I woke up early. Eerie early. For no reason whatsoever, but I felt the hairs of my neck standing up. As if I was in danger. Some danger to my home, my family. The feeling was strong. I wanted to go out and hunt the bastards that were threatening my family. I could feel that this emotion was affecting Penny as well because there was agitation coming from the stables.

I went to the window and threw it open to let some light in. The moonless sky was dark and full of stars. Since the fire never went out, some light came from the kitchen but dawn was still a faraway dream. I saw movement and caught two guards going out of the guardhouse, carrying a torch they lit up once they were outside.

I put the LED headband on my head and turned on the lantern I was holding in my left hand. I felt no pain as the dimly lit room flashed into existence. I went out of my room and down the stairs.

"Arwia! Wake up! Check the children!" I shouted as I approached the girls' room.

I could hear movement and voices as the children woke up in their rooms.

"Sandra! What is going on?" Arwia's voice came from inside.

"Get dressed, Arwia!" Belle-Sunu shouted at her roommate.

It reminded me, I was in my pajamas. No time to worry about it.

"I think we have intruders! Check the children!"

Belle came out with a candle lamp. "I will go ahead."

"I'll call the guards," Arwia said as she went out of the room, in a dress and a cloak.

"I'm going with you," I said and followed Arwia.

I went out into the front lawn. Lipit-Ea and Shamash had the gate. "Mistress!" Shamash shouted.

"Be alert, I think we have intruders," I shouted back.

I was not holding back my voice. If the prospect of getting caught would scare invaders away, so be it. If I could avoid a fight or a kidnapping, that was good enough in my book. I turned on the headband and broke into a jog and ran along the outer wall, trying to find signs of intruders. The rest of the guards were coming out, I could see several torches roaming around as I went around the main building and reached the backyard. They were shouting, searching, and I kept going around.

I crossed with a pair of guards, Muta-Ni and Usalla. "Did you see anything? Any signs of intruders?"

"No," Usalla answered. "But the Lady should wait inside. It is safer."

"Keep searching. I'm going to the stables," I answered, consciously ignoring his advice.

I was more resilient than they were and I could heal from any would that was not instantly fatal. Or so I hoped. I dashed to the stables. Inside, Aristunn was trying to calm the horses. I found Penny and quieted her down. The feeling of intruders was gone now and both of us quickly calmed down once we confirmed that we were unhurt. With Penny calm, the other horses also quieted down.

"Sandra, what happened?" Aristunn asked me.

"I don't know. I woke up with this ominous feeling, that some bad guy was coming to harm us, especially the children. Keep everyone alert, Aristunn."

"Will do. Now, go back to the main house."

I pondered on what they were telling me and figured out that they couldn't help but be nervous with me exposed. I went back to the house and found the girls and the children in the living area. I did a headcount and everyone was accounted for, except for the AWOL witch.

"Is everyone alright?" I asked.

The small children were scared and the bright white light from my headband and lantern were not helping. I shut down the headband and dimmed the lantern, reducing the number of lit LEDs.

"All the children are here, none of them are hurt, Sandra," Arwia answered. "How is it going outside? Did the guards find any intruders?"

I shook my head. I felt nervous butterflies in my belly as if I did something wrong. Was it a false alarm? The feeling was so ominous. I had no idea what was going on.

"I don't know. At least everyone is safe. That's what matters."

"Okay. Since everyone is awake and it won't be long before dawn," Belle tried to distract everyone by clapping her hands, "why don't we start early and eat some breakfast? I'm going to make some eggs and sausage."

I was still feeling that anger at something. As if in the corner of my sight there was an enemy poised to strike at my children. It didn't overwhelm me but soured my mood.

"Arwia, I'm going back to my room. I'm not feeling very well."

The former barmaid looked at me with her big almond eyes.

"Should I send someone to warn the guard captain you'll miss training today?" She asked with a cheeky tone.

Today was the day the training weapons would be ready for use. I wanted to go. "No. I'll go train. Rimush, please calm down your siblings."

"Will do, Sandra. I..." He seemed bashful as if he was going to confess to a girl. Oh, wait. "I'd like to thank you for taking care of us and worrying about us. I really appreciate that!"

He pushed Pidda and Muranu forward and both of them bowed. "Yes, we are grateful, Sandra." Both said as if rehearsed. Then Muranu added, "You went so far as to make sure our mothers were safe."

Seeing them trying to create a bond with me melted my heart. I knew Rimush and Muranu had a vested interest in getting on my good side as I could - but would never dare to - kick them out and forget they ever existed. Or sell them. Eww. But it only reinforced my instinct at protecting them. Something was threatening my children. I could feel that.

"I'll go to my room and work on some projects. I'll come back at dawn."

I went away and set the lantern on the vanity where the light would diffuse on the steel mirror and illuminate the room. Then I sat by the desk and summoned my computer, hooking its power supply to the camping battery. I also took every device I had that was not at a full charge and plugged them too. A carnival of color LED indicated they were charging.

I wanted to check the photo database. I exported the table to a JSON file, hooked it on the HTML and loaded the page. I was staring at a random photo. The page always showed a random photo when it loaded. But the other photos next to it were all messed up. The terrain seemed the same but the edges didn't match. I checked the ID's of the nine photos and marked them in the directory. Then I exported them to GIMP.

I played around with them until they matched. The script found the four adjacent photos but scrambled them. I checked their coordinates and ported them to a spreadsheet. Then I manually calculated what the script did. Then I wrote next to the results what numbers they should be. Put some weights on the coordinates and recalculate. Adjust and recalculate. Until the formula yielded the same as the result of my observations in the image editing software.

I ran that with another five sets of images, checking if the formula would work now. It looked fine so I made the corrections on the script and told MySQL to recalculate the adjacent images. I also added a command to play a sound file when the procedure ended. I knew it would take around half an hour so I withdrew from the desk.

My wonderful adventure in another world included getting paranoid over raising children and running SQL procedures. And digging holes.

While the procedure ran and my devices charged, I went back to the big lumps of mixed metal I brought from the smithy yesterday. I got the frying pan, perfectly repaired and started to separate the metals with Decompose. First aluminum, lead, and copper. I made the disks and recorded the amounts. The proportions were different. I guess it was from a different ore mine. That accounted for more than half the metal. Then tin, zinc, titanium, and nickel. This sample had more titanium than before. And zinc, that the previous one had none.

I had no sulfates, only pure sulfur because I removed oxygen with brute force. That would be troublesome if I had to manipulate fine compounds. I extracted sodium fluoride and potassium chloride. I could make toothpaste with the former and use the latter as a food supplement. Make sure these kids had the right levels of potassium in their bodies. It spent all the halogens so I next took sodium metal and potassium metal into some of the sample pop tubes from the mineral lab.

Speaking of which, I should check the radiation tag. I summoned it from storage and it was regrown. I checked the strip and it was light green, lighter than the 5 mSv band. I put it back in its lead sleeve and stored it in the lab case. I had a hunch I'd need that tag a lot in the future.

Why these items disintegrated and reformed while in my possession or in the storage? I had no idea. If I had to formulate a hypothesis, I'd have to admit I had no idea. It's magic, doh.

The music played. I transferred all the 'trace materials' to the bag with the ones from the previous session and checked the result. The page opened on an image with a river. The black water ran through what seemed the vivid green treetops of a rainforest. I could see the river snaking from photo to photo. I opened the browser console and messed with the CSS to move the photos to overlap. When I was satisfied I reloaded the page, showing another random spot in the world. The edges didn't match. So I removed the negative border-collapse.

I groaned as I thought of setting individual distances for each photo. Not going to happen. I opened the script and bound the onClick event of the adjacent photos. It should set the value for the center photo as a GET parameter and load the eight adjacent ones from the database vectors.

That was good enough. I'm no computer scientist and I was sure it was a crappy job that would get me fired from any IT internship. But I had a way to navigate the photos. And even bookmark them because each photo had its own URL.

One day I'd find Es-Kina on the map. But today was not the day. Because I got bored after the hundredth-something click. Then I committed a crime. I scaled down the page until all nine photos could be seen and edited the HTML to add this tag to the header.

http-equiv="refresh" content="1">

And there it went. 540 images per minute started to burn my retinas and my mood. I found a city and the page kept going. The damn thing didn't stop and I shut down the browser. Heck. I launched it again and checked the history. I could get back to where it was if I opened the history, right?

Wrong.

Not only the stupid refresh kept moving, but the URL was also the same. Stupid machines! Can't you figure out what I want without trying to murder Linda Hamilton?

I deleted the tag. Cliff Robertson taught his nephew well. I checked why there was no photo ID in the URL, it was because the ?ID=XXXX query string only appeared when the jQuery trigger wrote it in the URL for the reload. So I replaced the meta tag with a timer function that would choose a random number between 1 and the number of photos and navigate there. Making a trail in the damned browser history.

Then I let it run again. It wasn't one second exactly because the page load event only fired after everything was loaded but that was fine. The frantic succession of pictures went by without anything of interest until I saw a large city. It took most of one photo and the four adjacent ones. I tried to stop it but I noticed I hadn't put in a stop mechanism.

Infuriating. And all my fault.

At least I got the photo ID. I opened it in GIMP and zoomed in. I dragged the other four and matched them, exporting into a bigger photo. It was a huge city. The architecture seemed odd. I could only see roofs but the roads looked like they were made of stone. I could see tiny people, more like blots in the largest zoom, but the streets were large.

It felt like a modern urbanist made a town with medieval technology. The blocks had this square-ness to them. They were not square but also were not the jumbled labyrinth of roads and alleys I've seen here.

I scrolled and panned over the image, trying to find something. I don't know. A water tank, an antenna, a building too tall. I couldn't find anything. I found a carriage with horses and measured its size. Then I used it to extrapolate the town size. Thirty-five by twenty-seven kilometers across. I also found a palace and the city walls. A very nice palace - not a castle - resembling Versailles. Large garden, slanted roof. Definitely a luxury habitation rather than a military fortress.

I saved the composite photo and sent it to all my devices. Then I stretched and notices sunlight. Playtime was over.

I took a quick bath - showers still had to be invented - and bound my hear in a ponytail. I checked my training uniform and it didn't seem to need washing. The self-repair function or the act of stooring them removed the grime and sweat. The training tunic, however, was filthy. I took another tunic and donned it over the pink-and-white dry-fit shirt.

After storing all my stuff back where it belonged, I went downstairs and ate breakfast. Kali-Maru was there.

"Oh, mistress Sandra! The clothes and shoes you gave us to wash are already dry. What should we do with them?"

Right. Left-foot shoes and female underwear.

"Bring them to me."

I ate my breakfast, got the bags of underwear and shoes back and sent them to storage. After giving the charger and battery to Aristunn, I mounted on Penny and went to my training session. Kanu-Kasu was my bodyguard for the day. The ride to the garrison complex was uneventful and I arrived just in time.

My daily dose of nordic hunkiness was just about to be delivered. Guard captain Brandon was there, in all his blonde-topped muscle majesty. Smiling. I deluded myself thinking he was smiling because I came but in fact it was the wooden weapons.

"Sandra! The carpenters delivered the wooden weapons yesterday. Please check if they are accurate."

I let Kanu-Kasu take Penny to the stables and approached Brandon. The weapons rack next to him had a wooden facão and a bokken. I took them from the rack and inspected the items. They were made of hardwood and were only slightly lighter than the metal counterparts. The facão was thicker than a metal one and seemed to be just right. There wasn't a precise measure of how a facão should be anyway. The bokken was the troublesome one. I checked the curvature, balance, it lacked the finish of a Japanese-made bokken but anyone from Earth would say it was a wooden katana. I held it and did some test swings. The sound of the wooden blade cutting through the air was refreshing. Yes, for something made just from an image and some directions, it was very good.

"They are okay. Did you test them?"

Brandon smiled and I handed the bokken to him. He took it and gave it some swings as if it were a scimitar.

"Yes, I gave them a few swings while waiting for you. No, don't worry, you are on time today."

"Good."

He swapped weapons and tried the facão. Or a big knife in Portuguese. Because it was exactly what that was.

"This weapon is strange. It seems more like a big kitchen utensil than a proper weapon. But I believe it can deliver nasty cuts. The balance is more like an ax though."

I chuckled. "That it is. A big knife. We call it facão. And it is used more as a tool to chop undergrowth and low-hanging tree limbs to open up a path through thick forests. But the people that developed the art of fighting with them, they did not have much choice regarding what weapons to use."

Now that he had an idea of how it might be used, the veteran guard did a few chopping motions as if hacking at bushes and thin branches.

"I can see it. But if the people that learned to fight with these had metal for such large blades, they surely could forge swords."

I sighed. They would if they could. But they weren't allowed anywhere near real weapons. The African slaves in Brazil had to conceal their fighting ability. That's why they disguised their martial art, capoeira, as a dance. That's why they fought bare-handed or with tools. The facão used to clear trails in the tropical Atlantic Forest - not the rainforest of Amazonia but still as thick with vegetation and biodiversity - and the navalha, a barber's folding razor blade. They also didn't fight fair. They were fighting against an oppressive system that would kill them and their families if they were captured. The slavers seldom kept escaped slaves alive, preferring to use them as examples to frighten the others from escaping.

The hardy people, forcefully brought from Africa, were once proud warriors. Despite everything, they often chose death over slavery. Banzo, the sadness over the loss of their homeland often made them just die of sadness. While this might seem like a weakness, they had a will strong enough to go over their survival instincts. Out of sheer resentment. During the four years I trained capoeira, I could only deepen my respect for them.

That was yet another reason I loathed slavery. I swore to myself I would change it around still in my lifetime. But I couldn't wallow in remembrance. I took the facão from Brandon.

"They couldn't. The lords didn't allow them to have weapons, so they had to use tools. I'll tell their story later."

Brandon was a traditionalist, Nanna's voice rang in my head. I wouldn't reveal to him the origins of capoeira now. I was afraid of how he'd react.

"Okay, I'll hold you to that and wait for the right time. Can you show me some moves?"

I nodded and took the bokken. They did polish the wooden blade like I asked so I could draw it against my hand. I had no saya to stow the blade. I held the bokken with my left next to my hip and bowed to Brendan. Then I turned east and bowed to my grandfather. I had no idea where Earth was, but to me, my Ojichan was always to the east. I focused and calmed my heart. I drew the bokken and assumed the basic stance, chudan-no-kamae Aikido favored so much. Despite not having leverage for powerful swings, from here I could keep the opponent at bay, stab forward or quickly shift to another stance to attack. But the stance that was at the same time, relaxed and full of energy to spring into attack was the first thing I had to learn before my grandfather taught me anything else. I'd spend hours just standing there, under his watchful eyes. Sometimes he'd push me or adjust my stance. I think he was testing me to see if I'd give up.

I didn't.

From chudan-no-kamae I went through the basic shikakke-waza. I could hear my grandfather's stern but warm voice warning me of my footwork. He'd make me hold the shinai behind my back and train fumikomi until I had blisters on my feet. "I want to hear a petal falling on a lake when you walk! Be gentle with the hinoki floor your ancestors polished with love!" He would shout at me. Of course, that would change over time. But first I had to do a perfect fumikomi. Perfect to me. He could always find fault. Like when I lifted my knees or toes too much. "Glide! You are a crane over a calm lake. Make no ripples!"

It was a hot contender for the best year of my life. Gone.

I finished my routine and sheathed the bokken. Then I bowed east and to Brendan again. The guard captain clapped his hands. I could see several guards looking at me.

"Sandra, that was magnificent. I can see how refined those techniques are. Little wasted motions, every blow a fatal one. Wait, were you crying?"

I turned my face away and Decomposed my tears. "Just some dust that rose," I lied. "And yes, these techniques are hundreds of years old."

"Marvelous. I might hire you as an instructor for my men," He chortled.

Mesopotamian samurai. Who would've thunk it? As Edgar Bergen's puppet would say.

"Sorry, too busy. And you can't afford my price." I joked.

Yeah, way to go, Sandra. It felt as if cumulo-nimbus clouds darkened the sky immediately as Brendan's mood plummeted. Then it clicked. "Afford my price" as in hourly wages wasn't what came through. As "my price" in the context of a woman meant another thing to them. Stupid.

"Should I train with the dummy?" I asked, failing miserably at changing the mood.

Brendan waved a hand, "Please. Show me more moves."

Then I did. If it were to avoid the awkward mood, I'd slaughter an army of straw men. As a personal challenge, I tried to only lightly touch the dummy as fast as possible. Control, you must learn control, as Frank Oz immortalized it.

Then it happened.

I was mid-swing when a sharp pain hit me in the chest. I dropped the bokken and unceremoniously crumpled on the ground. It burned, it felt like I had been shot. Brendan lifted me.

"Sandra! Say something!"

I felt a wave of dread anger. A wish for vengeance directed at who hurt me. Overwhelming rage. Penny was running towards me and I knew I had to be elsewhere. I had to hurry. The children were in danger.

"I'm fine, put me on the ground, now!" I roared at him and wriggled until he released me.

I jumped on the ground running and dashed out of the training grounds. Penny was running and soon was beside me. She didn't slow down as I threw myself over the saddle and caught my feet in the stirrups. The mare and I were one and the same. Our minds were also of one thought. Run the faster we could to save the children. Precious children.

"Open the gate!" I heard Brandon shouting behind me. I could almost see through Penny's eyes but not quite. I just knew Penny could see Brandon running behind us. The gate opened slowly, I crouched and hugged Penny's neck as she went through the gates, brushing my leg and her side against the door. She didn't even flinch.

And we ran west. Past the market. West. Past the gate. We were running out of time. My chest still hurt. It burned. I came to the place where the road did a two-kilometer loop to go around this stupid farm. Penny leaped over the fence and ran past the flax field, tramping the plants. She jumped again and we were on our way.

The miniature Devil's Throne was there. I jumped off and went for the place I'd climbed without thinking. I had to go. The children were dying!

I climbed the rock and halfway I knew I had to go around. I used Decompose to create handholds and footholds to cross sideways through the geometric-shaped rock columns making up the hill. Not a single iota of fear passed through me. Only anger.

I went around to the north face of the hill and saw a bird's nest. Dozens of arrows were stuck in the straw, protruding from the inside of the nest. I kept moving. More arrows hit the stone around the nest and I quickly crossed the last few meters.

Then I saw it.

One of those large, green-necked eagles was in the nest, an arrow stuck to its chest. His breath was wheezing and the wound bubbled. Punctured thorax, maybe lung. Inside the nest, a lot of cracked eggs, the whites leaking and bird fetuses dead inside the shells. The children.

I heard voices below and took a look. A handful of men were down there, with bows. And another eagle hung by the feet and slung over the shoulder of one of them.

Enraged, I took the arrows out and tossed them downward. They picked speed from the gravity pull and rained on the men. I hit one of them before they retreated underneath some trees. With them out of my sight, I could focus enough to try and give the bird some first aid. The hunting arrows were not made to detach the head like the war ones. I held and pulled the arrow carefully but there was no way around it. the barbed head tore some flesh out. I summoned my first aid kit and took one patch made to close thoracic wounds. I plucked feathers to expose the skin and waited for the bird to exhale before I plastered the patch over the wound.

I could tell it worked because the bird started breathing more normally and was not wheezing anymore. After a few breaths, it opened an eye and stared at me. I caressed its head. He looked down and saw the men. The rage returned.

I almost jumped down to get them. But I was not a bird. I summoned my hiking backpack and sent everything inside to storage. Then I picked up the bird and placed him comfortably inside. I didn't close the pack but he was entirely inside. I checked the eggs but they were all cracked.

The men were shouting but I couldn't make what they were saying. I had to go back to the ground so I went around the rock face, using my spots where it was practical or making new ones with Decompsoe if it was not. When I reached the southern face and the road, I made my descent.

Just when I reached the ground, the men came out of the undergrowth, bows trained on me.

"Give us the bird, girl. it belongs to me!" The men with the female eagle corpse barked.

I knew it was the mate of the one struggling to live in my backpack.

I gave him a defiant stare, "No. Both birds are mine. You killed my eagle!"

I wasn't afraid of arrows. Penny came around and snorted, patting the grass with her hoof. Our anger and resolve were shared.

"These birds killed my sheep! Who is going to pay for it?"

They probably did. But I gave zero fucks for that man's sheep. Just by hearing the man's voice, the eagle's blood boiled and so did ours.

"You murdered my tame eagle! Who is going to pay for the bird?"

The archers behind laughed. "Tame sky-lord? That's rare now. These critters respect no one! They can't be tame!"

Then it struck me. I already had a bond with that bird. All the weird feelings I had the whole day were caused by him. Sent by him.

"If the bird is not tame, what will happen if I put my hand in the pack?" I asked him.

"You'll lose your hand. Now stop playing around and give me the bird. Or I'll tell my men to shoot you and take your horse. That will be a waste."

I could sense the bird awake. And angry. He was the premium one, he didn't need a slingshot. I willed him to cry. He didn't let me down. A shrill shriek came from my pack. Good to know he could speak.

I put my hand behind my back and into the pack. "You were saying? Now, you'll pay for my slain bird and the broken eggs, and I'll pay for your sheep. You really got me angry, there."

"Shoot her!" He called.

I summoned my frying pan and the hatchet. The arrows came. I tried to block and parry with the metal tools in my hands and got... zero success.

As if I could parry point-blank shots. At least two missed. Four hits. Penny dashed and barreled through the archers before they could reload. My adrenalin was extremely high and I barely felt the shots. I pushed the iron of the tips out of me and Decomposed the wood, making the shafts clatter down. I was bleeding but the hole was closing.

The leader moved to the side and away from Penny as the horse tried to kick him. The others were on the ground, two of them trampled by the horse. He nocked his bow and I threw the hatchet at the bow. The blade caught the bowstring and the staff quivered violently, hitting the man's hand.

I charged and bashed his face with a two-handed frying pan swing.

"Bitch!" He drew a dagger.

I moved backward, storing the frying pan and taking my survival knife instead.

He stood up. Penny whined. The eagle cried. I crouched, poised to strike.

"HALT! IN THE NAME OF THE ENSI!" Brendan's voice came from the road.

"Milady! Are you okay?" Kanu-Kasu said behind me and drew his scimitar as he jumped off his horse. "You! Prepare to die!"

The man dropped his dagger. I saw a sword coming from behind me, held by Brendan's muscular arm.

"What is going on here?" The guard captain asked, voice full of authority.

"This man killed one of my sky-lords, broke my eggs and wounded the other bird," I told Brendan.

It was not a lie. What I felt at night was the female dying. They were bonded to me, therefore mine. Even though I had no idea, in my heart, that was true.

"These wild birds killed my sheep! They are wild!"

The other archers were doing their best play-dead act. Without any immediate danger, I took off the backpack and retrieved the bird. He looked alert, his head swiveling back and forth as he assessed the surroundings. He zeroed in the hunter with the female corpse and cried bloody murder.

I held his beak. "Would I be able to do this to a wild bird?" I challenged him, even though I knew he was mad at me. I sent him calming thoughts. 'Play out this one with me, buddy.'

He held my finger in his beak, taking care to not break the skin. "See? He could've bitten off my finger, but he doesn't. He wouldn't even poke my eyes off." I brought him close to my face. I knew my affirmation annoyed him almost as much as losing his mate and clutch. He beat my face with the blunt upper part of his beak. "Totally tame!"

"Sir, you have to pay for the bird. This rock is nobody's property and the birds are really hers." Brendan said.

"No! It is not right!" The hunter cried. He recognized Brendan and was obviously scared.

"Okay, let's think this one over," I said, trying to act diplomatically but without being so. I was going to corner him into an agreement and leave it there. "We are clearly in disagreement. So, let's go to the magistrate and sort this out. Maybe you are right, but I'd take any trial the magistrate proposes to prove that I was right.

"Or you could strike a deal with me. Give me my bird you killed, we consider ourselves even regarding damages done to one another. You take your men and go on your way, I take my birds and horse and go on my way."

Sandra you sly bitch.

I was not proud of what I was doing but he murdered my children. I felt weird. It was like I had laid these eggs. I felt like a mourning mother. My instincts and body were raring to go at that man's throat.

"The magistrate won't be happy to see you again, lady Rinaldi," Brandon honestly remarked, displaying concern.

Kanu-Kasu chuckled. "Again."

"Yeah, he might get us both killed for contempt," I added.

The hunter raised his hands. "I yield. I yield. Here, take your cursed birds."

"And you take your wounded men," I roared at him. He looked at his knife and I kinda wanted him to pick it up. He looked at the arrow wounds and went wide-eyed. My skin was showing.

He scuttled back. I had Penny go around and stop by my side. "I agree. I'll go without any ill will if you do the same."

"The captain and Kanu-Kasu are witnesses then. Let's go home, Dime, Penny."

Yeah. My horse was called Penny, why wouldn't I call my eagle Dime?

"Good name," Brandon quipped.

I put the bird in the backpack, Kanu-Kasu took the female and placed the corpse in the saddlebag. We got on our horses and rode home. Brandon came with us.