By: Daiyu Tang
There are, dear readers, white weddings. Then there are Game of Thrones, ‘Red Weddings’ and then of course there are lots of random things in between ranging from elopements to Vegas-Stripper weddings to all sorts of shenanigans. Trust me, I’ve read about the good, bad and ugly of getting hitched before.
But then there are Hathian weddings. Just a sub-set mind. The kind where Domestic Terrorist take British Lad as their lawfully wedded husband while the out of place fairy lights and floral trim seem to lie uneasily against a backdrop that is more usually, where this bride is associated, covered in sweat, blood and sexual fluids. So it’s fair to say dears, that at least in this Editor’s mind there was enough bad Hathian history in the room to choke anyone (including the priest) and that was before the tear gas got there. Oh yes. Oh Hathian. How little you disappoint in fucking around with the perception of normality. Apparently even a Domestic Terrorist can’t get hitched without blood and police raids.
So here it is… In early March, Hitori Yamato, now (and it’s weird to say this) Hitori Delaney apparently stood beneath a carefully dressed arch at some fancy location in Rougarou and did what I might consider unthinkable for miss ‘Elben is my koda.. koga… something’ terrorist. She married. Not metaphorically. Not in some drunken ‘we woke up in Vegas‘ sense. Properly. There was an apparent officiant. There were rings. There were even vows, which this reporter imagines were bloodthirsty and vicious but in reality were probably the softy squeezy girly part of Tori that has never been seen before. I almost wish I had been there, to slow clap this progression from ‘terrorist who should be locked away for ever’ to ‘terrorist bride allowed one nuptial visit a year and only if no stabbings in jail that year’. At least that title has a tiny ring of sympathy to it and I’m in a generous mood and the husband can still get his rocks off. Win/Win?
My dears, there was even the soft little fiction of order that (pretend?) civilized people in Hathian like to wrap around commitment when they want to pretend that their love is stronger than the inevitable consequence (consequences… circle… never ending… etc).
Their ‘Own Damned Decision’
So, as we understand it the officiant opened by telling the room that “by their own damn decision” Delaney and Tori had chosen this partnership and then they were led through traditional vows with the monumental moment arriving when they were actually pronounced husband and wife.
I heard it was actually cute. CUTE. Can you imagine? Tori stumbling from a “Yeah” when asked if she did, to a proper “I do” and “I really do”. It does ask the question, does everyone deserve their moment of happiness irrespective of the past? Should I hold my acidic tongue because of the history of horror? Why does the world test this Editor so? I want to be cutting (and truthful) and I promise I will dear readers, but right now, be generous and allow me to for the sake of romance and feelings, which bubble in me always, to give the couple just a moment. A moment mind… a moment of faint congratulations.
A Bride Wearing White – An Archive Full of Crimson
Wow, sorry. Forgive me there for my black gothic heart suddenly getting soppy. Let us, dear readers, not be stupid just because somebody strung lanterns and tied pale ribbons to folding chairs and called it a wedding. ISIS does that. We don’t clap the fuck for them right?
This newspaper has been here before with Tori. We were there when citizens were kidnapped and pushed through her ‘Sin to Win‘ spectacle: a sadistic pageant of coercion, torment, and moral theatre in which I myself was among the victims. In my reporting after the event, Tori was (fucking accurately) described not as some misunderstood rebel with a difficult childhood and forced on her poor life choices, but as exactly what repeated public conduct suggested she was… Someone operating on the principle that ‘might makes right,’ a woman for whom brutality was not accident but method. I wrote then, rightly, that “a smart, good looking, well spoken killer is still a killer.”
Just in case anyone thought hey, one article does not a psychotic woman make… Part two of that same reporting stripped off what little romance anyone should try and project onto her. “Tori just likes to watch people suffer,” I wrote. “She’s a sadist.” That was not tabloid flourish that I conjured out of thin air. It was from events. Lived events. It was the conclusion drawn from what had been done to living people in her orbit and would be done again and again over the years. Do we learn? Only a few. I don’t know how else to phrase it. She’s a Yuugen gang leader holding a court of violence in a city where she believes she has the edge and the mandate to deliver her vision (and pleasure). She’s not some sweet society bride who happened to wander into the wrong zip code in the wrong shoes. Click your heels together two times Tori and wish you were back in Kansas? No, this ‘Dorothy’ is the Tornado, not the victim.
If you want one final thing (and yeah even if Hospital leaders can ‘move on’, I’m calling it like it is)… She destroyed our hospital. She terrorised the town over a few days and in the aftermath? In the bloody aftermath of the HGH hostage crisis, I and this paper put it plainly. We will always stand against terrorists and gang violence.
So no, readers, I am not suddenly going soft because somebody got married in a pretty setting, in a pretty dress.
A Fine Ceremony For A Surprise
The photographs from the ceremony that Tori released to her Bluesky are almost offensively elegant. The venue was tastefully dressed. The aisle was clean and bright. The arch was pretty enough to trick the eye into expecting decency. In the close shots, bride and groom do not look like caricatures mocking the institution or the city of Hathian. They look, maddeningly, like a couple having a wedding.
Perhaps this matters. Some readers will want the comfort of thinking this was fake, or drugged, or stage-managed from start to finish by some external hand. Maybe some of you secretly fancied Tori and wanted her for yourself. Shame. Shame on you. But I’m sorry to disappoint, it looks real.
Now before the city starts humming love songs and forgetting, let us be careful. ‘real‘ is not the same thing as ‘healthy‘.
But if anyone hopes to make this into a neat story of a woman (or man) being frog-marched into marriage, they should stop. The public social media around the event, as supplied to the Observer, cut against that. Ollie publicly called talking to Tori “a bad idea” done with “No regrets.” Tori answered that she was “fine being your bad decision” and would help him make “at least 100 more.” It’s sickly loving isn’t it? In another post she wrote, “Never thought I’d get here, but I don’t mind belonging to” him, before adding with striking clarity, “He’s mine.” In a reply beneath the post, she said, “I actually am happy too.” Those are not the words of someone sleepwalking through borrowed vows or playing a game, unless it’s a really long term game that even I can’t crack the meaning of. They are the words of someone making and embracing a choice in the language that Tori uses to the world: possession, risk, appetite, and a claim. A claim that we will see if it lasts to ‘death do us part’ or not….
Why Vetting Wedding Guests Is Important
Karma dear readers or tragedy? One moment spoilt when perhaps it could have been left? Read on and make your mind up because Hathian cannot let anything remain merely dreadful when it could become operatically bad. My source tells me the reception lasted roughly as long as it took to finish the vows and stand up before new guests arrived. Yep, you guessed it, the boys and girls of the Hathian Police Department (‘HPD’) decided to invite themselves in. I’m not entirely sure that’s what Ollie meant when he was reported to have said that everyone was welcome to get “Properly shitfaced” as they mingled with their guests.
Still, just before the Cops made their grand entrance a wedding gift was opened and here, as far as I understand it (though I have no picture to share you gorehounds) the wedding went crimson. Fast.
Ollie opened the a chest, apparently Japanese or at least Asian origin. His reaction was immediate and violent. Which, dear reader, to be honest I’d have expected from Tori first (violent that is). He did a little dance back jig, swore, and after much confusion I can report that there was a head. A head in a box. No, not a Child’s Jack-in-the-box, but a head in the box. Tori didn’t seem to know who it was, but Ollie’s reaction painted a main who really did. I’ve not dear reader tried to confirm this with him though. I quite like my head not in boxes.
And then, you guessed it dear reader and because irony in this city is as subtle as a tyre iron wielded by Boba Butt Bethari, the loudspeaker of the HPD rang out.
Detective Salanitri arrived outside with patrol lights washing the venue in red and blue and announced that the building was surrounded, and named the individuals police wanted to surrender: Tori Yamato, Ollie Delaney, Trinket Suzuki Shaw, Yukiko Shirokawa, and Takeshi Tsukisaki. For comedic effect, as if it would be the FBI or some shit, Salanitri shouted:
“THIS IS DETECTIVE SALANITRI WITH THE HATHIAN POLICE DEPARTMENT.”
To be fair to the HPD, they didn’t just shoot everyone with (non?-Lethal) rounds, but gave them a chance to surrender:
“Come quietly and we don’t have ruin your big day any further. I would prefer to take you with as little blood shed as absolutely necessary. So come out with your hands up. The rest of you remain inside. Cooperation would be greatly appreciated.”
Then, and credit to the HPD for knowing how to ruin a girls’ big day, tear gas was then deployed into the wedding venue. Yes, people didn’t surrender and yes, tactically even to my mind I guess that’s what you should do, but wow. Gassing a bride, groom and a priest!
White Satin. Gas Clouds and Hathian’s Usual Excuses
The predictable chorus of shills and comments will begin any minute now, so allow me to save people the breath and even if not now, this paragraph is for the Blueskyers and ‘X’ crowd.
Yes, those named by police were not choirgirls/boys. Yes, we understand that people were armed and dangerous inside the venue armed themselves further… and someone whispered to me that not only guns but also Molotov cocktails were produced by guests. Let’s let that sink in and consider the meaning… It means the city has become so degraded that ‘wedding preparedness’ for this ‘class’ of citizen now includes improvised anti-gas advice, carrying blades under bridal satin (rather than sexy lingerie? A knife holster could function as a garter I guess…), and the possibility of exchanging vows before sprinting for a window.
This was then the perfect Hathian object lesson: gang prestige dressed in ceremony, police force dressed in inevitability, civilians and half-civilians (ahem – generous) crammed in the middle, and everybody acting shocked when blood and chemicals show up at the buffet as part of the menu. Oh Hathian.
Editorial Musings
I am supposed, perhaps, to decide whether this was tragic or absurd. Whether Tori should be granted the strange little mercy of being called a bride without the rest of her history being brought up by me like a scavenger or by the HPD banging at the church doors with a crowbar (or tear gas in this case).
I decline.
A wedding is not holy because it has flowers. It is not innocent because the dress is white. It is not full of redemption from the Ouroboros because an officiant says the right lines in the right order and the room claps in the right places when Tori goes cute and gets her lines right. Oh and let’s be clear a woman does not stop being what she has repeatedly shown herself to be simply because she manages, for one afternoon, to look beautiful while doing something that is in a way, ordinary.
That is perhaps what unsettles me most. Not that Tori married. Not even that she appears to have meant it. But that Hathian has become so warped that a sadist can stand in silk and make vows and look, for a moment, like she belongs there.
She does not.
But Hathian, my city, our city. You merely revealed what you have always been made of. Not white. Not pure. Not even cleanly black. But crimson. A morally dubious, possessive, blood-dark crimson pretending for one brief hour to be bridal. Then it all went to shit. Again. Hell, I can even agree with a later post on BSky from Ollie, paraphrased as ‘aren’t you tired of doing and seeing the same shit over and over again’. Yes Ollie, yes we are. Maybe talk to your wife about that for a start..
My rotten Hathian, you did not ruin a fairy-tale wedding but you did lift the veil and for a moment expose the costume that was not, in this case the wedding dress.
((OOC Photos below – not ICLY available to the Observer))
