#tw disaster

Fireworks exploded above like it was a holiday, but it wasn't. Music rattled speakers that shook the ground. Ren felt the vibrations of which across his body, as he road the rail for the entirety of the night's final set. He was having a great time. Nothing had gone wrong yet. The witch even managed to take his mid day nap and demolish a sizable score from the concession stands. As far as he knew all the witches were getting along, too. Then something hit him sideways, but it wasn't the questionable amounts of dairy he'd consumed forming a knot in his stomach. The crowd's entire energy shifted, and he watched the beginning of chaos start. Immediately Ren reached for his phone from his pocket to call Poppy, but he fumbled with the device just as his own magic glitched. His spot on the rail now empty, save his phone, as Ren was ripped through space.

Quickly, despite his best efforts, Ren realized he had no control of where he went or for how long. Magic shot him across the festival in varying intervals, allowing him to witness the calamity at large. Water, fire, wind, and electricity whipped across the landscape. A storm raging above the entire affair. The dead intermingled among half shifted werewolves, deranged vampires, and a slew of foreign faces that had stumbled through portals. Hunters, armed and ready, accompanied them, yet Ren was practically helpless. Every time he stopped long enough to catch his breathe he would shout a warning about the impending dangers. "Hunters! Portals! Fire! Flooding!" Accompanied by the loud exclaiming of names when he recognized a familiar face. Coven and counsel members, family, friends and neighbors, too. He did what he could with the mere moments he was given to help.

A few hours later, the disaster reached Manthos. Most people didn't really grasp what hit them - a monster wave taller than any building in Manthos.

Poseidon's wrath hit them hard, especially those buildings that were closest to the sea and the estuary.

When the waves finally redrew, everything was covered in mud. The library, with it's valuable manuscripts and papyrus was not spared. There was nothing left.

The Agorá was unrecognizable.

The temple was damaged, but still standing, at least partly.

Many people died instantly. Many were never found. It was an unimaginable tragedy. More than two thirds of the population died that day, and even more the following days from injuries, lack of clean water, lack of food, diseases, and frostbites.

Everything living was affected. Animals large and small. Donkeys, sheep, chickens, dogs and cats. The fertile fields and olive groves. The gardens, painstakingly cultivated for years, to provide food as well as beauty and joy. Everything was covered in the sticky mud.

When the initial shock wore off, they knew this was no time to mourn. If they were to survive, they had to help each other, they had to start the cleanup, pick up the remains and bury their dead. And someone had to lead the way, lest chaos and anarchy break out and destroy the last remnants of their way of life.

Naturally, they looked to their leader; the king, for guidance. Unfortunately the palace was hit particularly hard, as it was built next to the sea. It was smashed to pieces, and it was initially believed that the entire royal family had been wiped out. The disaster was total. How would Manthos get through this?

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There's nothing "increasingly certain" when there's no sources? Jesus christ, I'm not apologizing! For asking! For sources!

I never said the death toll wouldn't go up, I never refuted the points made about people suffering and losing everything. I'm skeptical of claims to a numerical value to lives lost, I'm skeptical of grossly maudlin claims at people calling loved ones as they're part of an active conflagration, I'm skeptical of claims that hotels aren't helping without elaboration about how one can be certain they even CAN help (do they have the employees to do so? Is local government okay with them pushing in non-essential peoples to assist in staffing? And is their lack of help possibly due to the fact that they're waiting on FEMA organizers to guide them?

I don’t usually do this but I really need to vent. I’ll delete this later.

My country is currently being hit by a terrible disaster near where I live, I myself was stuck in said disaster a few days ago and got lucky because I found my way home.

I went to work last Saturday and it was raining heavily non-stop for the whole day. The water started rising but my boss kept insisting we should still meet despite the flood. Flooding is normal in my country but it’s unusual for the state I work in to flood so when it happened two days ago, it hit hard and we were stuck on the highway. Almost all the highways to leave said State are closed and I was stuck in the car for 10 hours trying to find my way home. I was scared, worried, and tired. The waters are rising and I worry that I’m going to die. I keep trying to find my way out the whole night but to no avail. I was very very lucky that my mom had a friend who lives nearby and wasn’t affected by the flood so I stayed with her for a night. It was a traumatizing event and I’m still shaking every time I think about it.

I was lucky. Super fucking lucky. And it frustrates me so much when I can’t do anything to help my people. And I’m so fucking angry at my government for not doing anything except for visiting the flood site. The civilians are the one who has been helping the flood victims and it just hurts seeing people’s cries for help on twitter and finding out people dr*wned. God, it hurts so much and I can’t do anything to help. There are children, pregnant women, elderlies still stuck at the place and there’s nothing the government has done to help them. The civilians trying to get in the area are not allowed in because they didn’t have the clearance which is fucking bonkers. People are dying and you still need clearance?????

To the politicians who did nothing to help us and instead went to launch their convention, play with fireworks, and cutting cakes. Fuck you. We’ll remember this.

“Can I sit here?” Stephanie asked the girl in the khaki scarf and gray and acid green throw-up print high tops.

Rosie nodded, “Sure.” She went back to her banana bread.

She pulled up a chair and sat down. Rosie took one look at the chocolate bar Stephanie was eating and glared at her. “Did you know the widespread consumption of chocolate is only made possible by slave labour?”

Hearing this took Stephanie aback. Not the information itself, she already knew that; it’s a shock to her that Rosie never bothered to say hi or hello. “Who the fuck starts a conversation like that? I just sat down!”

Rosie narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “So, you’re a slavery apologist then?”

Stephanie stood up. “No, but what you said just caught me off guard.”

Rosie’s patience with Stephanie‘s attempt to appear bigger wore thin. “It's people like you who have a reason that this is a problem,” she growled in an angry hushed tone. “We're never going to get past slavery if we can't talk about it!”

Rosie desperately wanted Stephanie to sit back down. Stephanie stayed standing, as she didn’t think it was a good idea to stop looking big just yet. “OK, the reason it caught me off guard is that I wasn't expecting to have to talk about it, and I kind of don't feel like talking about it.” Her tone of voice was calm, but her body language suggested domination.

“That's not an excuse!” Rosie barked back, “If someone wants to talk about a serious problem, you're supposed to engage them; you're not supposed to blow them off!”

“I didn't blow you off, I just got a bit startled.”

Now, Rosie stood up. “Listen, asshole; you didn't just blow me off, you blew off every single enslaved human on the planet!”

Rosie kept trying to make herself look big. She was six inches shorter than Stephanie, so it didn’t work. “You look at me like I’m at all aware of what I have just done; like I hurt you on purpose,” Stephanie replied, speaking calmly but pointing aggressively, “Honestly, I didn't think you'd get so upset.”

“Of course you didn't!” blurted Rosie. Her face went red. “You don't think about anyone other than yourself!”

“You need to calm down.” Stephanie opened both palms.

Rosie aggressively slapped her hands together. “Don’t you dare tell me I need to calm down!”

Stephanie leaned against the wall like she was a cool greaser in a 50s movie. "I’m serious," she told Rosie in a firm but gentle tone, "I think you’re upset about something else, and it’s manifested itself as this incredibly pointless conversation.”

Rosie did not react well to this at all. She picked up an empty mug and threw it across the room. It hit someone between the shoulder blades, shattering on impact. The person turned around. Rosie hid.

They assumed Stephanie threw the mug. They picked her up and slid her across the bar. She rolled on her right ankle when they dropped her on the bar to slide her. Upon flying off the bar, she landed on the other ankle in such a way that she wound up rolling on top of her ankle. Long story short, she injured both ankles in a bar fight.

What happened next was a blur. Stephanie screamed. The screaming irritated the people sitting at the next table. A woman wearing a hijab with Winnie the Pooh printed on it and a Villanova sweatshirt got up, scooped up Stephanie, and carried her out to her second-hand Ferrari with a flaming skull painted on it. When things finally settled down, Stephanie found herself in the back of a car travelling down a country road with Forest on either side. She had no idea how she got here, nor did she have any idea where we were going. All she knew was the driver's name: Elizabeth. Elizabeth had just got off from chaperoning some ungrateful little kid's college tour of Villanova. Stupid little brat, she thought, they're so disrespectful. "Yeah, those kids think they're going to Villanova. Monkeys might fly out of my butt."

Stephanie looked towards Elizabeth and said, "no kidding".

"You know, that bratty, high-and-mighty attitude will get you nowhere."

While Elizabeth initially agreed to take her to the hospital to see if they really were broken or if it was just a pair of really bad sprains, she quickly changed her tune when she saw a sign that said: “hitchhikers may be escaping inmates” followed by a sign that said, “have a nice day“ with a smiley face underneath. "No good."

"What?" Stephanie asked.

"This is no good. I'm turning around." Elizabeth snarked.

"We just got here." Stephanie protested. Of course, they were nowhere near the hospital, but rather halfway there. At least, Stephanie hoped they were halfway there.

She swerved the car so fast that it did a donut. "And now, we're leaving."

Stephanie never did figure out why they had to leave so abruptly. “Is it because of that sign? Because don’t worry, we weren’t planning on picking up hitchhikers”

“It doesn’t matter, Stephanie, we’re leaving. End of story”

Stephanie felt worried. What if Elizabeth wasn’t taking her to the hospital like she said she would. Maybe Elizabeth only said she would take her to the hospital to keep the peace. No, she thought, what doesn’t make sense. The more likely explanation would be that Elizabeth felt bad for her and wanted to help out, but realized that it wouldn’t do much good.

She had heard it for herself on the radio. A large meteor the size of a semi truck hit downtown Philadelphia this afternoon, overwhelming emergency services all over the East Coast. Of course the hospitals are going to be overwhelmed if a chunk of metal that size hits a large urban center. Meteors can do a ton of damage. Even if they don’t hit the earth, they can create devastating shockwaves. Just ask the people of Chelyabinsk. Windows got broken, people got hurt, and the meteor didn’t even hit the ground.

Except that wasn’t Elizabeth turned around. She wasn’t trying to avoid going to the hospital because she didn't want to wait in line. Elizabeth had been asleep at the wheel for the entire journey. She may have had her eyes open, she may have spoken lucidly, but make no mistake; there was no way in hell she was conscious.

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