. Several other students stepped back. I stood my ground, but braced myself for the very real possibility that I was about to see a demonblood flip her shit.
“Rule number one in life is that the people who have the weapons are the ones who get to pick which rules get enforced,” Callahan said. More evidence that she didn’t know exactly what she was facing.
“Oh, I’ve got a weapon,” Mack said. For somebody who didn’t know what she was, it would have been easy to miss the subtle undercurrent of menace there.
Of course she had a weapon. Her whole body was a weapon. Preternatural strength. Nails that could double as rending claws. Teeth that could shred flesh and shatter bone. The fire of hell itself.
Homophobe or not, I prayed that Callahan had the ability to back up her bluster against more than a couple of unprepared humans. She obviously hadn’t caught on yet. Her eyes went to the bronze-handled hunting knife on Ms. Blaise’s belt. It was an ugly, unremarkable looking weapon, done in an obvious and poor imitation of the elven style. I couldn’t imagine why anybody would bother to enchant it. Of course, she would only be carrying it as a formality. Whatever the rules said, Ms. Blaise would hardly require an enchanted weapon.
“Great,” Callahan said. “Come at me with it.”
“What?” Mack said. This wasn’t the response she’d been expecting, obviously.
“Draw your knife and come after me,” Callahan said. “Attack me.”
“But, but it’s not a mockery, it’s a real knife,” Mack stammered. Maybe Callahan was cagier than she looked. The professor had just changed the game. Instead of the demonblood goading her into a fistfight, she was challenging the student to draw her weapon. Chances were a demonblood would be far better-versed in using her hands and teeth.
“Should I care?” Callahan said, fluttering her surprisingly long eyelashes. There was something off-putting about her corded body, something vaguely wrong about the set of her shoulders, but she had a pretty face. “Am I supposed to care that you have a live blade? Is there some reason I should find that fact to be significant?”
“Are you insane?” Mack yelled, her voice cracking with indignation. She literally could not believe that Callahan was standing up to her.
I was losing more respect for “Ms. Blaise” and gaining it for Callahan. I didn’t like bullies. I know that’s not an original stand. Who does like bullies? But I hated the way she’d slouched into the class, made herself the center of attention, and tried to intimidate the professor into doing things her way. She’d be used to human teachers and classmates shitting themselves when she looked at them funny. She wouldn’t even have to make a direct threat. It would be enough to give anybody a case of “big fish, small pond” syndrome hopped up on giant strength.
“No, I’m serious,” Callahan said, cool as can be. “Is there a reason I should care that you have a knife?”
The Ms. didn’t care for that one bit.
“Well, for one thing it’s a fucking knife and I could kill you with it,” she said. “For another thing, it’s a fucking knife and I could kill you with it!”
“Really?” Callahan asked. Now she looked like she was trying to keep from laughing, as the demonblood’s tantrum continued to build. “Are you sure about that?”
“Am I sure that it’s a knife?”
“That you could kill me with it,” Callahan said. She put her clipboard off to the side, where it hovered in the air. “Because I’m not sure you could, even with that knife.” Now I was starting to wonder if she was insane. Challenging a demon to unarmed combat? “In fact, I don’t think you could do so with my personal blade, a long sword so loaded with enchantments my grandkids will be paying it off.”
She drew the weapon—a nice piece with a basket hilt and a long blade with gold filigree—and held it out pommel-first.
“Here, take this and swing it at me,” she said when her angry pupil didn’t react.
“What?” Mack asked.
“Don’t speak Pax?” Callahan said. “Take this and swing it at me.”
“You’re not serious,” she said, looking at the weapon like she thought it would bite her. Maybe it would. Callahan had said it was enchanted up the wazoo.
“Deadly,” Callahan said.
Mack stepped forward, her hand reaching out for the weapon. She froze, then looked at the teacher’s face.
“You really are serious?” she asked. She didn’t seem to have registered Callahan’s fist going up and back.
“I am,” Callahan said, punching her in the nose. I heard the crunch. “You’re not.”
It was the most impossible, paradoxical thing I’d ever seen. Callahan and Mack were of a similar height. Though Callahan was bulkier, she seemed to be a mostly-human mutt. Yet Mack, by all accounts half-demon, was down on the ground screaming her head off and Callahan was standing her ground.
“You punched me!” Mack yelled. The fact that she wasn’t bleeding implied her heritage hadn’t been exaggerated.
“Yeah, yeah, go cry, emo kid,” Callahan said, turning her back on her, sheathing her sword and grabbing her clipboard.
Mack blubbered something that sounded like “I’m not crying.”
Callahan waved a hand dismissively.
“Whatever, go to the healing center if—Johnson!” she said, looking up suddenly. I followed her gaze and saw Steff skipping across the field. “You’re late!”
“Aw, sorry, Coach,” Steff said, slouching his head low while giving her a big ol’ shit-eating aw-shucks grin. “I’m just trying to move slow enough for your poor, human eyes to follow.” His eyes flicked down to where Mack was still sitting sprawled on the ground, apparently digging for sympathy that didn’t seem to be coming. “Shit, Mack, what happened?” he asked her.
“I punched her in the face,” Callahan said.
Steff snorted.
“Better not do that too much or she’ll get to like it,” Steff said, rolling his eyes and smirking. “Are you okay, honey?” he said to Mack in a fluttery, girlish sing-song voice. He didn’t think much of her, either, it seemed.
“If she likes getting the shit knocked out of her, I think she’s in the right place,” Callahan said. “Though it’s kind of hard to imagine a place where she wouldn’t. Do something with her, will you? I can’t have crying kids in my class. They unbalance my fucking chi.”
Steff gave the crying Mack a sidelong glance, then dropped his voice low, beckoned to Callahan and said, “Look, Jillian.” I couldn’t make out the rest, but Jillian? Elven arrogance shouldn’t have surprised me at that point, but he either hadn’t processed the fact that he was talking to somebody who had suckerpunched a demon or he didn’t care.
“You’re telling me?” Callahan said. “I didn’t say get rid of her, but at least make her stop crying.”
They exchanged a bit more of what I guessed was “friendly banter” for them. Steff fit surprisingly well into the warrior jock culture, for somebody who identified as queer. Then he led Mack, still griping and moaning, away from the field. I didn’t envy him getting stuck with her. I still couldn’t quite get a bead on her, but I was less sure I wanted to. I felt bad for Barley getting screwed over, but she was better off with Mack out of her life.
“Class started five minutes ago, so I’m guessing everybody has their weapons mocked,” Callahan said, looking around the field. A bunch of people started moving towards the tables where the boxes were. “All you people, next time you aren’t ready when class begins, you’re spending it unarmed. ”
That was one thing I could say for sure about Ms. Mack Blaise: she was a grade A dumbass for picking a fight with Callahan.
Cross-Reference TOMU Chapter 85: Mixed Melee
@132
I’m not the only one? Huzzah!
But yeah, I’m weird like that. I think it’s a neat little idea! I’m looking forward to seeing how it’s executed in-story.
Whoops, meant 152, not 132. How’d I do that? O.o
As the blog is not open for comments;
AE; why are you pursuing your languishing stories, when at the moment you’re unable to keep up with the current ones? You’ve already bitten off more than you can chew; More MU has not been updated for over 3 weeks and regular MU has been sporadic of late too. I’m curious as to how this translates into deciding to take on even more work. Are you getting bored of MU, in either or both its forms? If so it would be better just to say so, rather than have people waiting for updates that come in an unreliable fashion, if ever.
@148, good point. and that’s sort of what i’ve been thinking. but at the same time, in the main story she has that little chat with Dee about self-control and not living carelessly, so I’m wondering if there’s a possibility she could find a way to have more control over it, or at least, not letting it come out.
@ 146 Me:
What about people that do it out of boredom?
I’ve heard of an unreliable narrator, but AE is an unreliable _author_. “Oh, there will be MToMU updates beginning Monday…soon…next week…and you’d better not complain or I’ll be too stressed and guilty to write anything at all (and that’ll be your fault).
Ever hear of a professional work ethic, AE? No? And then she wonders why donations decline.
On the “if you think murdering people is right means your a psycopath, and therefore not responsible” note.
No. That won’t alieviate any guilt.
There are plenty of murderers who believed they were doing the right thing.
Timothy McVeigh believed he was doing the right thing.
The Federal Government executed him in record time.
Your belief in right and wrong doesn’t factor in when deciding your competence to stand trial. (I’m not saying that the system is entirely right, i’ve read a few accounts where i agreed with the “perpetrator” of the “crime”.)
I believe in something practiced by a great many farmers.
Kulling the herd. Removing those that would leave powerful negative impact on the rest of the herd. So we must do with our society. If one would do “unjust” harm to others, then that one is removed.
@ False Prophet 155:
How would that system work? I mean, who would decide what harm is unjust? For instance, if some guy raped my wife, and I went out and killed him in cold blood, which of us did unjust harm? What if someone stole something of mine and I beat the shit out of him until he gave it back? What if someone framed a friend of mine, so I got revenge on him?
I’m honestly not trying to destroy your system here, I’m trying to understand how it would work. I know how our system works; I’d be put in jail (at the very least) for all of those.
rape is terrible, but even if that provokes you to murder ,its still murder…so…you did the most harm.
if you want to kill some rapist than go live in somalia , and while your at it you can stone the rape victim to death to, youd probably enjoy that. Anything to see some blood, huh? Honor killing would probably be right up your alley.
Part of living in a civilized society means not going out and murdering people whenever you feel like it. No matter how you justify it, sure , the whole justified murder thing just leads to lynch mobs, which never even kill the guilty party, historically, all they did was grab some random black guy.
We all know that whether or not you get the death penalty only ever comes down to how much you are able to spend on a lawyer. Justice has nothing to do with it and we need to stop telling that lie.
So you’re saying that a provoked murder is still unjust, right? I can understand that. But we’re not talking about which does the most harm to any one person. We’re talking which does the most harm to society, which poses the bigger threat to society. In that context, I would argue that the man who raped a person without provocation is the bigger threat than the man who was provoked into murder.
You say part of civilized society is not murdering whomever you feel like whenever you feel like it. I would put forward that Nazi Germany was a civilized society, but they still have the blood of 6 million Jews, among others, on their hands. What about Stalin? He killed how many people? But Communist Russia was still civilized. Britain? God only knows how many people the British killed throughout their empire. Not even the United States is exempt. Look at our history in the 1800s.
I’ll agree that our system isn’t based on justice. It’s based on whoever can convince a group of people that they’re right. It’s based on whoever plays the game the best. But in the end, it’s not the system we’re talking about. We’re talking about a system where we cull our society. One in which the guy that’s a threat gets beat down because he’s a threat.
By the way, I completely appreciate the implication that I just like killing people.
your view of “Culling the herd” is way off base. You’re supposed cull out bad breeding stock, undesirable genetics. You’re claiming that criminal activity makes someone worth ‘culling’ but in many cases, it’s a factor of environment, not some kind of ‘natural’ instinct. In other environments most criminals would have been great productive members of society. And I’d hate to see anyone advocating killing off random kids just because they’re born into a situation where all their adult role models were also raised with a ‘crime is a way of life’ mentality. I still believe in personal responsibility and all, but that doesn’t negate the fact that crime is a symptom of other things, and it’s hard for people to make choices against what’s seen as normal and acceptable. We need to fix the system to stop producing criminals, not just kill them off one by one.
If you want to cull the herd, you’d do what real animal breeders do, get rid of the ones that are deformed, handicapped, or have other genetic defects.
and as for your little thing about the death penalty, that’s just ridiculous. Our system is against the death penalty no matter how good of a lawyer you have. Do some research, it costs 2-3x as much to kill someone legally, as it does to keep them in jail for their whole life. They don’t run around killing the poor criminals just for the fun of it. It’s seen as an extreme punishment for extreme cases, and highly discouraged due to the $2-3Mil price tag. Life isn’t like law and order. the justice system tries to cut costs where ever it can. And includes NOT asking for capital punishment, even when the person deserves it, because it’s so much easier and cheaper to just throw them in prison without parole.
Ixta. I don’t mean that we need to kill off a bunch of kids. Society needs to change. We need to help them if we can, prevent that type of mentality as much as possible.
But if someone breaks into YOUR home, should you be forced to flee? To stand idly by, praying that the police arrive in time to save you? The police don’t prevent crime, they come to mop up the mess and catch the guy that killed/raped your wife/child in their own home. They come to record the fact that you were violated.
Rarely in time to prevent it or catch them in the act.
Which is why it’s your responsiblity as an individual to protect yourself. Your family. Your property. Your freedom.
And taking a life, or causing physical harm to protect your own, and the sanctity of your freedom that another would willingly violate is not a wrong.
It’s what we call “Mala Prohibita”, which is essentially “wrong because someone else says so”.
I’m all for rehabilitating Lil-Johnny-Steals-A-Lot.
But when Lil-Johnny breaks into my home with the intent of wronging me, my family, or those i care about, Lil-Johnny is going to be carried out by a coroner.
I shouldn’t have to wait to see if i could have ran away, if maybe he had no intent of killing me, or raping my wife/daughter, or maybe he would have just killed the family dog, or if the police just MIGHT make it there in time to arrest him after the fact.
No jury has to worry about not being able to convict him then.
Because the victim didn’t wait to BE a victim.
Almost a month and no updates? *pout*
I can support self defense, but that’s not really what culling the herd is in my mind. *shrug* semantics I guess. And I was sort of responding to you and alex at the same time, but that was probably a bad idea, since you’re not arguing the same thing. However, even with self defense, there is such a thing as using excessive force. Although this sort of reminds me of a convo I was having with some cousin’s the other night about robbers who get hurt and sue the people who’s house they broke into. That kind of stuff is completely ridiculous. I’d be all for culling out whichever idiot jury members let that actually win. Sadly, with that kind of crap, you really would be better off killing them just to not get sued for emotional trauma or something ridiculous like that.
@161
Dear False Prophet: I appreciate your points about self-reliance and responsibility, and I agree; there is a gap between police response and victim risk that only intelligent self-protection (by the potential victim) can fill. The criminal that breaks into our house gets no further; my husband and I know where all the weapons are, and the criminal *doesn’t*.
And as far as the “culling the herd” point…have you read any of David Brin’s *Uplift* novels? The humans first ‘uplifted’ themselves by enforcing restricted breeding; they “culled the herd” by sterilizing those with undesirable genes or tendencies. Eventually, the humans “bred out” genetic illness and genetically-based tendencies towards undesirable behaviour). (Obviously,the uplift process is a eugenic one.)
And then the humans cleaned up their ecologically devastated planet, and uplifted two other Terran species; the Dolphins and the Chimpanzees. And that was about the time the aliens of the Five Galaxies arrived…. (See _Sundiver_, _Startide Rising_ and _The Uplift War_.)
A little legalese:
Murder is not a malum prohibitum; it’s a malum in se. (-um ending, singular/-a ending, plural. It’s Latin.)
Mala prohibita crimes are crimes ONLY because some regulatory agency has said so: Don’t walk on the grass, Speed limit 65, Pay federal income tax on this date every year. Mala Prohibita crimes have no moral element; they’re “wrong” just because the rules say so, but not “evil”.
Mala prohibita tend to be concerned with regulatory matters.
Mala in se (“evil in itself”) crimes are crimes because of society’s feeling that these are “bad things”: murder, rape, arson, robbery. Mala in se crimes DO have a moral element — these are considered bad acts — and even without a law that specifically makes them illegal, most Americans would still recognize these as crimes/moral wrongs.
Mala in se are the baddies. People may question whether a suspect DID a particular mala in se crime — like murder — but there’s no question that murder IS an evil…it’s wrong in and of itself.
So apparently when a story blog goes into a “coma” (no updates for month = coma, no updates ever = dead) the result is that people post long rambling analyses of the story that make no sense?
Thank you Louise. I’m actually surprised i got any positive response. Same for Ixta.
But on the “mala in se” part.
I’m making the assertion that killing in self defense or defense of another is not “murder”. And is not wrong or evil. Though some may disagree.
Ixta, I appreciate that you mostly agree about the methodology. Determining “excessive force” is an extremely difficult an nuanced matter, and in the case of most people, they would lack the training and physical ability to apply the minimum amount of force to deter/repel/disable an attacker without it giving the attacker a better chance of injuring a party or escape, so they could do it again.
And the people who monday morning quarter back self defense cases have no standing from which to criticize the victim. Again, i think you were more or less in agreement as well.
*sigh*
Still nothing…
Fish?