Podcasts about errands

In this episode of the Tactical Living Podcast, hosts Coach Ashlie Walton and Sergeant Clint Walton dive into the impact of acts of service (Amazon Affiliate) in first responder relationships. When one partner works a high-stress, demanding job, small gestures of support can make a huge difference in reducing stress and fostering connection. Something as simple as packing their lunch or helping prep their uniform can ease their mental load and show that you have their back—even when the job is overwhelming. In this episode, we explore five simple yet powerful ways you can support your first responder spouse and why these small acts lead to a healthier, stronger relationship. 1. Why Acts of Service Matter in First Responder Marriages First responders often carry the weight of their jobs home with them, making stress management crucial for both partners. Small, thoughtful gestures can lessen decision fatigue, increase connection, and create a sense of teamwork in the relationship. 2. Five Simple Ways to Support Your First Responder Spouse 1. Packing Their Lunch or Meal Prepping for the Week Example: Preparing a healthy lunch or meal prepping ensures they have nutritious food instead of relying on fast food or skipping meals. Why It's Beneficial: Saves time and money during long shifts. Ensures they have energy to stay focused on the job. A small way to show love and care in a tangible way. 2. Prepping Their Uniform and Gear Example: Having their uniform ready, boots polished, and gear in order means they can start their shift stress-free. Why It's Beneficial: Reduces morning chaos and rushing before work. Helps them feel put together and confident. One less thing for them to worry about after a long shift. 3. Taking Care of Errands and Household Tasks Example: Handling grocery shopping, bills, or minor home repairs so they don't have to worry about it after an exhausting shift. Why It's Beneficial: Allows them to truly rest when they're home instead of feeling like they have another job waiting for them. Keeps the household running smoothly, reducing stress for both partners. 4. Creating a Quiet and Relaxing Home Environment Example: If they worked a night shift, ensuring the house stays quiet during their sleep hours. Why It's Beneficial: Helps maximize rest and recovery, which is crucial for performance on the job. Creates a peaceful retreat for them to decompress from work stress. 5. Offering Emotional Support Without Needing to "Fix" Everything Example: Simply listening when they vent instead of trying to give advice or solve their problems. Why It's Beneficial: Allows them to process emotions in a safe space. Strengthens trust and emotional connection in the relationship. Reinforces that they don't have to carry everything alone. 3. How Small Acts Create a Bigger Impact in Relationships These small gestures add up over time, creating a sense of partnership and support. A relationship built on mutual care and service is stronger and more resilient. 4. Why It's Not About Gender Roles—It's About Teamwork Acts of service aren't about traditional roles—they're about lightening the load for each other in whatever way works best for your relationship. 5. How to Incorporate These Habits Without Feeling Like a Burden Start small and simple—acts of service should be genuine, not forced. Ask your spouse what would help them the most. What seems small to you might be a huge relief for them. Why This Matters: Being in a relationship with a first responder means understanding the stress and demands of their job. By offering small but meaningful acts of service, you can ease their daily burdens, improve their well-being, and create a more connected, fulfilling relationship. Listen now to learn how these simple acts can transform your relationship!

Janet in Annandale thought her date was going well—until he suddenly left to run errands in the middle of it. Was he multitasking his way into her heart, or was this just a bizarre brush-off? Listen to hear how it all went down and whether this odd detour led to a second date or a dead end!

Hey Guys, In this episode of Declutter Your Chaos, we're diving into a topic that is essential for a clutter-free life—time management! I'm sharing my simple yet powerful block system that helps organize your weekly tasks into broad categories, making it easier to stay on top of everything without feeling overwhelmed. This system not only keeps you accountable but also reduces anxiety by ensuring you're giving attention to all the important areas of your life—Home, Family, Me Time, and Errands.  Here are my twelve blocks...yours may be different:   HOME  (blue)  Cleaning:  daily reset, wash car, dishes, vacuum, mop, dust, bathrooms, kids rms Decluttering decluttering block Food prep (prep and cooking) Laundry laundry block  FAMILY - (green) with or for the family  General family (driving kids around, family dinner, weekly friend dinner, weekly game time, jogging with henry, going to games) volunteer : pta, cotillion Pets:  (walks,feeding, grooming)  ME (pink/yellow) mind work block (meditation, breathwork, journaling) pink body work block (yoga, running, walking, lifting weights) yellow General me time- (piano, getting ready, boyfriend, tv, scrolling, friends, makeup, hair, shopping) yelllow ERRANDS (red) 11. Errands WORK (purple 12.  Work (making money) I hope this is helpful.  Let me know if you try it! XO, AMBER Links and Resources:

Hey Guys, In this episode of Declutter Your Chaos, we're diving into a topic that is essential for a clutter-free life—time management! I'm sharing my simple yet powerful block system that helps organize your weekly tasks into broad categories, making it easier to stay on top of everything without feeling overwhelmed. This system not only keeps you accountable but also reduces anxiety by ensuring you're giving attention to all the important areas of your life—Home, Family, Me Time, and Errands.  Here are my twelve blocks...yours may be different:   HOME  (blue)  Cleaning:  daily reset, wash car, dishes, vacuum, mop, dust, bathrooms, kids rms Decluttering decluttering block Food prep (prep and cooking) Laundry laundry block  FAMILY - (green) with or for the family  General family (driving kids around, family dinner, weekly friend dinner, weekly game time, jogging with henry, going to games) volunteer : pta, cotillion Pets:  (walks,feeding, grooming)  ME (pink/yellow) mind work block (meditation, breathwork, journaling) pink body work block (yoga, running, walking, lifting weights) yellow General me time- (piano, getting ready, boyfriend, tv, scrolling, friends, makeup, hair, shopping) yelllow ERRANDS (red) 11. Errands WORK (purple 12.  Work (making money) I hope this is helpful.  Let me know if you try it! XO, AMBER Links and Resources:

Welcome back to Westgate! The Burning Elf Festival has moved into the parking lot, but that won't stop our three newest Goblins from trying to find their friend a sensible turtle neck. Er...the neck of a turtle? Eh. They'll figure it out. Listen as Scrumples (Madelyn Murphy), Crooked Ramone (Diego F. Salinas) and Pinchy (Alex Stompoly) try to navigate hippies, birds, and raving mascots on a quest to stoke the fires of Love while soothing their own broken hearts. Special shout out always to our resident Tall Person (and pig VO artist), Jasmin Malave at the helm! Want to Adventure with us??? Get Tickets to the Show Here! Join the Discord! Follow us on Instagram Follow us on TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether you're out running errands or doing your laundry, use even those times to sing a hymn, confess your need, quote a Scripture, and praise your God. -------- Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible.     Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org   Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

This week on the podcast, come along with staff on comical (mis)adventures as they play GOBLIN ERRANDS: it's a short role-playing game as three goblins (and one "tall person") simply trying to complete seemingly mundane tasks! You'll also hear information about our bi-monthly RPG Group!      

In this episode, we share our personal experience of home birthing our second child, Nti. We recount the details from the early contractions to the challenges of labor, and the joyous moment of delivery. We discuss the spiritual significance of childbirth, the importance of trust in God, and the significance of supportive spouse roles. Marcia provides insights on labor pain, the concept of the mucus plug, and the physical demands of birth, while Thomas touches on the father's role and our collective experience as a family. This episode includes a mix of personal anecdotes, scriptural reflections, and practical advice on pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum recovery. 00:00 Introduction and Scripture Reflection 01:14 Early Labor Signs and Timeline Confusion 03:28 Errands and Increasing Discomfort 05:48 Active Labor and Midwife Support 10:58 The Birth and Immediate Aftermath 18:01 Unexpected Sensory Experience 19:06 Reflecting on Childbirth Experiences 19:57 Delivering the Placenta 22:07 The Mystery of Childbirth 26:34 Postpartum Journey and Breastfeeding 28:14 Father's Role and Paternity Leave 29:10 Healing and Reintegration 34:05 Final Thoughts and Advice for Husbands

The Westgate Mall Kenn is back in action! This time they face one of goblinkind's greatest foes…indigestion!!! Can our old friends Blub (R. Alex Murray) and Snerick (RJ Christian) with the help of their new buddy Bill (Cassidy Sledge) find a way to soothe their savage tummies?? Join us as they battle escalators, cacti, and the ever present apathetic teens of Westgate!”   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, look around at the many people who help you, then be quick to say thank you. It'll bless them and you. -------- Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible.     Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org   Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

In this episode of Dumbing It Down With Dave, #337, titled “So long my Kia I'll miss you” amongst various topics, Dave talks about putting his trusted porta-poddy down. It was a 2008 Kia Rio LX and after 329,000 miles it was time to go. It WASN'T the engine. It was the chassis rust and a brake line. Mostly the rust on the chassis. It got really bad and unsafe. Remember: The BRAND NEW Dumbline is 845-330-3410 Leave a vm and maybe I'll play it on the air. We'd love to hear from you. This episode was recorded in a 2011 Dodge Grand Caravan on the Saturday morning of Dec. 28, 2024 around 8-9 am'ish, while driving around running errands like going to the dump, fueling and getting coffee. Dave discusses his standards in regard to supporting this podcast and his other creations and other creators creations as well. It's a fun half hour of various discussions mostly about human behavior and trying to keep the focus on pragmatism,truth, happiness and the search for it all. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share... That's a link to the Dumbing it Down with Dave Facebook group.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/dumbing-it-down-with-dave--1657141/support.

By the grace of whoever is in charge of engineering this hellsite in its dying days, Jay and Dre will bring the full morning football party, handing out awards for the best and worst of Week 14 in the NFL before making their picks ATS for Week 15. The schedule is lopsided, so get your chores done during the first half of the day because all four games featuring teams with winning records take place after 4P: two of the hottest offenses go at it in Motown as the Bills take on the Lions, the Pride of Pennsylvania as the Steelers visit the Eagles, playoff hopes abound as the Buccaneers battle the Chargers, and on Sunday Nite, the Packers try to solve the red hot Seahawks.   Music: "Power Shot" by Eugenemeyers

Let the chaos REIGN! Welcome to "Goblin Errands". This will, in all likelihood, be an ongoing series where Jasmin runs two or three cast members through some zany Goblin adventures. For episode one Will, RJ, and Alex join in for shenanigans and the highest of jinks. After some world building and rules explanation a trio of Goblins enter the Westgate Temple Complex (Mall) to secure some form of affordable housing for the local Goblin Kenn. They must face the dangers of the food court, navigate the empty echoing halls of lap walkers, consult the oracle of the Rainforest Cafe, and help jaded teenage employees reach their potential lest their community get squeezed out of existence. We are playing "Goblin Errands" by Martin Nerurkar. It you'd like to check it out yourself, Click this Handy Hyperlink! Follow Jasmin @jazzylovesdrama Follow Will @willthechamp Follow RJ @rjthecomposer Follow Alex @ralexmurray Want to Adventure with us??? Get Tickets to the Show Here! Join the Discord! Follow us on Instagram Follow us on TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The KDE and GNOME projects are working on official Linux distributions, but do we need more distros? We dig into their special sauce.Plus: Wes' top DNS server pick, and it's not one we've heard before.Sponsored By:Black Friday Member Sale: 30% Off for the lifetime of your Membership! Code: blackfriday Tailscale: Tailscale is a programmable networking software that is private and secure by default - get it free on up to 100 devices! 1Password Extended Access Management: 1Password Extended Access Management is a device trust solution for companies with Okta, and they ensure that if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps. Support LINUX UnpluggedLinks:

If you cannot compromise; Challenge! In 25 parts, edited from the works of FinalStand. Listen and subscribe to the ► Podcast at Connected.. “Every person is alone. That is the definition of Free-will.” The gift from Grandpa that keeps on giving. I almost miss not killing him myself." "That man was an eternal foe of the Amazons, Cáel. His death was necessary for peace with the Illuminati, thus peace with all the other factions," Pamela related. I began laughing. "So my misogynistic family heritage comes from my Mother and my misandristic lineage comes from my Father," I clued Pamela in. She found it to be hilariously ironic too. "We still have to be careful," Pamela nudged me. "After all, your Grandfather had plans for your body. Whether we choose to believe it was to be a vessel for your Grandfather's essence; or, if you prefer, he put something in your Mother's DNA that, when combined with the machinery he used to store his memories, would bring him back to life; Cáel O'Shea always was thinking three steps ahead." "Why didn't you kill me when you figured this out?" I stared at her. "You hold the fate of House Ishara inside of you," Pamela smiled warmly. "Besides, I like you. No one really understands me like you do. Everyone else thinks I have a sick sense of humor." "I wish you had been my Grandmother," I nodded. "Wait; wait," Pamela held me back from continuing. "Because if I had been your Grandmother, you would have known to avoid a nut-ranch like Havenstone." "Are you like my psychic twin?" I teased her. She was right, of course. "I had a twin brother," Pamela turned sad. "I have always wondered what path his spirit traveled once they took him to the cliffs." "The fact that you still recall him with empathy speaks volumes for you, Pamela," I hugged her. "I felt the same way, you know," Pamela drew comfort from my warmth. I was uncertain of her meaning. "When they told me what happened to boys; I couldn't accept it. Their reasoning rang hollow and I saw their denial of their own blood to be self-defeating." "I have always wanted to believe my brother waits for me in the Hall of Ancestors so I can finally see his face and tell him I'm sorry that I was the one that was spared," she confessed. "You weren't spared, Pamela," I comforted her. "You had children and grandchildren so that way your brother will have grand-nephews and great grand-nephews whose actions are recorded in the deeds of your house and their names inscribed in the roster of the Host." "That's my hope anyway," I added. "Let it be so," she whispered.  (A Step back in time: that Weekend, between Oneida and Nicole) The weekend;  I'd had plenty of relaxing sex over the weekend, bonded with Oneida somewhat while we biked Saturday morning, had sex with Gael, junior of House Bendis (the woman who let me borrow her phone so I could invite Buffy, Helena and Desiree to my little induction ceremony), then had a late afternoon date with Nikita. Escorting Yasmin and her son to the airport for the start of her Havenstone training after dinner was unsettling. The boy, Braulio, seemed worried, Yasmin was glad to see me, really glad to see me then finished if off by commenting that she could tell 'something had changed'. I affirmed her hunch without going into the details. As Yasmin's mood improved, so did her son's. I wished her luck. She told me I'd need it more. Late Saturday night I was invited to a party by Libra. Brooke showed up date-less (she wasn't jumping into a new relationship) so she glommed onto me; us. Marla and Libra had a huge phone fight about her (Marla) not being 21 yet, thus not invited to the party. Felix was there having reconnected with Gina because he had both a glib tongue and an awe-inspiring sexual arsenal. Felix's attempts to recoup any ground with Brook failed miserably. She had her own bitterness toward Trent, her memory of me handing her panties under an outdoor cafe's table as a trophy Felix had taken the night before and displayed openly in my office, and my own masculine support to draw strength from. Felix and I did not verbally, or socially, spar. He accepted the verdict of our first contest and, for all his faults, he acknowledged that my victory had worth and obeyed his conscience on the matter. If anything, he was visually more respectful than ever before. I wasn't his equal; no man and definitely no woman was; yet I was now a competitor he would have to give his very best to defeat. Sunday morning had been just me and Odette. We'd cuddled on the sofa, watched some TV and then I took her to Havenstone for time in the pool. I kept the overly-aggressive Amazons at bay while getting Odette used to the idea of regular exercise; hanging out with Timothy and I required greater endurance than her sedentary youthful stamina provided. An early afternoon invite to a 'pick-up' basketball game at the community, two-court, outdoor lot with Jason, the bar-back from the Yuppie bar, brought me back in contact with Katy Lee Baker, aka Delivery Girl. Odette tagged along. It also brought me in contact with the local 'wild-life'. A Latin King clique was starting to operate in the area and Jason's crew were the native inhabitants who took exception to this. We played for about half an hour were everyone learned I was a big, fat liar. I was actually good at basketball, despite my earlier claims at ignorance. The Kings showed up, drove off the younger teens playing on the other court. A few more of those jokers showed up and it was now 'our turn' to make space. That went over like a shit brick. The Kings outnumbered us a good two-to-one, but Jason wasn't backing down. I was struggling to convince Jason that discretion was the better part of valor when some of the new Latin King arrivals tried to play with a few of the local ladies who had come down to watch their menfolk pull off their shirts and get sweaty. Poor Odette; she had been in the company of so many powerful, confident and lethal women she'd forgotten she wasn't one. A King grabbed Katy Lee's breast. Odette hit the asshole in the stomach, put a shin to his nuts and finished him off with grabbing his head and driving it into her upward moving knee, dropping him like the sack of shit he was. But wait, he had five buddies. Poo was being served up and the electric switch was about to be flipped. "I'll be back to help in a moment," I growled to Jason as the gang members jumped Odette. Katy Lee and a slightly older woman rushed to Odette's aid. The Kings didn't ignore my approach, peeling off two to 'deal with me'. They really shouldn't have hit Odette because now I was angry. The feces hit the rotary wind machine. With their last shows of bravado, I lay into the closest bastards. The sixteen year old was hesitantly pulling out his 32 caliber ACP while reconsidering his poor life choices as I hit his buddy so hard he went airborne, two teeth and a fountain of blood coming from the ruin I'd made of his face. Gun guy was next. I clamped my left hand on his right, gun-toting wrist then drove my knee into his elbow. The elbow snapped upward with a sound reminiscent of a car backfiring. His screams drowned out the thud of his gun dropping to the court surface. For the three remaining Latin Kings I was closing with, a terrible social reality came crashing in. Gangs rely on several tools to exert power; a propensity for violence, illegal finances, a fierce reputation, and superior numbers. By the look on my face, they discovered that their numbers didn't bother me in the least. I knew exactly who they were and didn't give a damn. My desire to destroy them was motivated by something far stronger than any currency, and I was clearly better at this whole violence thing than they seemed to be. They had their pride and the fidelity with their gang, plus their intimidation tactics were going wrong so fast, they couldn't process the disaster quickly enough to alter course. These guys were not professional warriors by any stretch of the imagination. 'Warriors'; perhaps. 'Professional'; definitely not. Their ability to rapidly adapt to a changing situation was woefully under-developed. In gang hand-to-hand combat, you bunch up your members, overrun a foe and beat him to the ground. Fighting a practitioner of Brazilian jujutsu, standing close to one another is the Last thing you want to do. I was a whirlwind of destruction, fed by the understanding that Jason's bunch needed me back real soon. The asshat who tried to use a knife on me got his hand pinned to the court for his audacity. I repeat, threatening Odette had infuriated me. At center court, Jason had his hands full and then some. The Latin Kings had the edges in both numbers and ferocity. The only other hometown boy holding his own was this thick, solid Puerto Rican guy named Bennie; the rest were in trouble. I started with the four-on-one stomp-down on one of Jason's friends; I'd missed the guy's beat down. My inner Amazon was leading the charge. Unlike all my previous encounters, I was intentionally causing pain. I wasn't trying to drive them off, or render them hors de combat. No, my desire was to strike terror in their hearts, inflicting suffering in order to eradicate my foes' resolve to fight. Knees snapped, bones broke, faces were stomped into the court and internal organs ruptured. Even my erstwhile allies were aghast at the wickedness with which I treated our enemy. "Ah; Cáel; are you okay?" Jason mumbled when the last King went down. He'd have a shiner on his left eye soon and his lip was split and bleeding. I hadn't come through unscathed either. Havenstone had seriously upped my pain threshold. Jason wasn't really asking about my physical well-being anyway. I had to get ahead of this; predicament. "Let's get this trash off the court," I commanded. The boys hesitated until Jason picked up one of my semi-conscious victims. "Come on 'Pendejo', leave and don't come back," Jason yanked the man up and began shoving him toward the gate he and his buddies had arrived by. The rest of Jason's friends joined in and we began cleaning up the place. One gangster decided he was too hurt to be moved. I'd rammed his shoulder into the goalpost, breaking his collarbone. He was crying about the pain he was in. I pulled him up. He was around 7 foot 2 inches tall and 275 pounds. I wrapped my hands around his thick bull neck and slowly raised him up off the ground. His face was reddening, his good hand was trying to break my hold and his legs were flailing about in the open air. [In Spanish] "Pain, Asshole? No, pain is me having to come back here and hunt you and your vermin buddies down," I seethed. "I don't live here. These men are not my friends. You touched my girl and I am God Almighty when it comes to defending those of my household. I am not in a gang. I am not a criminal. If you, or your gang, come within a block of this place, I will become Death. Today, there are too many witnesses. This is your reprieve; your moment of grace," I snarled. "Use it wisely. It will not happen again," I finished in a fury. I dropped him to his wobbly feet, catching his good hand before he fell over. That act of compassion after my dire threat confused the guy. "Go," I returned to English. The rest of the Latin Kings walked, stumbled, were dragged from the court. "Who are you again?" Bennie inquired. "Cáel Nyilas," I grinned. "I'm an Aerospace Engineer working on the feasibility of having hamsters running on their wheels being used to recharge batteries on manned flights to Mars." "Hamster wrangling has to be one tough profession," Katy Lee snickered as she and Odette came up. "Come on now," Jason winced as he licked his lip. "Brawling is about panic, anger and the management of those two forces," I told them. "I was the only one in this fight in control of himself, so my actions look out of proportions to what really happened." "They were kicking our asses," Bennie chuckled. "Not as bad as you guys think," I consoled them. "None of you guys ran, or curled up in a ball. That allowed me to pick my fights. I clearly have more hand-to-hand combat experience, but none of that would have mattered had you guys freaked out." There was some truth in what I said. Had they panicked, I would have grabbed Odette and Katy Lee then fled as well. Since they toughed it out, and the Latin Kings exerted virtually no command and control, I was able take on the gang members in small, bite-sized chunks. My training and experience took care of the rest. This also made the somewhat traumatized ballplayers feel proud about the cuts and bruises they'd received. Now they realized they had 'won' this scuffle, they'd played their parts courageously and had all been instrumental in a successful stratagem. The fact that none of them knew that when the blows were raining in it meant nothing. The women who'd come out to watch the game then witnessed the beat down knew their men had been brave, taken their licks and routed their enemies. Martial ardor, baby! 'Defending' a woman does not diminish her. It increases her odds of dealing with insults and threats in a positive manner. Women who look down on women who use their pussies to better themselves are being stupid. It is the equivalent of having a complete toolbox and only using the hammer. The women were going to give up some level of sex to reward the men. The men, in turn, had an example of the kind of behavior that would get them what they wanted; defending your ladies equated to feminine reward. That did not mean penetration; life was far more complex. It did mean she would hang around you, talk to you and trust you (most likely more than she should). Guys still had to seal the deal, figure out what she wanted and deliver. That had been the working arrangement between men and women for most of the last 80,000 years. What I didn't know at the time was that I was being spied upon, that this spy called Buffy; my 'spear and shield'; and Buffy would gather up some Security Detail chicks. Why would SD help? Some morons had tried to murder the Head of House Ishara and that wasn't something the Amazons would tolerate. That Latin King clique was contemplating revenge. They were about to get schooled by the Grand Mistresses of that brutal and unforgiving Art form. I could never let Odette know. After all, to her they were someone's sons, brothers and husbands. My chilling rationalization was that, for whatever reason, the Latin Kings had redefined themselves as carnivores, preying on the rest of mankind. They should have studied what nature was really like. Predators had predators of their own. They'd been big, bad caimans, snatching all that came to the water's edge. In nature, the caiman was careful because jaguars hunted and ate caimans. In the urban jungle, there were things far more dangerous than gang-bangers living in the shadows that jealously guarded their spot as apex predator. Odette and I exited the field. I'd have to catch Katy Lee another time. I was to get the bad news from Ulyssa and her sister about the death in her family. Timothy, Odette and I worked out some more as Odette and I took turns relating the fight to Timothy. He reminded us that the Latin Kings were a powerhouse in the city as well as nationwide. Nicole called at the point I was ready for bed and the rest was family history. (Monday morning) I locked my bike up as normal. When I saw the security guards eyeing me funny, I grew cautious. "Is there a problem?" I asked the woman scanning my ID. She was fearfully hesitant. "Wait, are you worried that I'm pissed about Friday morning?" "We were only doing our jobs, Cáel of Ishara," she told me. "Oh," I chuckled. "So that is what is bothering you." I smiled at the group. "Of course you were doing your jobs. I would have been surprised if you hadn't and I'm certainly not angry about what went down. You acted in defense of Havenstone and I never saw it any other way." That gave them some relief. My next problem. "Has anyone from the Security Detail called about me?" I asked. "I don't see anyone here to pick me up this morning." "I'll call them," she offered. The answer was that they weren't expecting me, but I could come down if I desired. That was promising. My ID card worked for the lower levels now. Walking past the Armory was intriguing; in that they barely noticed me. In the prep room for the shooting range there was; nothing. No guns for me to try out, or even look at. I went to the firing range looking for one of my 'friendly' SD ladies. They were all giving me the cold shoulder. Naomi told me why; Constanza. The SD were very angry with my interference in justice for Constanza versus Pamela. Since Naomi had been there when the entire incident went down, I didn't laugh in her face. I got coldly furious instead. If I wanted a firearm, I could go to the Armory and check one out, so that's what I did. The guards there weren't helpful either. Inside was; well; everything. I called up SD and asked them to send an armorer to help me make some selections. Ten minutes later, the lady had still not arrived. That made me laugh. They were tit-for-tatting the wrong guy. Glasses and ear protection came first. I left the Armory with my weapon of choice for the day, a full bandolier and a crate of ammo. I could see the SD chick's guarding the Armory eyes bug-out. I grinned and headed for the shooting range. They surreptitiously called somebody. Knowing that, I hurried myself along, passing straight through prep room for the firing line. I was a man on a mission. See, I could be a raging prick when I wanted to be. Those SD babes should have talked with any number of the Amazons who already knew me. I had made it clear; make my life difficult if you wished, but accept whatever payback I could imagine. Respecting House Ishara wasn't even a question. For pummeling me over Constanza, they were about to get a whole new kind of Righteous Pricking, courtesy of the house they refused to treat with equality. An Amazon finished firing off a clip for her personal defense weapon and was checking her pistol's slide action. "Excuse me," I said as I stepped up. She was about to scream something. Most likely 'stop!' Since I had no intention of complying, I didn't wait; or stop. For me, I was suddenly wondering what the precise blast radius of a 40 mm grenade was. I pulled the trigger anyway. I swear by Ishara-turned-Ishtar, I hit that target right in the 10 ring. The explosion the grenade caused when it hit the back wall rendered my claims moot. Even with eye and ear protection, I could barely hear anything because of the ringing echo, or see anything because of the dust. The flashing yellow lights and klaxons going off indicated something bad had happened. Bad wasn't done yet. I walked to the next stand where the Amazon had ducked down while she oriented herself to the threat. "Good morning," I yelled at her. Then I aimed and prepared to squeeze off my second round. With all the dust in the air, I could barely make out the outline of the target I was shooting at. Accuracy at this point was unnecessary. This bitching toy seemed to kill everything. Third station; third shot and the Amazons were starting to figure out what was going on. Some moron was firing a grenade launcher within an indoor firing range. Before the fourth shot they figured out it was me. Now those bitches had a problem. The lead Amazon tried to get my attention despite my constant attempts to ignore her. I resolved the issue by tapping my six-shot bang-bang and indicating I had two shots left; and I used them. Only when I stopped to reload did the ladies screw up the courage to exhibit some kind of physical resistance. Naomi pulled off my ear protection. "What are you doing?" she shouted at me. She wasn't being rude. All our ears were ringing. "I'm being left to my own devices, you 'failures' to every concept of loyalty, respect and faith," I replied to the entire group. "Constanza called House Ishara an abomination, insane and diseased," I spat out my hate. "I spared her life when I should have had her stricken from the roles of her house and butchered her like some beast. I showed mercy and this is how the Security Detail responds? Congratulations, you have earned my contempt." "But why are you using a grenade launcher; indoors?" Naomi struggled to understand. "Oh," I smirked. "Because I can. I'm superior to all of you here so I can do what I want and you have to suck it up. I am the Head of a First House so none of you have a choice. Every one of you chose to show me no respect and, out of respect for your lack of respect, you get no respect." They were trying to figure how to work around that when I upped the ante. "I'm also going to direct the other members of House Ishara to come down here at random times and fire off grenades, use flamethrowers, or; how about tear gas; tear gas sounds good." "That would degrade the readiness of the Security Detail," the first Amazon protested. "Not my problem. Take your complaints to Elsa or Saint Marie. Make sure to start your complaint with exactly how you behaved toward me; but use the names Beyoncé, Ursula, Katrina, or Messina instead of mine," I glared. "Now excuse me. I have a box full of high explosives to work through." And off I went. There were 25 shooting lanes. I had fired off my 22nd grenade when Elsa showed up. "Cáel of Ishara, why are you destroying this training area?" she inquired calmly. "Working through a crate of grenades. I thought that would be obvious," I joked. "Is there something wrong we should talk about?" Elsa was keeping her anger in check. "Your underlings were chronically disrespectful. Since positive reinforcement failed; being nice to any of your weakling-bullies was counter-productive; I decided to employ the stick treatment," I met her gaze. "Stop destroying the firing line; please," Elsa ground out through clenched teeth. "You are right," I nodded. "I need to take a few of these upstairs to the pure-blood gym. There is a lot more damage I could do there. This place is already a mess." Desiree's voice broke the silence. She must have come in with Elsa. "Cáel," Desiree yawned. "How do you want to resolve this crisis? That doesn't involve setting off seismic sensors all over New York City, that is?" "Hmmm; fine, every member of the Security Detail is to write a romantic poem then read it aloud to a 'Runner' while at that 'Runners' workstation," I invented a punishment. "Ishara is the Goddess of Love as well as Oaths. It is a fitting tribute to her that romantic verses from the heart be created and spoken aloud." "It is also fitting that the recipients be 'Runners', since it will unite them in both their appreciation of love and their anger with me for throwing my weight around like every other Full-Blood who thinks they are better because of some quirk of birth," I concluded. "It will be done," Elsa intoned. That part of the matter was settled. Elsa looked at my grenade launcher. An unhappy sigh escaped my lips as I handed it over. "Elsa, I'm coming for weapon's practice again tomorrow," I informed her. Now I was going to burn off some time in the pool then get to work, or so I hoped. I hadn't gotten away with this because I was Cáel Nyilas, or the Head of House Ishara. I got away with it because Elsa didn't want to see the faces of the Council when she explained what her people had done. The Council members treating me like offal was their business. Other Amazons deciding that they could treat ANY member of the Council that poorly wouldn't fly; reference to the fate of Leona. Why had SD treated me poorly? Constanza. If they repeated my conversation with Constanza that cost her an eye, the outcome was known by all. Constanza would cease being an Amazon right before she died. I made it to Katrina's office four minutes before seven only to find Katrina absent while Daphne, Brielle and Pamela were hanging around. Dora and Fabiola followed me in. Everyone made it before the deadline, Katrina last of all. As Katrina began the meeting, Brielle left. Pamela and Katrina ignored one another. My work review was far better than normal. I'd sold Anthrax to a terrorist cell, but it had turned out to be a mislabeled Anthrax antidote instead, so all was good. Daphne was trying to figure out how her glowing report over my efforts had been so misconstrued. My assigned boss for the day was Rosette, one of the senior members of Executive Services. "Katrina, I need a moment of your time; in private," I requested as the meeting broke up. "As Cáel, or the Head of House Ishara?" she asked. "Neither," I replied. She waved the others away with Tigger shutting the door. Pamela remained seated. Katrina shot me a look concerning Pamela's presence. "I don't control her," I shrugged. "She hangs around me for her own reasons." Katrina nodded. I walked to the edge of Katrina's desk, put my palms on its cool surface. "Katrina, I am the Grandson of Cáel O'Shea, I met Brianna O'Shea earlier this morning, she knows who I am and was brought to town because some genetic research done on me." "Brianna knows where I work and who I work for, as in you. Pamela said the word 'Protocols' and Brianna backed off, but I'm sure she wants to see me again. I've warned my Dad about what happened and to destroy everything associated with my Mom. By the way, Brianna looks exactly like my Mother did when I was first born; exactly," I emphasized. Had the situation not been so completely screwed up, I would have treasured the steamrollered look on Katrina's face. "She is with something called the Illuminati. She doesn't know about me and House Ishara. When Brianna tried to figure how this Protocol/Truce thing involved me, Pamela stonewalled her," I added. "Pamela, I can understand Cáel not immediately bringing this to my attention," Katrina's cool exterior reasserted itself. "He doesn't know what's going on. You do." "I didn't feel inclined to do your job for you, Katrina," Pamela gave a rapier-thin smile. "Besides, you are part of the brain trust that sent him home Friday night cloaked in ignorance, not I." "Cáel," Katrina turned back to me. "How did you meet Brianna O'Shea?" "I met a lawyer, screwed her to multiple orgasms in the Women's room of some bar, met her again plus her lawyer buddies and Sunday night she called me to her downtown office to screw her into enlightenment; which I did," I sighed. "She was working on a case involving DNA ownership, which is oddly germane to my current predicament," I grinned. "Cáel, we need you to report to medical for more testing," Katrina ordered. "I apologize, but House Ishara does not believe that would be in its best interest so Cáel must decline," I nodded. "Will there be anything else?" Will battled Will to no outcome. She nodded and I left. Pamela ghosted along behind me. Rosetta intersected my path and off we went. I was given no clue as to my assignment; no surprise. I texted Buffy: 'Nothing new happening. Pick me up at 5:30 Wed. morning.' That meant there was no new development on the committee to help House Ishara pick 'Runners'. I had played nice. Katrina and Hayden had dodged me on Friday afternoon. This morning, she owed it to me to show some kind of progress. That wasn't what she offered. I had made a concession, they refused to reciprocate, so now I was free of any obligation to consider their wishes. I wanted more 'Runners' and come Wednesday morning, I was adding twenty. Working with Rosette (and Pamela) was a triple-barreled experience. Errands were the largest bulk of our time, but the rest was other mundane tasks of the most basic sort. Within the workload were instructions in the craft of being unseen. Executive Services was more than laundry and daycare; it was about not disrupting the lives of clients. A side benefit of that was learning how to move through any group and not be memorable; to not give off the subtle clues that you were an outsider. Not only could a group of executives hold a conversation without an ES person disrupting their trains of thought, people trained to look for threats wouldn't be tipped off to your presence either. It was peon-craft for beginners. Executive Services personnel weren't ninja; they were inconsequential. As I had bubbled to Katrina on day one, Executive Services got to go everywhere and learn how everything worked. What I didn't appreciate was that was how Counter-Intelligence worked too. From what I wedged out of Rosette, Counter-Intelligence had never uncovered a successful internal conspiracy. They had ferreted out multiple peripheral programs meant to gather information on Havenstone, but no Amazon had been critically compromised; which meant several Amazons had been blackmailed yet gone to ES before doing any damage. Rosette appreciated that fanatic devotion, but she'd never hold complete faith in it. Her job was vigilance. (What is really going on?) The third barrel was the real unhappy news. For all their illegal activities, Havenstone was not the Sinaloa Cartel. There were not a global criminal organization that invited international law enforcement scrutiny. So why did they devote so much time and energy to security? They weren't alone in the shadows of world-wide civilization. At the top of the pile was the Illuminati. They were a hydra controlled by a ruthless, cutthroat conclave; membership uncertain. They were a Darwinian meritocracy until the top tier of leadership, where a group of smaller secret societies and families monopolized the real influence. Their biggest strength, and weakness, was that most of the people in the organization didn't even know they were part of the Illuminati. After that was a mishmash of groups with different abilities that made rating them difficult. The Condottieri were rather simple; they sold mercenaries and weapons to anyone with the coin with the sideline of promoting conflict by any means necessary. The Nine Clans; that sounded familiar; were assassins in the truest sense of the word. Hashshashin, Ninja, Thuggee, Black Lotus, Coils of the Serpent, Brotherhood of the Wolf, the Black Hand, Cult of the Jaguar and the Ghost Tigers. They were not just murder for hire, but murder to advance their cause. Harmonious existence was bad for business, so they stirred up rivalries and conflict in every corner of the globe. The Egyptian Rite Masons sounded sublime. They weren't. They may have been a secret order older than the Amazons, claiming descent to the days of Imhotep. The Egyptians were the oldest enemy of the Illuminati. The Egyptian Rite's goal was a global autocratic government, were the Illuminati wanted a capitalist oligarchy in charge of global commerce; with the Illuminati pulling all the strings. The Egyptian Rite were not restricted to Egypt anymore; membership was open to all races and genders. The Earth and Sky Society were not New Agers. They were the descendants of Genghis Khan and were devoted to the reincarnation of the Greatest World Conqueror of all time. Before tossing them into the rubbish bin of bad ideas, know that Genghis was the largest single genetic contributor (via rape) to the human gene pool since the mystical Eve. To be a member you had to have a genetic link to ole Genghis. The Seven Pillars of Heaven were an ancient Chinese Secret Society out for; you guessed it; World Domination. To be a true member of this group you had to be Pure Han Chinese and a man, or bound to one. Needless to say, Havenstone and the Seven Pillars did not get along. The final bit of information; these groups were what was left of the Great Secret Societies; the survivors. Havenstone's place in all of this chaos was complicated. By mid-5th century BCE, the Egyptians were aware of the Amazons. The Amazons were not causing problems for the Egyptians, so they parted on decent terms and that was that. By the first century ADE, the political landscape had changed. Amazons had penetrated Roman society and brought Latin houses into their structure. Amazingly, the Egyptians contacted the Amazons again, figured out the Amazons only wanted co-existence so co-existence they got. In the late 4th century, the Amazons returned the favor. The Amazons told the Egyptians something horribly bad was coming across the Eurasian steppes and the Egyptians better batten down the hatches. A few decades later, the Huns were pressing on the Roman Empire's frontier. What is not generally know is that in the ranks of Hunnish horde were the Sarmatians, successors to the Scythians, who had allied Amazons in their ranks. This gave the Amazons, thus the Egyptians, contacts on both sides of the Roman-Attila conflict. By the mid-5th century the two secret societies parted ways once more. Their relationship had been useful, but not close. From the Amazons viewpoint, it was the equivalent of getting good gossip at the fish market. The Egyptians appreciated the intelligence, but wanted, and didn't get, military assistance in propping up the Roman Empire. For the Amazons, the fall of the Western Roman Empire was the trigger for a massive Diaspora. A few houses decided to tough it out in Western Europe and its packs of warring Germanic tribes. Others travelled to Egypt and from there, down the Nile to Ethiopia and Central Africa. A third group travelled farther East than ever before, eventually settling in Southern India. Of course, the World never stands still. In the late 8th century, the Illuminati was founded as a mercantile society trying to restructure the shattered Western and Central European economies. It turned out that there was a major pass over the Alps between eastern Italy and southern Germany that was a safe transit region. The Illuminati decided to seize it. The Egyptians popped up, revealed to the infant Illuminati that they didn't want them to do that, but were ignored. The Egyptians were out to rebuild European civilization, which meant, in their eyes, you didn't go around butchering those who were restoring law and order. The Egyptians went to the mountain pass and warned the Amazons there what was coming their way. The Illuminati convinced a local Lombard warlord that the pass would be a nice addition to his territory and off he went. Two months later, their bully boy hadn't returned. Neither had any of his men. Never ones to retreat from failure, the Illuminati sent another force and those guys were never seen again as well. This time the Egyptians showed back up to warn the Illuminati that those people whose land they'd been trying to steal were sick of their meddling and were coming to settle matters. Would the Egyptians help the Illuminati deal with this threat, now that it was out of the mountains? The Egyptians politely declined stating 'better the sitting stone you know than the rolling one that sets things around it on fire'. The Illuminati fled from their first base and that is the reason why they hate the Amazons and Egyptians to this day. Mind you, the Illuminati had no idea who lived in that mountain pass at that time. A few decades after the incident, the Amazons relocated northward. Being good stewards over their lands had given up unwelcome rewards; namely people came to them seeking sanctuary. Amazons can be rather cold-hearted. That does not mean they kill you for knocking on their door. When the number of refugees became too great, the houses voted for migration over slaughter. The Amazons travelled to the Black Forest, dispersing from there, and left the people behind to become known as the Swiss. Everywhere, Europe was tough for the Amazons in the Middle Ages. Heavily male-dominated Germanic cultures in the North, Islamic culture in the South, piracy in between and an epidemic of warfare all around. It was in Sub-Saharan Africa where the Amazons prospered the most. There, migrating populations worked in their favor, as did the style of warfare generally practiced. Perversely, the increase in the East African Arabic slave trade worked in the Amazon's favor. Not only could they 'liberate' captured populations; males for breeding and women for recruits; it encouraged local tribes to temporarily ally with the Amazons to fight off the slavers. The Subcontinent turned out to be a mixed bag. In the South, Amazons prospered and grew in numbers and houses. The problem was that they became too strong. Normally they would have spread out, but Eastern India proved more hostile than acceptable and further East looked like a crap-shoot. China didn't look welcoming at all. So, the Indian Amazons were caught up in a series of wars when Northern powers tried to move South and the Southern lords were in some serious need of aid. The issue was there were multiple players in the shadows pulling the strings. One day, the Egyptians came knocking. The Egyptians knew the Amazons well enough to not try to draft them into their cause. They simply told the Amazons who the key players were and what they were trying to do. Why would they do this? It was obvious. Amazons existed for two reasons; live free and make baby Amazons. Those other asshole Secret Societies were threatening both of those goals. Warfare is doubly hard on a female population and women spending years in combat aren't making babies. Take into account that during this time period a massive amount of the world's population lived in India. Add to that the Amazon numbers were respectively tiny (invisible) and Every Secret Society they were fighting didn't think much of women. A few thousand gurgling last breathes later and two of India's oldest Secret Societies were gone, or eviscerated. Why had they left the other, Islamic, secret society alone? The Islamic society operated in the populous North, not the jungle-covered South. Why did they leave the Amazons alone? The Amazons exhibited a shocking capacity for violence. The Muslim group was a 'secret' Secret Society. The Amazons were a 'hidden/don't screw with us' Secret Society. A side effect of the war in India was the creation of another Secret Society; the 9 Clans. They weren't nine back then, but thanks to the Amazons and Egyptians, this East Asian group picked up the Thuggee and, within a century, the Hashshashin. Things were about to get even more interesting. For the Amazons in India, life existed off the beaten path so it took a year for the Amazons to realize those 'dirty little men' who had shown up in some western Indian ports were, in fact, Europeans; in a European-built ship. They didn't know Portuguese, but they knew Latin and with a little bit off effort, they got an updated history of Europe. Amazons had been meeting regularly every thirty years, or so, to choose the next High Priestess and exchange notes. These meeting did not include studies of technological, political, or social improvements. Stealing the twenty-first ship to show up, the Amazons sailed home; Europe, that is. They stopped off in East Africa to spread the good news then, upon landing, went to tell their European sisters that their pilgrimages were no longer a matter of torturous overland travel. They could use nifty ships like these instead. With that came even better news; some Genoese, nut-job, failure of a mathematician had discovered a brand new land and they were going to check it out. The decision was made. The Indians were going back home. Their Europeans sisters were going to 'acquire' some instructions on how to sail a ship then 'obtain' some ships and divide them up among the three strongholds. Europe would be heading to the west, Africa would sail around the Cape of Good Hope (not yet named that), back toward Europe to link up their communication network (and in time, bump into Brazil), and India would head east to the South-east Asian archipelago, sailing around the hostile Asian kingdoms. Hopefully, the fleet sailing west and the one heading east would meet one day. Unfortunately, North and South America stood in the way of that dream. The 'little' hitch in this plan was who those ships belonged to. Nearly half the commerce of Europe at the time was either controlled, or influenced by, the Illuminati. The Amazons were running off with their equipment and profits; whoops. A cherry on top to that 'whoops' was that the Illuminati were only starting to come out of a bloody war with the Condottieri. The Condottieri had started out as a business venture/strong arm of the Illuminati. In classic Illuminati fashion, the leaders of the Condottieri didn't know precisely who they were working for. In fact, they thought they were independent. When the Illuminati yanked that leash, it snapped and the blood-letting began. The Illuminati had more money than the Pope and the subtle ability to call upon the kingdoms of the Mediterranean World. What did the Condottieri have? A small cadre of loyal, professional fighting men and the best strategic and tactical minds in the West; the ones the Illuminati had recruited into the Condottieri in the first place. Whoops yet again. The Illuminati had every resource under the Sun. The Condottieri knew they were screwed, but they'd been in screwed up situations before and battled through. They needed to stay alive until the path to victory presented itself. Re-enter the Egyptians and the 9 Clans (still not 9 yet). The Egyptians? The Egyptians made a butt-load of money on the silk and spice trade's overland routes. The Western Europeans/Illuminati were about to cut them out of that. The Egyptians needed time to reposition themselves. The revolt of the Condottieri was a gift from the Divine and suddenly the mercenaries had funds and ships. The 9 Clans? The Illuminati was a 'Does it All' organization. If the Illuminati won, who would need assassins? This was class warfare, pure and simple. Even with three-on-one, the Illuminati fought back and fought well. The Amazon predations were not the deciding factor in the war. It wasn't even their war. Soon enough, the Amazons were buying their own boats and going elsewhere. The Illuminati doesn't forgive, or forget. For some reason, they took the Amazon thefts personally, despite its negligible impact. Maybe it was that all the other players were regionally invested while the Amazons seemed to be dog-piling them. The fact that Amazons had existed in Europe for nearly 2500 years either didn't occur to them, or they didn't care. Flash forward to the start of the 20th century. Through the discrete use of marriage-assassination, land grabs and the basic lawlessness in the Western United States, rural South America, Australia and the islands of Southeast Asia, the Amazons had grown vastly in numbers and economic influence. The Egyptians come knocking once more. Unlike past encounters, they were bringing an offer of alliance. The Illuminati controlled key assets in the British Empire and were using those chokeholds to eliminate their rivals. This was not news to the Amazons. Their holdings in India and the Dutch East Indies had been under pressure of the Illuminati for a century. Ever since the Illuminati nearly ground out the Thuggee (one of the 9 Clans), the Egyptians and Amazons have been constantly harassed. This was not the first warning the Egyptians had brought. The Amazons hadn't want a war with the Illuminati and they certainly didn't trust the Egyptians. This time they agreed to go to war though. Why? Two things; totally unrelated. First, the Illuminati and the Seven Pillars of Heaven had agreed to carve up Asia. Amazons lived in Asia and they were no man's chattel. Secondly, the Women's Rights movement was in full swing. The Amazons had nothing to do with it. Those were outsider females. What interested the Amazons were the legal ramifications of Women's Equality. The Amazons were poised for a massive increase in their financial footprint. With the Illuminati out of the way, or at least, preoccupied, they could seize assets and have time to fortify before they could be attacked. Women's Equality would allow this to take place. Basically, the Amazons were going to exploit the blood, sweat and tears of women to advance their agenda. From all accounts, the only groups that recalled the Amazons last foray into Secret Society politics were the Amazons and Egyptians. Certainly no one had enlightened the Condottieri. They started smacking around some Amazon bases in Europe and unleashed 'Hell on Earth'. With the help of the Egyptians, they got to it in Amazon fashion. A General of the Condottieri and his family were eating at a Naples eatery when five women dresses like nuns walked in and shot up him, his entire family plus some bodyguards. When the response team showed up, they killed them too. A few police were added to the obituary column as the Amazons escaped. Welcome to Amazon warfare. The Condottieri were furious over such a public breach, as well as the losses. They swore a vendetta. The 9 Clans happily informed the Condottieri that a 'War of Extermination' was the Amazon default setting. The Condottieri were not afraid; not yet. See, there was another secret society called La Solidaridad. Working on intelligence from the Illuminati, La Solidaridad overran an Amazon compound in Argentina. They thought it would be funny to take the survivors as sex slaves. Maybe the Illuminati was experimenting to see just how pissed-off Amazons could get. Maybe La Solidaridad hadn't read their Homer, especially those parts concerning Ancient World vengeance. It took the Host six months to start things rolling then the carnage began. They made damn sure the men knew they were being hunted by women. They weren't there to out-macho the men, or make a point. Every night, they attacked the men and their families in the cities and towns. For safeties sake, La Solidaridad retreated to their country estates. Huge mistake. A good number of them had to have hunted at some point in their lives. How they missed being 'flushed out into the open' was beyond me. Out in the countryside, there was nowhere to hide. Walls meant little because Amazons were incredibly fit and trained to fight at night. Most of the families the Amazons killed. They were the lucky ones. The survivors? By using a new Edison device, they took some home movies of the fates of those men. The Amazon's favorite tactic was to shove lit sticks of dynamite in the men's asses then steer them toward the closest river. One guy actually made it. His relief didn't last long. The Amazons had done something to turn the normally safe caiman population into rabidly aggressive swarmers. Bitches; insanely, sadistic bitches. In eighteen months, La Solidaridad had ceased to exist as an organization and never recovered. The Illuminati used that time wisely to beat down the Egyptians, Earth and Sky, and the 9 Clans, aided by the Seven Pillars. Having concluded their first order of business, the Amazons sent their home movie to the Condottieri. It wasn't mercy toward the Condottieri. I was psychological warfare. The Amazons needed the Condottieri off-balance so they could go after their real enemy. It seemed the Illuminati had instructed La Solidaridad on how to 'intimidate' the Amazons; through rape, torture and enslavement. Specifically, it was Cáel O'Shea who set the tragedy in motion; Granddad. Beyond Granddad being impossibly fucking old, he had possessed some seriously out of control animosity where Amazons were concerned. Before the Amazon's could implement their hunt, the 9 Clans intervened. The Illuminati had been giving them real problems and they saw a way to gain some breathing space. Had the Amazons and 9 Clans been in communication, the World might be a very different place today. Instead, the heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne was wacked by the Black Hand, some Serbian numbskulls took the fall and the rest of us got World War I. Oddly enough, this one murder accomplished the goals of the 9 Clans, Amazons, Egyptians and Earth and Sky Society. The British Empire still stood, but was wrecked. China was much worse off than that. Before the Amazons could gain their vengeance, the Egyptians negotiated a cease-fire between groups. The Amazon Council was furious yet unwilling to fight the Illuminati alone. They kept down their bile; and waited. In the post-War period, the Amazon/Illuminati feud ate much of their resources (probably the Egyptian's intentions all along). A truly dark side of this struggle was the Amazon support for the Nazis. Did the Amazons switch course? Yes, but not for the reasons most people would think. Jews, gypsies, communists and homosexuals going into camps didn't worry them one bit. What did? Let's go back in time to those women in the Swiss Alps who headed north. A great many of them went North then East; to places like Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It wasn't so much a matter of whimsy as one of terrain and population. All the best farmland was in western Germany, the Low Countries and France. That's where the Germanic peoples settled. Behind them, to the East, were the Slavs. The Slavs had three things the Amazons liked; low population density, weak social hierarchies and crappy land. That meant they could live in relative isolation, not be subject to an all-powerful king and not be inundated with migrating hordes wanting to steal their dank swamps, deep forests and isolate meadows. Sometime in early 1939, right after the Third Reich snatched up Bohemia, some Amazon augur decided to open up Hitler's Mein Kampf to see what was going on i.e. to see when Hitler would get around to jumping on England; the whole reason the Amazon were supporting him. What she found out was bad, bad, bad! The genocide of a bunch of people they could care less about? Not a problem. Invading the Slavic lands? What? Russia/Soviet Union hadn't been the big foe in WWI and they certainly were not Germany's greatest enemy at the moment; Britain was! Drang Nach Osten? That was an undefined migration of Germans back into Slavic lands that ended over 600 years ago? Their Eastern European sisters were in grave danger from a lunatic. The common sense response (for Amazons) was to kill the Hitler. They couldn't get close, so they took their problem to their old allies, the Egyptians and 9 Clans. Those two saw nothing wrong with the way things were developing. The Amazons swallowed their pride and went to the Illuminati who seemed rather enchanted with the idea of the fascists and communists annihilating one another. They had no way to safely approach the Soviets. Pulling their sister houses out of Eastern Europe was no longer an option; the other Secret Societies would be looking for that and try to figure out where the Amazon home bases were. The Amazons decided to make a fight of it. They were not going to charge panzers with spears. No, they started setting up caches of supplies and weapons in the most inaccessible places imaginable. The hope was that as Nazi Germany was grinding Communist Russia to dust, they could smuggle out their people in the chaos to Sweden then points west. The problem was WW II didn't work out that way. Great Britain got spanked at Dunkirk and Poland, France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and Norway all surrendered to the Nazi blitzkrieg. Then the Germans invaded Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia went under, but the Soviet Union didn't fall. Much to the Amazon Council's horror, resistance units began to interact with the local Amazons in an effort to improve their mutual survivability. Tales of mysterious female fighter, appearing to slay their enemies then disappearing into the wilderness filtered to both the Stavka (Russians) and SOE (British). The SOE discovered an answer to the mystery in mid-1942, by way of the fledgling US OSS. The Americans 'found' three female Army recruits who volunteered for such a mission. A month later, the partisan bands with those agents found the 'Forest Women' and all the lights came on. Unknown to the public World, the Amazon Council decided that the best hope for their kinswomen was to bring down the Nazis and ride out the Allied conquest. All of that might have been a happily little footnote except for what happened next. Hundreds of Amazons fought; no surprise; yet they didn't fight alone this time. Men and women of the local populace fought side by side with these lethal warriors. They shared battle plans, food, fire and medical care. That huge cultural barrier created over two and a half millennia began to erode. They bled together and were forced from time to time to place their lives in each other's hands. They witnessed one another's courage and sacrifice. They watched them bury their dead, nurture their young and weep at their pain. Whenever things looked darkest, the Amazon would turn to their partisan partners and say with utmost confidence 'we have survived worse; so can you'. The seminal event happened on the night of February 17th, 1944. For two years, the fractured, wounded women that are ever-present wherever there is war began to attach themselves to the Amazon bands. At first they were little more than annoyances. In time, the Amazons tried to turn these women into something 'useful'. Later, a few earned the right to follow the Amazons into battle. On that February night, two ladies were inducted into House Živa. This was hardly the first time outsider women were brought into the Host, but this circumstance was unique; induction in the middle of a war, having proven themselves in battle before their now-sisters. From that action; not the last in that conflict; was born the concept of the 'Runners'. With the end of WWII, the Amazons emerged more powerful than ever. The three strongest groups in the United States were the Egyptians, Illuminati and the Amazons. The Amazons profited the most; having started with the lowest profile and having infiltrated both the government and business sectors during the war effort. Using the Freemasons, the Egyptians reaped great benefit from the US war effort too. Always forward-looking, the Egyptians helped the Amazons as well. Still, not everything was rosy. For the Public World, World War II ended in September of 1945. That was barely a blip in the Secret Societies' radar. The calamity came on the 10th of December 1949. Using their pawns in the Chinese Communist Party, the Seven Pillars had re-unified China and were back on the world stage. Earth and Sky and the 9 Clans were dealt a setback. A fourth secret society involved in the Chinese struggle was absorbed by the 7 Pillars. The problem was that all the societies were locked in a bitter struggle yet devastated and over-extended. The 9 Clans, fearing the ratcheting up of Cold War intelligence-gathering services by multiple national governments asked for a global truce. The Amazons were dangerously exposed and over-extended. The Illuminati decided this was their time to strike and nothing could deter them. Into this backdrop, came the news to the Amazons that they had serious genetic issues. That led to the First Directive; the recruitment of 'Runners' as an established program as well as the explosion of what I knew as Executive Services. In a truly bizarre twist, U.S. and Soviet agents found themselves engaged in cat-and-mouse games with European NATO agents. Amazons had penetrated the proto-CIA during the war in an effort to reach their European sisters. In Eastern Europe, many of those partisans went over to the Communists when the Soviets overran their countries and looked favorably upon their erstwhile allies from the War. They couldn't match the influence that the many of the other secret societies possessed. Instead they pulled upon existing, personal relationships. I worked with a negative result of those days; Desiree, or more accurately, Desiree's parents. I was also walking with the final resolution of that crisis. The Secret Societies proved they could work just as fast as the UN. In three decades they had resolved nothing and were spending more and more time on damage control. Three events converged. The Illuminati had figured out the full-blooded Amazons were dying out so they knew they could win a game of attrition. The rest of the groups were coming to the conclusion that wiping out the Amazons was the easier course of action. The Amazons had, without a doubt, located the leader of the Illuminati, Cáel O'Shea. O'Shea was in sight of his goal; the extermination of the Amazons; when a lone Amazon got to him first. O'Shea's death sent titanic shockwaves through the Illuminati. There was a scramble for the top spot, fear over how much the Amazons knew about their inner workings, and how the other secret orders would take this bit of news. The Illuminati recoiled from the event, agreed to a truce and that led to the protocols that kept Brianna from dragging me off; gunshot wounds and all. That had been the state of affairs for the last thirty years. Again, the World had not stood still. China was an economic powerhouse, the EU grew stronger, and wars of political ideology had been replaced by religious-based terrorism. The Amazons were at a critical juncture in their history. The 'New' Directive was their best chance at staving off extinction and the Houses were fighting it kicking and screaming. The First Directive wasn't being implemented properly. If nothing changed, the Amazons would be dragged under by the weight of their own bigotry. But wait! There was this idiot with no conception of history getting in the way of Amazon extinction; the decline toward oblivion that six murderous factions were waiting for. In this epic there were no 'friends', only 'allies of convenience'. The Egyptians weren't buddies. They simply preferred others to fight their battles for them. The Amazons fit that bill nicely, but if they were dying out, the Egyptians would be more concerned in filling the Amazon void than mourning over the Host's grave. The Illuminati and Seven Pillars were enemies. Though there was little animosity between the Earth  and  Sky and the Amazons, the E and S were based on perpetuating the legacy of the World's greatest rapist. The 9 Clans were the 9 Clans and their business was all about the precise application of death. They had no friends and if they pretended to be your friend, it was only so they could position themselves to kill you. It was only business. They rarely played with debts, obligations and vendettas. Still, if a member of the 9 Clans said they owed you, it was worth the assassin's weight in Iridium. As a bonus, the 9 Clans were gender-neutral. Outside of the Amazons, they had been using females in their numbers the longest. Because of this, the 9 Clans tried to interact with the Amazon using women from their own ranks, minimizing the sexual tension between the groups. The Condottieri had also began recruiting women into their ranks over the past twenty years. Their leadership was still all-male with the added complications of the unresolved Naples killings and the brutal destruction of La Solidaridad. Also, while the Amazons were not business competitors, they didn't employ the Condottieri either. All these micro-wars had been very good for the Condottieri, allowing them to build up quite a stable of talent and a huge war chest. If the Amazons recovered, the global map would change. How so? Madi and Rhada weren't from Cleveland, but from India where unresolved crimes against women were too common. Palli Chandra, the VP of International Finance and Ngozi from my sparring match were from Central Africa and I'd gathered from

If you cannot compromise; Challenge! In 25 parts, edited from the works of FinalStand. Listen and subscribe to the ► Podcast at Connected.. “Every person is alone. That is the definition of Free-will.” The gift from Grandpa that keeps on giving. I almost miss not killing him myself." "That man was an eternal foe of the Amazons, Cáel. His death was necessary for peace with the Illuminati, thus peace with all the other factions," Pamela related. I began laughing. "So my misogynistic family heritage comes from my Mother and my misandristic lineage comes from my Father," I clued Pamela in. She found it to be hilariously ironic too. "We still have to be careful," Pamela nudged me. "After all, your Grandfather had plans for your body. Whether we choose to believe it was to be a vessel for your Grandfather's essence; or, if you prefer, he put something in your Mother's DNA that, when combined with the machinery he used to store his memories, would bring him back to life; Cáel O'Shea always was thinking three steps ahead." "Why didn't you kill me when you figured this out?" I stared at her. "You hold the fate of House Ishara inside of you," Pamela smiled warmly. "Besides, I like you. No one really understands me like you do. Everyone else thinks I have a sick sense of humor." "I wish you had been my Grandmother," I nodded. "Wait; wait," Pamela held me back from continuing. "Because if I had been your Grandmother, you would have known to avoid a nut-ranch like Havenstone." "Are you like my psychic twin?" I teased her. She was right, of course. "I had a twin brother," Pamela turned sad. "I have always wondered what path his spirit traveled once they took him to the cliffs." "The fact that you still recall him with empathy speaks volumes for you, Pamela," I hugged her. "I felt the same way, you know," Pamela drew comfort from my warmth. I was uncertain of her meaning. "When they told me what happened to boys; I couldn't accept it. Their reasoning rang hollow and I saw their denial of their own blood to be self-defeating." "I have always wanted to believe my brother waits for me in the Hall of Ancestors so I can finally see his face and tell him I'm sorry that I was the one that was spared," she confessed. "You weren't spared, Pamela," I comforted her. "You had children and grandchildren so that way your brother will have grand-nephews and great grand-nephews whose actions are recorded in the deeds of your house and their names inscribed in the roster of the Host." "That's my hope anyway," I added. "Let it be so," she whispered.  (A Step back in time: that Weekend, between Oneida and Nicole) The weekend;  I'd had plenty of relaxing sex over the weekend, bonded with Oneida somewhat while we biked Saturday morning, had sex with Gael, junior of House Bendis (the woman who let me borrow her phone so I could invite Buffy, Helena and Desiree to my little induction ceremony), then had a late afternoon date with Nikita. Escorting Yasmin and her son to the airport for the start of her Havenstone training after dinner was unsettling. The boy, Braulio, seemed worried, Yasmin was glad to see me, really glad to see me then finished if off by commenting that she could tell 'something had changed'. I affirmed her hunch without going into the details. As Yasmin's mood improved, so did her son's. I wished her luck. She told me I'd need it more. Late Saturday night I was invited to a party by Libra. Brooke showed up date-less (she wasn't jumping into a new relationship) so she glommed onto me; us. Marla and Libra had a huge phone fight about her (Marla) not being 21 yet, thus not invited to the party. Felix was there having reconnected with Gina because he had both a glib tongue and an awe-inspiring sexual arsenal. Felix's attempts to recoup any ground with Brook failed miserably. She had her own bitterness toward Trent, her memory of me handing her panties under an outdoor cafe's table as a trophy Felix had taken the night before and displayed openly in my office, and my own masculine support to draw strength from. Felix and I did not verbally, or socially, spar. He accepted the verdict of our first contest and, for all his faults, he acknowledged that my victory had worth and obeyed his conscience on the matter. If anything, he was visually more respectful than ever before. I wasn't his equal; no man and definitely no woman was; yet I was now a competitor he would have to give his very best to defeat. Sunday morning had been just me and Odette. We'd cuddled on the sofa, watched some TV and then I took her to Havenstone for time in the pool. I kept the overly-aggressive Amazons at bay while getting Odette used to the idea of regular exercise; hanging out with Timothy and I required greater endurance than her sedentary youthful stamina provided. An early afternoon invite to a 'pick-up' basketball game at the community, two-court, outdoor lot with Jason, the bar-back from the Yuppie bar, brought me back in contact with Katy Lee Baker, aka Delivery Girl. Odette tagged along. It also brought me in contact with the local 'wild-life'. A Latin King clique was starting to operate in the area and Jason's crew were the native inhabitants who took exception to this. We played for about half an hour were everyone learned I was a big, fat liar. I was actually good at basketball, despite my earlier claims at ignorance. The Kings showed up, drove off the younger teens playing on the other court. A few more of those jokers showed up and it was now 'our turn' to make space. That went over like a shit brick. The Kings outnumbered us a good two-to-one, but Jason wasn't backing down. I was struggling to convince Jason that discretion was the better part of valor when some of the new Latin King arrivals tried to play with a few of the local ladies who had come down to watch their menfolk pull off their shirts and get sweaty. Poor Odette; she had been in the company of so many powerful, confident and lethal women she'd forgotten she wasn't one. A King grabbed Katy Lee's breast. Odette hit the asshole in the stomach, put a shin to his nuts and finished him off with grabbing his head and driving it into her upward moving knee, dropping him like the sack of shit he was. But wait, he had five buddies. Poo was being served up and the electric switch was about to be flipped. "I'll be back to help in a moment," I growled to Jason as the gang members jumped Odette. Katy Lee and a slightly older woman rushed to Odette's aid. The Kings didn't ignore my approach, peeling off two to 'deal with me'. They really shouldn't have hit Odette because now I was angry. The feces hit the rotary wind machine. With their last shows of bravado, I lay into the closest bastards. The sixteen year old was hesitantly pulling out his 32 caliber ACP while reconsidering his poor life choices as I hit his buddy so hard he went airborne, two teeth and a fountain of blood coming from the ruin I'd made of his face. Gun guy was next. I clamped my left hand on his right, gun-toting wrist then drove my knee into his elbow. The elbow snapped upward with a sound reminiscent of a car backfiring. His screams drowned out the thud of his gun dropping to the court surface. For the three remaining Latin Kings I was closing with, a terrible social reality came crashing in. Gangs rely on several tools to exert power; a propensity for violence, illegal finances, a fierce reputation, and superior numbers. By the look on my face, they discovered that their numbers didn't bother me in the least. I knew exactly who they were and didn't give a damn. My desire to destroy them was motivated by something far stronger than any currency, and I was clearly better at this whole violence thing than they seemed to be. They had their pride and the fidelity with their gang, plus their intimidation tactics were going wrong so fast, they couldn't process the disaster quickly enough to alter course. These guys were not professional warriors by any stretch of the imagination. 'Warriors'; perhaps. 'Professional'; definitely not. Their ability to rapidly adapt to a changing situation was woefully under-developed. In gang hand-to-hand combat, you bunch up your members, overrun a foe and beat him to the ground. Fighting a practitioner of Brazilian jujutsu, standing close to one another is the Last thing you want to do. I was a whirlwind of destruction, fed by the understanding that Jason's bunch needed me back real soon. The asshat who tried to use a knife on me got his hand pinned to the court for his audacity. I repeat, threatening Odette had infuriated me. At center court, Jason had his hands full and then some. The Latin Kings had the edges in both numbers and ferocity. The only other hometown boy holding his own was this thick, solid Puerto Rican guy named Bennie; the rest were in trouble. I started with the four-on-one stomp-down on one of Jason's friends; I'd missed the guy's beat down. My inner Amazon was leading the charge. Unlike all my previous encounters, I was intentionally causing pain. I wasn't trying to drive them off, or render them hors de combat. No, my desire was to strike terror in their hearts, inflicting suffering in order to eradicate my foes' resolve to fight. Knees snapped, bones broke, faces were stomped into the court and internal organs ruptured. Even my erstwhile allies were aghast at the wickedness with which I treated our enemy. "Ah; Cáel; are you okay?" Jason mumbled when the last King went down. He'd have a shiner on his left eye soon and his lip was split and bleeding. I hadn't come through unscathed either. Havenstone had seriously upped my pain threshold. Jason wasn't really asking about my physical well-being anyway. I had to get ahead of this; predicament. "Let's get this trash off the court," I commanded. The boys hesitated until Jason picked up one of my semi-conscious victims. "Come on 'Pendejo', leave and don't come back," Jason yanked the man up and began shoving him toward the gate he and his buddies had arrived by. The rest of Jason's friends joined in and we began cleaning up the place. One gangster decided he was too hurt to be moved. I'd rammed his shoulder into the goalpost, breaking his collarbone. He was crying about the pain he was in. I pulled him up. He was around 7 foot 2 inches tall and 275 pounds. I wrapped my hands around his thick bull neck and slowly raised him up off the ground. His face was reddening, his good hand was trying to break my hold and his legs were flailing about in the open air. [In Spanish] "Pain, Asshole? No, pain is me having to come back here and hunt you and your vermin buddies down," I seethed. "I don't live here. These men are not my friends. You touched my girl and I am God Almighty when it comes to defending those of my household. I am not in a gang. I am not a criminal. If you, or your gang, come within a block of this place, I will become Death. Today, there are too many witnesses. This is your reprieve; your moment of grace," I snarled. "Use it wisely. It will not happen again," I finished in a fury. I dropped him to his wobbly feet, catching his good hand before he fell over. That act of compassion after my dire threat confused the guy. "Go," I returned to English. The rest of the Latin Kings walked, stumbled, were dragged from the court. "Who are you again?" Bennie inquired. "Cáel Nyilas," I grinned. "I'm an Aerospace Engineer working on the feasibility of having hamsters running on their wheels being used to recharge batteries on manned flights to Mars." "Hamster wrangling has to be one tough profession," Katy Lee snickered as she and Odette came up. "Come on now," Jason winced as he licked his lip. "Brawling is about panic, anger and the management of those two forces," I told them. "I was the only one in this fight in control of himself, so my actions look out of proportions to what really happened." "They were kicking our asses," Bennie chuckled. "Not as bad as you guys think," I consoled them. "None of you guys ran, or curled up in a ball. That allowed me to pick my fights. I clearly have more hand-to-hand combat experience, but none of that would have mattered had you guys freaked out." There was some truth in what I said. Had they panicked, I would have grabbed Odette and Katy Lee then fled as well. Since they toughed it out, and the Latin Kings exerted virtually no command and control, I was able take on the gang members in small, bite-sized chunks. My training and experience took care of the rest. This also made the somewhat traumatized ballplayers feel proud about the cuts and bruises they'd received. Now they realized they had 'won' this scuffle, they'd played their parts courageously and had all been instrumental in a successful stratagem. The fact that none of them knew that when the blows were raining in it meant nothing. The women who'd come out to watch the game then witnessed the beat down knew their men had been brave, taken their licks and routed their enemies. Martial ardor, baby! 'Defending' a woman does not diminish her. It increases her odds of dealing with insults and threats in a positive manner. Women who look down on women who use their pussies to better themselves are being stupid. It is the equivalent of having a complete toolbox and only using the hammer. The women were going to give up some level of sex to reward the men. The men, in turn, had an example of the kind of behavior that would get them what they wanted; defending your ladies equated to feminine reward. That did not mean penetration; life was far more complex. It did mean she would hang around you, talk to you and trust you (most likely more than she should). Guys still had to seal the deal, figure out what she wanted and deliver. That had been the working arrangement between men and women for most of the last 80,000 years. What I didn't know at the time was that I was being spied upon, that this spy called Buffy; my 'spear and shield'; and Buffy would gather up some Security Detail chicks. Why would SD help? Some morons had tried to murder the Head of House Ishara and that wasn't something the Amazons would tolerate. That Latin King clique was contemplating revenge. They were about to get schooled by the Grand Mistresses of that brutal and unforgiving Art form. I could never let Odette know. After all, to her they were someone's sons, brothers and husbands. My chilling rationalization was that, for whatever reason, the Latin Kings had redefined themselves as carnivores, preying on the rest of mankind. They should have studied what nature was really like. Predators had predators of their own. They'd been big, bad caimans, snatching all that came to the water's edge. In nature, the caiman was careful because jaguars hunted and ate caimans. In the urban jungle, there were things far more dangerous than gang-bangers living in the shadows that jealously guarded their spot as apex predator. Odette and I exited the field. I'd have to catch Katy Lee another time. I was to get the bad news from Ulyssa and her sister about the death in her family. Timothy, Odette and I worked out some more as Odette and I took turns relating the fight to Timothy. He reminded us that the Latin Kings were a powerhouse in the city as well as nationwide. Nicole called at the point I was ready for bed and the rest was family history. (Monday morning) I locked my bike up as normal. When I saw the security guards eyeing me funny, I grew cautious. "Is there a problem?" I asked the woman scanning my ID. She was fearfully hesitant. "Wait, are you worried that I'm pissed about Friday morning?" "We were only doing our jobs, Cáel of Ishara," she told me. "Oh," I chuckled. "So that is what is bothering you." I smiled at the group. "Of course you were doing your jobs. I would have been surprised if you hadn't and I'm certainly not angry about what went down. You acted in defense of Havenstone and I never saw it any other way." That gave them some relief. My next problem. "Has anyone from the Security Detail called about me?" I asked. "I don't see anyone here to pick me up this morning." "I'll call them," she offered. The answer was that they weren't expecting me, but I could come down if I desired. That was promising. My ID card worked for the lower levels now. Walking past the Armory was intriguing; in that they barely noticed me. In the prep room for the shooting range there was; nothing. No guns for me to try out, or even look at. I went to the firing range looking for one of my 'friendly' SD ladies. They were all giving me the cold shoulder. Naomi told me why; Constanza. The SD were very angry with my interference in justice for Constanza versus Pamela. Since Naomi had been there when the entire incident went down, I didn't laugh in her face. I got coldly furious instead. If I wanted a firearm, I could go to the Armory and check one out, so that's what I did. The guards there weren't helpful either. Inside was; well; everything. I called up SD and asked them to send an armorer to help me make some selections. Ten minutes later, the lady had still not arrived. That made me laugh. They were tit-for-tatting the wrong guy. Glasses and ear protection came first. I left the Armory with my weapon of choice for the day, a full bandolier and a crate of ammo. I could see the SD chick's guarding the Armory eyes bug-out. I grinned and headed for the shooting range. They surreptitiously called somebody. Knowing that, I hurried myself along, passing straight through prep room for the firing line. I was a man on a mission. See, I could be a raging prick when I wanted to be. Those SD babes should have talked with any number of the Amazons who already knew me. I had made it clear; make my life difficult if you wished, but accept whatever payback I could imagine. Respecting House Ishara wasn't even a question. For pummeling me over Constanza, they were about to get a whole new kind of Righteous Pricking, courtesy of the house they refused to treat with equality. An Amazon finished firing off a clip for her personal defense weapon and was checking her pistol's slide action. "Excuse me," I said as I stepped up. She was about to scream something. Most likely 'stop!' Since I had no intention of complying, I didn't wait; or stop. For me, I was suddenly wondering what the precise blast radius of a 40 mm grenade was. I pulled the trigger anyway. I swear by Ishara-turned-Ishtar, I hit that target right in the 10 ring. The explosion the grenade caused when it hit the back wall rendered my claims moot. Even with eye and ear protection, I could barely hear anything because of the ringing echo, or see anything because of the dust. The flashing yellow lights and klaxons going off indicated something bad had happened. Bad wasn't done yet. I walked to the next stand where the Amazon had ducked down while she oriented herself to the threat. "Good morning," I yelled at her. Then I aimed and prepared to squeeze off my second round. With all the dust in the air, I could barely make out the outline of the target I was shooting at. Accuracy at this point was unnecessary. This bitching toy seemed to kill everything. Third station; third shot and the Amazons were starting to figure out what was going on. Some moron was firing a grenade launcher within an indoor firing range. Before the fourth shot they figured out it was me. Now those bitches had a problem. The lead Amazon tried to get my attention despite my constant attempts to ignore her. I resolved the issue by tapping my six-shot bang-bang and indicating I had two shots left; and I used them. Only when I stopped to reload did the ladies screw up the courage to exhibit some kind of physical resistance. Naomi pulled off my ear protection. "What are you doing?" she shouted at me. She wasn't being rude. All our ears were ringing. "I'm being left to my own devices, you 'failures' to every concept of loyalty, respect and faith," I replied to the entire group. "Constanza called House Ishara an abomination, insane and diseased," I spat out my hate. "I spared her life when I should have had her stricken from the roles of her house and butchered her like some beast. I showed mercy and this is how the Security Detail responds? Congratulations, you have earned my contempt." "But why are you using a grenade launcher; indoors?" Naomi struggled to understand. "Oh," I smirked. "Because I can. I'm superior to all of you here so I can do what I want and you have to suck it up. I am the Head of a First House so none of you have a choice. Every one of you chose to show me no respect and, out of respect for your lack of respect, you get no respect." They were trying to figure how to work around that when I upped the ante. "I'm also going to direct the other members of House Ishara to come down here at random times and fire off grenades, use flamethrowers, or; how about tear gas; tear gas sounds good." "That would degrade the readiness of the Security Detail," the first Amazon protested. "Not my problem. Take your complaints to Elsa or Saint Marie. Make sure to start your complaint with exactly how you behaved toward me; but use the names Beyoncé, Ursula, Katrina, or Messina instead of mine," I glared. "Now excuse me. I have a box full of high explosives to work through." And off I went. There were 25 shooting lanes. I had fired off my 22nd grenade when Elsa showed up. "Cáel of Ishara, why are you destroying this training area?" she inquired calmly. "Working through a crate of grenades. I thought that would be obvious," I joked. "Is there something wrong we should talk about?" Elsa was keeping her anger in check. "Your underlings were chronically disrespectful. Since positive reinforcement failed; being nice to any of your weakling-bullies was counter-productive; I decided to employ the stick treatment," I met her gaze. "Stop destroying the firing line; please," Elsa ground out through clenched teeth. "You are right," I nodded. "I need to take a few of these upstairs to the pure-blood gym. There is a lot more damage I could do there. This place is already a mess." Desiree's voice broke the silence. She must have come in with Elsa. "Cáel," Desiree yawned. "How do you want to resolve this crisis? That doesn't involve setting off seismic sensors all over New York City, that is?" "Hmmm; fine, every member of the Security Detail is to write a romantic poem then read it aloud to a 'Runner' while at that 'Runners' workstation," I invented a punishment. "Ishara is the Goddess of Love as well as Oaths. It is a fitting tribute to her that romantic verses from the heart be created and spoken aloud." "It is also fitting that the recipients be 'Runners', since it will unite them in both their appreciation of love and their anger with me for throwing my weight around like every other Full-Blood who thinks they are better because of some quirk of birth," I concluded. "It will be done," Elsa intoned. That part of the matter was settled. Elsa looked at my grenade launcher. An unhappy sigh escaped my lips as I handed it over. "Elsa, I'm coming for weapon's practice again tomorrow," I informed her. Now I was going to burn off some time in the pool then get to work, or so I hoped. I hadn't gotten away with this because I was Cáel Nyilas, or the Head of House Ishara. I got away with it because Elsa didn't want to see the faces of the Council when she explained what her people had done. The Council members treating me like offal was their business. Other Amazons deciding that they could treat ANY member of the Council that poorly wouldn't fly; reference to the fate of Leona. Why had SD treated me poorly? Constanza. If they repeated my conversation with Constanza that cost her an eye, the outcome was known by all. Constanza would cease being an Amazon right before she died. I made it to Katrina's office four minutes before seven only to find Katrina absent while Daphne, Brielle and Pamela were hanging around. Dora and Fabiola followed me in. Everyone made it before the deadline, Katrina last of all. As Katrina began the meeting, Brielle left. Pamela and Katrina ignored one another. My work review was far better than normal. I'd sold Anthrax to a terrorist cell, but it had turned out to be a mislabeled Anthrax antidote instead, so all was good. Daphne was trying to figure out how her glowing report over my efforts had been so misconstrued. My assigned boss for the day was Rosette, one of the senior members of Executive Services. "Katrina, I need a moment of your time; in private," I requested as the meeting broke up. "As Cáel, or the Head of House Ishara?" she asked. "Neither," I replied. She waved the others away with Tigger shutting the door. Pamela remained seated. Katrina shot me a look concerning Pamela's presence. "I don't control her," I shrugged. "She hangs around me for her own reasons." Katrina nodded. I walked to the edge of Katrina's desk, put my palms on its cool surface. "Katrina, I am the Grandson of Cáel O'Shea, I met Brianna O'Shea earlier this morning, she knows who I am and was brought to town because some genetic research done on me." "Brianna knows where I work and who I work for, as in you. Pamela said the word 'Protocols' and Brianna backed off, but I'm sure she wants to see me again. I've warned my Dad about what happened and to destroy everything associated with my Mom. By the way, Brianna looks exactly like my Mother did when I was first born; exactly," I emphasized. Had the situation not been so completely screwed up, I would have treasured the steamrollered look on Katrina's face. "She is with something called the Illuminati. She doesn't know about me and House Ishara. When Brianna tried to figure how this Protocol/Truce thing involved me, Pamela stonewalled her," I added. "Pamela, I can understand Cáel not immediately bringing this to my attention," Katrina's cool exterior reasserted itself. "He doesn't know what's going on. You do." "I didn't feel inclined to do your job for you, Katrina," Pamela gave a rapier-thin smile. "Besides, you are part of the brain trust that sent him home Friday night cloaked in ignorance, not I." "Cáel," Katrina turned back to me. "How did you meet Brianna O'Shea?" "I met a lawyer, screwed her to multiple orgasms in the Women's room of some bar, met her again plus her lawyer buddies and Sunday night she called me to her downtown office to screw her into enlightenment; which I did," I sighed. "She was working on a case involving DNA ownership, which is oddly germane to my current predicament," I grinned. "Cáel, we need you to report to medical for more testing," Katrina ordered. "I apologize, but House Ishara does not believe that would be in its best interest so Cáel must decline," I nodded. "Will there be anything else?" Will battled Will to no outcome. She nodded and I left. Pamela ghosted along behind me. Rosetta intersected my path and off we went. I was given no clue as to my assignment; no surprise. I texted Buffy: 'Nothing new happening. Pick me up at 5:30 Wed. morning.' That meant there was no new development on the committee to help House Ishara pick 'Runners'. I had played nice. Katrina and Hayden had dodged me on Friday afternoon. This morning, she owed it to me to show some kind of progress. That wasn't what she offered. I had made a concession, they refused to reciprocate, so now I was free of any obligation to consider their wishes. I wanted more 'Runners' and come Wednesday morning, I was adding twenty. Working with Rosette (and Pamela) was a triple-barreled experience. Errands were the largest bulk of our time, but the rest was other mundane tasks of the most basic sort. Within the workload were instructions in the craft of being unseen. Executive Services was more than laundry and daycare; it was about not disrupting the lives of clients. A side benefit of that was learning how to move through any group and not be memorable; to not give off the subtle clues that you were an outsider. Not only could a group of executives hold a conversation without an ES person disrupting their trains of thought, people trained to look for threats wouldn't be tipped off to your presence either. It was peon-craft for beginners. Executive Services personnel weren't ninja; they were inconsequential. As I had bubbled to Katrina on day one, Executive Services got to go everywhere and learn how everything worked. What I didn't appreciate was that was how Counter-Intelligence worked too. From what I wedged out of Rosette, Counter-Intelligence had never uncovered a successful internal conspiracy. They had ferreted out multiple peripheral programs meant to gather information on Havenstone, but no Amazon had been critically compromised; which meant several Amazons had been blackmailed yet gone to ES before doing any damage. Rosette appreciated that fanatic devotion, but she'd never hold complete faith in it. Her job was vigilance. (What is really going on?) The third barrel was the real unhappy news. For all their illegal activities, Havenstone was not the Sinaloa Cartel. There were not a global criminal organization that invited international law enforcement scrutiny. So why did they devote so much time and energy to security? They weren't alone in the shadows of world-wide civilization. At the top of the pile was the Illuminati. They were a hydra controlled by a ruthless, cutthroat conclave; membership uncertain. They were a Darwinian meritocracy until the top tier of leadership, where a group of smaller secret societies and families monopolized the real influence. Their biggest strength, and weakness, was that most of the people in the organization didn't even know they were part of the Illuminati. After that was a mishmash of groups with different abilities that made rating them difficult. The Condottieri were rather simple; they sold mercenaries and weapons to anyone with the coin with the sideline of promoting conflict by any means necessary. The Nine Clans; that sounded familiar; were assassins in the truest sense of the word. Hashshashin, Ninja, Thuggee, Black Lotus, Coils of the Serpent, Brotherhood of the Wolf, the Black Hand, Cult of the Jaguar and the Ghost Tigers. They were not just murder for hire, but murder to advance their cause. Harmonious existence was bad for business, so they stirred up rivalries and conflict in every corner of the globe. The Egyptian Rite Masons sounded sublime. They weren't. They may have been a secret order older than the Amazons, claiming descent to the days of Imhotep. The Egyptians were the oldest enemy of the Illuminati. The Egyptian Rite's goal was a global autocratic government, were the Illuminati wanted a capitalist oligarchy in charge of global commerce; with the Illuminati pulling all the strings. The Egyptian Rite were not restricted to Egypt anymore; membership was open to all races and genders. The Earth and Sky Society were not New Agers. They were the descendants of Genghis Khan and were devoted to the reincarnation of the Greatest World Conqueror of all time. Before tossing them into the rubbish bin of bad ideas, know that Genghis was the largest single genetic contributor (via rape) to the human gene pool since the mystical Eve. To be a member you had to have a genetic link to ole Genghis. The Seven Pillars of Heaven were an ancient Chinese Secret Society out for; you guessed it; World Domination. To be a true member of this group you had to be Pure Han Chinese and a man, or bound to one. Needless to say, Havenstone and the Seven Pillars did not get along. The final bit of information; these groups were what was left of the Great Secret Societies; the survivors. Havenstone's place in all of this chaos was complicated. By mid-5th century BCE, the Egyptians were aware of the Amazons. The Amazons were not causing problems for the Egyptians, so they parted on decent terms and that was that. By the first century ADE, the political landscape had changed. Amazons had penetrated Roman society and brought Latin houses into their structure. Amazingly, the Egyptians contacted the Amazons again, figured out the Amazons only wanted co-existence so co-existence they got. In the late 4th century, the Amazons returned the favor. The Amazons told the Egyptians something horribly bad was coming across the Eurasian steppes and the Egyptians better batten down the hatches. A few decades later, the Huns were pressing on the Roman Empire's frontier. What is not generally know is that in the ranks of Hunnish horde were the Sarmatians, successors to the Scythians, who had allied Amazons in their ranks. This gave the Amazons, thus the Egyptians, contacts on both sides of the Roman-Attila conflict. By the mid-5th century the two secret societies parted ways once more. Their relationship had been useful, but not close. From the Amazons viewpoint, it was the equivalent of getting good gossip at the fish market. The Egyptians appreciated the intelligence, but wanted, and didn't get, military assistance in propping up the Roman Empire. For the Amazons, the fall of the Western Roman Empire was the trigger for a massive Diaspora. A few houses decided to tough it out in Western Europe and its packs of warring Germanic tribes. Others travelled to Egypt and from there, down the Nile to Ethiopia and Central Africa. A third group travelled farther East than ever before, eventually settling in Southern India. Of course, the World never stands still. In the late 8th century, the Illuminati was founded as a mercantile society trying to restructure the shattered Western and Central European economies. It turned out that there was a major pass over the Alps between eastern Italy and southern Germany that was a safe transit region. The Illuminati decided to seize it. The Egyptians popped up, revealed to the infant Illuminati that they didn't want them to do that, but were ignored. The Egyptians were out to rebuild European civilization, which meant, in their eyes, you didn't go around butchering those who were restoring law and order. The Egyptians went to the mountain pass and warned the Amazons there what was coming their way. The Illuminati convinced a local Lombard warlord that the pass would be a nice addition to his territory and off he went. Two months later, their bully boy hadn't returned. Neither had any of his men. Never ones to retreat from failure, the Illuminati sent another force and those guys were never seen again as well. This time the Egyptians showed back up to warn the Illuminati that those people whose land they'd been trying to steal were sick of their meddling and were coming to settle matters. Would the Egyptians help the Illuminati deal with this threat, now that it was out of the mountains? The Egyptians politely declined stating 'better the sitting stone you know than the rolling one that sets things around it on fire'. The Illuminati fled from their first base and that is the reason why they hate the Amazons and Egyptians to this day. Mind you, the Illuminati had no idea who lived in that mountain pass at that time. A few decades after the incident, the Amazons relocated northward. Being good stewards over their lands had given up unwelcome rewards; namely people came to them seeking sanctuary. Amazons can be rather cold-hearted. That does not mean they kill you for knocking on their door. When the number of refugees became too great, the houses voted for migration over slaughter. The Amazons travelled to the Black Forest, dispersing from there, and left the people behind to become known as the Swiss. Everywhere, Europe was tough for the Amazons in the Middle Ages. Heavily male-dominated Germanic cultures in the North, Islamic culture in the South, piracy in between and an epidemic of warfare all around. It was in Sub-Saharan Africa where the Amazons prospered the most. There, migrating populations worked in their favor, as did the style of warfare generally practiced. Perversely, the increase in the East African Arabic slave trade worked in the Amazon's favor. Not only could they 'liberate' captured populations; males for breeding and women for recruits; it encouraged local tribes to temporarily ally with the Amazons to fight off the slavers. The Subcontinent turned out to be a mixed bag. In the South, Amazons prospered and grew in numbers and houses. The problem was that they became too strong. Normally they would have spread out, but Eastern India proved more hostile than acceptable and further East looked like a crap-shoot. China didn't look welcoming at all. So, the Indian Amazons were caught up in a series of wars when Northern powers tried to move South and the Southern lords were in some serious need of aid. The issue was there were multiple players in the shadows pulling the strings. One day, the Egyptians came knocking. The Egyptians knew the Amazons well enough to not try to draft them into their cause. They simply told the Amazons who the key players were and what they were trying to do. Why would they do this? It was obvious. Amazons existed for two reasons; live free and make baby Amazons. Those other asshole Secret Societies were threatening both of those goals. Warfare is doubly hard on a female population and women spending years in combat aren't making babies. Take into account that during this time period a massive amount of the world's population lived in India. Add to that the Amazon numbers were respectively tiny (invisible) and Every Secret Society they were fighting didn't think much of women. A few thousand gurgling last breathes later and two of India's oldest Secret Societies were gone, or eviscerated. Why had they left the other, Islamic, secret society alone? The Islamic society operated in the populous North, not the jungle-covered South. Why did they leave the Amazons alone? The Amazons exhibited a shocking capacity for violence. The Muslim group was a 'secret' Secret Society. The Amazons were a 'hidden/don't screw with us' Secret Society. A side effect of the war in India was the creation of another Secret Society; the 9 Clans. They weren't nine back then, but thanks to the Amazons and Egyptians, this East Asian group picked up the Thuggee and, within a century, the Hashshashin. Things were about to get even more interesting. For the Amazons in India, life existed off the beaten path so it took a year for the Amazons to realize those 'dirty little men' who had shown up in some western Indian ports were, in fact, Europeans; in a European-built ship. They didn't know Portuguese, but they knew Latin and with a little bit off effort, they got an updated history of Europe. Amazons had been meeting regularly every thirty years, or so, to choose the next High Priestess and exchange notes. These meeting did not include studies of technological, political, or social improvements. Stealing the twenty-first ship to show up, the Amazons sailed home; Europe, that is. They stopped off in East Africa to spread the good news then, upon landing, went to tell their European sisters that their pilgrimages were no longer a matter of torturous overland travel. They could use nifty ships like these instead. With that came even better news; some Genoese, nut-job, failure of a mathematician had discovered a brand new land and they were going to check it out. The decision was made. The Indians were going back home. Their Europeans sisters were going to 'acquire' some instructions on how to sail a ship then 'obtain' some ships and divide them up among the three strongholds. Europe would be heading to the west, Africa would sail around the Cape of Good Hope (not yet named that), back toward Europe to link up their communication network (and in time, bump into Brazil), and India would head east to the South-east Asian archipelago, sailing around the hostile Asian kingdoms. Hopefully, the fleet sailing west and the one heading east would meet one day. Unfortunately, North and South America stood in the way of that dream. The 'little' hitch in this plan was who those ships belonged to. Nearly half the commerce of Europe at the time was either controlled, or influenced by, the Illuminati. The Amazons were running off with their equipment and profits; whoops. A cherry on top to that 'whoops' was that the Illuminati were only starting to come out of a bloody war with the Condottieri. The Condottieri had started out as a business venture/strong arm of the Illuminati. In classic Illuminati fashion, the leaders of the Condottieri didn't know precisely who they were working for. In fact, they thought they were independent. When the Illuminati yanked that leash, it snapped and the blood-letting began. The Illuminati had more money than the Pope and the subtle ability to call upon the kingdoms of the Mediterranean World. What did the Condottieri have? A small cadre of loyal, professional fighting men and the best strategic and tactical minds in the West; the ones the Illuminati had recruited into the Condottieri in the first place. Whoops yet again. The Illuminati had every resource under the Sun. The Condottieri knew they were screwed, but they'd been in screwed up situations before and battled through. They needed to stay alive until the path to victory presented itself. Re-enter the Egyptians and the 9 Clans (still not 9 yet). The Egyptians? The Egyptians made a butt-load of money on the silk and spice trade's overland routes. The Western Europeans/Illuminati were about to cut them out of that. The Egyptians needed time to reposition themselves. The revolt of the Condottieri was a gift from the Divine and suddenly the mercenaries had funds and ships. The 9 Clans? The Illuminati was a 'Does it All' organization. If the Illuminati won, who would need assassins? This was class warfare, pure and simple. Even with three-on-one, the Illuminati fought back and fought well. The Amazon predations were not the deciding factor in the war. It wasn't even their war. Soon enough, the Amazons were buying their own boats and going elsewhere. The Illuminati doesn't forgive, or forget. For some reason, they took the Amazon thefts personally, despite its negligible impact. Maybe it was that all the other players were regionally invested while the Amazons seemed to be dog-piling them. The fact that Amazons had existed in Europe for nearly 2500 years either didn't occur to them, or they didn't care. Flash forward to the start of the 20th century. Through the discrete use of marriage-assassination, land grabs and the basic lawlessness in the Western United States, rural South America, Australia and the islands of Southeast Asia, the Amazons had grown vastly in numbers and economic influence. The Egyptians come knocking once more. Unlike past encounters, they were bringing an offer of alliance. The Illuminati controlled key assets in the British Empire and were using those chokeholds to eliminate their rivals. This was not news to the Amazons. Their holdings in India and the Dutch East Indies had been under pressure of the Illuminati for a century. Ever since the Illuminati nearly ground out the Thuggee (one of the 9 Clans), the Egyptians and Amazons have been constantly harassed. This was not the first warning the Egyptians had brought. The Amazons hadn't want a war with the Illuminati and they certainly didn't trust the Egyptians. This time they agreed to go to war though. Why? Two things; totally unrelated. First, the Illuminati and the Seven Pillars of Heaven had agreed to carve up Asia. Amazons lived in Asia and they were no man's chattel. Secondly, the Women's Rights movement was in full swing. The Amazons had nothing to do with it. Those were outsider females. What interested the Amazons were the legal ramifications of Women's Equality. The Amazons were poised for a massive increase in their financial footprint. With the Illuminati out of the way, or at least, preoccupied, they could seize assets and have time to fortify before they could be attacked. Women's Equality would allow this to take place. Basically, the Amazons were going to exploit the blood, sweat and tears of women to advance their agenda. From all accounts, the only groups that recalled the Amazons last foray into Secret Society politics were the Amazons and Egyptians. Certainly no one had enlightened the Condottieri. They started smacking around some Amazon bases in Europe and unleashed 'Hell on Earth'. With the help of the Egyptians, they got to it in Amazon fashion. A General of the Condottieri and his family were eating at a Naples eatery when five women dresses like nuns walked in and shot up him, his entire family plus some bodyguards. When the response team showed up, they killed them too. A few police were added to the obituary column as the Amazons escaped. Welcome to Amazon warfare. The Condottieri were furious over such a public breach, as well as the losses. They swore a vendetta. The 9 Clans happily informed the Condottieri that a 'War of Extermination' was the Amazon default setting. The Condottieri were not afraid; not yet. See, there was another secret society called La Solidaridad. Working on intelligence from the Illuminati, La Solidaridad overran an Amazon compound in Argentina. They thought it would be funny to take the survivors as sex slaves. Maybe the Illuminati was experimenting to see just how pissed-off Amazons could get. Maybe La Solidaridad hadn't read their Homer, especially those parts concerning Ancient World vengeance. It took the Host six months to start things rolling then the carnage began. They made damn sure the men knew they were being hunted by women. They weren't there to out-macho the men, or make a point. Every night, they attacked the men and their families in the cities and towns. For safeties sake, La Solidaridad retreated to their country estates. Huge mistake. A good number of them had to have hunted at some point in their lives. How they missed being 'flushed out into the open' was beyond me. Out in the countryside, there was nowhere to hide. Walls meant little because Amazons were incredibly fit and trained to fight at night. Most of the families the Amazons killed. They were the lucky ones. The survivors? By using a new Edison device, they took some home movies of the fates of those men. The Amazon's favorite tactic was to shove lit sticks of dynamite in the men's asses then steer them toward the closest river. One guy actually made it. His relief didn't last long. The Amazons had done something to turn the normally safe caiman population into rabidly aggressive swarmers. Bitches; insanely, sadistic bitches. In eighteen months, La Solidaridad had ceased to exist as an organization and never recovered. The Illuminati used that time wisely to beat down the Egyptians, Earth and Sky, and the 9 Clans, aided by the Seven Pillars. Having concluded their first order of business, the Amazons sent their home movie to the Condottieri. It wasn't mercy toward the Condottieri. I was psychological warfare. The Amazons needed the Condottieri off-balance so they could go after their real enemy. It seemed the Illuminati had instructed La Solidaridad on how to 'intimidate' the Amazons; through rape, torture and enslavement. Specifically, it was Cáel O'Shea who set the tragedy in motion; Granddad. Beyond Granddad being impossibly fucking old, he had possessed some seriously out of control animosity where Amazons were concerned. Before the Amazon's could implement their hunt, the 9 Clans intervened. The Illuminati had been giving them real problems and they saw a way to gain some breathing space. Had the Amazons and 9 Clans been in communication, the World might be a very different place today. Instead, the heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne was wacked by the Black Hand, some Serbian numbskulls took the fall and the rest of us got World War I. Oddly enough, this one murder accomplished the goals of the 9 Clans, Amazons, Egyptians and Earth and Sky Society. The British Empire still stood, but was wrecked. China was much worse off than that. Before the Amazons could gain their vengeance, the Egyptians negotiated a cease-fire between groups. The Amazon Council was furious yet unwilling to fight the Illuminati alone. They kept down their bile; and waited. In the post-War period, the Amazon/Illuminati feud ate much of their resources (probably the Egyptian's intentions all along). A truly dark side of this struggle was the Amazon support for the Nazis. Did the Amazons switch course? Yes, but not for the reasons most people would think. Jews, gypsies, communists and homosexuals going into camps didn't worry them one bit. What did? Let's go back in time to those women in the Swiss Alps who headed north. A great many of them went North then East; to places like Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It wasn't so much a matter of whimsy as one of terrain and population. All the best farmland was in western Germany, the Low Countries and France. That's where the Germanic peoples settled. Behind them, to the East, were the Slavs. The Slavs had three things the Amazons liked; low population density, weak social hierarchies and crappy land. That meant they could live in relative isolation, not be subject to an all-powerful king and not be inundated with migrating hordes wanting to steal their dank swamps, deep forests and isolate meadows. Sometime in early 1939, right after the Third Reich snatched up Bohemia, some Amazon augur decided to open up Hitler's Mein Kampf to see what was going on i.e. to see when Hitler would get around to jumping on England; the whole reason the Amazon were supporting him. What she found out was bad, bad, bad! The genocide of a bunch of people they could care less about? Not a problem. Invading the Slavic lands? What? Russia/Soviet Union hadn't been the big foe in WWI and they certainly were not Germany's greatest enemy at the moment; Britain was! Drang Nach Osten? That was an undefined migration of Germans back into Slavic lands that ended over 600 years ago? Their Eastern European sisters were in grave danger from a lunatic. The common sense response (for Amazons) was to kill the Hitler. They couldn't get close, so they took their problem to their old allies, the Egyptians and 9 Clans. Those two saw nothing wrong with the way things were developing. The Amazons swallowed their pride and went to the Illuminati who seemed rather enchanted with the idea of the fascists and communists annihilating one another. They had no way to safely approach the Soviets. Pulling their sister houses out of Eastern Europe was no longer an option; the other Secret Societies would be looking for that and try to figure out where the Amazon home bases were. The Amazons decided to make a fight of it. They were not going to charge panzers with spears. No, they started setting up caches of supplies and weapons in the most inaccessible places imaginable. The hope was that as Nazi Germany was grinding Communist Russia to dust, they could smuggle out their people in the chaos to Sweden then points west. The problem was WW II didn't work out that way. Great Britain got spanked at Dunkirk and Poland, France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and Norway all surrendered to the Nazi blitzkrieg. Then the Germans invaded Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia went under, but the Soviet Union didn't fall. Much to the Amazon Council's horror, resistance units began to interact with the local Amazons in an effort to improve their mutual survivability. Tales of mysterious female fighter, appearing to slay their enemies then disappearing into the wilderness filtered to both the Stavka (Russians) and SOE (British). The SOE discovered an answer to the mystery in mid-1942, by way of the fledgling US OSS. The Americans 'found' three female Army recruits who volunteered for such a mission. A month later, the partisan bands with those agents found the 'Forest Women' and all the lights came on. Unknown to the public World, the Amazon Council decided that the best hope for their kinswomen was to bring down the Nazis and ride out the Allied conquest. All of that might have been a happily little footnote except for what happened next. Hundreds of Amazons fought; no surprise; yet they didn't fight alone this time. Men and women of the local populace fought side by side with these lethal warriors. They shared battle plans, food, fire and medical care. That huge cultural barrier created over two and a half millennia began to erode. They bled together and were forced from time to time to place their lives in each other's hands. They witnessed one another's courage and sacrifice. They watched them bury their dead, nurture their young and weep at their pain. Whenever things looked darkest, the Amazon would turn to their partisan partners and say with utmost confidence 'we have survived worse; so can you'. The seminal event happened on the night of February 17th, 1944. For two years, the fractured, wounded women that are ever-present wherever there is war began to attach themselves to the Amazon bands. At first they were little more than annoyances. In time, the Amazons tried to turn these women into something 'useful'. Later, a few earned the right to follow the Amazons into battle. On that February night, two ladies were inducted into House Živa. This was hardly the first time outsider women were brought into the Host, but this circumstance was unique; induction in the middle of a war, having proven themselves in battle before their now-sisters. From that action; not the last in that conflict; was born the concept of the 'Runners'. With the end of WWII, the Amazons emerged more powerful than ever. The three strongest groups in the United States were the Egyptians, Illuminati and the Amazons. The Amazons profited the most; having started with the lowest profile and having infiltrated both the government and business sectors during the war effort. Using the Freemasons, the Egyptians reaped great benefit from the US war effort too. Always forward-looking, the Egyptians helped the Amazons as well. Still, not everything was rosy. For the Public World, World War II ended in September of 1945. That was barely a blip in the Secret Societies' radar. The calamity came on the 10th of December 1949. Using their pawns in the Chinese Communist Party, the Seven Pillars had re-unified China and were back on the world stage. Earth and Sky and the 9 Clans were dealt a setback. A fourth secret society involved in the Chinese struggle was absorbed by the 7 Pillars. The problem was that all the societies were locked in a bitter struggle yet devastated and over-extended. The 9 Clans, fearing the ratcheting up of Cold War intelligence-gathering services by multiple national governments asked for a global truce. The Amazons were dangerously exposed and over-extended. The Illuminati decided this was their time to strike and nothing could deter them. Into this backdrop, came the news to the Amazons that they had serious genetic issues. That led to the First Directive; the recruitment of 'Runners' as an established program as well as the explosion of what I knew as Executive Services. In a truly bizarre twist, U.S. and Soviet agents found themselves engaged in cat-and-mouse games with European NATO agents. Amazons had penetrated the proto-CIA during the war in an effort to reach their European sisters. In Eastern Europe, many of those partisans went over to the Communists when the Soviets overran their countries and looked favorably upon their erstwhile allies from the War. They couldn't match the influence that the many of the other secret societies possessed. Instead they pulled upon existing, personal relationships. I worked with a negative result of those days; Desiree, or more accurately, Desiree's parents. I was also walking with the final resolution of that crisis. The Secret Societies proved they could work just as fast as the UN. In three decades they had resolved nothing and were spending more and more time on damage control. Three events converged. The Illuminati had figured out the full-blooded Amazons were dying out so they knew they could win a game of attrition. The rest of the groups were coming to the conclusion that wiping out the Amazons was the easier course of action. The Amazons had, without a doubt, located the leader of the Illuminati, Cáel O'Shea. O'Shea was in sight of his goal; the extermination of the Amazons; when a lone Amazon got to him first. O'Shea's death sent titanic shockwaves through the Illuminati. There was a scramble for the top spot, fear over how much the Amazons knew about their inner workings, and how the other secret orders would take this bit of news. The Illuminati recoiled from the event, agreed to a truce and that led to the protocols that kept Brianna from dragging me off; gunshot wounds and all. That had been the state of affairs for the last thirty years. Again, the World had not stood still. China was an economic powerhouse, the EU grew stronger, and wars of political ideology had been replaced by religious-based terrorism. The Amazons were at a critical juncture in their history. The 'New' Directive was their best chance at staving off extinction and the Houses were fighting it kicking and screaming. The First Directive wasn't being implemented properly. If nothing changed, the Amazons would be dragged under by the weight of their own bigotry. But wait! There was this idiot with no conception of history getting in the way of Amazon extinction; the decline toward oblivion that six murderous factions were waiting for. In this epic there were no 'friends', only 'allies of convenience'. The Egyptians weren't buddies. They simply preferred others to fight their battles for them. The Amazons fit that bill nicely, but if they were dying out, the Egyptians would be more concerned in filling the Amazon void than mourning over the Host's grave. The Illuminati and Seven Pillars were enemies. Though there was little animosity between the Earth  and  Sky and the Amazons, the E and S were based on perpetuating the legacy of the World's greatest rapist. The 9 Clans were the 9 Clans and their business was all about the precise application of death. They had no friends and if they pretended to be your friend, it was only so they could position themselves to kill you. It was only business. They rarely played with debts, obligations and vendettas. Still, if a member of the 9 Clans said they owed you, it was worth the assassin's weight in Iridium. As a bonus, the 9 Clans were gender-neutral. Outside of the Amazons, they had been using females in their numbers the longest. Because of this, the 9 Clans tried to interact with the Amazon using women from their own ranks, minimizing the sexual tension between the groups. The Condottieri had also began recruiting women into their ranks over the past twenty years. Their leadership was still all-male with the added complications of the unresolved Naples killings and the brutal destruction of La Solidaridad. Also, while the Amazons were not business competitors, they didn't employ the Condottieri either. All these micro-wars had been very good for the Condottieri, allowing them to build up quite a stable of talent and a huge war chest. If the Amazons recovered, the global map would change. How so? Madi and Rhada weren't from Cleveland, but from India where unresolved crimes against women were too common. Palli Chandra, the VP of International Finance and Ngozi from my sparring match were from Central Africa and I'd gathered from

Jenn's Crazy Errands List 11/11/24

Cáel's tombstone: For the love of women, women put him here.In 25 parts, edited from the works of FinalStand.Listen and subscribe to the ► Podcast at Connected..