V
is for Vagenda (Part 19 - Snowflake)
"Most chemicals that are used in research and teaching laboratories are stable and non-explosive at the time of purchase. Over time, some chemicals can oxidize, become contaminated, dry out, or otherwise destabilize to become PECs (e.g., isopropyl ether, sodium amide, and picric acid)." (http://www.ehs.berkeley.edu/hm/30-chemical-waste-management/45-guidelines-for-explosive-and-potentially-explosive-chemicals.html)
If
I had to take one thought that wrapped up the wildly diverse band of misfits
making up the NextGen Heroes league – that would be it. Everyone was so
dissimilar. I know birds of a feather tend to flock together, but I found
no thread of commonality uniting these people and kept waiting for it to
explode. Every day, every one came to the base and no cliques would ever
form. No permanent associations were ever forming. Nothing seemed
to draw anyone together but the name of the league. It couldn't
last. How did it last this long?
I
spent a good number of months teaching people about strategy, sportsmanship,
and technique to the point that I started to feel a little bit like a den
mother. Oddly enough, I liked it. This rag tag band of misfits with
nothing in common when I met them began to feel like some strange drug induced
"Alice In Wonderland" enactment of a family. A family, none the
less, though.
I
found myself getting together more frequently with a few dozen of the misfits,
and feeling increasingly protective of them, as if they were in some sense my
children. So many ninja looters turned into upstanding citizens, and so
many reckless reactionaries turned into patient lethal weapons of intense
precise destruction. I was so proud at how quickly they were
learning. It can be rare for criticism to be embraced to its fullest
potential for personal benefit and growth. Soon, we had a team that
couldn't do Bludhaven exercises training in the FOS instances with relative
ease.
This
was the good side of NextGen Heroes. We had one good leader in The
Bloodwing, and one talented crew in the fold. On the other hand, we had a
few officers that began to abuse power. It wasn't the abstracted
improbable assortment of dissimilar personalities that would destroy what was
here. That statistically should have been the problem, but somehow,
something unique, beautiful and much akin to a snowflake formed instead - only
to be destroyed by the common heated vices of jealousy and vanity.
SNOWFLAKE
Watching
a ton of very green rookies quickly fine tune their craft and abilities to a
point that rivaled and, in some instances, surpassed those of myself.
This was the reward I found in this league. My mothering instincts got
the better of me. I recognized these people less as league mates and more
as friends - not everyone in the league, but a small group of 8 that seemed to
get my attention more than the rest.
On
one occasion, one of my students and I came under fire from a league lieutenant
for being incompetent at our role while running a training exercise based on
Smallville. I made sure the focus was placed squarely on me so to make
sure that my student wasn't brought to bear the criticism or insult. If
he had deserved it, I would not have robbed him of this opportunity to grow -
but in this case, I felt it was important to allow the lieutenant the chance to
dare cross me.
I
was much more skilled, and held a higher combat rating with the Justice League
itself than this lieutenant who would complain of incompetence. I could
hear his reasoning without being hurt by it. If he was right, I could
pass along the needed lesson constructively. If he was wrong, I could be
the endpoint on the conversation.
The
lieutenant, General Liberty, failed to qualify what he felt was wrong in any
way that demonstrated what should have been done in place of what had been
done. Pushing for detail was fruitless - in fact it was disastrous.
What could have been an opportunity for improvement quickly became flexed
impunity raging for half an hour. I gave my warnings that this was not
constructive, and out of line. Officers are expected to conduct
themselves with a certain level of poise and grace, a level of professionalism
that sets a standard of expectations to those in lower ranks. This is how
an officer garners respect and loyalty. Virtue wins.
The
nonsensical berating exceeded a 30 minute threshold I had set as a maximum
duration of abuse I was willing to entertain. On the 31st minute, as
promised, I left the league.
I
was not noticed by anyone but my students - my family. No other officer
took notice. Within 15 minutes, I was approached by another league called
"Exobyte Elites" and ushered in as the next hero. I quickly
made a home there, but was very much distracted by a long list of mail piling
in my inbox from my students at NextGen Heroes asking if I was coming back, if
they should follow me here, or if I was OK personally. It was touching,
and made it difficult to not consider NextGen Heroes home, though was suddenly
in a new one. It was a struggle within me between principal and
friendship, but if friendship were to ever blossom in NextGen Heroes, then this
derisive destructive behavior needed to be snuffed out, else all efforts were
to be in vain.
Ostriches
merely make themselves excellent targets when they bury their heads in the sand
to hide from their problems. I was raised to fight. I punch
back. One way or the other, the problem is eliminated. Here, abuse
of power was the problem. Here, abuse of power had to be eliminated.
I
joined Exobyte Elites - seen no such power abuses taking shape toward
anyone. They were very efficient. They were very polite. They
were all so very much alike. I felt like I left the rabbit hole and
landed on Wall Street. It was clear immediately why these people
attracted each other and that wasn't to say that the common qualities they
shared were in any way negative. This was a businessman's league.
This was private networked VPN Chat-based PVP training oriented professionalism
gone wild. It was so purely professional, I was both finding myself
feeling very respectful and somehow intimidated by them. I wasn't sure I
could be that professional, let alone that professional all of the time.
I
actually played more, but felt less involved in all I did trying to be as
professionally detached emotionally from the action as the rest managed to
be. It came as a great surprise, however, when a few days later, I
returned from a series of FOS successes to see Alphanoid waiting for me.
He was patiently waiting for me to return from training so to ask if I would
entertain grouping for 30 minutes.
Fascinated,
and surprised - I accepted his invitation at face value, and out of some
predetermined sense of honor did not immediately leave when I discovered
General Liberty in the group as well. Apparently, my children made it
readily clear to Alpha, who was second in command at NextGen Heroes, what had
happened between General Liberty and I. I was made aware, in clear
well-chosen words, that General Liberty was indeed read the riot act ever since
Alpha was aware of what took place. I was separately made aware that,
although General Liberty was indeed grilled out, he was also purely there of
his own free will to make any attempt required to convince me that he genuinely
was sorry about what had happened.
Anyone
that knows me can attest that emotively, I am the Seawise Giant.
Here,
take a look at the Seawise Giant (or Jahre Viking, and various other names it's
carried under different owners), if you don't already know and love this thing
- please:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawise_Giant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX2HFVHbo18
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxbY1wR87b0
OK,
so now that we are all experts on the Seawise Giant - please understand my
metaphor. I don't turn easily from a negative emotion to a positive
one. I may be the worst case for this in the world. I'm so serious,
and my being aware of this has in no way armed me with any effective way to
alter this fact.
General
Liberty spent the better part of 45 minutes convincing me that he was being
genuine and true. The very fact that anyone would take an interest in
convincing me for this long won out in the end. I conceded that this was
no mere posturing or patronizing to try to bury the hatchet. General
Liberty won himself fully into my good graces again, and I left Exobyte Elites
to rejoin NextGen Heroes.
Strangely,
no one at Exobyte Elites ever seemed to notice I was gone?
All
was well and a new age of productivity emerged for all of us there. The
number of people that I work under my wing grew larger and The Bloodwing
ultimately promoted me to one rank below Alphanoid appreciating the show of
ethics. He agreed at the time that this kind of thing ultimately
benefited the league.
I
felt that for months, this was true...
One
evening Alphanoid really wanted to pull together a team to run the Fortress of
Solitude exercise. Our rag tag group got our collective asses in gear and
volunteered. We had all roles, lifestyles, colors, and walks of life
delicately colliding into our rare snowflake, our beautiful band of misfits -
finely tuned and ready to squash the mission.
We
begin the instance. Alphanoid wanted pure domination from us and that was
exactly what we delivered. We got to the first boss, and suddenly
Alphanoid leaves the instance and announces over our comm channel that he has
decided to start over with another group from another league that is
starting. We tried calling out for a replacement but continually failed
to find one. After a while some of our group got depressed about it and
dropped out as well.
After
about an hour, we were a group made of five here from the start, 2 guests from
other leagues, and still we were one healer short to continue.
Alphanoid
came back to our group, embittered about how horribly bad the other group he
had joined had failed. Soon, his anger led to lashing out on us as
well. I was not allowing this to stand.
On
behalf of everyone in the league, I first apologized to our guests. They
should never have seen one of us acting this way, let alone our second in
command behaving this way.
Then
I turned my attention on Alphanoid. I explained to him how long we have
been waiting since he first abandoned us, and that rather than lashing out, he
best recognize loyalty and consider an apology for having wasted what
collectively added up to 8 hours of time real people lost. Admittedly,
this figure was assuming 8 people waited an hour, and thus was statistically
inflated, yet the point needed to be made.
I
merely succeeded in taking fury off of others and unto myself as he decided I
was the new target of his anger. Ironically, the person who stood up for
ethics with me when it applied to General Liberty was now acting as bad or
worse than General Liberty ever had.
The
return of abusing power emerged and I somehow ended up attempting to champion
the fight to not have my family abused, taken for granted, taken advantage of,
and otherwise generally disrespected. The stand led to a demotion to the
lowest possible rank - for no other reason than that he could and he wanted to
anger me anyway he thought I might react to. He tried many lines of
insults seeking the reaction he was fishing.
He
even started calling me Orange again.
Throughout
the rest of the week, I had spoken to The Bloodwing about what had happened,
but he did not show any interest in the matter what-so-ever. I was
shocked at his complete complacency. All he would do is restore my rank
each time he noticed that Alphanoid dropped it again.
Cosmic
War had also recently begun getting treated particularly badly for no reason
other than that the tanks within the higher ranks could suddenly recognize that
he was as good as or better than them now. As a threat to their position
of dominance in Raid Selection in the league, and I would watch and learn.
A new Officer named Lord Ahnubis had joined the fold and was a tank that was
very much used to being far and away the best tank in a league. Lord
Ahnubis was one of the longest standing heroes in the Watch Tower who wasn't
pre-dating Exobytes. He had a long history among many leagues and was
well respected, but yet his actions revealed a clear sense of threat in how he
treated Cosmic War.
I
don't care if you are Superman himself. General Liberty, Stabilo,
HappyHammer, Epic Arrow, Cosmic War, Garth Dreamwalker, MayaDF, AnotherPacifist
- hell, even Endrix - these were people core to the family now, and anyone who
wanted to wrongfully hurt anyone of them... Well, good luck getting
through me first.
The
weeks that came to pass after taking a stand once again revealed that our rag
tag crew of misfits set the standard and that example was not being met by the
higher ranks. The inverse should always be true. Alphanoid
continued entertaining himself by being as rude as possible daily towards
me. Lord Ahnubis continued to mount support for people to not like Cosmic
War so to secure his position as the preferred league tank. The Bloodwing
did nothing at all to take control of these dynamics.
Soon,
the snowflake - in all of its crystalline once-in-a-lifetime beauty - ceased to
be. Epic Arrow, Lunar Eclipse, Garth Dreamwalker, and MayaDF soon left
for other leagues. Soon after, Endrix left as well. Our incredibly
improbable team melted under the hostile environment created by heated egos.
With
virtually nothing left to make us want to stay, Cosmic War and I also
left. At least The Bloodwing noticed that in all this, it cost him his
best Raid team and an officer - he did eventually hunt me down and make sure
that the two of us were on good terms.
Good
would come of this. Other good things had already started on the
sidelines of all of this as well, but that is quite another story.
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