Friedrich air conditioner remote control instructions

You have been a good woman your whole life, but you also have carried a secret with you that fills you with silent shame and embarrassment, because your fantasy doesn't match your personality at all. There is something secretly submissive in you that yearns to be satisfied. You long for a dominant, sexy, man to take control of you and discipline you. You want to feel helpless...dominated...NOT in control. You want to have your panties forcibly taken down and be spanked like a naughty school girl. You want to be pushed down over the sofa, feel your skirt lifted, your moistened underwear pulled aside. You want a big, hard cock to invade your slippery wetness, stretching you wider than you thought possible and making you feel oh so delicious!. You are a normal person, constrained by society's conventions and frustrated by your inability to realize your innermost fantasies. You want to be spanked with your panties down and you want to be fucked hard! -- you are already getting wet right now just thinking about it.
I am a well educated, intelligent & professional man who is physically fit and accustomed to dealing with naughty women like you. I will lecture you and instruct you to pull your skirt up around your waist as I kneel before you and pull your panties down to your thighs. The delicious smell of your aroused pussy will rise to meet me. You will feel the cool air on your bush and revel in the delicious anticipation. Then I will instruct you to stand against the wall with your legs spread and your hands above your head while I slowly pace about behind you and your clit tingles with excitement. You will feel my eyes on your pussy and this thought will excite you even more. Then I will call you sternly and bend you over a chair so that your pussy is in full view - wet, exposed, vulnerable. Oh, the shame of it. I will stroke your clit gently and when you try to stop me I will slap your cheeks hard.
Then I will commence the spanking proper. Perhaps I will use my hand. If you resist too much I will use a slipper or my leather belt. It will sting, but not be intolerable, and every now and again you would feel my fingers probe your fragrant slippery slit, making you gasp with pleasure and ache for penetration. Maybe I will tell you to reach between your legs and spread your lips apart with your fingers as I kneel behind you and slide my tongue between your sopping aromatic folds. I will continue spanking your now very red ass and you will be torn between tears and screams of delight. When your punishment is over, I will instruct you to kneel in front of me and take my big cock deep into your mouth, making you almost gag as I hold your hair and fuck your face while you moan approvingly and look up at me, your eyes wild with desire. When I am convinced that you want my cock badly enough I will turn you around on your hands & knees and I will wait as you kneel in that position until you BEG me to fuck you, and then I will grab you firmly by your hips and RAM my hard cock into your wet & swollen pussy hard and fast; banging you the way you were meant to be banged, until we both collapse in a sweaty heap of sexual bliss.
I know you are wet after reading this so lets do something about it..

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Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
— Langston Hughes
Catalogue Description
Self-Monitoring Behavioural Management Report: Casimir Szymański, Scazim Institute of Science and Technology - English Translation
Date:
15 Summer-2 3429 (Standard Parimthian Calendar)
November 23rd, 2162 (Gregorian Calendar)
Held by:
The UK National Archives, Kew
Legal status:
Public Record(s)
My father worshipped a fabricated, pagan prophet.
The Senghavi of the Parimthian Empire are principally joined under the ditheistic religion called Siedi, which I do not subscribe to. Of course, the Senghavi's literature, art, and faith flooded the whole of Earth upon their arrival a century ago. From this ocean of civilised culture, my degenerate species drew a sample, claimed it as our own, and polluted it with a distorted, appropriated, dumbed-down doctrine.
The central figure in this corrupt sample of Siedi was a man whom my father called Jesus Christ. He was said to have offered himself as a sacrifice that could be made to a single God. It was a final sacrifice, one beyond lambs or cattle or people. One that would atone for humanity's sins, so that we could have the free choice between the eternal presence of God and the eternal absence of "Him."
My father dressed himself in black, with a standing collar whose white fabric was exposed at the centre. That much, I could recall. He preached to hopeful humans in what was called a church, though I did not know what he was preaching. At the very least, my childhood is fuzzy in that regard.
The pain that throbbed through my skull, after the blonde savage had slammed my head against the ridges of the airlock, faded into the background. I could not focus; perhaps, I thought, one of their improvised explosives had gone off by accident. There was blue Senghavi blood staining my dress shirt. The rush of air escaping into vacuum pierced my ears.
Perhaps it was thirst of water, which binds most sapient beings—the Sons of Liberty had reached an agreement with the Colonial Defence Force to allow spacecraft delivering food, water, and medical aid, only to unleash the anti-collision lasers of this cursed spaceliner upon those very ships.
Or perhaps it was the explosion, as I initially thought, an inadvertent complication which had wrought injury and death over my countrymen, and which had forced the terrorist savages to attempt to patch up the many hull breaches left by debris.
Or perhaps it was simply the stress of betraying, in my desperate efforts to save everyone from this senseless violence, the greatest secret of the Senghavi Terrans: our antimatter research. Word of it had likely been forwarded already, hundreds of light-years away, to that pink-hued marble which was Parimth itself.
Or perhaps it was all three; thirst, explosion, and stress. In any case, my mind shut it all out, and something lost from my childhood flashed before me:
We're standing on the cracked street of the Vennec Human Reservation. In the distance, the Senghavi's white, glassy spires reach above the clouds, their accents of luminescence dim in the broad daylight.
I hold a ball in my palm. It's wrapped in white leather held together with red stitching. I toss it to Dad.
Instead of his clerical uniform, he wears the normal "T-shirt" and "cargo shorts." Along with the clerical getup, they are just two of the many sorts of clothing which the Senghavi have invented for humanity. I toss the ball to Dad, and he swings a primitive wooden bat.
The ball goes soaring, further than he meant to. He jogs down the road to retrieve it, then gives me the wooden bat. The breeze ruffles his hair just as he ruffles mine with his hand.
"Now, you try," he says. "It's just practice, that's all."
For some reason, he lifts one leg in the air, then pitches the ball to me. I swing. The impact of the ball shakes through the wood, and it goes careening off to the left.
"I did it!" I yell. "But it went out of bounds."
"Heyyyy, that's not bad," Dad says with a reassuring voice. "Good job, just try to go a little more right next time."
Mom comes out onto the front porch, the breeze ruffling her dress as she waves to Dad. "Dinner's ready, and Mom's pie is... almost ready."
I stare blankly at her until I realise that she is talking about her Mom, Grandma, who is the best at making pumpkin pie.
"The pie!" I shout, running and jumping to the front door. "I totally forgot about that!"
I am ready to speed my way through dinner just so I can get to dessert, but Dad stops me before my first bite.
Of course, I think. We need to say grace. Me, Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Grandpa all hold hands, thanking God for our food, and then dig in. But Mom and Dad just talk about work, and I am too focused on finishing my food quickly to pitch in.
Finally—Grandma's pie!
When you bite into the soft, smooth filling, you can instantly tell it's been made with fresh pumpkins, not the boring canned ones. The taste of cinnamon and spice is balanced out perfectly with the coolness of the whipped cream.
The flavour spreads through my tongue and nostrils, filling my entire brain with a feeling of amazing-ness. If I wrote the Simple-Speak Dictionary for Senghavi Terrans, I'd put Grandma's pie next to the translation of "perfection."
I should save a slice, I think, for the Senghavi kid.
Even though it's only been a week since I met him through the playground fence, we already told each other where we live, and I want to get to know him more. He doesn't live on the Vennec Human Reservation, but his house is just a bike-ride away in Fellye Neighborhood.
I wonder if anyone's ever given pumpkin pie to an alien before. Even though humans only invented it fifty years ago, it makes me feel proud of my species!
When Mom tucks me into bed, kissing my forehead, I tell her what I'm going to do.
"Oh, you wild thing," she coos. "You're so much like your father. And you have his eyes, you know? Just stay safe."
"Don't worry, I'll do my best."
>! "Good night. I love you." !<
>! "I love you, too, Mom," I say. I hug her tightly from my bed, and a warm, fuzzy feeling blossoms within me. I can hardly fall asleep in my excitement. !<
Luckily, Fellye Neighborhood doesn't take apartheid that seriously, and I don't think anybody cares about an eight year-old human riding his bicycle around the gates.
Next evening, I do just that, peddling out of the Reservation's entrance into the violet dusk. When I get to Mensim's address, I ring the hi-tech front doorbell, and a really tall Senghavi shows up.
"Oh, dear," she says in Parimthian. "A barbarian hatchling—by what name do you go?"
"I'm Casimir," I say nervously. I don't pay that much attention in school, but I know just enough Parimthian to talk to the Senghavi woman. "Are you Mrs. Munghazi? Is Mensim fe Munghazi here? I got two slices of pie. You can have one, too!"
She looks at me suspiciously, antennae twitching. "That would be Teacher Munghazi to you; I know not why you natives invented these odd 'Mister' and 'Missis' honorifics. Hold on—Ghanvati! A native hatchling stands at our doorstep!"
Ghanvati must be Mensim's dad. I wonder where his other moms are; only one has shown up to the door. Ghanvati shows up with two of them—they are both shorter and daintier than Teacher Munghazi, their raptorial forelimbs folded shyly against their bodies. In front of the group of three is Mensim, and I involuntarily gasped with excitement.
"Mensim!"
"This is your new companion?" Ghanvati asks Mensim.
Mensim's papery forewings flicker with affirmation. "I met him at school."
"What, pray tell, is the point of apartheid if it does not actually keep natives away from Senghavi?" whines one of Ghanvati's wives.
Ghanvati's antennae droop as if to say "I don't know," while Mensim lifts my arms, inspecting me like I am a test animal in a mad scientist's laboratory.
"How do you guys not get cut all the time?" he asks, tracing his tarsal hairs over my bare skin. "You're so fleshy!"
"I do get cut all the time," I giggled. "We just use band-aids. Oh, do you wanna eat a pumpkin pie?"
It turned out that pumpkin pie is bad for alien stomachs. Mensim had to go to the bathroom for a long time, and three of his moms got mad at me.
When I got back, Dad and Mom were arguing. I snuck close to the back porch, making sure they couldn't hear me.
"Yes, they leave some people alone," Dad said. "Obviously, they can't spy on every single human who believes in human religions. But Katarzyna, they still need people to make an example out of, and I don't want to be that person!"
"Casimir is a responsible kid," Mom retorts. "I told him he can't tell anyone what you do, and he listens to me."
"He's eight years old. You can't just let him wander around aliens with a secret that could have me killed! Or have you killed!"
Mom cups Dad's cheek and looks him in the eye. She's a lot shorter than him. "Look, love. You're a great father, and I think it's amazing that you spend time with him. But you're the only person he talks to. You know just as well as I do that he needs to talk to other kids! It's not healthy; even Teacher Perevvoxath agreed. And now he finally has a friend."
Dad sighs, running his hands through his black hair. My hair. "You really think aliens are a substitute for human interaction?"
>! "I think every human needs a person they can talk to, and Casimir found one. If you really care about him, stop preaching for a while! Your church isn't gonna die without you. It'll be okay." !<
The next day, I visit Mensim's house after school again. And the next day after that, and the next after that. His dad Ghanvati is formally named Engineer Munghazi. I am to call his moms Teacher Munghazi, Teacher Munghazi, Teacher Munghazi, Accountant Munghazi, Priestess Munghazi, Doctor Munghazi, and Maidservant Munghazi.
A couple weeks later, Mensim and I are lounging together on his couch, watching a Parimthian war movie. The main characters are fighting against the evil forces of the Imperium of Orion. Under his head capsule, Mensim is munching something called Synth-Fruit, which is imported from a faraway planet called Mryi. I eat Pop-Tarts, which I'm pretty sure are toxic to him.
"Come on, just give me one," Mensim exclaims, reaching over to steal the sweet snacks from me. "It can't be that bad!"
I lift the Pop-Tarts away from him, laughing. "Stoppit, you're attacking me! Pay attention to the movie, or I'm gonna shoot you!"
"But I just want one..."
"It's gonna poison you, and you're gonna get your weird alien throw-up all over me!"
Priestess Munghazi, the oldest of his moms, bursts into the living room, her jewellery clinking over her clerical cape.
"Your sister conveyed to me quite the disturbing piece of news, Mensim," Priestess Munghazi cries. "The father of Casimir is a priest of a most barbarous and evil perversion of the Siedi faith. Ghanvati and I spoke, and we agreed that you are not to consort with this primitive, pagan savage any longer."
I drop my crumbly Pop-Tart on the couch, confused at the sudden order.
"But Priestess Munghazi, I'm not dangerous or evil. I'm just a kid."
"Nonsense! You are dangerous; your father is a barbarian worshipper of this evil, primate paganism that is called Christianity, and a most woeful effect is begot that even self-respecting Senghavi have 'gone native,' as they say. Mensim, if you continue to consort with this native spawn, I will be impelled to inform the Siedi Court, and they may by chance see to it that he is executed!"
"W-Wait!" Mensim says, holding up the remote to pause our movie. He gets off of me, suddenly losing interest in my Pop-Tart, his vestigial forewings rising with concern. "Please, Mother. I promise he won't be any trouble."
My blood runs cold. Dad, executed? Just because what he believes in isn't "civilised" enough? Actually, I thought that Mom told him to stop preaching for a while.
Mensim scrambles to *his father's sleeping quarters, and I trail frantically after him.*
"Father," Mensim says. "Is Casimir's father's job so ghastly that he should be executed by the Siedi Court?"
"We can't just let the natives spread the same barbarous religions that they used to kill each other," Ghanvati replies, his secondary arms clasped together. "It's a threat to safe, moral society. Priestess Munghazi told me his father spreads evil and paganism. I have no reason not to trust the oldest of your mothers."
"But Casimir's my best friend! If you tell the Siedi Court about his father, I'll... I'll run away! I'll hate you!"
Distressed vibrations emanate through the floor beneath my feet; Mensim's antennae and papery forewings and hindwings go limp. Something like lilies and the earthy scent of rain fills the air.
"My dearest Mensim," Ghanvati says softly, dipping his head capsule with compassion. "I will hold off, just this once. It would be apt of you not to cause me to reconsider."
"T-thank you, Engineer Munghazi," I say, wiping my own tears. "My dad's not a bad person, I promise."
After confronting his dad, Mensim and I keep on watching movies and playing digital games. He always wins when we wrestle, but I still haven't given up (even though Priestess Munghazi always tells us to stop roughhousing).
I even bring my Lego pieces to his house. He doesn't know what Legos are, but later, in his sleeping quarters, we build together. He makes a cool-looking spaceship that he calls a "negative energy generator."
"Hey, you took all the cool black and grey pieces," I complain. "Now I can't finish my army base!"
"This is cooler than your army base," Mensim says proudly. "Father used to work in one. It uses the superposition of squeezed vacuum states to produce a field of negative energy density."
"I have no idea what that means, but that sounds really smart."
"No kidding! It's how people make wormholes and fly all the way to other stars."
"Well, my army guys could beat your negative energy-thingy. They have machine guns."
"My guys could just fly a [~million billion trillion kilometres] away, and yours can't do anything about it!"
"Then your guys are wimps. But my guys aren't. Because they're the Army!"
>! *We also explore the pine forest in his backyard. Within just two more weeks, we have uncovered all sorts of interesting things, like a piece of a real human skull. One time, we found a human foot sculpted and smoothed out of stone—who would make such a thing?—and a dead metal device with the icon of a bitten-out-of apple printed on it. *!<
There were also other human body parts made out of ancient stone, too: the cracked half of a man's face buried a foot deep, a muscly arm sticking out of the soil. Even a private part, which I snickered at, though Mensim seemed unfazed.
There is something else we start to do. My parents have given me "the talk," and Mensim told me that his parents gave him the Senghavi version of it. And so even as we talk and play in the woods, we experiment—because we are curious, and why should we not be?
A fragment of a memory in the forest; Mensim's raptorial forelimbs are set on my shoulders as his compound eyes look into my primate eyes, and he says, "You cannot tell anyone about this. Anyone. Absolutely no one."
I don't know how, but Priestess Munghazi learned of what we were doing, and now she expresses anger and disgust alike, her wings and antennae wild and rigid. Ghanvati is the same. Mensim and I... We're actually making them reconsider their decision not to tell the Siedi Court about my dad.
A fragment of a memory... I feel like I am in space, stranded aboard a spaceliner that has been hijacked by terrorists, its atmosphere venting amid a backdrop of violence... But I am not, I am in the forest that Mensim and I talked and played in; I am in Mensim's home, terrified as I am yelled at by Ghanvati, whose compassion no longer shines through, accompanied by Priestess Munghazi.
"By the names of the Gods, it's those false, pagan corruptions which humans have named as their religions, that are spouted by your father," Priestess Munghazi spits. I am teary-eyed and snot-nosed from guilt and embarrassment. "How horrid is the link between the state of barbarism and a most revolting and shameful propensity for bizarre and perverted behaviour!"
Then I am in my own family's living room, and the mom I love so dearly yells at me, too, but my father is quieter and only seems disappointed. This must be the first time in my life that I have felt true shame, I think; the kind that leaves you with an emptiness inside. Like the whole point of existing just vanished inside of me.
*The worst part is that I cannot even lean on Mom's shoulder, because she is distressed—because she knows what will happen— *
"This is all on you, Casimir!" she screeches, tears in her eyes. "All on you!"
I remember telling Priestess Munghazi that 'I'm not dangerous or evil; I'm just a kid,' but now I can't be sure anymore. I can tell I am different in the eyes of my family. They are disgusted by me.
After Priestess Munghazi tells the Siedi Court of my father's evil, barbaric Christian teachings, the Parimthian soldiers bring my father to the gallows. Their snow-white exoskeletons gleam under a burning sun. They have dressed him in his clerical uniform, and the camera is close enough that I can see his cross necklace.
I have been grounded in my room; still, I have a television to see the live broadcast.
Hanging works for primates and mantids alike. It happens in the Forum of Movvaeti, the venue for public events in our area, where my father is a lesser criminal compared to the native leaders and Senghavi malcontents who have dissented from Colonial Governor Nieve fe Skellth.
He is joined with seven other convicts, three humans and four Senghavi, and their crimes are read to the crowd—blasphemy, paganism, monogamy, witchcraft, seditious libel, insulting the Parimthian Crown, treason against the Parimthian Crown, and refusal to quarter Parimthian soldiers.
Why? None of this feels right. Why should my father be killed because of what he says and believes? Why can't these people be judged with fairness, rather than at the whim of some distant space emperor?
Not only have I been grounded, but I grow cold without my mother's touch. I want to hold someone's hand while watching Dad lose his life, but nobody is there. Mom brings me food, but she doesn't even look at me. Why can't she look at me? Why can't she speak to me? I just want things to be the way they used to be, when Dad would help me practise hitting a ball with a bat on the street.
I watch him turn down a caped, bejewelled priestess of the Siedi faith, who thought she could make my dad accept their Gods before his death. Before a modest crowd of humans and Senghavi alike, all eight of the convicts have their arms and legs bound with rope.
I am begging myself to turn the TV off, but I can't bring myself to. The Senghavi executioner uses some kind of hi-tech display to remove the supports from beneath the convicts' feet. My stomach flips over inside of me, a nausea of shame filling my body.
I can't deny it any longer. This is my fault—this is why my family avoids me—this is why they are disgusted by me—and Dad falls and his head jerks when the noose goes taut.
As he hangs there, I cannot tell for how long he remains alive. My insides are cold. After the broadcast ends, after night falls and I sit in the moonlight spilling faintly through my windows, that is when it all comes out. I sob alone. I scream for Mom to help me and be there for me, but she does not come. Her harsh voice resonates through my memory; this is all on me. I am a disgrace to everyone I love, and that is why they have left me here. Why they avoid me as if I am a disease.
The only thing I want is to see Dad again, but he is gone forever. I curl up on my room floor. What is this? What is this loneliness? This stinging hatred I feel against myself?
No one, human or mantid, will be there for me. I cry until my throat cannot ache any more harshly, until my eyes cannot sting any more painfully, and then I go cold inside, my body shivering in the moonlight. I retreat into my happy memories with Dad until it is too painful to bear.
I wish so dearly I could end it all, to take my own life and join Dad in the heaven that he believed in. There is a belt in my closet that I can use on myself in the way the Siedi Court killed Dad.
But beneath the sickly well of shame, the nausea and crushing humiliation at the stupid antics of Mensim and I, with which Mom's brief gaze pierces me—beneath the weight of knowing that I will never fill the torturous vacuum Dad left, knowing that I am a foul and disgusting son to the mother I so desperately need, that I see no end to the infinite river of anxiety and guilt pouring through the hole left in my heart—beneath my isolation and my longing for human touch—something breaks inside of me.
An emptiness of purpose. There is no point in going on, and I feel nothing, not even the desire to stop living. There is one exception: A hatred of myself, and of the humans I loved as family.
One day, Mom appears in my doorway, and she just stands there. Before, I would've welcomed being offered interaction with her beyond just receiving food, but now I am numb, my eyes all out of tears to cry.
"Pack your things," she says, her voice flat. She still doesn't look at me; the eyes she once said I inherited from Dad, she now shuns. "You're going to a residential school."
Indigenous Residential Schools; that is what Colonial Governor Nieve fe Skellth calls them, I think. They're for human kids who have trouble letting go of their "savage" roots; kids that the normal schools aren't enough to civilise. Schools that show you how to act Senghavi, to think Senghavi, to... be Senghavi.
There was a human kid in normal school whose sister went there, but they said that something had happened to her there; something in that residential school had changed her before she finally returned.
But I feel no fear as I pack my clothes into my bags. Every time I look in my bedroom mirror, a violent feeling rushes to my chest, only to dissipate into the hatred-tinged numbness I have grown so used to.
Finally, the time comes to depart. In the early morning, I am already aboard the autonomous public transport. It pulls out of the cracked street I once played with Dad in, passing by the entrance of Fellye Neighborhood, driving off into the fiery, violet Terran dawn. I see my faded reflection in the window, and my chest jumps with revulsion.
So I look down, fidgeting with my touchpad—then the numbness abruptly leaves, and my tears fall once again.
Forgive me for all the redaction, Doctor Morgthax. While I will not disclose what I wrote, you are correct, as always, about the act of writing. There is some semblance of psychological relief in typing one's sullen inner thoughts onto a touchpad. As if one can be heard without being heard.
By the time I drifted back to reality, my mouth and lips dry from dehydration, the hijackers had patched up the holes punched through the hull by the accidental explosion. Plenty of Senghavi passengers were spilling cerulean blood from beneath their exoskeletal coverings; though they were all alive, they needed medical attention.
Two hundred-something Senghavi civilians aboard this luxury spaceliner, and none had yet died. That stroke of luck offered me a glimmer of hope.
Pavok, the child, was emitting vibrations through the floor in his despair, the smell of rain and lilies becoming evident to me. It is starkly fascinating, the evolutionary dissimilarity between how native Terrans and Senghavi Terrans cry.
Those ships were delivering medical aid and critical provisions to the passengers, Commander Lokprel barked, the neutrino signals that encoded his gruff voice coming out from the intercom. Why did you laser them?
"Stop playing games," Jake snapped wearily into his radio. I recalled that his full name was Jacob Weaver, as Commander Lokprel had mentioned. A drop of blood streaked down his face. "We know what you're up to."
Paranoia will get you nowhere, Jacob. If we don't work with each other, you won't survive. We have detected an explosion aboard the spaceliner. Is anyone dead?
"Not yet," Jake growled. "But Fenni Svim will be if your forces keep approaching!"
Fenni Svim—the Senghavi from the Vellir Veneti Physics Lab, against whose skull Jake had pressed his pistol to halt the CDF's initial approach, hours ago—stiffened in her seat. I had never known the nuclear researcher very well before this barbarous event, but I prayed to the Gods of Siedi (whom I do not really believe in) that she would be okay.
Many of the passengers were still being kept by the windows to deter snipers. They included Pavok, behind whom Khadija stood guard.
"Sorry for attacking you," Jake suddenly said to me, his voice worn-out. "It's like Khadija said. The bugs know that humans are strong when they're united. It's why they try to play us against ourselves, to ally with just some of us, to try to make us hate each other; to hate ourselves. It's how they tore the United States apart. Everything they do... It's to make us ashamed of our species, our own culture, to lose hope in the future. If we were united, Casimir... they'd be terrified of us. And make no mistake—we're uniting again."
"E-even if what you say about mankind is true," I croaked, "Our species would not have settled anywhere but Earth. Our culture and history would still have been negligible and primitive, the richness and complexity of the Senghavi, still greater by many orders of magnitude."
"Casimir, did you go to one of the Indigenous Residential Schools?" Khadija asked.
"Y-yes," I managed, dusting off my formal wear and cleaning my glasses. "I was sent to one as a child. They are for those of us savage natives which conventional education could not sufficiently civilise."
Khadija's eyes softened with compassion, and she gestured to my wrist. "I asked because of that code on your wrist. I've heard about some of the things that happen in those places. The cruelty; the abuse."
I glanced at the abstract identification code tattooed onto my skin, faded with time. I hadn't thought about it in ages; it was but a remnant of my childhood, and I never paid it any attention.
"Residential schooling is necessary and proper," I tell her. "It is similar to human-mantid apartheid in its purpose; it keeps the public safe from savagery. "
"If we get out of this alive, I'm gonna take you with me to Russia," she said, wiping sweat from her brow. "Specifically, Moscow. It's where I lived after the fall of Türkiye. Man controls it, not the Senghavi."
I was already aware that a vast, untamed region named Zvorriu-Sai, located in Earth's northeastern quarter-sphere, is called Russia in simple-speak. A decade ago, Nieve fe Skellth had tried to civilise the hunter-gatherers who lived there, but his troops starved and froze in the snow.
It was with the multitude of planetary habitat fabricators that his army had been using that the native primates of Zvorriu-Sai constructed such cities as Moscow or Saint Petersburg.
"Russian civilization goes back over a millennium," Khadija explained. "I don't give a fuck about what the Senghavi have built on this planet; Russian architecture is my favourite, hands down. Anyway, it's the most stable and self-sufficient of the ten countries we've got left. Hard to invade, you know? It's seen better days, but the cities are nice, the economy is good. I think you'll find it's a hell of a lot less 'savage' than whatever the fuck the Parimthian Empire is doing."
To corroborate her claims, she showed me a photo from the gallery of her cracked, dusty touchpad. Before a busy canal, the waters tinted orange by a rising sun, a more relaxed version of her smiled into the camera alongside some human of the phenotype I had seen in the video of Tokyo. Looming over them was an intricate, palatial structure topped with colourful, onion-shaped domes.
"How... quaint," I replied, unsure of what to say, though it ignited dry laughter in Khadija.
"Looks like we got a communiqué from the UN," another hijacker announced, his mask still covering his face. I couldn't place his accent at all. He held up his own touchpad, displaying photos of the Colonial Governor herself—Perellanth fe Sumur—flanked by armed UN military personnel. They were clad in urban camouflage that was marred with blood. The black, plant-like extraterrestrial gazed defeatedly in the sterile lighting.
The UN had captured her! The Crown's decision to appoint a Vire as the leader of a Senghavi colony had been no small event. I was certain that after all the talk of Senghavi Terran independence, then followed by the Colonial Governor's capture, His Imperial Majesty regretted his progressivist decision.
"We... We did it!" Jake exclaimed, his voice disbelieving. "We took down Perellanth!"
You achieved nothing, Commander Lokprel retorted over the intercom. Not beyond the promotion of Benghoviu fe Prim to Acting Colonial Governor. If you kill Governor Sumur, Governor Benghoviu will become the permanent Colonial Governor as per the chain of command, and he will carry on the fine work of his predecessor.
Jake seemed to consider that situation a fair one, and he nodded to himself subtly. "Okay, sure. But if you do nothing, we'll still kill our first hostage."
What I can promise you is that Delegate Essintsya fe Baryn will submit an Act to the Forum of Delegates to recognize the sovereignty of the UN. It will be deliberated over for months, but it is your only realistic option. In return, we demand that you allow the passengers injured by one of your explosives to board CDF medical ships.
I recalled that the Forum of Delegates had voted Benghoviu fe Prim as Vice Colonial Governor just a year ago. And before even that, the Senghavi who lived on Vennec—my home continent on Earth—had popularly elected the ever-prudent Essintsya fe Baryn to the Forum. She was quite the economic liberal, as her sort was called.
Delegate Baryn's statements on the social contract between a people and their government, as well as her rejection that the Parimthian Crown ruled by divine right, had resonated deeply with me.
Jake's eyes hardened, and he turned his radio back on. "I said no games!"
There are no games here, Jacob! We only aim to preserve as much sapient life as possible. And you are out of options.
The hijacker who had shown Colonial Governor Sumur's prison photo gave Jake a withering look. "We're dragging this on, man. I don't want anyone to die."
"Don't talk to me about death, Ramiro. Not after what happened in the US."
The so-called United States of America... called Gholo Vieda in Parimthian. That region was Nieve fe Skellth's last successful conquest before he attempted to take on the vast, snowy expanses of Zvorriu-Sai. I wondered if, like Khadija's experience in Türkiye in the Niethvahi region, Jake had witnessed firsthand the cultural assimilation and political integration of Gholo Vieda into the rest of Parimthian Earth.
The conquest of Gholo Vieda and Niethvahi were the great accomplishments of Perellanth's predecessor, of course; but, in my opinion, the devotion of the (now captured) Perellanth to the causes of liberty, reason, equality, and sapientism far outshadowed anything that Nieve had done. I am certain, however, that the Parimthian Crown disagrees.
In any case, my faith in CDF Commander Lokprel loth Fonvie had not risen. Perhaps that was a good thing; otherwise, I might have regretted betraying the knowledge of antimatter research in order to elicit a more competent Parimthian intervention.
More security forces took up positions around the spaceliner, each ship split sharply into sunlight and shadow amid the black of space. The hijacker called Ramiro pointed to a series of smaller craft, which seemed to be pulling away from the luxury spaceliner. Escape pods!
"Hostages are falling through our fingers," Ramiro said. "We need to do something."
"Go to the rear," Khadija ordered. "Stop anyone else from sneaking out!"
Jake's radio crackled with the voice of someone in the cockpit. We've intercepted a neutrino transmission from the new guy, Benghoviu fe Prim. He's calling for some kind of emergency council at the highest levels in the Parimthian Empire.
I scoffed internally. The Crown would intervene for the sake of investigating all this talk of antimatter, whose alluring utility had hitherto been confined to theory and fiction. But it was doubtful that His Imperial Majesty would agree to an emergency council for the sake of his colonists' security and well-being. As (relatively) progressivist as he was in policy, he was still very much a punitive emperor, not a rewarding one.
"I told the commander to stop advancing—dammit!" Jake spat. "We're only letting medical craft get any closer. Fire at the corvettes!"
Affirmative, his radio crackled. Targets in sight.
The spaceliner's anti-collision lasers flashed against several faraway spacecraft. A succession of oxygen-fueled fires, each lasting for a [~split-second] against the vacuum of space, flared in the distance. Even so, the growing array of naval craft began to close in upon us again, surrounding the spaceliner in every dimension.
Switching again to the neutrino-connected channel, Jake gave a disgusted scowl. "Are you deaf, Commander? If your people keep getting closer, the deal is off!"
The more you fire, the closer we will get, *Lokprel said. *We are just making sure it is safe for the medical craft. As long as you refrain from harming them, we will not hurt you.
The hijacker in the cockpit radioed to Jake again, her voice sounding more alarmed.
We're picking up a massive object on our scanners. It's headed our way.
"How massive are we talking?" Jake asked.
It's... some kind of warship, I think. Over a hundred times our size.
"You're joking, right?"
"A Parimthian spacecraft carrier," murmured a soft, whimpery voice.
It was Fenni Svim again, her praying raptorial forelimbs tucked close in fear.
"The Imperial Parimthian Navy?" I asked. "They're really here?"
"Y-you shouldn't act surprised," Fenni said. "I know you were speaking to someone on the P-Parimthian side. You leaked our greatest secret, Casimir."
"R-right."
"What's she talking about, dude?" Khadija asked. Suspicion of betrayal lingered in her dark eyes. She had believed the lie that I was only calling a loved one when I contacted Mensim, >! who is at present an agent of Parimth!<; she had trusted me, and defended me against Jake's wrath.
I didn't answer. The very reason we needed antimatter was that the colonists' outerspace spanned but a meagre few millionths of the Parimthian Empire's total volume. I did not know what exactly a spacecraft carrier one hundred times the size of our spaceliner could do for the hostages, but it would be far more competent than the comparatively flimsy Colonial Defence Force.
Finally, after so many years of strategic modesty in the administration of the Crown's distant colony, of his Earth, as His Imperial Majesty suffered expense upon expense in countering the Imperium of Orion... Parimth had sent a warship of the Imperial Parimthian Navy, here in full force!
There was no need to inquire as to its distance; I could see it through my window. It was far enough that I could view the whole of its great form. Senghavi architecture, of course, is usually round, white, and glassy, traced with glowing accents; however, the imperial warship was boxy and shadowy black, visible only by the silhouette that it carved into the beaming sun.
Already, dozens of smaller craft—operated by some of the finest Senghavi pilots in the Milky Way—began spilling out from the spacecraft carrier, moving in the shadow of their gargantuan mothership. As even the hostage passengers became aware of its presence, the muted chatter and whimpering, which had been ambient across the aisles of the spaceliner, finally ceased.
Because of me, all of us—colonists and savages alike—were, for the first time in a decade, going to face a military intervention by Parimth itself.

Clearing out some old stuff that I don’t use anymore/haven’t had the chance to use and are just taking up space
Prices were just estimated from looking around online, everything is negotiable and prices are by no means firm. If I am off on pricing please let me know and I will adjust. Shipping not included in most cases.
Trying to move every item so I will at least consider ANY offer!
Will update with images and additional items shortly
PayPal F&F Highly Preferred
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Hero Name: Psych-out Epithet: "The Mentalist" Real Name: [Need Ideas] Age: 27 Appearance: A 5'10 male with dark skin. He has dark purple eyes and short black hair Hero outfit: Psych-out is known for wearing a series of business suits. While the specific colors change, the suits are all made of a specialized fabric that is not only highly resistant to damage, but also lightweight and flexible, allowing for quick movement despite its bulky and restrictive appearance. A signature aspect of his outfit is his faceless mask, made of a sort of similarly durable plastic. This mask is outfitted with an air purifier, as well as antennae which synergize with his quirk Quirk: Brainwave The user generates and manipulates a psychic signal. This signal can interact with anything within a specific range. Psych-out's ability works in many ways like a radio. He is able to emit psychic waves, and Harmonize those waves in order to match the vibrations or signals generated by a specific targeted object. For example, brainwave allows him to "tap into" an electronic such as a television, disrupting it, manipulating it, or creating an entirely new signal and therefore a new image entirely (although this specifically requires a lot of effort). However, this quirk extends to much more than technopathy, as Psych-out's main ability is how brainwave affects the mind. For example, Brainwave can allow him to connect with another person, remotely speaking to them, reading their thoughts, and even confusing and jumbling their thoughts by creating mixed signals. Brainwave also has more tangible applications. For example, by condensing and focusing the psychic waves, Psychout can create directed vibrational attacks. Or, he can use this condensed energy to immobilize a target, however this requires being able to negate the vibration of that target. One of the most interesting and passive applications is that Brainwave as a quirk is constantly emitted. Because these psychic waves are always being generated, Psych-out posesses what can be considered a sort of "Sonar", being able to detect things around him within a limited radius. The weakness of this ability, however, is that this secondary vision is not capable of peaking through solid walls, nor would it be able to clearly define the object it detects, making it slightly unreliable Weaknesses: Brainwave requires a lot of focus, as well as the ability to detect and perfectly match frequencies on the fly. Further, mentally connecting to an person is a two-way street. This means that not only can brainwave hear a person's thoughts, but they can hear his. Distraction is a massive detriment to this ability. Equipment: Brainwave's mask is vital to the usage of his ability. The antennae on his mask serve to amplify his psychic signal, granting him greater range, as well as more accuracy. Further, his mask can be modified in order to block out all light, blinding him. This is done because trying to use sonar and eyesight is nauseating. Further, removing a sense allows him to focus more on detecting vibrations and connecting to them. Brainwave also utilizes small devices that emit an erratic but unique signature. This allows him to detect this device from far away, effectively becoming a limited tracking device. Other similar devices receive his signals easier, allowing him to remotely control thing from farther away than normal, and with more ease.

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​
Pure, unadulterated fear. With those 4 hateful eyes locked onto me, the bear colossus took its first step forward, and with it saturated my mind with a visceral terror. People always talk about the flight or fight reaction, speculating on which end of the fear response they might fall on. But apparently, there’s a third option too, because I froze. Those baleful eyes gripped me like a steel vise and with each plodding step forward I could feel them constricting around me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think, everything was consumed by that mounting sense of dread as my doom drew near.
This is ridiculous! I shouldn’t be this incapacitated by some dumb bear! It’s not the first time I’ve faced dangerous stakes in this world, and hell I’d even died already once before, so what’s with me!? But even as I tried to logic my way out, the back of my mind was already prepared with an answer. “This time is different,” It whispered. I’m not dying of clumsiness with an end too quick to process. I’m not dealing with the vague threat of a bunch of herons overrunning my territory. This time, I’m being hunted by a malicious being whose only desire is to see my end, and its winning.
Just then, 4 shafts bury themselves into the bear scion’s red orbs, the aether contained within them blowing large chunks of flesh away from the beast’s skull, followed shortly by an explosion of vines. The new growth attempted to dig deeper into the bear, fighting against its regenerating flesh to penetrate deeper towards the brain. With an angry howl, the beast was forced to use its massive claws to gouge out the arrows, leaving it temporarily blinded by the wounds. Just like that, the spell over my mind was shattered, and I was able to look away from the colossus, up to the brave bunny who had defended me.
From the canopy bounded my favorite jackalope in the world, her visage positively radiating fury. Foregoing her usual aether armor, she’d instead forced all of it directly into her bow to increase its destructive power. All, that is, but the thin sliver of wind aether she’d applied to the bottom of her feet, allowing her to bound through the sky as if it was terra firma. I’m filled with a potent mix of emotions as I watch her swap her bow into shortbow form, fully intending to dance around the bear and take advantage of any openings it dares give her. She did it! She’d managed multiple types of aether at once with that last attack!
But while I was relieved to have been released from the colossus’s gaze, that feeling was strongly tempered by the shame of my inaction. I’ve got to pull myself together dammit! This fight is far from over yet, and I can’t let myself quiver uselessly in a corner while my brave denizens do all the hard work facing this monstrosity. As if to mock the reformation of my resolve, the ground rumbled once more, and out from the giant hole in my mountain poured another host of bears and badgers, thundering onto the battlefield.
Right, this is Deepholm after all, so of course the asshole kept forces in reserve. I swear he must be emptying out the whole damn mountain on me! Uuugghh, fine. Of my scions, only Jackie and Alexa were combat capable at the moment, so they would each need to handle their respective scions on their own. The owl squads would back up Alexa in the sky vs the bats, meanwhile down on the ground my surviving forces were still scattered and disoriented. Alright, time to get to work. All units, fall back to the 3rd defensive line, that bear scion’s size will make it impossible for the regular invaders to help it with its fight against Jackie, so they’ll be forced to go around it to get to you or be crushed underfoot.
It's close, but my remaining denizens are able to make it behind the relative safety of the wooden barricades while my flechette-pines provided cover fire. By this time, the bear colossus has recovered enough of its sight to start fighting back against Jackie, swiping furiously at her while she jumps around burying more arrows into his joints to slow it down. With a fierce battle now being waged on three fronts, I take a moment to check in on Kelving to see how he’s progressing.
Still invisible somewhere inside Deepholm’s caverns, I find him seeping his stone magic into his surroundings. Noticing my presence, he informs me that trying to explore manually was taking too long, so he decided to swap tactics. To avoid detection, he’s maintaining invisibility on himself while keeping his magical flow slow and steady rather than risk alerting Deepholm with a burst of it all at once. As for why he’s soaking the surroundings with stone magic? Well, he actually stole the idea from the bat scion’s sonar, figuring that two can play at that game. His spell is slowly but surely mapping out the entirety of Deepholm’s interior, and once the sanctum’s location is revealed he can make a direct line towards it.
Excellent thinking on your part there Kelvin! Though I am worried for his safety. As of yet, we’ve only seen a bat and a bear scion, so that still leaves the badger one unaccounted for. Considering the fact that the invisibility potions are still just faulty prototypes and that he’s already had to go through all but the last one, I tell him to be as careful as he needs. We’ll figure out a way to hold out on defense for him to do his job. Stay safe kitty, cause I can’t send you any backup should things go sideways.
Up on the surface, to say that the defense is struggling would be a might bit of an understatement. Though Jackie has qualified herself as a threat worth being wary of, the bear has quickly adapted to her hit-and-run fighting style by choosing to simply tank its way through most of her hits and plow its way forward regardless. Even with Jackie striking it in the tendons or continuously destroying its eyes, the bear has figured out that its regeneration is just barely fast enough to keep up with her damage, and to slowly push out any vines that she tries to root into the flesh with. With several ponderous steps and a few blind swipes whenever Jackie gets too close, the colossus is steadily progressing across the lake and straight for my island.
Jackie may have the bear blinded and otherwise occupied currently, but all it would take is a bit of guidance from its winged compatriot and we'd be in some serious trouble. Well, that certainly puts batty up at the top of my list of priorities at the moment, but things aren’t looking so hot for my owls right now either. Though my owls are physically superior and able to hold their own against the greater number of bats swarming around, there is a vast gulf between the support the two scions are capable of effecting the fight with. Alexa isn’t intended to be a primary combat scion, plus she was only born barely more than 48 hours ago!
Meanwhile, her opponent is a giant nightwing bat that is a master of a strange blood-based form of spellcasting, and it has who knows how much experience in actual combat to back it up. This is further complicated by a hitch that none of us had thought to test beforehand. Turns out, when Alexa swaps out the contents of her Cache ability, it puts the ability on a 24hr cooldown before it can be modified again. Since this hadn’t been mentioned anywhere in the skill description, and Alexa hadn’t had the need to change the Cache’s contents until today, this unexpected limitation has left her scrambling trying to come up with a new plan of attack.
Since she’s been locked into storm affinity spells for the time being, Alexa tries to summon forth cumulonimbus clouds to use as a base for some lightning and hail. Yet each time the summoned effect begins to brew and build, the bat scion simply uses its sonic affinity to shred and scatter the stormy weather apart. Meanwhile, it is free to wreak havoc amongst my flyers with a flurry of blood spells. First, it pelts my owls with a slew of blood pellets big enough to kill if they strike any of the owls' vitals, but otherwise leaving behind more minor injuries. But that was just the setup for its next attack. With a dramatic pump of its wings, the nightwing hisses out the words of its next spell, despite not having needed to do so previously.
“Scarlet Blossom: Proliferation.”
The results of this were horrifying, to say the least. With a cruel glee evident in its eyes, the bat scion watched on as one by one my owls began to shake violently, before popping apart like an overfilled balloon. Each owl was one who had been struck by at least one of the previous blood pellets, presumably allowing the bat scion to spread the spell throughout the rest of their body before detonating it. But that was not the end of the carnage, as each drop of blood from the exploded owls dug into the flesh of whatever creature they landed on to repeat the process with their newest target. This technique did not bother to distinguish friend from foe, so owls and bats alike fell victim to its exponential spread, all while the bat scion grinned a wicked smile.
Desperately trying to salvage the situation, Alexa has her owls spread out as much as they can while still being able to help keep their fellows from being surrounded and picked off, each one doing their best to avoid the infected bats who had begun to make kamikaze dives at them. The nightwing didn’t deign to give her more time to think things over and instead swooped down upon her to engage my scion in melee combat. I quickly observe that this might mean the bat scion can’t focus on any other spells while it is maintaining the exploding blood one, and advise Alexa to take advantage of her smaller wingspan to focus on dodging for the time being while we work out a plan.
Down on the ground, Deepholm's regular denizens have made their way up to my entrance cave where they are being held back by a fierce barrage of needles. Giorno has got the flechette-pines firing in staggered groups to keep up the continuous assault while my froglings provide backup with their poisonous shots splashing against the particularly tough or unfortunately bunched together groups of enemies. He’s got my bunnies and leopards on standby behind the wooden barricades to deal with anything that manages to break through, but in reality we really just want them to get a bit of rest so they can recuperate enough for whatever might come next.
Thankfully, though there are still quite a few enemies left, we’re not outnumbered anywhere near as badly as the first wave. Since Deepholm doesn’t seem to have any surprises to pull out from its hat for its regular denizens, it looks like with enough time my defenders will be able to take care of those invaders without any further issues. Finally, some good news. I tell Jackie to delay the big guy for as long as she can with her disabling shots, just keeping him to a slow forward march is a huge help. Then, once either that bat problem or the lesser invaders have been dealt with, we should be able to get her some backup to try and overwhelm the bear’s regenerative rate.
That leaves the battle in the sky as the most critical situation, so I turn my attention once more to Alexa and her dogged resistance. Flapping furiously she’s managed to keep dodging every attack thrown her way, but the toll of exertion is already starting to catch up to her. It won’t be long until exhaustion slows her down enough for the nightwing’s attacks to start landing. Noticing how close the bat scion was getting, Alexa decided to dive down and back towards the creature’s main body, using the assistance of gravity to accelerate her past the bat’s grasping talons. Still, she wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid the blow entirely, and so received a long gash across her back for her trouble. Thankfully the extra space she’d managed to earn by flying to the rear gave us both some more time to think up a plan while the cumbersome beast had to arc back around.
Ok, let’s break it down. Alexa is locked into storm magic without any access to other techniques nor enough experience of her own to utilize her native spatial magic effectively. Storm magic generally works based on the user’s strong mental image of storms to function which between their own experience and all the mental images I’ve shared of the storms I’d experienced in my past life has given my scion plenty to work with. The problem with storm magic is that it takes a much larger amount of mana to use, and it takes time to gather and propagate the storm. Furthermore, after forming said storm it requires a great deal of control and further mana to direct it on its path or to try and make adjustments to parts of it.
Because of all this, it leaves the magic incredibly susceptible to disruptions, especially ones strong enough to disperse the clouds directly as the bat scion can. So obviously, trying to form a proper storm and use that to fight is completely out of the question here, especially since Alexa had used up such a large amount of her mana already with her previous attempts. But what about all the minor bits of storm magic that work in the background to create the cloud formations in the first place? The whole reason storm magic costs so much mana initially is due to working off of only the pictured end result and letting magic fill in the rest of the blanks. So what if we focus on those blanks instead? Let’s see, what do you need for a storm to form?
Well first off, obviously moisture in the air. Can’t do stormy things without some water vapor to work with, naturally. Then the weather channel people would always talk about things like high and low-pressure systems, oh and temperatures of course. And I know that a temperature difference is needed to get air moving. But if moving the atmosphere around is all that’s needed we could always use magic instead of thermal energy.
While I’m busy racing through what little knowledge I have about meteorology, the bat scion has gotten close enough to once more give chase to Alexa as she swerves through the sky. My time for thinking up something useful is growing severely limited. C’mon you dumb jewel, think! What can we do with moving the atmosphere around? Translating moving air to wind magic could work, but the bat’s sonic affinity is too likely to disrupt a straightforward attack like that. We need something it won’t see coming, that it wouldn’t know how to defend against. Wind…moving air…moving…moving gas?
Suddenly I’m struck by inspiration as I watch Alexa breathing heavily in her exertions. We’ve got everything we need to make an invisible killer right here. There’s no time to explain the finer details about the periodic table and all the elements that exist in the giant mixture we call the atmosphere, but thankfully there’s no need, as the body provides an easy filter for exactly the kind of gas we want that should be easy enough for anybody to grasp and use in their mental image. Alexa! Use your storm magic to gather up all the air you’re exhaling, as well as the exhalations of all the remaining bats and owls. I want you to move just that air and keep that bat scion’s head covered in it!
Even in this life-and-death situation, I can feel Alexa’s burning curiosity completely override every other emotion in her head. She manages to rein herself in and complies with my request, but I can practically feel the questions burning to bombard me at any moment. Relax relax, don’t worry. We live through this and you can grill me with as many questions as you want later, ok? I figure that with her native spatial affinity, Alexa will have enough spatial awareness to keep the bubble of carbon dioxide gas firmly wrapped around the nightwing’s head even with the chaotic flight patterns of their dogfighting. Here the big bat’s size worked against it as its massive lungs quickly burned through the oxygen within the bubble’s confines, adding even more carbon dioxide into it in the process.
I watched as those malevolent eyes, so full of confidence and glee before, widened into panic upon realizing it was slowly beginning to suffocate. Suspecting some kind of trick, it used its sonic magic to ripple the air nearby violently, trying to shake off whatever was stealing its breath away. But Alexa’s spell wasn’t some blade of wind or air concentrated into a solid object that could be scattered apart. Instead, all the bat scion accomplished was wasting more of the air in its lungs to vibrate the gasses gathered around its head. Without understanding that it would need to forcibly disrupt the high concentration of carbon dioxide gas, it could do nothing to stop the spell from taking effect.
But a Deepholm scion is still nothing to be trifled with. Below us, the bear scion gave out another mighty roar and began to charge forward at full speed, despite still being blinded by Jackie’s incessant arrow barrages. Looking closely, I can see the thin layer of sonic mana coalesced around the bear’s head, presumably allowing the bear to borrow the bat’s navigational abilities. With this, the colossus could advance quickly without needing to worry about veering off course, stampeding on a direct path to my core while just shrugging off the damage Jackie peppered its hide with.
Shit, the bastard just put us on the clock. We need to end this, and quickly. Meanwhile, the bat scion has interrupted the exploding body spell in favor of transforming all the blood in the air into a swarm of small red bat-shaped blades. Still struggling to breathe, and its eyes filled with sneering hatred, the nightwing launched them all at Alexa at speeds as fast as an arrow in flight.
Having picked up on some of my thoughts about moving air around with storm magic however, my scholarly scion applied it to deftly increase or decrease the density of spots in the sky around her. These patches of wildly different pressure zones caused the many blood blades to veer harmlessly around her. Undeterred by its lack of hits, the bat scion simply pulled the blood back around to attack again whilst he chased after Alexa even more desperately than before.
Waiting for the beasty to suffocate would be problematic, especially if he could maintain concentration on his magics up until, or even after falling unconscious. Thankfully, I’d paid attention back in my chemistry classes and learned a thing or two. It’s a simple matter for Alexa’s storm magic to grab onto the abundant water vapor nearby, and then mix it in with the gas bubble suffocating the bat scion. With the added instruction of picturing the water vapor merging completely with the gas itself to encourage the reaction, we pretty quickly have ourselves an incredibly high concentration of our good friend H2C03, otherwise known as carbonic acid.
The effect was almost immediate. As the nightwing breathed in its throat seized up and tremors ran down the length of its body. The eyes became unfocused and its wingbeats unsteady as the toxic concentration of gas sent the beast into a state of torpor. The blood blades stopped mid-flight and dissipated harmlessly, all of the bat’s attention now being consumed just with trying to stay awake and airborne. Not about to let this golden opportunity pass her by, Alexa takes revenge for the gouge the nightwing left on her back by swooping in and rending one of its wings with her talons. Using the last vestiges of her mana, she does the same to the other wing with claws of wind, shredding the soft membranes to tattered pieces. Still doing its best to fight off the gas-induced sleepiness, the bat scion succumbs to gravity’s embrace and tumbles helplessly toward the rocky ground of my island.
Yeah, science! Get dunked on by chemistry batty! Turning my attention back to the bear colossus below, whose head has now lost the glow of sonic magic from before, I rejoice at the feeling of my newly bolstered spirits. One scion down, two to go.
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Three days ago, my housemates were alive.
And I wasn't losing my fucking mind.
Three days ago, I awoke to my housemate, Misty, shaking me.
“Get up!!”
Misty was usually the last to roll out of bed out of all of us, so I figured it was something important. My housemate wouldn’t get out of bed for nothing. She valued her sleep—often comparing her bed to a safe haven. Her place of solitude. I was right there with her, until she startled me out of slumber. I opened my eyes to find her face roughly three inches from mine, her expression lit up with excitement I couldn’t justify this early in the morning.
She smelled of toothpaste breath and her raspberry scented body wash. Her thick black curls framing her face were still damp from what I presumed was a shower, hanging in tangled knots in front of wide, almost unseeing eyes. When I first met her, Misty Kang had been my crush for a while. With a Korean father and a Texan mother, she definitely caught eyes when we hung out. We had a thing in freshman year, which quickly fizzled out once we started living together. Never date your housemates.
I will just say that.
Over the last few years, Misty has become one of my closest friends.
When she knew I was at least conscious, my housemate was grabbing my arm and yanking me out of bed. “Get up!”
I was barely awake, and those were the only words I could fully distinguish.
I shooed her away for a moment and swung my legs out of bed, taking a minute to blink sunlight out of my eyes coming through the blinds. “Sam.” Misty was in front of me again.
I don’t think she understood the concept of being half asleep.
She wouldn’t leave me alone, waving her arms wildly. Her shadow under the soft morning light almost reminded me of one of those inflatable tube guys.
“Huh?” My voice was a low croak, and her smile widened.
“Guess who’s just scored tickets for an actual screening of the first five minutes of gameplay for the most anticipated game of the decade?”
“What?” Her string of words wasn’t making sense in my caffeine deprived mind. It just sounded like gibberish to me, initially.
Like we were in some cheesy commercial, she was the lead, and I was the confused NPC with the WTF expression. But when I went over it in my head, words started to slide together like a jigsaw puzzle. Misty didn’t get excited about video games. Well, she did. Though, my housemate was one to get excited on behalf of someone else. After living with her for a while now, I had concluded she was a follower.
By that, I mean whatever others thought or did or said, she copied it. If her Twitter followers were mad at bad takes, she would drop all of her own opinions on said follower and focus on what other people said. We had Korean barbecue for takeout the other day, and Misty clearly did not like it from the creased look on her face, and her very obviously spitting it politely into a napkin.
Jay, my other housemate, liked it.
And so did I. So, naturally, Misty announced she wanted more.
I had to watch her suffer through two more portions before she excused herself—presumably to throw up. Blinking at my housemate who was clearly excited for Jay, I resisted the overwhelming urge to roll my eyes.
“Slow down. What game? What are you talking about?”
I got out of bed and threw on my robe, half aware of the mess from last night on my desk. Another attempt to finish an essay which just wasn’t happening. The monster energy cans and takeout Chinese wrappers were embarrassing. I got a basic run-through as I headed downstairs with Misty right behind me, practically breathing down my neck. From what I understood, there was a Reddit post.
That was all I got from Misty’s squealing. She leapt down the stairs after me with a spring in her step. The clock above the front door told me it wasn’t even 9am. The smell of bacon, however, was quick to arise me from the dead.
Jay was in the kitchen making breakfast. I noticed his laptop was open on the table, and every so often he’d peer at it with wide, almost disbelieving eyes. Jay and Misty were complete opposites, which made them great people to live with. Jay was a quiet book who was slightly on the pretentious side, routinely quoting something philosophical to piss me off.
He had rich parents on the other side of the world, but the guy himself was fairly humble and had mostly detached himself from said family.
My housemate was usually well put together. In fact, I barely saw him in his pajamas, excluding game nights. That morning, however, he was a disheveled mess, still in yesterday’s clothes.
He offered me a grin. I glimpsed sauce from last night’s dinner still staining his chin. Jay hadn’t brushed his hair or even put on deodorant.
I caught a whiff of BO when he ducked in front of me, his gaze glued to his MacBook. It was rare when Jay ignored basic hygiene, so yeah, I was going to guess this was a pretty huge thing. “I did tell her not to wake you up, y’know.”
His slight aussie accent was always refreshing on a morning. Born in Australia and moving to the states when he was ten years old, Jay still had a slight tinge in his accent. I had seen pictures of his family, and the guy had definitely gotten most of his dad’s genes, thick brown hair, and freckles. While his dad was built like a pro wrestler however, Jay was leaner like his mom.
I shrugged. “I was already awake.”
“Liar.” He didn’t look away from his laptop.
Looking closer, I glimpsed the Reddit homepage.
“So, you have won something.”
Jay didn’t answer. I could tell he was excited by the way he could barely keep still, bustling around the kitchen, barefoot. “Coffee?”
His voice was more of a Misty-like squeak, and I half wondered for a moment if they had switched bodies, or he had at least become one with my other housemate through a chemical explosion. In our kitchen, which was yet to be cleaned after a cooking disaster several nights ago, I wouldn’t be surprised if something was living on the countertop. I nodded, slumping into a chair. “What’s going on? Why is Misty freaking out?” I nodded at his laptop. “She said you’ve won something?”
As if my housemate couldn’t hold it in anymore, he nodded, turning his screen towards me. “You know____, right?”
“Yes.” I sipped my coffee, eyeing a toaster strudel sitting on the countertop. "You mean the game which has been coming out for a decade."
He ignored that. “Well, what if I told you one of the developer’s posted on the official sub this morning?”
“For _____?"
He nodded with a grin, and I wondered it this was one of those rare times when Jay was blindly looking through a red flag to see what he wanted. I had heard of these types of scams, and Reddit was a breeding ground for them.
Gamers were pretty intense. I didn’t realize I was pulling a face until I caught his lips curving into a smile. Jay was usually the skeptical one.
“You don’t believe me.”
I downed my coffee to avoid replying. When I had drained the cup, he was still staring at me with amused eyes.
“What?”
“You think it’s bullshit.”
I shrugged. “You said it,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that game isn’t even partway through development. Didn’t Twitter leak a still last year? Also, they’ll be bringing out a new console before that game comes out.”
I leaned back in my chair. “It’s more of a pipe dream, at this point.”
“The leaks were fake,” Even he didn’t look sure. “Anyway, that’s not the point. One of the dev’s posted on the official sub this morning. He asked if we were all excited for the new game, asked if we could post some of our favorite NPC dialogue, and he’ll DM winners.”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded at the screen. I had already checked my phone for an internet meltdown concerning this post, but there was nothing. “And where is that post now?”
Jay didn’t look at me. “It was deleted. So it only reached a certain number of people.”
“Oh, it was deleted?” I couldn’t resist a smile. “What a coincidence.”
When I laughed, Jay scowled, showing me his screen—navigating his trackpad to his Reddit DM’s.
To my surprise, there was actually a message from what I guessed was a throw-away account.
While I was skim reading the DM, Misty hurried in, all dressed and ready for the day. I peeked at her outfit from Jay's laptop. Cute.
Extravagant, but cute. My housemate cranked the radio up before bouncing between us, a toaster strudel hanging out of her mouth.
Misty was a living animated character. Ignoring her wide smile, I turned back to the screen. “Congratulation!!” The DM started with capitals.
It took me reading it twice to realize there was a clear spelling mistake. I sent Jay a pointed look, but he was too busy practically vibrating with excitement. If the guy had any more caffeine, he was going to explode. “Since when did winning DM’s start with a typo?”
“I knew you were going to say that.” Jay curled his lip. “They were clearly excited when typing the message.”
“But this is supposedly an official,” I said. “Surely they would make sure it’s professional?”
My housemate didn’t reply, shooting a look at Misty, who rolled her eyes.
“Wow.” I squinted at the screen. “I am so sorry for caring about your safety. You do realize these types of scam’s usually end up with you being sold on the black market, right?”
I shuddered. “I’ve heard horror stories about underground markets specializing in illegal organ harvesting.”
“Or…” Jay’s eyes were glued to the screen. “You could be happy for me?”
I frowned at the rest of the message, which was just a capitalized freak-out about the upcoming release of the game, before inviting Jay (and a friend!) to a five-minute preview of gameplay, as well as a Q&A. There was a location and a time, which was brow-raising. “10 at night.” I said. “Who hosts a gaming convention at 10pm?” I leaned my chin on my fist. “Unless they wanted to lure as many gullible people as possible, and ship them to some organ harvesting factory on the other side of the world.”
Jay scoffed. “That’s dark.”
“You’re actually considering going to a 10pm gaming convention in the middle of nowhere. I’m trying to wake you up.”
Jay nudged me that time. “It’s real. Relax.”
“And.” I pointed to the screen. “No phones? Why would they ask you not to bring your phones?”
“To stop us filming content,” Misty sang. “Duh.”
I groaned, leaning back in my chair. “You’re on his side? This is clearly shady!” I didn’t get mad unless something was seriously pissing me off, and this was one of those times. Jay was a smart guy. There was no way he was falling for this bullshit. I thought he was joking around when he spent the day tracking the location on Google Maps. I went to class like normal and got updates through text. At lunch, Jay agreed with me and said it was in fact shady, and he wasn’t going. By afternoon classes, he was texting me in paragraphs explaining his own skepticism but had found several “friends” on an online forum who were also going and had changed his mind once again. The guy couldn’t make up his mind. He was driving me crazy.
Misty sent me several videos of Jay pacing the kitchen with his MacBook in his hands. She was broadcasting his mental breakdown via Instagram stories. But then she started to send me pictures of herself in different outfits, asking me for my opinion on each one. At that point, I turned my phone off. My housemates had lost their fucking minds. I did my own research though, just to make sure I wasn’t actually going to lose them to a shady cult.
I searched for the game itself, but just as I thought, it was shown as still in development. Every “update” was just fan speculation.
There were YouTube videos and TikTok’s of fake leaks, but nothing was real. It was either AI generated, or badly edited. By the time my classes had ended and I had turned my phone on, I had a barrage of missed calls and texts.
Most of them were from Misty with her outfit changes, and Jay changing his mind again.
This time he was convinced it was all a scam, his texts full of typos and crying emoji's which he never used. Before it hit me that Misty was most likely using his phone to text me.
I was right. When I walked through the door, I was greeted by both of them sitting on the stairs. Misty was scrolling through Jay’s phone, while the boy had his head in his hands. According to Misty’s last text, he was back to being excited to go.
From the look on his face, eyes shadowed with sleep circles, light brown curls slipping from under his hood, I wasn’t sure what Misty meant by “excited”. The guy looked the complete opposite. His mind had been consumed by the game, and the idea of seeing new content.
When I dropped my bag and folded my arms, fixing the two of them with my best disapproving parent look, Misty jumped to her feet. “Sam!” she waved Jay’s phone at me. “Did you get my texts? We’re actually going now!”
The 100+ texts on both messenger and iMessage said otherwise.
I nodded, my gaze on Jay. “Both of you do realize it’s a scam, right?” I softened my tone despite growing progressively more irritated. We were grown adults, not kids. I could understand a group of teenagers falling for it, but two twenty-three-year-olds?
This time, I ducked in front of Jay. “Hey.” I pulled down his hood, and he groaned, burying his head in his knees. “I don’t want to freak you out, so listen to me, okay?”
I exhaled out a breath. “I’m not saying something bad is going to happen to you, because it most likely won’t—and yes, I admit I’m being paranoid.” When he lifted his head, blinking through bedraggled curls, there was a faint smile on his lips. “But.” I said. “You are most likely going to end up disappointed. Which I don’t want, because you won't shut up about it for weeks."
I was only partly joking.
For a moment, I thought my housemate was going to wake up, and nod, laughing at how crazy it was.
Before shook his head and jumped up.
“I’m going to take a shower, alright? I should start getting ready."
I admit, I exploded at him.
We argued while he was in the shower, and I paced up and down the hallway, coming up with multiple reasons why he was definitely going to die, and only two positives if it was in fact real. In the end, I gave up worrying all together. I didn’t say anything when the two of them were hurrying around looking for shoes and missing car keys. I didn’t realize they were gone until the door was clanging shut, and a text was coming through. I didn’t look at it until an hour later, and I had calmed down.
Jay: 1h ago: Stop worrying, lmao. We’re good! I’ll keep my phone just in case. I’ll make sure to avoid the organ harvesting 😉
Another from Misty a few minutes later: “Love you! Chillll, kay? 😭😭 It’s going to be fun! I’ll take pics!”
…
Followed by: “Oh shit, we can’t. I’ll try to sneak some!"
Attached to the text was a photo of the two of them. Misty with a wide smile and a peace sign, and Jay who looked like he was mid-shout, his eyes on the road.
Those texts were… at least comforting, I guessed. Maybe they were right. I figured I was paranoid, and they in fact would really be okay.
But that didn’t stop the anxious coil in my gut when I tried to force down takeout pizza. I attempted to focus on my essay to distract myself, but I couldn’t stop glancing at my phone, and checking Twitter. There was a hashtag on the DM, which was just “PlayStationGO.” When I searched for it, however, nothing came up.
Sure, it was a private convention and only a select few knew about it, but nothing could escape Twitter.
Somewhere, someone must be talking about it. After scrolling through endless tweets though, I realized I was wrong. There was nothing.
That put a bad taste in my mouth.
10pm came, and I held my breath all the way through a Netflix TV show I was forcing myself to watch, half asleep, slumped at my desk.
I could barely distinguish the plot.
I just had a vague idea of the character names, and some of their motivations.
Midnight passed, and I was struggling to stay awake.
I glanced at my phone.
No messages, just a notification from Spotify reminding me my favorite band was playing nearby.
1am.
Still nothing. I fell back to sleep.
2:48am.
This time, I stayed awake for a few minutes glaring at my phone before my eyes grew heavy.
3:16: am.
My phone buzzed with a text from Jay, but I could barely desipher it: "can't feel help my head hurts Canshdhsn727272_6798mi/!! _&go home please. (Sent from: PlayStationGo™️ BETA)."
3:27: am.
3:54: am. I was wide awake, blinking at a notification which had popped up from an unknown number. I was trying to figure out what number it was, when my phone vibrated again and I almost jumped out of my skin.
After a moment of hesitation, I answered it.
I was trying so hard not to think of the possibility of it being the emergency room, or even worse, the cops.
All of my worst nightmares had come true in a single second.
“Hello?” I whispered in a croak.
“Are they in the house with you?” The stranger’s voice came through in a hiss of interference.
His words sent my mediocre dinner lurching back up my throat. “What?” I managed to get out. “Who?”
“Your friends.” He said, and I leapt to unsteady feet, my gut twisting and turning.
“No.” I found myself taking slow strides toward the window, brushing back the curtain and peering out into the night. “Why? Did something happen to them?” I paused.
“How did you get my number?”
“That does not matter.” His voice rattled in my ear as I rushed downstairs, almost stumbling down the bottom two. “I need you to get out of that house. Now. Get as far away as possible.”
I could hear his rapid breaths.
He was driving. I could hear the rumble of the engine. With my phone pressed to my ear, I obeyed his instructions, pulling open the door and stepping out into the cool night, a brisk breeze grazing my bare arms was just enough to stop my thoughts spiraling.
I was barefoot, in nothing but a robe, staggering down the driveway. The night was calm and silent; our neighborhood was asleep, each window drowned in darkness. I couldn’t breathe, my clammy fingers wrapped around my phone, as this stranger broke down over the phone. “Whatever you do,” he gasped out.
“Do not, I repeat DO NOT remove the PlayStationGo—shit!! He hissed out, static rattling the call. The guy seemingly got ahold of himself, and the wheel, and continued. I started to walk—where I was going, I had no idea.
The stranger lit a cigarette. I heard the click of a lighter and his exhalation of breath. “It was a BETA version, but we had to rush it. This was not my idea. My boss is a greedy man. He wanted to release the game last year, which would have meant widespread infection. Luckily, that did not happen. We did manage to delay it, but only by a year.” His words barely made sense to me as I struggled to get a word in, peering in the dark. “It was supposed to be a virtual experience of the game—a whole new angle of gameplay. But testing was difficult. First, on monkey’s, we lost multiple subjects. Tonight was supposed to be a…well, I guess you could call it out first attempt on human subjects,” his laugh was bitter. “I knew the tech wasn’t finished. And I tried. Believe me, I fucking tried. I tried to blow the whistle, but these bastards know where my parents live."
Something squirmed its way down my spine.
“So my friends were lab rats?” I said stiffly. “You used them?”
I fucking knew it.
I knew it was too good to be true.
“Yes and no. Listen to me, the people I work for are hunting them down. Trust me, I don’t want my bosses to find them because a life of experimentation will await them. Torture. Do you hear me? It does not matter if subjects fail. They don’t care. As long as there is at least a light at the end of the tunnel for them, they will see it as a win, and bring the publication date closer. They will not be treated as humans. Your friends signed a contract before trying out the tech, where the small print stated that, under section 3, player engagement, all subjects must agree to offer themselves as participants in later updates. I silently cursed Jay for always skipping the terms and conditions when buying games." The man stopped to breathe.
“I have told you multiple times, and I won’t say it again. Get as far away from that house as possible. I will take care of them. I will make sure of it." The sound of squealing engines, and I stopped power walking, coming to an abrupt stop. The silence of the night around me, compared to the sound of the highway he was on, traffic horns and the wind rushing through the window was an eerie contrast, a disturbance to the heavenly bubble we were trapped in.
“What do you mean ‘take care of them?” I had to swallow a yell. “Hey! What are you talking about?
“I’m sorry.” Was all he replied with. “I’m afraid it is too late. There was once an opportunity to save the mind during the initial level of the demonstration. However, once the PlaystationGo has been fully attached to the base of the subject, we no longer have control of it. Once integrating itself into the cerebral cortex, the PlayStationGo can only be removed by signing out of the player’s account,” his breath was heavy. “On this unfortunate occasion, however, your friends are unable to navigate the system due to a malfunction which scrambled their brains,” He trailed off. “Which has left them stranded in the game."
I let out a breath. “Right.” I said. “That’s.. bad. I mean, it’s a fucked-up piece of technology, but they’re just playing a game, right?”
There was a pause, before the man laughed.
“Young man, I don’t think you understand,” he said. “The PlayStationGo was created to give the player a full virtual experience of our game. The PlayStationGo is not a physical object. Created with nanotechnology, it attaches itself to the subject’s brain and is supposed to create a personal gaming experience for each player. As I said, however, it is not finished. It is yet to be released to the public, and of course, we are expecting certain ethical arguments due to the controversial—”
I pulled the phone away from my ear, shaking my head. I didn’t need to hear his attempts at trying to save his own skin.
“You need to help them,” I whispered. “Do you hear me? Can you do that? Can you help them?!”
“That is what I am trying to tell you,” He said.
“I know you are upset and confused, and believe me, I offer my apologies. But you need to listen to facts. During initial testing, our subjects were conscious enough to know where their home was. We are unsure why this happens, though we have linked it to territory, as well as the main character of the game heavily influencing their actions. I have been tracking them from the testing facility, and they are incredibly close. Please get as far away from there as possible. If you are no longer in the vicinity of the house, I can end this quickly and quietly before we gain attention.”
I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. Maybe start fucking screaming at him, because he was talking about getting “rid” of my friends, after their mistake.
“Do you understand me?” He said, when I couldn’t reply. “Your friends are lost causes!”
Before I could answer, though, headlights were suddenly coming around the corner, and I found myself paralysed to the spot. The car which swerved twice, crashed into several trash cans, before reversing and coming straight towards me, was not Jay’s car. Jay’s car was an old hunk of junk he’d gotten from a scrapyard. Jay’s car had doors which were practically hanging off, and a stereo which exclusively played either static gibberish, or old tapes I had no idea how to use. This car was bright yellow, and definitely had an option to drive itself. When the car came to a stop, inches from careening into me, I lost all control of myself.
I was vaguely aware of my phone slipping from my fingers and hitting the sidewalk. But I was too busy staring at the two shadows in the front of the car. The driver, and the passenger.
And the muffled screaming coming from the trunk.
When the door swung open, a figure stepping out, I did not recognise my housemate.
The stranger told me I wouldn't, but I didn't believe him.
Jay had left the house in casual jeans and a sweater, bearing the game's logo.
Now, I found myself face to face with a man with my housemate's face and features, his smile and eyes-- but something had been severed in his eyes and twisted in his expression. For one, Jay was wearing a suit I knew he couldn't afford, the sleeves torn, collar pulled open, smears of red staining the front.
His pants had cufflinks, and the Rolex on his wrist had definitely been pulled off someone's corpse.
The silver was stained a revealing scarlet. Drinking in his face, he looked like Jay. His curls hung in front of his eyes, freckles speckling his cheeks, but everything else wasn't. It wasn't until I was glimpsing what was moulded into the flesh of his hand, did I remember how to move. But then I was taking all of him in, everything my mind had intentionally skipped, because I didn't want to believe the stranger on the phone. Nanotechnology, the man had said in a hiss.
Fiction, I had thought.
Before I saw the reality of it, a writhing metallic like substance glued to the guy's temple, and slowly, very slowly, inching down his cheek, already forming around the bridge of his ear, a very faint blue light flickering.
Something must have alerted him. His cavernous eyes left mine, and he twisted his head—and I heard the sound of his neck snapping, his head lolling to the left slightly, his eyes flickering. I watched his whole body seem to sway back and forth, ready to fall forwards.
Before the newly formed device on his ear turned red, then green.
It was almost like he was… rebooting. As if coming back to life, Jay lifted his head at an awkward angle, before looking straight through me. The blood vessels in his eyes had popped, rivulets of red beading down his face. He should have been dead, I thought. No. No, he was dead. That… that thing was keeping him alive. “Well, shiiiittt,” he said. I could sense the game dialogue which had taken over him, forming on his mangled tongue.
“I’m a man on a mission.”
In jerking movements, he turned and marched back towards the car, opening the door, and sliding into the front seat.
I remembered how to move, ducking to grab my phone, before something slammed into the back of my head—and I saw stars.
I didn’t remember hitting the floor, only the soft sound of her voice, a seductive murmur repeating NPC dialogue, and her kitten heel sticking into my spine, forcing me onto my face.
Misty. I was expecting her to get it over with. But when she dragged me to my feet, sticking the barrel of a gun into the flesh of my neck—I figured she was still playing the game.
Twisting around to meet her eyes, lifeless and empty, only filled with light from the device which had taken over half of her face, I felt sick to my stomach. This thing wasn’t a games console or a virtual reality headset.
It was an attempt at coercing and programming something you already don’t understand, to do something impossible.
I could see that in the way the things had visibly chewed and eaten through her flesh, devouring her from the inside and out. I could see what was left of the dress she had worn earlier, but something must have gone wrong with her too. Because Misty had thrown on another outfit over the top, a diamond necklace hanging from her neck.
I caught a thin river of red pooling down her right temple, trying to ignore the twitchy way she moved, just like a character. From the way Misty walked, stumbling, I already knew she was gone. My housemate had newly acquired strength, throwing me in the trunk of the car where three other hostages were, and slamming it shut on my attempts to reason with her. She didn’t tie me up or restrain me.
In the dim light I could just make out though passing streetlights, I could see the trunk opened from the inside. Which was too easy.
Still though, Jay was driving recklessly, and every time I tried to throw the damn thing open, I was knocked backwards, rolling into a screaming girl, who was bound by her hands and feet. It took me multiple attempts before I had the trunk open, freezing cold air blasting me in the face. I untied the other hostages, but when I told them to come with me, they just stared blankly at me, and continued begging for their lives—and it only took me glimpsing what was attached to their temples, a familiar writhing metal plate, for me to understand. They too were playing the game. This time, as NPC hostages.
I found myself gingerly touching the trembling metallic flesh of the girl's fingers bound in rope. It had a slimy consistency, and I swore, I felt something bite into me.
No way, I thought.
This thing was sentient, yes. But it wasn't living.
Listen, I wish I could tell you what it was like to jump out of a moving car, but I can’t.
I remember it as lunging out of the trunk, hitting the freezing cold air, before hitting the ground head first, neutron star collisions exploding in the backs of my eyes.
What I do remember is waking up on the side of the road. Hours later. The sky was bright blue, a scorching sun blinding me when I managed to force my eyes open.
The early morning rush hour flew by as normal, and I wondered how ignorant American people had to be to ignore someone knocked out on the side of the road.
It’s not like I was nowhere near civilization. There was a fucking Subway right next to me.
When I had gathered myself, I remembered I had no phone. I couldn’t go home in fear of running into my rogue housemates playing their own fucked up version of _____ in their head. My plan was to try and find my phone, get in contact with the stranger who blew the whistle on my friends being dangerous, and find them. They couldn’t be far., right? And even if they weren’t themselves… someone would be able to save them.
If someone could do this to them, surely they could reverse it.
I felt sick, tired, and I was starving.
So, with some loose cash I’d found in my pocket, I bought a Subway and a Coke.
The woman at the counter smiled widely at me. She leaned forward, with a wink. “Nice cosplay!”
Cosplay?
I didn’t understand what she meant until I swore I felt something… move its way up my pant leg. I ignored it, and it happened again, this time it felt like something was… biting.
A bug, maybe? I had been laying on the side of the road for around six hours.
When I went to the bathroom, though, I found myself staring at an all too familiar glint of silver creeping its way across my temple. Like it was sentient, parts of it sider webbed towards my ear while the rest writhed into my hairline.
I pulled up my pant leg again, and there it was, a fungus-like metal substance which had already formed in two solid metal masses on my knees. I remember grazing two fingers across the thing beginning its slow feast of my flesh. I remember trying to pull it off, hissing in pain when I risked ripping off my own skin with it. I remember shaking my head and being in denial, even when the lights dimmed above me, and the bathroom door in front of me became more of a shadow. When I strode back through the Subway store, I began to see slight flickers of light above each person, highlighting something not quite there yet.
I could see it already starting, beginning to take over my thoughts. Cars which sped past were suddenly highlighted, and at the corner of my eye, if I concentrated, the outline of a map was starting to appear. Even now, when the room is almost completely taken over by shadow, and my thoughts are half my own, and half not—when a metallic device is beginning to form over my eyes—I know if I hold on, this thing won’t take me. I have considered killing myself, but that wouldn’t… be right.
How could I kill myself when there is so much left to do?
This developer was right. I don’t even know where I can sign out. There’s what looks like the beginning of some kind of index when I look up, but it’s not… finished. I can still see entangled pieces of code struggling to load what I’m guessing was log out. Whatever this thing is, it’s taking over me. Fast. Like a fungus, like a virus, it will not stop until it’s dragged me into the game, until it's leeched itself onto me.
I can feel it happening right now. It's been slow.
Almost painfully slow.
But maybe that is the point. Maybe part of the game is to feel my own thoughts beginning to unravel in favor of something else entirely.
Fuck.
Time is going by…. Fast.
Five minutes ago… I was trying to get home. But I can’t remember where I live.
I can’t concentrate.
I can’t think straight.
I have a phone—but I don’t know how I got it. Did I steal it?
Every time I move, the slowly emerging map comes to life at the corner of my eye jerks with my movement. There is a car parked nearby.
I know it belongs to the man with a child.
But a confusing blur of light is highlighting it to be something of importance. Reality is crashing in front of me, replaced with contorting shapes and bursts of color I have to blink through.
I keep hearing... sirens.
Jay is messaging me.
On what, I'm not sure.
But I need to find him.
I’m sure one mission won’t hurt, right?

Chapter One
Chapter Fourteen
CONTENT WARNING: This one contains some implied torture. Nothing explicit, but be aware.
United Launch Alliance main facility. Decatur, Alabama. Ten minutes before the DC attack.
Chao never thought she’d think this, but here she was, sitting at a table in a conference room which looked out into a giant assembly room holding multiple huge rockets in various stages of construction. She also was sitting next to an alien, one who was fast becoming a good friend, while talking in-depth about technical things. And yet she was bored out of her skull. It was now the sixth day of trying to somehow figure out how to best repair the Rithro. During the first day, the four engineers assigned by different companies to this task group were tripping over themselves getting to talk to an actual alien, while Grakosh had in turn quizzed them endlessly about how the rockets worked and even gotten a tour…shadowed by multiple Secret Service agents, of course. By now things had settled down to the task at hand.
Fortunately, the distant crippled ship contained a veritable army of drones capable of quite complex tasks, so manpower…or alien-power…was not the problem. The problem was more a matter of having the proper raw materials available, especially for the damaged hydrogen tanks. The latter used a specialized lightweight but low-permeability alloy; in order to have any patches hold, whatever metal the humans provided needed to be close enough to its properties to properly bond or weld to it. Chao was not a metallurgist, but she was getting a crash course in it thanks to the endless discussions between Grakosh and the four engineers.
Then there was the matter of hauling it up to the L5 point. Trying to carry the needed tonnage in the ship’s landing boats would be like trying to drink a lake dry using a straw. But humans, right now, didn’t have any single rocket capable of carrying such a payload into orbit.
She, Grakosh, and the four engineers were spread out around a small table set before a whiteboard; the latter was not quite yet full. Next to the doors into the conference room stood a pair of Secret Service agents; Chao felt a bit sorry for them having to stand on their feet for so long.
“So Falcon Heavy can do about 26 tons to geostationary,” said one of the engineers, a gray-haired balding man named Blake. He was a metallurgist from SpaceX. “That’s fully expendable, of course. We did look a while back at how much it could take in a trans-lunar injection, I think it was somewhere around 18 tons, but we’d need to go back and redo that math.” He turned to Chao. “Will TLI be close to the delta-vee needed to get to L5?”
Chao perked up, now grateful she had something to contribute. After a bit of tapping on her laptop, she nodded. “It’s not exactly the same, but for initial planning purposes using TLI figures can work.”
One of the ULA engineers, a young blonde woman named Clara, regarded the whiteboard with a thousand-yard stare. Chao knew that Clara was not really looking at it. “Vulcan can do…somewhere around five and a half tons to TLI, if you strap six solids to it. Less mass, but it does have a bigger fairing than the Heavy.” She grinned at Blake.
“So we’ll need multiple launches?” Grakosh, of course, did not have a laptop or chair, and instead sat coiled up next to Chao. “Hmmm. I’d like to have at least thirty tons of patch material, just to have a comfortable margin.”
“So two to three launches of Heavy, or five of Vulcan, or some mix.” Clara looked over at Ned, the other ULA engineer. “That’s a lot of rockets. Our pipeline isn’t set up to crank out that many, that quickly.”
Blake nodded in sympathy. “We’ve got similar issues with using Heavy. We can use side boosters that have been well-reused and are close to end-of-life, but the center core is another matter. We don’t have that many of them, just because we didn’t have that much demand. Now we’d have to spool up production on them. Not my area of expertise, but you’re talking many months.”
The man from Raytheon, a skinny guy named Dwight, tapped the table in absent thought. “We could try something else.”
“If you’re thinking of using SLS, forget it,” said Ned, the other ULA engineer. “It’s got a lot of throw, even out to lunar orbit, but way too slow of a manufacturing speed. Even if we do repurpose some of the Artemis launches, it’ll be at least a year or two.”
Dwight smiled beatifically. “Keep in mind, we’re not talking about sending up boutique billion-dollar satellites. It’s gonna be mostly metal plates, at least at first. We can afford to swing for the fences.” He leaned forward. “Sea Dragon.”
“Oh fuck no,” said Ned. “First off, the original design study is from the damned Sixties. The redesign and approval alone will take a year at best, unless you just want to slap something together and go for it and then have everything explode on you.”
“What is ‘Sea Dragon’?” asked Grakosh.
Dwight rose and walked to the whiteboard. He flipped it over to the as-yet unmarked side and began sketching. “A super heavy-lift vehicle proposed a while ago, back when we were still trying to get to the moon. It’s two stage, like Falcon and Vulcan, but a lot bigger. A LOT bigger.”
He sketched something that looked like a child’s first drawing of a rocket; a big stubby tube with a single huge engine bell at the bottom and a conical nose. Dwight then added a dimension along its height showing the scale of the thing: 150 meters.
Grakosh let out a little trill; Chao wasn’t quite sure what that vocalization meant. “Hmm, yes, that is quite large for a chemical-engined craft.”
Clara snorted. “Dwight, nobody has ever made a pressure-fed engine anywhere near that large. Damn thing’s a bomb, I mean, even more of a bomb than a normal fueled rocket.”
“Pressure-fed,” mused Grakosh. “Ah, you use high-pressure gas to push the fuel and oxidizer into the combustion chamber, instead of those ‘turbopumps’ you showed me earlier.”
Dwight nodded. “Exactly. The problem with pressure-fed engines is that the tanks need to be a lot thicker to take the pressure, which of course adds a lot of mass and reduces the available payload. But you make it big enough and it becomes more feasible. This thing was designed to be constructed at a shipyard out of steel, not out of any sort of aluminum or other fancy alloys. Then it would get floated out into the ocean and launched vertically from the water. Estimated total payload…five hundred and fifty tons into Low Earth Orbit.”
“Admit it, Dwight,” replied Blake with a smile. “Your inner nine-year old wants it built just to see the spectacle when they light the candle on that giant sonofabitch. Am I right?”
Dwight set the marker down with a chuckle. “You’re not wrong.” Then his smile faded. “But seriously, folks. Our industry is used to doing things onsey-twosey. Even our illustrious colleague from SpaceX will admit that. But now we need to get a lot of shit into orbit, and yesterday. We are so far behind the technological eight ball that it isn’t even funny. Now, yes, we hope that our new allies will help us out with gravitic drives and all sorts of other lovely tech…once the various countries stop yelling at each other about how exactly to do that. But Grakosh, let’s assume we snap our fingers and, poof, the Rithro is magically fixed. How long will it take for you to get back and bring support?”
“Well, we did leave relay drones at each system, so we’ll be able to report to them well before we get there physically, but to scramble a proper defense fleet…let’s say twelve to eighteen months before they arrive in-system. That’s assuming we head back, of course.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” asked Clara.
“Because once the Rithro is repaired, it will be the only ship in-system possibly able to fight a Breaker drone. We do not need to report in-person to the CEB; we only need to jump back to Barnard’s star to plant a relay drone and send our message. If we left to travel all the way back…well, humans would be defenseless. You have no orbital combat capability.”
Grakosh pondered the sketch. “At the moment, as impressive as that design is, it is theoretical. So. We need to have fewer launches…am I correct that if you go into low orbit, you can lift more?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Dwight. “Literally tons more.”
“Then perhaps we can do a hybrid solution. The landing boats are limited in their internal volume, but they have far more thrust capability. We were able to push our ship with them, at least for a while. If you loft the repair materials up inside a proper container, we might be able to tow them out to the Rithro using the boats. That way we don’t have any political problems with tech transfer.” He gestured with his single ‘tailhand’ in front of him, and a holographic display appeared. With great agility, he began tapping on nothing; a schematic of one of the landing boats appeared, with alien text on one side and below.
Every single engineer plus Chao looked at the display and a single thought ran through their minds.
I Want One.
Grakosh then switched to a schematic of the Earth-moon system and sketched out a rough transfer orbit out to a blinking dot at the trailing L5 point. “I do hope the visual translators are working properly. Unit conversion is such a pain in the tail. Chao, would you mind checking the math on this?”
The alien text then shimmered into readable figures. “Um sure!”
As she leaned over to examine the display, the two agents at the back of the room straightened up as one. Chao caught the movement out of the corner of her eye; by the time she glanced over both men already had pistols drawn.
One of the agents, a thin guy named Hanson, motioned towards the far corner of the room, away from the window and the door. “Everyone, please move over to there. Sit on the floor, and keep your heads down.”
Chao stuck out an arm, and Grakosh quickly coiled himself around it. Her heart started to beat faster, but she tried to remain outwardly calm. The engineers seated themselves as instructed with confused looks. She sat as well, and Grakosh unwrapped himself from her arm to sit in her lap. She tried to breathe slow, although by now she could practically feel her pulse. Hanson and the other agent backpedaled into the room; Hanson kept his pistol trained at the door, while the other agent went low and with impressive speed duck-walked to one edge of the room’s panorama out into the assembly area. He did a quick peek outside.
“Looks normal,” he said. Meanwhile Hanson was in the midst of muttering into his sleeve.
“What…what happened?” asked Chao.
“Not sure, ma’am,” replied Hanson. “There was some sort of attack in Washington, at Captain Sadaf’s speech. Some casualties, we don’t know details. There might be another attack in progress as well. The rest of the team is performing a sweep for any hostiles here.”
The other agent crouched again and gave Chao what he must have figured was a calming smile. “Just standard procedure, ma’am.”
Chao was not calmed. If the captain had been hurt, or worse…this was not going to go well.
Somehow Grakosh picked up on her inner turmoil. “Don’t worry, Chao,” he said quietly. “Captain Sadaf has the luck of the auhn’s Sacred Mothers. She’s seen us through worse.”
The engineers had finally picked up that there might be some physical danger coming their way, at least if the way the color left their faces was any indication.
Grakosh glanced at them all, again somehow intuiting that they needed something to get their minds off of the situation. “So!” he said brightly. “I believe we can solve the patching problem. I am more concerned about the damaged fusion engine. I did some remote surveying of the engine during our flight to Earth, and it is not going to be repairable with our on-board components. We’ll need to manufacture replacements here and ship them up.”
Clara made a pushing-away gesture with one hand. “Oh, no. That’s definite tech transfer, and we can’t be part of that…not yet, at least.” That was by far the biggest stipulation which had allowed the Rithro’s crew to remain on US soil. There was to be no transfer of alien technology to the USA; at the moment, most countries were in favor of setting up an international committee of scientists and engineers who would reverse-engineer what tech they could and hand out the blueprints to any country that asked.
But that didn’t satisfy everyone. Who would pay for the effort? What about countries with a smaller manufacturing base, who couldn’t properly take advantage of the new technology? For technologies with possible destructive applications, would they have to set up separate agencies to monitor and control their use? There was a lot of political and practical fiddly bits to get sorted, even among countries who were supposed allies.
Blake rubbed his bald spot. “I watched the UN debating the other day. First time ever. I have never seen so much said with so little actual content.”
Ned shrugged. “For once, I don’t envy the politicians. This whole thing is a hot potato.”
Grakosh looked with curiosity at Ned. “Hot potato?”
“Just a saying,” replied Dwight. “A potato is a starchy vegetable, you can make it a bunch of ways.”
“Ah, yes!” Grakosh perked up. “I have had mashed potatoes. Quite delicious.”
“Right, well you can also bake them whole. The notion is that after baking it’s really hot, so if you try to pick it up with bare hands…” Dwight now mimed juggling a potato back and forth. “Ow, ow, ow, too hot!”
“Interesting metaphor.”
Agent Hanson murmured into his sleeve again. “Confirm.” He kept his eyes fixed on the door. “Okay, folks, the sweep is almost over. Nobody here on campus who shouldn’t be here.”
“They might not have known I was here,” said Grakosh. “I am assuming this is an organized effort to kill me and my crew. Might be a bad assumption.”
“Could be,” said Chao. Now her guts went cold again, wondering if Sadaf or anyone else she knew were dead.
Both agents then stood, each touching their earpiece as if they didn’t quite believe what they were hearing. “No fuckin’ way,” said Hanson.
The other agent grinned, this time in true mirth. “Oh, that is too precious.” The two men looked at each other and chuckled, which Chao figured counted as a full-throated belly laugh for a Secret Service agent.
“Well?” asked Blake. “Care to let us in on the joke?”
Hanson shrugged. “It’s gonna be all over the news soon enough, reporters are already on the scene. We just got a report from the Decatur PD. About five miles from here, a delivery van was heading in this direction, well over the speed limit. The driver took a corner too fast and flipped the damn thing right onto its side. Slid into a few parked cars, but no bystanders hurt. Witnesses saw a bunch of dudes in black armor, toting rifles, un-ass out of the back of the thing and run off like headless chickens…in the other direction from here. Our guess is they were headed to this location, but we’re double-checking just to make sure none of ‘em made it to the campus. We all should be able to head out in ten minutes.”
“All head out?” asked Clara. “But we’re not a target.”
“That you know of,” replied Hanson. “Until we get this whole shitshow straightened out, right now y’all are considered potential targets. They might have some contingency in place.” He snickered. “I cannot believe that shit. You ever heard of anything like that?” he asked the other agent.
“Nah.” The man winked at the huddled people. “Important tip, folks. Never, ever let the FNG drive the car.”
“FNG?” asked Ned.
“Fuckin’ New Guy,” said Blake.
__________
Horace raised his head with a groan as he came to. Okay…check surroundings. Darkened room, with a single light from above illuminating the area around him. He was in a chair…no he was in a chair, with his wrists handcuffed to each arm and duct-tape around his ankles. He felt like he’d been on the wrong end of a few punches from Mike Tyson. Of course, all of his gear was gone. But he still wore clothes, at least.
In front of his chair, about five feet away, stretched a big oak table. Seated on the other side of the table was a man who put Horace in mind of a college professor. The man’s light-gray suit was impeccably pressed and didn’t have a speck of lint on it. His pale blue tie was neatly knotted at his neck. He had dark, slicked-back hair and wore wire-rimmed spectacles with round lenses. The spectacles sat perched on the end of his aquiline nose as he wrote with a flowing hand in a yellow legal pad in front of him. Two manila folders, each filled with multiple pages, lay neatly before him.
The man looked up as Horace let out a soft groan. “Ah, you’re awake!” His accent was British and quite proper. “Excellent. I fear my colleagues were a little over-enthusiastic in bringing you here. I do apologize.”
Horace probed his teeth with his tongue; one of his rear molars might be loose. “I want a lawyer. You can’t interrogate me without a lawyer present.”
The man leaned back and smiled. “Of course. Unfortunately, there are certain circumstances which have turned this from a simple matter of charging you with six homicides…of federal agents, no less…into something more of a, shall we say, existential crisis. I shall do my best to explain it to you, and if you need clarification at any time, please feel free to ask.”
Horace snorted. “So you must be good cop. Where’s bad cop? Waiting behind me with a rubber hose?”
“My colleague is on his way, he should arrive shortly. There was certain information he wanted me to see…information relevant to this interview.”
“Interview? I am a United States citizen. I have my rights.”
“Of course you do, Mister Bradshaw.” The man pulled the leftmost folder towards him and flipped it open, then began paging through its contents. “Horace Eugene Bradshaw. Graduated from high school with middling grades, applied to the Baltimore police academy. Was subsequently ‘kicked out’, as you say, after a rather unfortunate altercation with a superior officer. Held multiple jobs since; retail, some building maintenance. A few cases of assault, all involving alcohol. The profile of a bitter man without purpose. Exactly the type to wind up being taken under the wing of some radical group.”
“I want a lawyer present.”
“Patience, Mr. Bradshaw. As I said, I will explain. Now, as you may be aware, there were multiple attacks on the various locations where our alien guests were located. These attacks were coordinated, and appear to be well-funded. The attack in Washington, in particular, showed quite a high level of technical competence.”
He slid Horace’s file off to one side and pulled the other file towards him. “We did recover enough of the projectile to know it was a modified mortar round. Modified to have increased range, plus it had a quite ingenious home-made and fin-guided GPS system to ensure a precision strike with only one shot.”
The man then held up a picture showing a long tube, canted at an angle, sitting on a gravel rooftop. “We found the tube itself five kilometers from the site of the strike. Longer than the standard portable mortar barrel, again for increased range. It was rather foolish of your comrades not to take it with them; we suspect they were spooked and ran right after firing the round. Which is fortunate, I suppose. Multiple rounds might have resulted in a much greater number of casualties, including Captain Sadaf. Assuming you had more than one round, of course.”
“I want…”
“Yes, I know. Please, let me finish. Right now, the FBI is searching for who purchased the components of that mortar round; it should not take them long to track down the buyer or buyers. After all, you can’t purchase such things at one’s local shop.”
The man shut the folder and steepled his fingers. “I hope you can understand our dilemma. Putting this together with your attack on Camp David, we have a well-armed, technically competent group with inside help who is seeking to murder our alien guests and perhaps trigger a two-front war against us with the Coalition on one side and some genocidal robots on the other. Where there are three attacks, there could be more planned, even as we speak. Of course, we are moving our guests to a new, secure location…a location which I will not reveal, of course…and there could be ambushes already planned. You see, even if this was a normal legal case you would not be necessarily entitled to a lawyer if there is a so-called ‘ticking clock’ involved.” He smiled ruefully. “And I fear that there is some almighty ticking going on.”
Horace shook his head. Why did everybody take them the aliens at their word that these so-called ‘Breakers’ even existed? He took in a breath to tell this posh bastard that, again, he wanted a lawyer, when a door behind him opened and flooded the room with light. As he blinked, the door shut again. A lean man strolled into view, wearing military fatigues and with a folder under one arm…oh, no. It was him.
“Hey, Little Buddy-O!” said the newcomer, grinning as he saw Horace flinch.
The man at the table rose and gravely shook the other’s hand. “Good to see you, Matthew.”
“Tristan,” replied Matt. “Looking sharp, as always.”
“Well, one must look smart even with such a distasteful job before us.” Tristan turned to face Horace. “I have just explained to Mr. Bradshaw the gravity of the situation, in particular the need to know as soon as possible if any other attacks are planned. Mr. Bradshaw, were there any points I covered that require clarification?”
Matt grinned as he leaned on one corner of the table. “Shithead probably doesn’t know anything.”
“Most likely not,” sighed Tristan as he seated himself again. “If they had any sense they’ll have a proper cell structure.”
“Oh, hey, check this out.” Matt dropped his folder onto the table next to Tristan, then continued his smiling at Horace. “You’ll get a kick out of it.”
With a raised eyebrow, Tristan began reading. “Hmm…ah, yes. very nice. I see our friends at the FBI have followed up on the leads from that mortar round with their usual zeal.”
“Yeah, they’re good at tracking unusual purchases. They love that shit. But flip past that, get to the good stuff.”
Tristan did so, and for the first time Horace saw a look of genuine shock on the man’s face. “They did what?”
Matt laughed. “Dumped the fuckin’ van on its side. Then they all piled out and took off like jackrabbits.”
Tristan let out a small, sensible chuckle. “Well. It seems I may have overestimated our opponents’ competence.”
Horace tried to look stoic, but inside he felt dread. The van must be the one for the ULA attack; it sounded like they had failed.
Matt shook a playful finger at Horace. “Aw, now. Don’t try to play all serious with me. I saw that look. You know what that means, don’t you? I think you know more than you let on.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” said Horace. “Not without a lawyer present.” He clung to the notion like a mantra, although he was now getting a sense of just how fucked he was.
Matt walked forward and squatted, putting himself below Horace’s eye-level. “Now, my Little Buddy-O. I get it, you’re committed to the cause. You’ve psyched yourself up for this, you promised yourself that you’d die rather than roll over on your comrades. But. Let’s be reasonable. At least tell us what you know about any raids planned, even if you don't know much. You might have overheard something. We’ll keep the questions all about that. You don’t have to say a word about anything else. We can wait to ask you about that when you have a lawyer present, and we’ll do it all legal and proper. But I gotta warn ya, pretty much any attorney worth anything is gonna tell you it doesn’t look good for y’all. We got you and your buddies nailed. We got ballistics matches with the rounds which killed the six agents, and you were interrupted in the act of trying to kill a bunch more people…which presumably included all of the aliens at Camp David.”
Horace said nothing. This was how they did it, he knew that much from his time in the academy. The worst thing a suspect could do was remain silent. The police had to get them talking, about anything. If he started talking they’d worm everything out of him…then probably drop him down a deep hole somewhere.
Tristan sighed and stood. “Well, I fear it seems we will be here for a while. I fancy a cup of tea, even if it is an American brand. Matthew, would you care for something?”
Matthew rose as well. “Sure! Coffee, two creams and one sugar.” He pointed at Horace. “How about you? You want some coffee?”
Horace blinked in surprise. “Um, sure,” he said automatically. “Black, please.”
“Are you sure?” asked Matt. “If I’m honest, the coffee here is kinda meh at best.”
Upon Horace’s nod, Tristan walked with an even tread behind him. There was once again a bright, brief light as he exited the room.
Horace took a deep breath. This was it, this bastard was gonna start beating on him.
But instead Matt walked around the table and began flipping idly through the second file, the one on the mortar attack. His voice was mild. “I gotta say, you must have someone in your group with quite a bit of techie knowhow. I have seen some GPS-guided mortar rounds in action, but they’re not really what you would call man-portable. And built in somebody’s basement, no less.”
He continued flipping. “Interesting mix, though. Some very competent behavior, plus your gear was first-rate. You’ve got some funding and resources behind you. But man, when it comes to squad tactics you make the Keystone Kops look like fuckin’ Seal Team Six.”
Horace said nothing, waiting for the beating to start. But instead Matt just continued his casual perusal. After a long, long few minutes of silence, however, the room was once again briefly flooded with light as Tristan entered. He walked into view carrying a cardboard tray with three Styrofoam cups. He handed two of them to Matt. “Two cream, one sugar. And this is black, as the gentleman requested.” Tristan walked back around to his chair, and picked his own cup off of the tray. He blew on it a bit and grimaced. “I do wish you Americans would stop boiling your tea with the leaves in it. Tea needs to be encouraged, not bullied.”
Meanwhile, Matt set his own coffee down and walked towards Horace. The latter flinched as the man reached into a pocket with his free hand. But all that came out was a small key; with a deft touch Matt unlocked the cuff around Horace’s left sleeve and then pressed the cup into the now-freed hand. “It’s lukewarm, I’m afraid. Pot must be almost empty.”
Now that he saw the coffee in his hand, Horace wondered if something was slipped into it. It would be the ideal way to get him to drop his defenses without realizing.
Matt must have picked up on his trepidation and shrugged. “Hey, drink it or don’t. Pour it on your foot for all I care. I’ll swap, if you want.”
With a trembling hand, Horace took a sip. As Matthew had promised, it was bitter and barely hot. But it tasted like coffee.
“I don’t suppose Mr. Bradshaw spoke of anything while I was out?” asked Tristan.
“Nope. He’s gone full clam.”
“Unfortunate.”
Horace drank more coffee and said nothing.
“Yeah.” Matt sipped at his coffee and made a grimace of his own. “Jesus, this is almost cold. All right, I gotta go nuke this thing.”
“For the last time, you heathen, you ‘microwave’ something, not ‘nuke’ it.” Tristan began unbuttoning his suit jacket.
Matt chuckled as he strolled off. “Oh hey, they refilled the vending machine. You wanna cherry-cheese danish?”
With great care, Tristan hung his jacket on the back of the chair. “Good lord, no. Those things are revolting.” He unfastened his tie and with equal gravity laid it over the top of his jacket.
“Nah, all the preservatives give it extra flavor.” With another bright slam, the pair were once again alone in the shadowed room.
Horace was, by now, thoroughly confused as Tristan unbuttoned his collar. The latter then took a careful sip of his tea. “Still too bloody hot,” he muttered. “Damned Yanks. Ah, Mr. Bradshaw, forgive me. On occasion I tend to slip into the vernacular, you might say.” He walked around the desk and gripped Horace’s coffee cup. The sudden physical contact with his fingers made Horace flinch. “May I?” He pulled the cup from Horace’s unresisting grasp and turned to place it on the table, then re-locked Horace’s left hand to the chair. As Tristan walked back towards his tea, he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves to the elbow, then took off his spectacles and placed them on the table.
“What the fuck is going on?” snapped Horace. “This is bullshit, you’re just running around, going in and out, giving me coffee, taking it away. You’re trying to confuse me and make me say something. I know how this works.”
Tristan picked up his tea and returned to stand in front of the bound man. “No, Mr. Bradshaw, I fear you have completely mis-read the relationship between myself and my esteemed colleague.”
The man leaned forward as his face hardened into an emotionless mask. “You see, Matthew is the one who always plays good cop.”
With that, Tristan up-ended his scalding-hot tea right into Horace’s crotch.

Previous Next
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I fixated my gaze on the screen, absorbing the implications of the message. As the systems in the cockpit gradually came back online, a green light confirmed the restoration of manual control.
The Emissary 1's spotlights flickered to life, illuminating the colossal structure before me. Its surface was composed of a shimmering golden material that radiated under the spotlight's glow. Tentatively, I reached for the manual controls, gripping them with a mix of apprehension and curiosity.
In the center of the colossal structure, an opening materialized before my eyes. The center screen flickered again, displaying a new message that demanded my attention.
"Enter, so that we may converse."
My eyes shifted between the inviting opening and the vast emptiness of space surrounding us. There was nothing out there except the dim blue star and the colossal structure.
With a deep breath, I propelled the Emissary 1 forward, maneuvering it into the open hangar bay. Unlike before, there was no blinding light as my craft breached the threshold. Through the cockpit window, I beheld the awe-inspiring sight of the hangar, adorned with countless identical golden crafts suspended in mid-air by an unseen force. Each vessel was an exact replica of the one that had mysteriously appeared around Earth.
My focus settled on a pulsating circle of white and green light at the center. Guiding the Emissary 1 towards it, I cautiously landed the craft within the circle. After adjusting the switches on the control board to cool the engines and setting the vessel to standby, I shifted my attention to the multitude of hoses connected to the small oxygen tank affixed to my suit.
With a determined gesture, I slid down the helmet's visor, sealing myself inside. Aware of the limited supply of oxygen, approximately two hours' worth, I contemplated the unknown nature of the external atmosphere, or whether one even existed.
Relieving the straps securing me to the seat, I activated the suit's temperature and pressure regulators. As if on cue, the center screen flickered once again, captivating my attention with its renewed message.
"Exit your craft. We will do you no harm."
My heart skipped a beat as I glanced back at the cockpit window. Three towering figures stood there, cloaked in the same shimmering golden material that adorned everything in their presence. Feeling a mix of trepidation and curiosity, I quickly averted my gaze and made my way towards the hatch. With measured anticipation, I initiated the depressurization sequence, patiently waiting until finally releasing the hatch.
I gingerly positioned one leg through the opening, followed by the other, and slowly descended to the ground. The low gravity in this unfamiliar environment gave an ethereal quality to my movements. With cautious steps, I noticed ripples of light cascading outward from each footfall, a mesmerizing display that underscored the otherworldly nature of this encounter.
My attention turned towards the three towering figures standing before my small spacecraft. The central figure extended a long arm, beckoning me forward. I hesitated momentarily, taking in the gravity of the situation, but a profound sense of curiosity propelled me to approach.
Consciously keeping my arms away from my sides, I sought to convey a non-threatening posture. As I closed the distance, I had a clear view of these enigmatic beings. Towering above me, they stood at least twice my height, their elongated limbs adorned with bands of the shimmering golden material that characterized their presence. Their hairless heads, mottled grey and adorned with circlets of the same radiant material, hosted four bright orange eyes and a small mouth. Notably absent were ears and noses.
Coming to a stop a mere couple of feet away from them, I found myself under their penetrating gaze. Raising my right arm slowly, I caught their attention and offered a small wave. Their initial scrutiny gave way to subtle smiles as they reciprocated the gesture, their three-fingered hands waving in unison.
Astounded by their comprehension of my greeting, I took a deep breath and mustered the courage to proceed. Extending my hand for a handshake, a universally recognized gesture, I hoped they would interpret its meaning. The central figure reached out its three-fingered hand towards mine, our fingertips barely grazing, when a soft voice resonated within my mind.
"Greetings, small one. We are the Achaens. Please, remove your helmet so that we may behold your face. We have adjusted the atmosphere to suit your needs," the soothing voice reverberated throughout my skull. The Achaen withdrew her hand, her smile widening, reassuring me of the safety and goodwill in this encounter.
Following the instruction, I reached up and grasped the sides of my helmet, twisting it to the right and lifting it from my head, tucking it securely under my arm. The air carried a cool and invigorating sensation, carrying a subtle hint of mint. Taking a deep breath, I discovered no difficulty in breathing this unfamiliar atmosphere.
As I looked up at the Achaens before me, I reciprocated their warm expressions with a friendly smile. "Hello. My name is Deckard Conroy. I've been sent by the people of planet Earth as an Emissary. It is truly an honor to meet you all," I spoke, feeling the weight of the entire human race resting upon my shoulders. In a gesture of respect, I offered a deep bow.
The center Achaen reciprocated the bow, her gaze holding mine for a moment before she began to speak. Her voice carried a softness and deliberation, each word enunciated with care. "It is fortunate that your people have finally sent an ambassador. We have much we wish to share with you."
Stepping forward, the Achaen to the left fixed her gaze upon me. "It is our duty to uplift all species, provided they possess the desire for it," she spoke with measured intent. The Achaen to the right followed suit, her intensity casting an eerie aura that the other two Achaens did not possess.
Her words carried a warning, her gaze locked onto mine. "Be warned. The knowledge we are prepared to impart upon you holds the potential to unlock great wonders and technological marvels for your species. But it is also capable of sowing immense destruction if wielded by those with nefarious intent."
Interrupting, the center Achaen spoke once more, her voice a calming presence. "My sister speaks the truth. That is why we shall first give you, and you alone, this." Extending her arm, she handed me a small, softly glowing blue cube. I observed it for a moment before returning my focus to the Achaens.
"It is a communicator of sorts. Keep it to yourself upon your return and make no mention of it to your people. If they begin to misuse the knowledge and technology we are about to bestow upon you, you need only hold it with both hands and call out to us. We will come to your aid," explained the center Achaen. Firmly nodding in acknowledgement, I carefully placed the cube in one of my suit's secure pockets.
"Next, accept this. It contains a wealth of information encompassing everything you can conceive of in regard to the universe. Your finest scientists will cherish it. We have designed it to be compatible with your computer systems," conveyed the Achaen to the right, presenting me with a bright yellow cube. I turned it over in my hand, noting the myriad of small data ports, one of which I recognized as a USB-3 port.
Safely storing the cube away, I pondered the unfathomable knowledge it held. Returning my attention to the Achaens, the Achaen to the left extended her arms, offering another bright yellow cube and a small, intriguing device.
"The device I offer you is universally compatible with any spacecraft. It will provide perpetual fuel and power. Simply attach it to your craft, and it will seamlessly interface with the onboard systems. Additionally, it incorporates a powerful Artificial Intelligence capable of receiving commands and autonomously performing advanced maneuvers. The second device is another data storage unit, containing instructions on constructing various technologies for space exploration," elucidated the Achaen, carefully placing both devices in my hands. I secured them safely, meeting the gaze of the Achaens once more.
"The people of Earth express profound gratitude for your boundless benevolence and generosity. We will forever be in your debt," I solemnly spoke, offering another deep bow.
"We only ask that you explore, discover, and prosper. Build wonders and unveil the mysteries of the cosmos. You may call upon us whenever you desire, and we will be there to assist you," articulated the center Achaen. The Achaen to the left observed me for a moment before adding, "Return to your spacecraft. As you cross the threshold of our magnificent station, you will be transported back through the craft we placed in orbit around your homeworld," her voice filled with approval.
Once again, expressing my heartfelt gratitude, I repeated my deep bow. However, as I looked up, the Achaens had vanished, leaving me standing alone in the vast hangar bay. The silence enveloped me as I made my way back to the Emissary 1, each step filled with a mix of wonder and trepidation. The weight of the Achaens' gifts, both physical and metaphorical, rested heavily upon me.
Reaching the spacecraft, I paused for a moment to take in the extraordinary surroundings. The golden vessels, suspended in mid-air, seemed to hold the secrets of an ancient and advanced civilization. The enormity of the moment washed over me once again, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe and responsibility.
With a deep breath, I climbed back into the cockpit of the Emissary 1, feeling a sense of familiarity and comfort in its familiar embrace. The consoles hummed softly as I settled back into the pilot's seat, the weight of the mission amplified by the newfound knowledge and technology entrusted to me.
As I initiated the launch sequence, the Emissary 1 hummed to life, its engines purring with anticipation. I glanced one last time at the hangar bay, knowing that I was leaving behind a world of wonder and possibilities. The Achaens had granted humanity a chance to soar among the stars, armed with knowledge and tools beyond our wildest dreams.
With a feeling of anticipation, I guided the Emissary 1 towards the threshold of the colossal golden structure, bidding farewell to the enigmatic Achaens and their hidden presence. The weight of the extraordinary encounter settled upon me as I prepared to depart their station.
As I crossed the threshold, a sense of expectation filled the cockpit. I braced myself, awaiting the anticipated surge of energy that would propel me across the vast expanse of space and back to Earth. Yet, to my bewilderment, nothing happened. Time seemed to hang in the balance as I sat there, suspended in uncertainty.
A moment later, a familiar soft voice reverberated in my mind, causing a chill to run down my spine. The Achaen's words carried a tone of concern, laced with a hint of disbelief.
“We are unsure of what to make of this, but it appears your people have destroyed the craft we placed in orbit with atomic weaponry.”
_*_*_*_*_*_
​
Previous Next

Here are some things that I wish everyone from politicians to SES to Contractor management to individual supervisors understood about SHOW-UP and Return-to-Office:

1) Ending the Pandemic Emergency does not end the pandemic.

• WHO says there is someone dying of COVID every 3 minutes.
• I have an office-mate who was out with COVID last week. Per the current agency guidance, they are wearing an N-95 to the office this week.

2) SARS-CoV-2 is a Biological Safety Level 3 (BSL-3) airborne virus.

3) We have the tools to limit SARS-CoV-2 spread. They are not handwashing:

1. Temperature & Humidity control to affect the viability of the virus.
   
2. Exchanging building air with the outside, ~6 full exchanges per hour.
   
3. Improving airflow / circulation within any room that had / does / will contain people.
   
4. Increasing air filtration with at least HEPA or MERV-13
   
5. Closing lids over toilets before flushing.
   
6. Use of UV light to disinfect appropriate spaces.
   
7. Universal two-way masking would limit the amount of virus introduced into the environment.
   
   • This is the airborne equivalent of removing the water pump handle from a cholera source.
8. Personal protection in a one-way masking environment requires tight-fitting respirators, ideally fit-checked.
   
   • Proper personal protection against a BSL-3 virus includes a Powered Atmosphere Purification Respirator (PAPR).

 - On a good day, I call it my “Personal Responsibility kit,” because it allows me to not worry about anyone else’s health or safety measures. - On a bad day, it’s my FYIGM kit. 

1. For day-to-day protection of the lungs, other elastomeric respirators and/or N-95s may suffice. This would not protect the eyes.

4) For the ~10 percent of the public who are still wearing masks, this is what it means:

• For maximum protection, the mask does not come off indoors
  
  • This means no sips of water at one’s in-the-office desk. Must step outside to hydrate.
  • This also means no snacking at one’s in-the-office desk or eating lunch inside. Must step outside to manage the intake- side of blood sugar levels (eating food).
  • Masks affect one’s ability to participate in both in-person meetings and teleconferences:
    
    • The hood of the PAPR inflates, making a headset difficult.
    • The motor of the PAPR makes sound, which can interfere with clear speech, both in-person and through microphones.
  • Unpowered respirators also muffle speech and typically hide one’s mouth (preventing lipreading).
    
  • These drawbacks are manageable for a morning or afternoon in the office, say ~3-4 hours.
    
  • Longer than a few hours increases the discomfort from dehydration, condensation inside the mask, and the sensation of the mask itself.
    
• All of these drawbacks to the in-office environment disappear when an employee is allowed to regularly work from home, where they can manage their risk of workplace exposure without masking.
  

5) Not all disabilities are visible.

• I learned from a friend with Long Polio that wheelchair users are particularly susceptible to respiratory infections. It’s more difficult to clear one’s lungs if one’s leg movement is limited.
  
• The list of medical conditions that make a person higher risk from COVID include diabetes, asthma, and depression.
  
  • These in particular are chronic, long-term health conditions, with no cure.
  • They are typically manageable with treatment & medication, yes. They may allow one to work a regular job. Making these at-risk employees invisible.

6) The remote work agreement already included the expectation that the employee would come into the office when their presence serves the organization’s purpose.

• If you aren’t seeing people with masks on at the office, it’s quite possible that they normally telework.
  
• If an individual with a telework agreement is not fulfilling their organizational responsibilities, then the individual should be held accountable.
  
  • Telework cancelation should be an individual consequence, not organization-wide.

Ruud offers a wide range of HVAC products for both residential and commercial use, including:

• Furnaces: Ruud offers a variety of gas and electric furnaces for both residential and commercial use. The company's furnaces are energy efficient and reliable, and they are available in a range of sizes to suit different heating needs.
• Air conditioners: Ruud offers ductless mini-split air conditioners, which can cool specific areas or rooms in a building with no ductwork.
• Heat pumps: Ruud offers both air-source and ground-source heat pumps for both residential and commercial use. Heat pumps use the outside air to heat and cool a building, making them an energy-efficient alternative to traditional heating and cooling systems. Ruud heat pumps are reliable and efficient, and they are available in a range of sizes to suit different heating and cooling needs.
• Air handlers: A Ruud air handler is a device that is used in a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system to circulate air throughout a building. It typically comprises a fan, an evaporator coil, and a heating element. The air handler pulls in outside air, passes it over the evaporator coil to cool it, and then uses the fan to circulate the cooled air throughout the building.

Besides these products, Ruud also offers a range of accessories and controls, including thermostats, air cleaners, and humidifiers, to help homeowners and businesses create a comfortable indoor environment.
Ruud parts used in its appliances are durable and reliable, and they are typically backed by a manufacturer's warranty. It is important to note that the quality of any product can vary depending on the specific model and how well it is maintained.

Girls: Izzy
Boys: Ezekiel, Mal, Topher
Episode 23: Awwwwww, Drumheller
"Last time, on Total Drama World Tour!" Chris opened over a shot of the jumbo jet flying away from Rapa Nui. "Mal assaulted a statue for the fun of it," the host said over a clip of Mal kicking Cody's stone statue. "And while we searched for eggs on Easter Island," Mal was seen taking out food from Owen's statue, "some old pals stopped by for a nice visit." Ezekiel was shown finding his egg from the statue of Sadie. "Along with a couple seriously ticked-off condor parents," the host added, the male condor shown chasing Mal through the underground tunnel, and the female pecking at Topher while he sang and eventually swept him off the rocky perch with her wing.
"Sisterhoods were expanded," Chris said over a clip of Izzy giving Eva her egg. "Alliances formed," the host added as Ezekiel, Topher, Izzy, and Eva were shown hiding in a hole. "Ultimately, Eva got the vote off," Chris said as the girl was shown going to the exit, "but not before giving Mal what for!" he finished with a mischievous laugh as Mal was shown being punched in the eye by Eva.
"The Final Four begins," Chris told the camera as the recap montage ended. "Which one of 'em will dig up more trouble this week? Find out right now, on Total! Drama! World Tour!"
It was dawn as the camera zoomed out, and a hot air balloon was rising up nearby the plane. It collided with the wing, popped, and fell with a whimpering hiss.
XXXXX
The episode, as usual, opened with a shot of the Total Drama Jumbo Jet in flight as the sky was still dark. The scene cut inside to show Topher and Izzy lying on their seats and sleeping in economy class.
In first class, Mal and Ezekiel were both reclining in their seats and sleeping. Ezekiel was drooling a bit in his sleep, and the camera went over and focused on Mal, who's eye was covered with a black eye patch. He was snoring before the shot changed to the inside of his head.
\
Mike, Chester, Svetlana, and Vito's backs can be shown as they were walking closer to the tower.
"I hope we hit the club district soon," Vito said.
Chester wasn't on board with the suggestion. "Nah, you ninny. If this place has a club district, I'll eat my pants! Without any catsup! Unless you've got some on ya. Quit holdin' out!" he scolded Vito.
A crackling fire were seen next, and the camera panned out to feature Manitoba Smith next to it. He was holding out his rope, but his leg was chained to a rock behind him.
"Manitoba! Finally!" Mike rejoiced when he spotted him.
"Can't talk now. Big quota to fill," Manitoba said firmly.
"What's Mal making you do?" Mike discovered the conditions Manitoba was in.
"See them clouds?" Manitoba directed everyone's attention to the floating clouds. "Them's your dreams. My job's to get rid of 'em so you can never enjoy 'em again."
Manitoba pulled a cloud down using his rope and it landed in-between him and Mike. The cloud showed a dream of Mike wearing a dark tuxedo and walking down the red carpet while carrying a bunch of gemmies.
"It's the dream I had about walking down the red carpet! Aw, I loved that dream!" Mike told his alters.
"So inspiring!" Svetlana agreed.
Manitoba threw the cloud into the fire, and Mike was shocked to see it disperse. "Don't do that!" Mike freaked out.
"Love to, mate, but Mal's the boss," Manitoba backed up.
Mike groaned in frustration. "Once I regain control, I'll make more of an attempt to be in a red carpet. And Mal won't be able to ruin that!" the comedian promised and got cut off by a cloud getting burnt. "Ah, c'mon! Stop burning up my dreams!"
"Ah, well. We all gotta go sometime," Manitoba stated.
"Don't you want to be free?" Mike asked.
"But even if we could beat Mal, that would just put you back in charge," Manitoba claimed. "So, how's that make me free?"
"No way, he's right," Vito said when he and the others got closer. "Why should you get all the control?"
"'Cause I'm the first. The original," Mike answered.
Chester doubted the fact. "Where's the proof?"
Mike took out his wallet. "Right here. See?" He showed it to his personalities, and they reacted with surprise. Mike checked his wallet, and was surprised to see Mal rather than himself. "Mal is the original personality? I-I can't believe it."
"Me neither. Why have I been listening to you this whole time?" Chester complained.
"Stop!" Svetlana halted everyone. "Who cares who was the first? Mike is the best! He's more patient than me, more generous than Chester, less egotistical than Manitoba, and he's a better dancer than Vito."
Vito sighed. "It's true."
"Aw, thanks," Mike said in gratitude. "But if I'm not the original…"
"Think about it. We're trapped in a world Mal created. So where do you think that license came from?" Manitoba explained.
Mike watched his license turn into a brain. "Nice try, Mal, but you haven't won yet!" He rubbed the brain into a key and unlocked Manitoba's chain, setting him free.
"Took you long enough! C'mon! I know a shortcut to Mal's guard tower!" Manitoba informed the rest
"Guard tower?" Mike got confused.
"This whole place, is a jail. The tower is the only way in or out," Manitoba lectured before he, Svetlana, and Vito made their way to the tower.
"I don't think I can deal with anymore walking. Shortcut or not," Chester mentioned to Mike.
"Fine, I'll give you a piggyback," Mike offered. Chester got on Mike's back with a grunt, and they went off to catch up with the others.
\
The season's world map was shown, the plane icon flying north from Chile to western Canada.
A flash took the scene to a series of rock formations baking under the sun, the Total Drama Jumbo Jet speeding past between them and knocking a precariously-balanced rock off its perch.
Down below, a small burrowing rodent of some sort was just about to complete a house of cards, unaware of the shadow growing around it. It finally paused and looked up at the whooshing sound that was approaching, just as the boulder landed on top of it, the cards, and its hole.
\
"Welcome to Drumheller, Alberta," Chris told the Final Four, who had assembled in the barren canyon outside of the plane, its rear tail hatch visibly lowered as a boarding ramp in the background. "A World Heritage Site," the host continued, the camera zooming in just enough to show a saurian skeleton embedded in a distant cliff. "It has the wickedest collection of dinosaur bones on the planet! In front of you is a giant pit with lots of super ancient dino bones." The camera zoomed out to show more of the surrounding canyon, a few fossils visible in the rock walls. "Grab whatever bones you can find to make your very own life-size dino," Chris continued. "I'm calling it, 'Design-a-saurus'!"
The cast groaned at the pun.
"I know," Chris said with a broad smile. "They should pay me just to come up with titles. I'm that good."
Confessional: Topher
"For the first time, I have to disagree with Chris about his jokes and puns being considered humorous," Topher said.
Confessional Ends
"You have two minutes to rifle through the plane's cargo hold," Chris continued, "and grab whatever you can to help build your creations. Aaaand, go!"
At his signal, Mal shoved Topher to the ground and ran off laughing.
Confessional: Mal
"With Eva gone, that just leaves me, Topher, and Ezekiel as the big four of this season," Mal told the camera. "If you can beat 'em," he punched his palm and fist together, "beat 'em up!"
Confessional Ends
The scene cut to the cargo hold, the lowered boarding ramp visible on the left. Izzy, Mal, and Ezekiel were already searching through boxes and crates, and Topher was the last to arrive.
Izzy quickly managed to find a small box of what looked like art supplies inside a larger crate and smiled. "Glitter glue, stickers, puffy paint? This was meant for me!" As she listed off her supplies, Mal turned a mocking smirk in her direction.
"We're not making grade three art projects here," Mal taunted, and Izzy squirted a tube of glitter glue in his face as a response.
"How mature of you," the malevolent one growled as Izzy walked off.
"I think it was pretty funny," Ezekiel said as he walked past with an open cardboard box. "Not to you, but definitely to me!"
Confessional: Ezekiel
"I'm this close to being this season's winner!" Ezekiel boasted. "And unlike the spelling bee, where I got a hundred dollars, I'll get a lot more than that!"
Confessional Ends
The footage skipped ahead to show Ezekiel sitting on the ground, scooping away the dirt surrounding what looked like the tip of a larger fossil with his hands. He looked up to see Topher coming his way.
"So how was first class like with Mal" Topher wondered.
Ezekiel sighed. "We simply avoided each other. Scratch that. I avoided him while he kept shooting me dirty looks."
"That was what I expected," Topher nodded.
"He can't frighten us anymore," Ezekiel said. "Eva may be out, but we still have Izzy with us."
"We should still watch out for him," Topher advised the home-schooled guy. "Given we're in the final four, he'll do whatever it takes to claim victory."
The focus shifted to Izzy as she hauled a leg bone as long as she was tall through the barren landscape on her back, eventually throwing the bone to the ground next to a pile of smaller bones.
"This is already looking good," Izzy grinned and stood up, but scowled when she saw Mal standing on the other side of the pile.
"Greetings to you!" Mal insincerely said hello.
"If you're here to steal my bones, then you can forget it!" Izzy growled at the malevolent one. "I have the eyes of a hawk!"
"I wasn't going to steal them," Mal told the psycho hose beast. "I know they're yours, so I want to ask if I can have a few."
"No no no no NO!!" Izzy barked. "I will not help you, especially when you're a criminal!"
"And you aren't?" Mal replied. "We've been to the same juvie together."
"True, but what I did to get locked up was accidental," Izzy pointed out while looking at her bones. "You burned down a building when there were people inside!"
Mal scoffed. "And yet you still parade around as the mentally challenged girl. I don't know what Owen ever saw in you."
"You better get out before I make you extinct, Patchy!" Izzy snarled and whacked a bone to her palm.
Seeing that she was being serious, Mal rolled his eyes and departed.
Confessional: Izzy
"To be honest, what he said kind of hurt me, but I'm not going to show any signs of weakness around that guy or he'll eat it up!" Izzy acted intimidating, but sighed softly.
Confessional: Mal
"Most people try to make their words sound professional. I'm not like most people," Mal laughed, "and sooner or later, everybody's spirits will be crushed!"
Confessional Ends
The scene flashed to Mal down on all fours, picking through a small pile of small bones. He casually tossed one over his shoulder, along with another one. He finally looked happy at his third after a short pause.
\
Izzy was shown next, gluing an arm bone into her creation and sprinkling it with glitter.
\
Ezekiel stuck a tail to the back of his fossil.
\
Topher, who was kneeling down, pushed the bony claws onto the foot of his dinosaur.
\
"Time's up!" Chris declared, the footage skipping forward one more time. "Now we'll begin the amazing tour through the ages of imaginary dinosaurs. Let's start with Mal."
The shot cut to Mal looking smug. "I went with the most dangerous of the dinosaurs," he said confidently, turning around as the camera zoomed out to show the complete skeleton of what looked like a Tyrannosaurus Rex standing behind him, "Tyrannosaurus Mal, or T-Mal for short!"
"Wowza," Izzy said in awe as she, Topher, and Ezekiel were shown looking at the first creation.
"That does look cool," Ezekiel admitted.
Topher nodded and crossed his arms. "Even I can't deny that."
"It's gonna be tough to beat that right out of the gate," Chris told him.
"I can do it," Topher said before turning to the side. "Ladies and gentlemen…Chrisasaurus!"
The shot zoomed out dramatically, revealing the Chris wannabe's creation: a mass of bones built into the shape of a Chris pose with the head shaped like Chris.
"The Chrisasaurus is one handsome and charismatic beast," Topher explained. "Like it?"
"Love it!" Chris agreed. "L-U-V, love. Zeke, what have you got?" he asked Ezekiel.
"Meet the Blingoraptor," Ezekiel said, gesturing to his creation: it was a large spherical body made of the dome-like fossils he found earlier. There were two bones raised up as its hands, and the other two were on the ground as its legs. Ezekiel had also put gold chains on its neck and arms. "This dinosaur is hip and cool."
Mal smirked. "Bold choice for the body," he told the home-schooled guy.
"I thought the bones would make this dinosaur work," Ezekiel said proudly.
"They're coprolite fossils," Mal told him.
"What's a coprolite?" Topher asked in confusion.
"Coprolite," Mal repeated. "From Ancient Greek, 'copros' meaning dung, and 'lite' meaning stone."
Ezekiel looked at him blankly for a second before widening his eyes in realization. "You mean it's fossilized poo?!"
"So disgusting!" Izzy winced.
"Izzy," Chris interrupted in annoyance, "please rescue us from Ezekiel's suckitude."
Izzy began her introduction. "My dinosaur is the Aeroraptor," she said, the camera zooming out and panning over to her creation. It was built like a normal raptor, but it has eight legs instead of two, there was a party hat on top of the head, and glitter was everywhere. "Does whatever a dinosaur can, but it's more festive and fun than the others."
"Why is it wearing a party hat when it's nobody's birthday?" Ezekiel asked.
"Today is April Fools' Day," Izzy explained. "That's the day my dad was born, so I made this dinosaur as a gift to him."
"That's…very thoughtful of you," Ezekiel remarked.
"I don't normally see eye-to-eye with my family, but I won't trade them for the world," Izzy said sincerely.
Confessional: Izzy
"Except for my pet cat. She's really clingy," Izzy added.
Confessional Ends
"Enough mush," Chris interrupted sharply. "Iiiit's judgment day! Which dinos will survive, and which ones will be driven to extinction?" he asked the camera.
"Oh, and did I mention who the very special judges are?" Chris asked the cast. "You!" he announced. "With a pretty shocking twist, of course!"
\
The scene skipped forward to a close-up of a large battery, jumper cables connecting it to an electric chair that currently had Topher sitting in it. "Is the electric chair necessary?" he asked, looking down at the device skeptically.
"Yes it is," Chris answered. "It's time to vote for your fave dino," he said. "Can't vote for your own, of course, aaand you might wanna tell the truth. Just saying."
"Well, I think mine was the best, but I guess second can go to Ezekiel." Topher was promptly electrocuted, a puff of smoke coming from his mouth when it stopped.
Chris chuckled. "Yeah, might wanna tell the truth there Topher!" he told him.
Topher sighed. "Fine, Izzy's birthday gift to her father was pretty heartwarming," he admitted. "I'm pretty cheap when it comes to buying or creating gifts for others, and hers required hard work."
"You can say that again," Chris told him with a grin before turning around and calling out "Next!"
\
Mal was next in the chair. "I do find Izzy's spider dinosaur interesting," he said, immediately getting electrocuted. "Alright," he bitterly corrected. "Topher's dinosaur was eye-catching."
"Good enough," Chris told him. "Next!"
\
Izzy was third in the chair. "Although I don't like him and would rather get stung by a bee than be in the same room as him," she began, "Topher's Chris dinosaur really speaks to me, even if Ezekiel's bling dinosaur is really fresh."
"Not as much as me," Chris said with a shrug. "Next!"
\
"I'm surprised that anyone can even remotely like you after all you put us through, but Topher's dedicated to you enough to even make a dinosaur out of your likeness," Ezekiel said. "He gets my vote."
"As the winner," Chris announced as the camera pulled back, "Topher gets this handy-dandy post digger!"
Chef was shown delivering the large two-handled power tool to the fanboy. "A post digger?" he said as he took hold of the thing. "Why would I even need this-" He pressed a button on the machine, turning it on and causing the drill bit to spin. He gasped and let go of it in shock, causing the digger to move around wildly under the power of its own vibrations. It headed straight towards Izzy and Mal, forcing them to scatter as Topher tried to catch up to the machine to regain control of it.
"Topher versus the post digger!" Chris said, sliding in front of the camera. "See who wins next," the post digger continued along behind him, Topher still chasing it, "right here on Total Drama World Tour!"
\
(Commercial Break)
\

--- Table of Contents ---
Spring 4985, 18 Buromoth
The road to Hamerfoss was north out of Smilnda. By horse, the journey took only two days, one and a half if ridden hard. By foot, it generally took four days, but escorting a heavily loaded wagon would take the squires six.
On the first day out, Thom and Rerves released their excited energy through constant chatter. Talking about how happy they were to finally be on their way to real training. Occasionally Shon would join in.
On the second day, they spoke about how much easier it would be to concentrate without the girls around. Shon didn’t join much in this conversation.
On the third day, they confessed to missing Daisy and Ania. Suspecting they missed the conversation, Shon attempted to chime in more often.
The fourth and fifth days were plagued with spring rain, and the boys did little more than complain, particularly about their new leather armor chafing when wet. Shon couldn't help but grumble in affirmation. He'd hated the armor from the first day.
The sixth, and final, day saw a stop to the rain. The boys spent their walk beside the wagon carefully dodging puddles after Thom submerged his entire boot in one deeper than expected. There was very little talking between them now, all three too nervous and excited for their imminent arrival.
The road outside the city had been the only part with flat fields and open skies on either side. For the rest, they'd traveled through forest, with only the occasional clearing maintained explicitly for travelers to camp. Tall evergreens growing close together blocked the view of anything beyond the road at their feet, giving Shon and the others very little to look at as they marched.
Two sturdy horses pulled the wagon of supplies for the fortress. Barrels of food and crates of scrap metal as well as sacks of letters and the Squire's personal bags, weighed down the laden wagon, the wheels carving deep channels in the muddy road.
Shon had already sketched the wagon, the horses, the Paladin driving them, and his fellow Squires many times over. He even managed a few landscape drawings, for lack of better subjects. He had no idea how the other two managed to calm their excitement before sleep. Perhaps that was why they talked so much every night.
Walking ahead of him, Rerves readjusted the hilt of his short sword while Shon pulled at the neck of his armor for what seemed like the hundredth time each. They hadn’t been trained in the proper use of either, and Shon wondered again why the Paladins had insisted the Squires wear them. They'd been ordered to guard the wagon, but who would be stupid enough to waylay a Temple cart so close to a fortress full of knights? Of course, monsters such as the draken and drakwalves were always a threat, but what were three untrained boys supposed to do against something like that?
Shon sighed, letting his hand fall limply from the gorget. It was no use. No matter how many times he tried to shift it, it would just rub somewhere else until he grew uncomfortable enough to try again. He attempted to distract himself, letting his eyes unfocus and picturing himself going through his kata as he walked in a daze. Master Veon-Zih always said that mental practice was just as important as physical training, though in this case, Shon was just glad it gave him something to focus on besides his nerves and discomfort.
He was about to start the second kata when he nearly ran into Rerves. The taller boy had stopped walking, and Shon arched an eyebrow at him before realizing that the wagon had also stopped. There was no way they were there already…
Stepping to the side, Shon saw what had stalled them. A man in what looked like poorly kept half-plate stood in the middle of the path. A large war ax strapped to his back.
The stranger scratched at his short beard, scraggly and peppered like his hair, “Ho traveler, where you headed?” He called.
The three boys looked to the Paladin driving the wagon, watching as his eyes narrowed, “We are bound for Hamerfoss, good ser…”
“Ah, so the toll you’ll be payin' will be comin' out of them coffers then,” the stranger called, his face splitting into a grin as the boys looked back his way.
“There is no toll on this road, good ser.” their Paladin stated. As if their heads had been placed on a swivel, the Squires returned their gazes to him, but only for a moment as the stranger answered again.
“There is now.” the bandit lifted his hand, the Paladin stood, and the boys looked between the two with wide eyes, not sure what they were supposed to do. The bandit whistled, a sharp sound that sent birds flying from the trees as four hooded figures exited from the gloom to surround the wagon and its three terrified Squires.
The Paladin drew his longsword, ordering the boys, “Protect the wagon!” They turned frightened eyes on each other for only a moment before looking back at the bandits. Each now holding swords of their own.
The knight lept from the wagon and charged the leader, who'd reached for his ax. Thom and Rerves fumbled for their short swords, and Shon dropped into a low stance, his fists held at the ready and heart beating furiously.
“Shon, sword!” Rerves yelled, his voice somehow steady as the four hooded bandits stalked closer.
Shon actually felt himself blush despite the situation and pulled his sword from its scabbard like the rest. He felt off-balance, the weight of the weapon throwing off his well-rehearsed stance. He didn’t have time to adjust before the bandits charged. Two went for Rerves, leaving one each for Shon and Thom.
Shon tried to relax, to stay alert and ready to move, as he'd been taught. But his palm was sweating and he clinched the hilt tighter than intended. Focused on the bandit heading his way, the chaos around him blurred, becoming indistinct, like a drawing left in the rain. Shon held his ground and lifted the sword to one of the ready positions he'd seen the Paladins practice. His attacker was quite a bit taller than he was, and Shon lifted the sword above his head as the first swing came down hard from above.
The hilt shook in Shon's hand, and his attacker didn't hesitate to swing again, this time sweeping around and aiming for Shon's left leg. Clenching his teeth, Shon pivoted the sword down to block again but misjudged the length of his blade. The bandit's long sword passed below the point of Shon's block to strike just above the knee. He felt the impact, but could only imagine the damage, refusing to look and thanking Hengist the limb hadn't buckled. As the shock of the hit ran its course, the attacker flicked his sword up from inside Shon's failed guard, knocking the weapon from his hand.
The short sword flew free, but Shon had already begun his counter, aiming with his free right hand at his attacker’s extended wrist. The hit would have knocked the attacker's arm aside at the least, but with his now empty left hand, Shon struck the same arm from the outside at the elbow. In an instinctual effort to save the joint, the bandit twisted awkwardly, but predictably, bringing his head lower and closer.
Cartilage crunched beneath his knuckles and Shon's attacker reeled back, gripping his nose under his hood and cursing loudly enough for others to hear over the clang of metal and chaos.
One of Rerves' attackers disengaged from his two-on-one fight to aid his friend, who was now backing away from Shon as fast as he could. Shon hesitated a moment then dashed to his fallen sword.
Again Shon felt unbalanced with the weapon in hand. He tried to shift his weight to offset the difference but barely had enough time to bring the sword to bear as the second attacker swung his two-handed greatsword at Shon's right side.
Taking his own weapon in both hands, Shon managed to absorb some of the force of the blow, but he still wasn't strong enough to fully block the strike. His arms buckled, giving way for his opponent's longsword to hit his upper arm. This second hit hadn't fully registered in Shon's mind when the new attacker shoved his shoulder into Shon's chest, trying to push him over.
It worked. Shon fell to the ground with a splash and smack as he habitually swung his hands down to slap the ground, dropping his sword again, but breaking the energy of the fall. Just as Master Veon-Zih had taught him. Perhaps expecting Shon to be winded, the attacker didn't follow through with another attack on the prone boy; instead, turning to look at the companion Shon had punched.
Shon didn't hesitate. Still on his back, Shon twisted his hips, scissoring his legs to either side of the bandit's leg and kicking him behind the knee and inside the shin. The bigger man went down, and Shon swung his legs up, rolling onto his shoulder blades before jumping directly to a standing position. Or at least trying to. The leather armor was heavy and awkward, and he wobbled when he landed on his feet. As he attempted to regain his balance, another whistle rang out from the front of the wagon.
As one, the attackers disengaged from their respective defending Squires. The one Shon had knocked down rolled away and was helped up by his companion sporting a bloody nose. The Squires didn't pursue. Their hands shook with adrenaline, and their eyes tried to dart every way at once.
"Stand down, Squires," it was the Paladin. The knight had sheathed his sword and was moving back towards the wagon, but the boys could barely manage a glance at each other before focusing back on their attackers. Still very much on edge. It wasn't until the attackers in question also sheathed their weapons that the Squires began to slowly straighten, looking between the Paladin, the lead bandit, their attackers, and each other in quick succession.
"You all did very well," the knight said, reaching out to ensure the horses were still calm. They'd hardly moved, causing Shon to determine they must be warhorses, perhaps one was the knight's own partner.
"Not bad, not bad." the lead bandit started forward, slinging his ax back over his shoulder as he moved. Rather than being reassured by the gesture, the Squires dropped back into their fighting stance.
The Paladin snapped, "It was a test, boys. Relax and sheath your swords before you hurt yourselves." The lead 'bandit' laughed out loud at that. It was a booming sound like a bark straight from his belly as he threw his head back and planted his fists firmly on his hips.
"First time seeing battle, even a mock one, and you can't help but be on edge. It's the same every year," he said, the strange speech pattern he'd used before completely gone. He gestured, and his four underlings removed their hoods. The one with the bloody nose still had it pinched, his head tilted forward.
Mock battle… Shon's leg and arm throbbed painfully with every heartbeat, and his knuckles stung as he clenched and unclenched his fists to try and relax. But now that it was over, he realized that both hits had been with the flat of the blade.
The ringleader continued, "These fine Squires are going to be the newest Paladins of Hengist. After their vigil next month." the four attackers saluted and the younger Squires exchanged glances again before finally putting their swords away. "And I," the man slapped his chest, "am your new Weaponmaster. Master Daunas Mung. It will be my job to train you in combat at Hamerfoss."
Rerves was the first to recover. He smiled, but his voice held a hint of sarcasm, "I wish I could say it's nice to meet you, Master Daunas," he tried to laugh, "perhaps once my heart has stopped trying to beat its way out of my chest." That caused the Weaponmaster to bark his own laugh again. Thom smiled nervously at Shon, who was taking slow, measured breaths to calm his own heart.
The Paladin took a moment to examine their various bumps and bruises but only used his magic to heal the senor squire's broken nose. The much larger party continued together towards Hamerfoss, Master Daunas riding with the Paladin in the wagon while the older Squires chatted amongst each other. Thom and Rerves didn’t join in the chatter, both looking as anxious as Shon felt. He could hear the two uninjured seniors making fun of the two who had fought him and wasn’t sure if he should be embarrassed or proud. He'd hardly used his sword, -dropped it twice!- and the sword was the sacred weapon of Hengist. The symbol of the god himself.
Eventually, -finally- they left the woods and immediately saw the fortress situated in the middle of a vast field. Hamerfoss was one of the oldest structures still being utilized in Clearhelm. As such, it wasn't nearly as visually impressive as some of the newer Temples in the cities. Even so, as they approached the south gate, the three new Squires gaped at its great stone walls in awe.
The outer curtain wall was twenty stones high, -at least four of the boys stacked one on top of the other- with two layers of iron portcullises, their bars as thick as Shon's forearm. Walking through the first, the boys looked up and saw the faces of Paladins looking down at them through holes in the ceiling, built for dumping hot tar or oil on invaders trapped between the portcullises. They moved a little faster through the second.
Beyond the wall was one of two open courtyards, with training dummies, archery targets, and sparring rings separated by neat stone walkways. The smell of hay and horses wafted over the whole place from the stable against the south wall to their right, and the ringing "tink, tink" of a hammer on metal filled the cool air from the smithy built into the side of the fortress proper.
"Welcome to Hamerfoss!" Master Daunas gestured widely to all before them, and Shon fixed his eyes on the fortress itself, rising up like an indomitable mountain before him. It was about fifteen feet taller than the curtain wall, with one great tower in the center jutting up another fifteen feet above that. The roof was lined with battlements where archers could rain death on an invading army.
Turning his head, Shon could see three of the four bastions at the corners of the curtain wall and the armored figures that must be more Paladins standing guard. His left hand twitched as he longed to unpack his journal and draw every detail. The bare, dead-looking vines covering the face of the west wall, he was sure they would bloom in a few short weeks and cover the stone in green; the squat smithy coming out of his workshop to wipe the sweat from his brow in the cool air of early spring; and the slack-jawed expressions of awe on his companions' faces as they tilted their heads waaay back to try and see the top of the fortress's tower. But there would be plenty of time for that. After all, this would be his home for the next four years.
"Well. Don't just stand there gawkin'! Unload the wagon." Shon jumped in surprise and glimpsed Thom and Rerves doing the same. Master Daunas must have startled them out of their awe as well.
Shon was grateful as Rerves cleared his throat and took charge. His habit of speaking first and taking control had annoyed the girls back in Smilnda, but as Thom was used to it and Shon didn’t like giving orders, it worked out well for the boys. "Thom, you get the horses settled. Shon, you start handing me things out of the wagon." Without a word of argument, Thom nodded and went to the horses, murmuring gently as he began removing their harness and Shon climbed into the bed of the wagon to lift one crate at a time down to Rerves.
Master Daunas snorted, turning away from the new boys to give orders Shon couldn't hear to the older Squires. The young men saluted in unison, one moving to help Thom and two coming back to the wagon to help Shon and Rerves. The last jogged to the blacksmith, who waved him towards the smithy. He returned a moment later, carrying a small box and marching towards the smith, who was speaking quietly with Master Daunas.
"Shon, come on!" Rerves whispered, gesturing with both hands impatiently. Shon shook his head to clear it, handing Rerves another crate. He'd been paying a little too much attention to Daunas and the smith.
"Sorry," Shon murmured, but if Rerves heard him, he just took the box and set it with the others. It didn't take long for the four Squires to finish with the wagon. Shon hopped down with his own pack over his shoulder just as Thom came out of the stable with the senior Squire to meet them.
"Horses taken care of?" Rerves asked, and Shon blinked at him, thinking, Of course, they were; Thom wouldn't have come out otherwise…
"Yep, all settled and ready to go," Thom answered with a smile. Shon would've simply nodded. He was never one to waste words on things that didn't need to be said, and now more than ever, he found himself so focused on taking in everything around him that he could hardly think of words to say.
It seemed Master Daunas had been waiting for something to be said out loud, though, because he turned towards them at the sound, "Alright lads, this here is Nangran Flintchest. He's our resident Smith, and he'll be making all your equipment." The man was only as tall as Thom, but his shoulders and chest were broader even than Master Daunas, with hands the size of shovels and a beard that hung to the middle of his chest.
"Line up, smallest... largest…" As he spoke, Nangran pointed first to the right, then to the left of Shon, and didn't bother to see if they obeyed before turning away from them to open the box the older Squire had brought. Taking out a long measuring tape and a ratty-looking notebook, the smith tossed the young man the notebook without explanation and headed toward Thom with the measuring tape. Thom quickly positioned himself to the right of Shon with Rerves on Shon’s left.
Nangran motioned with his hand, grumbling only "Arms…" Without need for further explanation, Thom stepped forward and lifted his arms like a 't', visibly swallowing down his nerves. Shon watched closely as the smith took the smaller boy's measurements. Around his chest, his bicep, lower arm, from shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist, neck to waist, and much more besides. Thom stood stiff, following the old man's clipped instructions with hesitant jerky movements. Shon thought it should be awkward to work around their armor, but Nangran didn't seem to notice.
"Sword?" Nangran asked, and Thom made a confused sound. But the smith waved a massive hand in his face, "Not you, boy. Daunas, what sword?"
Master Daunas had his arms crossed over his chest and was tilting his head back and forth from one side to the other, absently scratching his beard before he finally said. "Two hands." he then pointed at Shon, saying, "Bastard." Shon wrinkled his nose, but the offense was short-lived when Daunas pointed at Rerves, saying, "One hand."
Nangran sniffed, "One each..." he stepped over to Shon and motioned for him to raise his arms. Shon stiffened but obliged, keeping his eyes fixed forward as the old man ran his measuring tape all across Shon's body, fighting not to flinch each time the Smith brushed against him.
"Yep," Daunas answered. They were talking as if the boys weren't even there, and the older Squires just watched. Didn’t they have anything better to do? "And that one," Daunas continued, nodding towards Shon, "is a lefty." Nangran snorted without comment and continued measuring, while the Squire with the notebook scribbled a little something extra besides the numbers Nangran mumbled to him.
But then the smith ran his hand down Shon’s forearm, touching the skin of his wrist, and pulled away in surprise. Shon jerked his hand back but quickly returned it with a nervous swallow. The smith stared at him, his brow furrowed, "You're cold as ice boy. Nervous?"
Shon shook his head, but the smith continued to stare, so he added, "No sir. I'm always cold."
The smith hummed and went back to measuring around Shon's wrist and back up his arm, "They say cold hands make a warm heart," Nangran muttered.
Beside Shon, Rerves and Thom snickered. "Whoever says that has never met Shon," said Thom, who had relaxed noticeably once the smith had finished with him. Face forward, Shon glared sideways at him, but there was no real anger in it, and Thom snickered again.
Master Daunas let out another bark of a laugh, "I see you get along well! That's good; you'll want friends in training." Shon tried to relax, taking a deep breath through his nose and letting it out through pursed lips. He did get along with his fellow Squires. He felt his lips tilt up in an almost imperceptible smile. He would even go so far as to call them friends. Even if they did poke fun at each other. Or maybe it was because they did.
Smith Nangran moved on to Rerves, and Shon looked from the larger boy to the smaller and back again before focusing his gaze on Master Daunas. It seemed neither of them was going to ask the adults to clarify what they meant by the sword assignments, so he would have to. Feeling more at ease, he asked, "I thought we were going to be trained in all weapons…"
Daunas must've seen where Shon was going because he spoke at the pause provided, "Oh, you will, boy. But I was watching you fight back on the road. You didn't think we staged that little raid just for fun, did you?" Shon didn't answer. He had thought it was just for fun. Perhaps some kind of hazing ritual. When Shon didn't say anything, Daunas continued, "You boys haven't been trained, so your movements were on instinct, giving me an idea for what fighting style you may lean more towards." he pointed at Shon, who crossed his eyes to focus on the finger, "You, boy, are going to be a problem. You're the one old man V's been training."
Who? Shon refocused on the Weapon Master's face, arching an eyebrow in confusion. When Master Daunas didn’t respond to the look, Shon guessed, "Master Veon-Zih?"
Daunas continued, "He's got you jumping around with no mind to the armor you'll be wearing or the weapon in your hand. You'll have to work twice as hard to adjust some of those habits." Shon was taken aback, shocked, and a little afraid… He didn't want to lose what he'd already learned… but Master Daunas continued, "But with a hand-and-a-half sword, you'll be able to switch between one and two-handed maneuvers." he smiled softly, and Shon realized his emotions must have been showing on his face more than usual because the Weapon Master seemed to be comforting him. "You mark my words; you'll favor the bastard sword for sure."
Nangran finished with Rerves and began rolling up his measuring tape. He turned his back on the boys but spoke to them as he took his notebook back from the senior Squire, “Take that leather off and put it in the wagon. I’ll have better ready for you by first watch week.” The Squires exchanged looks, then began following the command, stripping off the leather armor and thick gambeson and trying in vain to straighten the sweaty wrinkled uniforms underneath.
“You four,” Daunas addressed the seniors, who moved from parade rest to attention in perfect unison, “show these three around and give them the rundown of how things work around here. You three,” he looked over his shoulder at Shon and the others, scratching his neck again, “this is your last day of freedom, enjoy it while you can.” all seven Squires saluted and Daunas sighed, giving a lazy salute in response before walking off, muttering to himself, “I need to shave…”
The older Squires approached the younger, two of them snickering after Daunas was far enough away not to hear. Shon arched an eyebrow at them and, seeing the expression, the tallest explained, “He’s normally clean-shaven. He let his beard grow out all week for the wagon raid.”
“You’ll be doing one too, in your last year.” another of the four added.
“Sorry about your arm,” the one who had fought Thom said, holding out his hand to the younger boy, “You really did do well, considering.” Thom shook the young man’s hand with a grateful smile at the compliment.
The two who had fought Shon exchanged looks with each other then looked at him, their expressions expectant. Shon arched his other eyebrow instead. Did they really expect him to apologize? They had attacked him. And he was four years younger than they were.
“So…” the one Shon had bloodied started, drawing the word out.
“Who taught you how to fight?” the second interjected.
“Master Veon-Zih.”
When Shon didn’t elaborate further, the two exchanged silent shrugs. Shon looked away from them, frustrated. They could communicate with each other fine in gestures and expressions, yet, he was expected to explain details they didn't need? Would they even know what a Monk was? Did it even matter? He was here to train as a Paladin now.
The only one who hadn’t spoken yet cleared his throat, and the other three turned his way immediately. Apparently, he was the unofficial leader of this group, just like Rerves was the unofficial leader of theirs. “We'll show you the barracks first. You should shower and change your uniforms before we walk around the rest of the fortress.”
“You have showers here too?” Rerves blurted in amazement, then snapped his mouth shut, blushing.
The two who were prone to laughing did so again, “Why wouldn’t we?”
“I bet we need it more than most of the official Temples.” the two laughed again.
Thom shuffled his feet nervously but said, “They told us things would be a lot rougher here.”
“They were probably just trying to scare you,”
“They were talking about the work,” the leader said sharply, then turned towards the fortress.
Shon and the others quickly grabbed their bags and rushed to follow. The leader continued to talk as they fell into step behind him, “Your day will start just before sunrise, at fifth bell. You will get dressed, make your bed as quickly as possible, then gather with the others in the courtyard,” he gestured with one hand at a wide-open spot on the training grounds, “From there we run. Around the fortress ten times in formation. After that are drills and then breakfast. After breakfast, we have prayer, followed by lectures, then heavy weapons and armor training, then lunch.” they made their way into the fortress and up a long flight of stairs to the third floor, “After lunch, there's more classwork, then light weapons and combat training. You’re then given an hour of free time to shower and rest before dinner. After dinner, there is mandated study or prayer time, then another hour of free time before lights out at ninth bell. Once every season, we take four weeks to stand watch, one week for each shift.”
He took them down a long hall lined with doors on one side. Shon tried to listen and count the doors at the same time and was glad he did when the leader stopped beside the ninth, “These three rooms are yours. Go ahead and get a new uniform and meet us back out here.”
One of the nicer boys stepped forward to open the first door, “This one is Rerves, followed by Shon and Thom.” Shon entered to find a small room barely six feet square. Directly across from the door was a bed that took up the entire wall and a small high-set window that looked out over the training field. Beside it was a small desk with a single wooden chair. Under the bed, Shon found a long shallow box full of neatly folded uniforms. His name was embroidered in the lining of each piece, and on top was a pinned note with instructions detailing the laundry procedure. Shon only skimmed it, it was the same as the fortress in Smilnda, and most likely the same the Provence over, perhaps even the kingdom.
He left his pack by the desk and returned to the hall with one of his uniforms to find it empty. Glancing down either side of the hall, he shrugged at Thom’s questioning look when he was joined by his two fellows. They waited at least ten minutes before the seniors returned, without their armor and holding their own spare uniforms. They looked nearly as disheveled as the juniors. The leader gestured for them to follow again and said, “Once you get your armor, you will keep it in your room. It's your responsibility to keep it oiled or polished as appropriate.” well, they would be good at that at least… Had they been left to wait while the seniors cared for their armor? Shon didn’t bother to ask, following the four deeper into the fortress.
They were taken to the showers, a single large room with spigots set into the walls and drains in the floor. The seniors started to strip down, placing their dirty uniforms in a basket by the door and setting their clean sets on the benches set along the same wall. Thom, Rerves, and Shon all exchanged looks before following their lead.
There were only ten showerheads, and Rerves finally asked, “How many Squires are there here?”
The seniors each moved to their own showerhead, and the room was quickly filled with hot steam, “Twentyone, including us, but we will be gone in a month, so that will leave seventeen.” one of them answered, stepping under the hot water with a grateful sigh, rinsing the sweat and dirt from the road off his surprisingly well-muscled body. Shon counted the shower spigots again as he moved towards his own. Almost twenty Squires and only ten showers at a time… it sounded like a nightmare. But at least they had hot running water.
Though he had above-average cold tolerance and preferred the winter chill far more than the summer sweat, Shon always enjoyed a truly hot shower. Master Veon-Zih liked to argue that baths were far superior, but in Shon's experience, baths always cooled off too quickly, which was why most ordinary citizens of Clearhelm used the public steam baths.
After they were washed and dressed, the real tour began. They were shown the hall with the officer's rooms, the infirmary, the mess hall, the library, and the classroom. “There’s only one?” Thom asked, peeking into the room with a blackboard across the far wall and long tables situated in front.
“Tomorrow is the last real day before the watch weeks start. You'll spend those four weeks catching up on foundational stuff. Kingdom-wide law, and your assigned sword dills, that sort of thing. After that, the lessons are given in a four-year rotation, so your first classes after the watch weeks will be new to both you and everyone else." the leader explained.
The nicest one elaborated, “You’ll have the same schedule we did, so comparative law, followed by history, then theology, then comparative cultural studies.” Shon wasn’t sure what he looked forward to least on that list. Though all would be better than fighting for a shower…
"There's also etiquette, monster studies, combat tactics and command, and war history and theory." his friend added, and Shon was relieved that at least most of those seemed more interesting.
Next, they were shown some of the less-used rooms. The war room, full of charts and maps and only used for large-scale tactics training, and an indoor sparring room that looked like it was never used.
“This is supposed to be for heavy weather.” one of the laughers said with a snicker.
“But Master Daunus says your enemies won’t let you move a fight inside, so why practice there,” added the other. Shon happened to agree, but also wasn’t looking forward to training in the rain after having walked in it for two days.
Lastly, they were shown the chapel, not as fine as the one in Smilnda but with the same sweet incense and warm comfort. The atmosphere seeped into Shon’s bones as they approached the head altar for a brief prayer and a blessing from the resident Cleric. He was a young man with pale brown hair and green eyes. He smiled warmly down at the new boys, saying, “Welcome to Hamerfoss, Squires of Hengist.” which in turn made each of them glow with enough pride to banish the nerves of their first day and daunting future.
***
--- Part 2/2 ---
--- Table of Contents ---
All comments and criticism is welcome.

Summary: A demolition firm struggles to take down a damaged building for their mysterious clients
I Was a Foreman at the Grazer Tower Demolition
By now Grazer Tower has faded as a household name but to some the rumors and madness surrounding it refuse to die. The demolition of the massive three hundred twenty foot octagonal hotel left a gap in the Atlanta skyline but little fondness in anyone's hearts. I have no particular first hand insight into the freak lightning strikes on the 30th floor atrium which killed 13 people but I am willing to tell my side of the story about the demolition effort leading to the botched implosion. I tell this as a full, open, and honest disclosure. The legal maneuvering and ink has dried, all of the dead are buried, and all the bleeding stopped. The scars remain, the pain persists, the things I saw there are burned in my head even after they've been discredited into the conspiracy theory woodwork of the internet. The lightning storm struck on a Sunday afternoon and the next day for all we knew the bodies were still warm when a lawyer representing the owners of Grazer Tower entered our corporate office. I look back on it now with open and clear eyes and realize it was all very strange from the start when my Lead Foreman, Tom, and I were called into the meeting in progress.
The lawyer and now our client, looked like a fairly normal man in his mid thirties aside from his impeccably white suit which was ironed to the point of looking like stone rather than cloth. Beside the white suit his lips were an uncomfortable maroon and glossy. Besides this he spoke in a plain, clear, and disarming manner refraining from legalese and maintaining a firm but not imposing eye contract with whomever he was speaking directly to.
He told us in no uncertain terms he was instructed to contract with our firm to take down his client's building. Tom and I were shocked when we heard this after all, the lightning disaster, while tragic and perhaps undeservedly tarnishing in the short term to the Grazer Hotel's reputation, did not render the structure unusable nor unsafe to its surroundings. The worst damage was that the steel dome of the 30th floor atrium had collapsed into the vaulted restaurant and ballroom of the 29th floor but that's where the structure damage started and ended, in fact aside from the 28th, 29th, and 30th floor, city engineers working overnight already declared the building sound. So while perhaps still time consuming and costly, repairing the building was definitely possible and cost effective but owners, to make an analogy, were basically insisting on totaling a car after a minor parking lot fender bender. They gave us a specific date by which the building needed to be taken down. When our Boss, Jim, rebuffed the lawyer, not only because the date was challenging and soon but also because it was possible we could have it dropped BEFORE the date specified. The lawyer insisted the building go down on the date given – not later and not earlier. Jim swallowed hard and then glanced at Tom and I. Then the lawyer involved the name of the head of the owner's group, a Mr. Rohmer.
Mr. Rohmer, according to the lawyer, was offering our firm one hundred percent of the cost upfront and another twenty perfect of the total cost plus any overruns – stating if the implosion came early or late, it would mean all very little – no, that's no a typo, that's how the lawyer phrased it from his client, Mr. Rohmer. With that detail out of the way, you can see how the car totaling analogy breaks down considering the owners did not stand to profit from it's demolition – in fact quite the opposite.
The lawyer chuckled a bit to break the tension. He explained his clients and Mr. Rohmer in particular were an unorthodox bunch and then even insisted he wear the white suit in any of their dealings. The lawyer produced a tablet PC from his messenger bag and leveled it to Jim. On the tablet was all the banking confirmation codes ready to go for a direct deposit into our firms account alongside a contract. Jim seemed to hiccup or belch in excitement as he hurried around the short side of his desk to sign it since his stubby t-rex arms could not reach across his desk.
The firm was committed, we were committed – I was committed and I started to mentally cramp up over the challenges we all faced. The Grazer Hotel was in the middle of a dense urban grid. It had to be precise drop with virtually no margin for error. Jim poured us a dram of scotch from the bottle hidden under his desk. None of us a second thought about Rohmer's cryptic remark – after all, how often did you get a one hundred twenty perfect no-bid contract walk in off the street, out of the blue?
A combination of exhilaration over the money and anxiety over the work load kept us all from sleeping that night. Jim and Tom ended up going out and having a wild night to celebrate while I went home to mentally prepare not only myself but also my wife and kids. As a family they were staring down a month and a half of late nights and weekends with no dad. My wife was frustrated until I told her about the bonus and then she said she'd fill the lonely time making plans to send the kids to Disney World and then find a place for us to spend alone together. The promise of a much needed vacation after this only super charged the butterflies in my stomach further in anticipation of this challenging season ending.
As the assistant foreman I had office and on-site duties. Most of it was coordinating between the two. This included personnel, setting up site security – including guards and cameras to keep urban explorers and vagrants of out the dangerous site and satisfy OSHA hazardous work place safety requirements. The most challenging duty was site prep which included disposal of furnishings, removal of windows and other flourishes of the structure's facade which could become deadly shrapnel during an implosion. Fortunately, despite all of this, the nagging questions about permits and clean-up contracts were already handled by the lawyer. Rohmer's group also waived any rights to furnishings which means they could be unceremoniously hauled out in any way we chose to and disposed of.
Now I suppose some of these things should have came as red flags to me – or at least some one in the company but we all justified it as the group must have connects and short cuts to permits and it was a relatively new building, only about twenty years old in fact and furnishings – whether old or new probably weren't of any antique or sentimental value. All in all these were blessings since they freed our hands a bit and made a near impossible deadline more possible.
Of course the good news came with some bad news. The city engineers forbade us from working at the 28th, 29th, and 30th floors – unless we brought in a separate crew to stabilize those levels first. This was quite the fly in the ointment for the controlled implosion plan we sketched out. The 30th floor wasn't as much of a problem but the 29th floor ballroom and the weakening of the 28th floor meant we can't inspect for how compromised they were by the steel atrium dome. For all we knew if we blew the 27th floor on down the dome could shift and topple over the top three floors outside of the implosion safe zone, imperiling people and nearby structures.
I raised holy hell about it while Tom stood calm. It could take months to stabilize and clear those floors and far more money than I thought our eccentric client would pay in overruns. Jim waved me off mid sentence and simply told me he'd take care of it. That was good enough for Tom so it had to be good enough for me. I went back to my job – securing site and planning drop.
Although we had a problem with the top floor our saving grace lie in the basements. It had a three story subterranean parking garage, a basement level pool, and a utility sub-basement. We could easily smash the first ten or twelve floors into that deep footprint. Also the utility sub-basement gave us a clean cut off from the grid and a fairly convenient way to protect the surrounding grid without interruption. Still, at least part of our team would take have to take three weeks out of our six and change to handle the utilities.
The first week was hectic, they always were but we hit no major snags. By the end of it were on schedule and all of the parts were coming together. We thought maybe, just maybe, we were well on our way to an early Christmas bonus but nothing could prepare us for what was coming.
If you work on a site long enough and work anywhere on the site security reporting chain you're bound to get a few questionable reports from your night guys. Let's face it, for folks who are wake all night five or six nights a week poking around with flashlights chasing shadows, every building every where is haunted. I've been on the site security chain for thirteen years so it was easy for me to dismiss reports from the night guys about unusual glows on gutted floors and stairwells, elevators which moved on their own with no one calling for them or inside when they opened on a random floor, or the security cameras and cellphones constantly going offline on the 27th floor and the utility sub-basement.
I wasn't convinced anything of concern was going on until I got called on site by the test drilling team. This team was responsible for sampling the support materials to determine where it was best to place the explosives and what explosives would be best to use. They reported the interior supports were designed in an unusual way with a honey comb of unorthodox metals and concrete not reported on the building's records or blueprints. Specifically, they reported the concrete was impregnated by some kind of metal veins which gave off a bright shimmer. I was asked to come identify it but they claimed it disappeared by the time I arrived.
I was irate at the team and their supervisor for having me to come on down on site for something that sounded so wrong to begin with. They showed me a grainy cellphone video and told me they would swear on a stack of Bibles the sparkling compound welled up in the test coring like mercury, turned blood red and bled on the floor before disappearing into the torn up carpet. I chastised them for making this up and threatened to get new sub contractors if they kept wasting my time. I spoke with a separate sample team on the lower levels and they too discovered some unusual metal compositions – ones which were different then the ones found the top floors. One of the engineers speculated that the contrast in metals between the top and bottom floors could be cause the building to hold an electrical charge, like a battery or like a capacitor. Either way, the engineer said it would require more explosives than initially thought to take down the structure.
A couple of weeks later we were painfully behind – glass removal in particular was going slow because those contractors claimed they were constantly losing their toys. They also claimed one night to have cleared the top five floors on the east side of all their glass – only for all the windows to appear fully intact the next morning. I was forced to end their sub contract due to misrepresentation of work accomplished.
The glass wasn't the only thing slowing us down. The wire and plumbing removal was hindered by the wires somehow were fused to the pipes and in some places, the pipes were fused to the load-bearing members – we thought maybe it was due to the lightning strikes but that really didn't make sense since all of the wiring and plumbing otherwise seemed to work fine before we turned off the utilities. The only thing going for us was the helicopter loophole. Instead of accessing the 30th floor through the condemned floors we were able to get work teams on the atrium floor by helicopter. The bodies of the 13 were removed before we started working and before the atrium fully collapsed into the ballroom but the teams working on the roof reported many unusual artifacts including stained glass and Greek letters comprised of unusual amalgams of metal.
All of the strangeness culminated in the disappearance of one of the night time security guards named Phillipe. I say disappear because his girlfriend filed a missing persons report with the police and when they came to investigate Tom was busy with the atrium operations so the job fell to me. I walked the investigator through guard's smart phone filed reports from the previous evenings. Admittedly I was behind on my end approving the reports so I was embarrassed when things in the report took a turn. His reports including the same odd glows the others were reporting in the stairwells and seeing metallic veins throb on the walls.
His last reports stuck in my head: Report: Sub-basement 4 clear, 0312. Report: Sub-basement 5 clear, 0305. Report: Sub-basement 6 clear 0237.
His “all clear” reports documented levels of the building which did not exist and the further he went into the areas which did not exist, the automatic timestamps went backwards in time. It made no sense – unless he was confused as to where he was due to intoxication and there was software glitch with the timestamps. I was forced to give the investigator no firm explanation.
It's easy to write off a high security guard – they're flaky by their nature and have plenty of reasons to ghost a part time gig and even to pull prank on their final reports. I almost wrote it all off until I saw his girlfriend – apparently his fiance, handing out missing persons fliers outside of the site gate one morning. She seemed absolutely heartbroken and I got stabbed in the gut thinking maybe this wasn't a ghosting and prank after all. Seeing is believing and the next week I started to believe. Tom was finishing up on the atrium level. We used some heavy lift choppers to remove the rest of the frame and glass. Now we could get a better look into the section which collapsed into the 29th floor. We started by using a series of video drones to investigate the melted twisted dome through the collapsed roof. We quickly learned that the drones were being interfered with as their feed would cut out or their batteries would die almost immediately upon entering the ballroom.
So, we had to cut some corners, against city regulations, we let Tom and two others rappel in from the roof on secured anchored lines with helicopter over watch support. We needed to do this because we needed make sure that collapsed wreckage would not move and potentially change the implosion direction. Tom got twisted in his gear as he tried to lean into one of the holes in the roof. He slipped and fell in, disappearing from sight. We frantically radioed for Tom as the other two workers abandoned their own attempts to peer in and scrambled to Tom's aid. Tom was pulled out of the section uninjured but he appeared to be in shock, he looked wild eyed and shook as he was put on the helicopter and lowered back to ground level. Within minutes, Jim called us back to the office to discuss the near miss.
Two weeks to go and week behind, a missing guard, and now a near fatal accident. That for Jim, was the last straw. Tom and I had run out the rope Jim gave us to hang ourselves with. Jim slammed his hand on his desk as he catastrophized, red in the face, nearly breathless, he yelled we could very well kiss that twenty percent goodbye with the way things are going. He pressured Tom to go on the record after his dip into the structure that the atrium debris ball in the ballroom posed no threat to the implosion. Tom was elsewhere. He stared off in a thousand yard stare before replying to Jim that it posed no threat. Then Tom headed for the door. Jim screamed at him that he wasn't done chew us out but Tom only said he had to get back to it. I supported Tom and followed him. He and I headed back to the site to secure the night shift changes – another night not at home and having a late dinner.
I asked Tom in the car ride back what he saw in there. Tom was fixed in a trance and barely responded. He said it was wild. When we got back to the site, Tom separated from me through the gate while I strolled across the street to grab us some dinner from a street vendor. As I stood around waiting for two gyros and two cokes I could help but be mesmerized by the gutted tower. It seemed to breath in the spotlights inhaling puffs of the dust and dirt on the site and then exhaling it. A faint glow, barely perceivable against the light pollution, seemed to brighten, dim, and fade from the upper floors with each of the building's breaths. I was transfixed on it and it was the first time the building gave me an eerie feeling.
I got back on the site, food in hand, there was a buzz in their air as the night shift streamed in and the day shift streamed out. I barely had my hardhat seated corrected on my head when the site's emergency alarm blew. The interim foreman tossed me a radio as I was swept with him and our site occupational safety and emergency personnel to the basement.
Our increasingly panicked footfalls blotted out the squawk of the radios but I could hear one name again and again in the equally panicked messages – Tom Tom Tom. Whatever was happening was happening to Tom.
We reached the pool level and a trail of gasps proceeded me into the pool. There was Tom in his vest and hardhat face down in the middle of the pool with crimson oozing out him into the cerulean tiles lining the drained pool. We piled in from the ladders and shallow end to get to him. It was apparent when the first folks reached him that he was dead. They hauled him out on a stretcher and to our shock he looked like he had been dead for much longer than possible and his skin was water logged despite there being no water. He had died of fall trauma possibly despite the pool only being six feet deep. The paramedics also claimed he had water in his lungs. Then I noticed he was wearing his rappelling harness weaved in his vest – but that made no sense – he took it and his vest off when we were getting chewed out by Jim. Why would he put his rappelling gear on again.
I was the assistant foreman no more. Now the buck stopped with me. As they took Tom to the morgue we all knew the show must go on – our client demanded it, Jim demanded it and Tom would have wanted it that way. The same police investigator from the guard's disappearance met with me over Tom's death. They said it was standard procedure with work place deaths. I gave him a copy of the footage on an SD card and left the moment after it left my hand.
I had the recording queued up to the time of the commotion. The video we provided had a poor angle and was focused on the door to monitor access – the comings and goings of people. It was shift change so people were filing in and out Tom was somewhere in the crowd. The pool was one of the areas which required both foot patrols and constant video monitoring. I hit the rewind button on accident and watched his body lie there and lie there and then the timestamp sped past the 1900 hour mark. We were in traffic from meeting with Jim at that time. This was impossible but I kept my finger on the rewind button. Around 1400 the camera shakes a bit and there is slight glow reflecting on the doors so I let it play back to the shake. There is a soft green glow and then could hear a heft thud in the room. I gulped knowing that was Tom falling into the pool around the same time he fell into the hole in the roof. The soft glow turned brighter and brighter like a laser shining into the lens – something that wasn't present on the rewind. There was a flash of an incomprehensible shape or form on the screen. I was physically hurt in my eyes like I had just stared into the sun. I was left dazed with the shaped burned into my eyes with each blink. Then the camera system shorted out and a tiny puff of smoke left the memory module. The cameras blinked off wall to wall, the whole system was dead.
With the cameras fried, regulations required someone high in the company to be on site or we'd have to leave for the night. So I stayed knowing we couldn't afford to lose an hour much less an entire night. I circled the pool between approving payrolls and directing the increased security guard traffic required to monitor more areas. I was thinking about what I would say at Tom's funeral. I was thinking about Tom's family and what they would think about his apparent suicide.
I was forced to patrol the rest of the sub-basements as well since most of the guards were at the site perimeters or higher levels. I would have to follow paths of Phillipe, the disappeared guard, and all of the other guards who had mismatched timestamps on their increasingly strange reports. If not for today's incident and the recording of Tom's death, I would have stood fast to the idea that these reports were the product of night jitters and drugs but now, no.
I gritted my teeth as I exited the pool area to patrol the lower levels. I hated this building I muttered to myself. I couldn't wait to see it all rumble. I thought about which part I'd like to keep from the site to place in Tom's casket – then I realized it probably wasn't going to be an open casket funeral. I was lost in my thoughts and hatred for the building as I roamed through the parking garage into the utilities basement. I lost track of where I was as I weaved down stairwells.
I shown my flashlight on the wall and the floor level sign said “Sub-basement 999”. I stopped cold in my tracks. I was hoping it was a prank but I knew it was no prank. Then I thought maybe I'd have some answers. Maybe I would finally see what all the strangeness was about. But then I freaked out about Phillipe's disappearance and turned to run back up the stairwell. I ran up four levels to what I thought was the lobby and I pushed the door open.
My jaw hit the floor when I saw a black and white galaxy – the stars were black and the space was white with gradations of gray. The whole room was just white outer space and the whole universe swirled fast counter clockwise. I tried to breath and when I did the galaxy shrunk before my eyes until it was the size of a tiny of marble and then even smaller to a speck of dust. I reached out as it floated towards me. I stared at the speck in a cold sweat. As I stared, I was looking deeper and deeper into impossible detail. In the dust I found the milky way galaxy, I found our solar system, I found Earth and then I found North America, and then I found myself back in the pool room dripping in sweat.
Time seemed to skip and space was malleable in that hotel. As we approached the deadline to drop it, some jobs which would take hours took days and some jobs which would take days took minutes. The anomalies seemed to swarm tonight and day and yet we pressed on. Tom was buried and I couldn't go.
We met the deadline and the city came out in numbers to watch us drop the thirty floor structure. They gathered nearly two blocks away clad in ponchos and dust masks bracing for the implosion triggered by half a ton of high explosives.
I was so burned out and demoralized. My mantra became “this is for Tom, this is for Tom” and it was the only thing carrying me to this day. I chalked up all the anomalies and even my own experience on 999th sub-basement level as a reaction to shock, loss, grief, and exhaustion.
We were on the thirty minute countdown and Mr. Rohmer's attorney was designated as the trigger man. He stood there with Jim and I in the command trailer with the detonator remote. The remote triggered a two minute countdown on the charges from a master control station in my command trailer. All the charges had to be hardwired old school style because we were getting too much walkie talkie and radio interference from inside the structure for any other method of trigger to be reliable. I was too tried to make a stink about insisting I do it. I just wanted it to be over but suddenly a freak thunderstorm brewed up over the city. The skies were overcast and we were on the verge of having to abort the implosion until the next day – despite the next day being a day past the deadline. If we didn't abort and went through with the implosion, there was a strong chance the shock waves from the blast would bounce back off the lower cloud base and shatter windows and ears across the city.
I sat in my command chair at the perimeter in dismay, almost in tears as it started to rain. I felt my heart drop into the acid of my stomach as I ordered the suspension of the implosion for the day. The lawyer, surprisingly, did not resist. I watched as the crowds dispersed from the viewing lines and police started to permit traffic back through the streets surrounding the site.
Then a group of unauthorized personnel threw open the door of the trailer. They were a mass of men and women clad in pressed white suits, stoney faces with thin maroon lips, one of them carried a white covered book.
The attorney dropped his eyes and head in deference to elderly man at the head of the congregation. The attorney addressed him as Monsignor. The man introduced himself as Monsignor Rohmer and he placed his hand on his attorney, calling him a cousin of the congregation, stating there will be no postponement and no delay.
Rohmer, a man I judged to be in his late 50's or early 60's was bald and covered it with a white derby hat. He was tall, about six five, and thin, so thin his suit fit him like snake half shedding its skin. His was face long and his cheeks thin and worn like a mountain side. His voice was steady and low like waterfall. Everything he said bloomed with authority and confidence. He ordered the building would be dropped in twenty minutes.
I told him I didn't care if he was the owner, the building could not be blown in this weather and I snatched the detonator out of his attorney's hands. Rohmer, moving faster than I believed humanly possible with some kind of martial arts move swiped the detonator from my hands. Simultaneously, he had two of his followers press Jim against the wall. They put him in a sleeper hold and he slumped down to the floor barely getting a word out. Then Rohmer gestured to his flock to follow towards the building.
They left in a fast deliberate almost choreographed walk like a flock of geese flying in formation. I grabbed the radio to get police help but I realized that was hopeless. I watched as our trailer was shrouded in the same interference we experienced in the building's interior. The CCTV monitors flickered out and the radio squawked static. Then I realized Rohmer had no control over the detonation and no way to contact his followers still with us in the command trailer. So I did what I had to and pulled the master key out of the master detonator in the command trailer and chased after the flock. I needed to know what was happening I needed to see with my own eyes what all of this was all about.
The Congregation had reached the lobby and I saw the trailing end of the clad white congregate into the stairwell. I darted at my best speed to follow them.
I reached the stair well door. I found Rohmer standing on the top step, apparently waiting for me. I was out of breath while he began to speak to me in his booming voice. He explained to me that if the building did not fall in the next twenty minutes, all of Earth would be pulled, sucked, inside out and down through the building into the black and white universe. The entire building, but especially the atrium dome, he continued, was designed and built to create and then temporarily contain an impossible shape, a living form, a 4 dimensional object, a tesseract, when struck by lightning in the presence of thirteen self-sacrificial Congregate members. This shape would slowly expand and cause space and time anomalies before growing so large inside compared to its size would pull us all into place with no life.
The shape was still in the process of forming even as we spoke, he said. It would reach critical mass and dimensional contortion and the only way to stop it was to disfigure and crush it in the hotel's collapse. He led me into the pool level where his entire congregation was sitting cross-legged where Tom fell. A green pulse, like a laser, came down from the ceiling into the group's center, where their white book lay open on blank pages. I had a feeling this glow was being projected down from the ballroom where the dome of the atrium was taking its final fourth dimensional form.
After a loud chant from the white clad followers, the book slammed shut and turned from a brilliant white shimming cover to one black as night. As they passed around book, their white suits turned black and the formed a single file line. Rohmer left my side and pulled the detonator from his suit. He showed it me and tossed it at me. In my panic I reached out with both hands to catch it but I forgot I still had the master key in my sweat slick hand and it fly out and fell at the foot of Rohmer.
I asked what he planned to do with the key without a lock and a jammed detonator. Rohmer bent down and grabbed the key and looked me without a hint of concern. He took the new black book into his hands and opened it facing the wall of the pool. A new green pulse launched from the book and flickered on the tiles. An octagonal outline appeared to frame a hazy image of a tropical beach. One by one Rohmer's congregation walked into the side of the pool, into glow and seemed to arrive safely on the otherside of the beach.
Once all his compatriots were on the beach, he turned a page in the book and reopened it, projecting another octagon portal on the side of the pool. I could see his destination – it was the command trailer. He stepped through portal and yelled to me from the other side that I had two minutes. The portal sealed.
I could hear the warning sirens we installed going off above me. Needless to say, I made it out, just barely. I reached the perimeter fence screaming to anyone who was in ear shot to run away. The building imploded as planned but I was caught in the dust cloud and developed tinnitus severe enough to be comparable with combat veterans.
The shock waves from the explosions were reflected off the cloud base and channeled down the street by other skyscrapers. Virtually every window in a two block radius around the site was shattered and hundreds of people were hurt in the resulting stampede and vehicle collisions caused by fleeing from the flying glass cascade. Parts of downtown looked like a war zone for weeks afterward.
Rohmer and the rest of his group, including the lawyer, had disappeared out of the trailer in another portal leaving a suitcase of gold equaling the twenty percent promised. Our company was fined, sued, and threatened with criminal charges and eventually put of business. There wasn't much left after paying the cities fines and lawyer fees.
Though I was spared any direct sanctions, I forced into an early retirement. I've had time to research Rohmer's group. There are at least six mentions of figures like Rohmer on the deepest parts of the conspiracy web. They seem to show up at a locale experiencing paranormal activity with a white book and then leave with a black book. Their departure usually marks the end of any strangeness. I can't be sure but this congregation seems to be summon demons, which they exorcise, by trapping them in their books. Trapping maybe a poor term to use since, as in the case of the Grazer hotel encounter, they can apparently cleanse the anomalies and then use the book containing them to weaponize a portion of the traits of whatever their unholy creations posses.
I suspect Rohmer and his congregation, now with the ability to teleport, are accelerating their plans, to whatever ends these paranormal means enable them.
Theo Plesha - Sequel to "Flush" by Theo Plesha on The Chilling App

So I´ve actually Bought FIFA 23 about 3 days ago because I found that Epic Games had an amazing discount, plus some cupons, and it was around 15€ in total, overall great deal. Just like many of you, my only interest in FIFA revolves around career mode, FUT never really pushed me, had loads of rage moments and it wasnt really worth it since im not going to waste any money on those stupid cards that come out every week.
Just in order to give you guys some context, me and my brother have been playing FIFA 20 for the past years, we only do career modes and its really ocasional. We either go months without playing or we spam FIFA for weeks straight. I´ve refused to give EA any money until they fixed career mode and made it enjoyable. I´ve only purchased FIFA 23 as kind of surprise because my brother lost all his saves over some PC formating we needed to do.
I play in legendary mode and I think that defending isnt as disgusting as everyone mentions. I´ve made a career on Man United and in about 15 games I´ve managed to keep a clean sheet in half of them. This may be due to me changing that definition where atributes are kept real and not adjusted to the position. I also activate those Team Stars buff which I think is really cool.. The frustrating part is HOW I suffer goals, allways the same passing and cheesy dibbling to get someone 1 feet away from my goalie and fuzilate him.
Continuing this idea, in terms of aerial duels and duels in general I tend to come out on top. In comparision to FIFA 20. At least now I can win balls in the air and corners are viable, I´ve even scored in corners.
List of real Problems that i´ve noticed:
- AI doesnt cross or shoot from outside the box. They will just play those cheesy passes until they have a striker 2 meters away fromt he goal.
- Player swaping is a disaster at times, as I keep trying to choose the player I need, the others that are selected meanwhile have the imput I designed for the one I needed and keep running away from the striker until he has no opposition.
- Game highlights are around 3 per game, which is really not that many, plus the situations they created are repetitive and scrappy.
- AI defenders can allways block shoots from outside de box, somehow they manage to get 3-4 players to teletransport and block your shoot.
- Midfielders dont give a flying f*ck about defending, letting opposition siege my goal until they score or I manage to disarm them.
-Making me do the training sessions to get good grades is really boring and they should have just a simulation based thing like they had before, where it doesnt repeat your best grade.
-My attackers refuse to make runs when I have clear instructions on that.
-Match simulating is kinda trash because neither me or my team controlled by cpu can manage to defend agaisnt those passes and every team gets 3 or 4 gols past my defense no matter how good it is and how bad the attackers are.
-Full backs dont get involved in the attack with overlaps and stuff like that.
-Even though i felt like playing into some 2 star team in carabao cup was easier than facing tottenham in premier, its still sad the try to defend and attack the same exact way.
Positive points:
- Rashford and Sancho, if given enough space, can outrun the fat Centre backs and Full backs, which is already amazing cuz in FIFA 20 it was impossible, no matter what stats your players have they allways catch up.
- Star of the team buffs are cool and make it more challenging (Di Maria in juve and Immobile in Tottenham were hard to deal with, as they should)
- Crosses and Corners are somewhat Viable.
- Great aesthethics and presentation.
Obviously I have complete notion EA doesnt gain anything in fixing offline modes. Money inst in offline, and plus, if offline modes were to be fixed a lot of people would for sure leave ultimate team. And even if they didnt leave ultimate team they woulndt spend as much money and time in there.
If only they made AI cross and shoot from distance would be already a huge difference in gameplay. Instead of using the same tactic all the time AI would have 3 ways to hurt us, that would be awsome. And next, Im not saying every team should have a diferent way to play, but making the stategy change when AI losing or winning in late stages would be really nice (which I think already happens, but I dont think its at the extent it could be). Next thing would be changing, lets say: 1 star, 2 star, 3 star clubs and so on, having different ways to approach the game, more direct football or possession based.
Overall i think its better than FIFA 20 so theres a little development. But having a good offline career scenario will be a dream for a little while. Until some other company funding and licensing can surpass FIFA ;-;
I might be forgetting stuff and plus, I´ve only played about 3 days of manager career and these are my first impressions. If anyone has any idea how to make the AI cross and shoot from distance instead of Dribbling and passing thru my defense please share. Thanks for reading.

[excerpt from defense and security writer Kyle Mizokami, 2019]
During a recent Pentagon roundtable, Task & Purpose’s Pentagon reporter Jeff Schogol asked if the Space Force “is concerned about threats posed by extraterrestrial intelligence.” The official answer he got back? “No.”
Schogol’s question was asked with tongue firmly planted in cheek, but the revelation last year that U.S. Navy fighter jets encountered alleged UFO craft in 2004 and again in 2015—in both instances appearing on radar and leaving behind video evidence—makes one wonder.
If the unidentified flying objects described by Navy pilots, as well as military and civilian personnel for the past seventy years, are really of extraterrestrial origin and unfriendly, how would the Pentagon deal with them? If UFOs suddenly descended from the skies, toasting the Statue of Liberty, the Great Mall of America, and the Golden Gate Bridge with death rays, the Pentagon would need to convene some sort of study group to quickly determine what kind of threat it was dealing with. If that happens, forget the Air Force. Ironically, the service that would most likely take the lead is the U.S. Navy.
Why the Navy? Aliens would likely come from vast distances, traveling light years in long distance voyages, to smash puny humans. The U.S. Navy is unique among the services in planning similar, though much, much shorter voyages. Both submarines and UFOs deal with pressure—in the case of submarines the pressure is on the outside, while in space the pressure is on the inside of the vehicle. From an operational and technical standpoint, aliens and sailors have a few things in common.
There are other reasons the Navy might take the lead. Seventy-one percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, and if aliens operated from the water (remember, the 2004 sighting included reports of a 737-sized object on the surface of the ocean) the Navy is unique in having manned aircraft, surface ships, and submarines prowling above, on, and below the surface of the ocean. The Navy could also sail to the most remote locations in the world’s oceans, establishing a military presence for weeks or months, to investigate and monitor for enemy activity.
The Air Force could operate against aliens, but the service’s fighters and bombers could only remain on station for mere minutes or hours before returning to base. Against a terrestrial threat this isn’t really a big deal, but against an alien threat we know nothing about—and according to the 2004 incident, theoretically capable of traveling extraordinary distances in a blink of an eye—such a force will be less useful.
If humans could lure aliens into a set-piece battle the Air Force could bring a lot of firepower, but how one lures aliens into battle is anyone’s guess. In the meantime the Space Force, nestled under control of the Air Force, would contribute to the alien war by maintaining the U.S. military’s network of position, navigation, and timing/GPS satellites, communication satellites, and other space-based assets.
The Army would be the service responsible if aliens attempted a landing in the United States, or presumably one of our allies. The Army’s 10 combat divisions would spring into action, attempting to destroy the aliens with fire and maneuver. It would be in many ways similar to countering an airborne landing, with the Army attempting to destroy the alien’s landing zone and prevent the flow of alien reinforcements. The Marines could also get in on the alien fighting, particularly overseas in Asia, Europe, or even the Middle East—though one would like to think aliens would be smart enough to avoid that region and the prospect of their own 18-year war altogether.
Of course, all of this is contingent on the U.S. military being on par with alien technology... which, frankly, is extremely unlikely. The universe is billions of years old, and other races could easily have a head start of a million years or more on us. And certainly, any species capable of interstellar flight is far more technologically advanced.

Hi! I plan to use my iPad Air M1 to play XCloud games or PS5 Remote, but I would like to know if there is any controller like the Backbone or the Razer Kishi that can be used with this iPad. This iPad is not heavy, so I am not concerned about getting tired of holding it.
I am referring to something like this: https://www.reddit.com/Backbone/comments/smtz9i/the_perfect_ipad_mini_6_setup/
Or if there is any accessory (like a clip) to use my Dualsense with the iPad, that would be also good.
Thanks!

Credit for the original story goes to u/spacepaladin15. All critique is appreciated, as is excessively lavish praise (if you can find any left over after reading the other works in this community). Enjoy!
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Memory transcript subject: Tressa, Venlil civilian
Date [Standardized Human Time]: February 29th, 2177
Location: City 23, Venlil Prime
“Come on, just move over a little! You know tails need more room than that!”
“I've moved over as much as I can. Any more, and I’ll get impaled.”
“You… actually, why is Burai even in the back with us? Shouldn’t it be him driving?”
“Trish doesn’t get distracted by our bickering like I would be. You should be thankful I’m back here and not up in front.”
“Oh yeah, real thankful. If Sasha bleeds out getting stuck by you, I’ll make sure to thank you before throwing you out the back.”
“Out the back of my own truck? Tressa. My dignity, please.”
The phrase rang hollow. None of them had any semblance of dignity, not while stuffed in the back of the vehicle like cattle. Tressa’s tail was already starting to get sore, and he had to imagine sitting packed next to a Gojid without the protection of wool was a harrowing experience for both Sasha and James, even with thick clothing that could cushion the blow instead. That Trish was allowed to be free of this torment simply by virtue of her focus felt like an insult. The injustice of it all stung at him, an annoying buzz at the edge of his mind which jabbed every time he had to reposition so his tail didn’t get crushed.
He fought with his own self-control to not constantly complain during the entire trip, but it was a hopeless losing battle. The whole trip to the upper layer of City 23 was punctuated by an orchestra of whining in every voice but Trish’s.
Beast, as Burai so affectionately referred to it, was not helping the matter. The thing groaned in protest every time it was met with an incline, and despite Trish’s apparent skill in taming it, it felt as though it might simply give up at any moment. It wouldn’t, they all knew; Burai took good care of it. That was cold comfort for the long ride up. It felt less like a trip, and more like some novel form of torture.
“Ladies and gent—”
As the back door slid open, Tressa practically bolted into the open air. Or tried to, anyway. His desperate bid for freedom was interrupted by the body of an gray-quilled Gojid, playing the role of a suborbital flight attendant. Spikes slid across the flame-resistant fabric of Tressa’s coat, saving him from a painful impalement and leaving him stumbling and embarrassed.
“AH! Uh… s-sorry, Burai, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine.” Burai seemed more bothered by the forced break in his little performance than the high-impact Venlil slamming across his chest. “I know you’re desperate for some fresh air. Here, let me get out of your way.”
He stepped aside, dramatically sweeping his claw towards the now-open walkway and bowing slightly in a reprisal of his role. “Welcome to City 23, the twilight jewel of Venlil Prime. We hope you enjoy your stay!”
—
Massive concrete skyscrapers intertwined with glass and plastered with neon dominated the skyline, casting the streets below in a mixture of shadow and vibrant color. Roads and walkways weaved through the architecture like blood vessels through some strange inorganic beast, teeming with activity. Carefully maintained vegetation splashed natural color against the cold metal and unyielding concrete. And through it all, an eternal sunset cast soft illumination on every unshadowed surface. City 23’s upper layer was nothing less than an artistic statement, a crown jewel of the Federation’s empire.
While a compelling narrative about the Federation’s superiority, it had a few holes. The rectangular skyscrapers, for instance, were a distinctly human design, as were the shimmering panes of glass adorning them which acted as decoration more than functional windows. According to official Federation mandate, these architectural masterpieces were examples of the Venlil’s architecture, the masterwork of an emotional and artistic prey species which proved superiority over the predatory scum that they couldn’t help but tolerate due to their tragically overwrought empathy.
Below the bustling streets of City 23’s upper layer lay the dilapidated ruins of a counterargument. An old Venlil-built city; the lack of sunlight and state of ruin did it no favors, but even in its prime the city was hardly a marvel. Thick outer walls and barriers which divided the city into clean, ugly segments that could easily be quarantined in case of a predator attack spoke of a scared people who valued practicality over art. The pawful of new buildings speckling the sprawl were far more appealing despite their cheap construction; that they were built primarily by humans was hardly a secret. But nobody who lived up above in the new city which blotted out the sky would ever bother learning this. Why would they ever bother to leave? Despite its fraught history and muddled origins, the pristine beauty of the “twilight jewel” was undeniable.
​
Tressa found that his initial breathlessness at the glimmering city hadn’t abated during his long bout of musing, and quickly drew a breath before he passed out. The air tasted of vegetation, a sweet smell which felt almost overbearing for one used to the ash and grime of the sprawl. He took several more deep breaths, savoring the scent. The rest of the group was similarly awestruck; even Trish, who muttered a poem under her breath in lieu of showing her awe through body language. To an onlooker, the sight of an interspecies herd staring wide-eyed at the routine sight of city life must’ve been rather amusing.
Or it would have been amusing, were there anyone to observe it. Trish had set them down in a parking complex, shockingly quiet for its proximity to the spaceport. Having Beast at their backs shielded the posse from prying eyes, affording James and Sasha the rare luxury of breathing that fresh air without the masks that were mandatory for human visitors to the upper layer.
Of course, it couldn’t last. They had a job to do, and being arrested for civil disruption wasn’t part of it. The two slipped on masks which covered their “predatory” eyes and teeth. Unfortunately, without enabling the passthrough cameras, it also blinded them, a fact James was rather harshly reminded of when he tripped on his first step. He quietly muttered something about a muzzle, but his words were muffled by the mask; he’d forgotten to enable the microphone as well.
As they left the parking complex and walked out into the street, James’ complaints suddenly went silent. Tressa looked to see if they’d gotten separated, only to see a thing which superficially resembled his human friend shambling behind them. His natural body posture had given way to a practiced imitation of a more timid stance, his head held low to not look anyone in the eye. Even though his face couldn’t be seen through the mask, Tressa knew he was wearing the vacant expression and incurious eyes that so many cured humans were marred with after extensive electroshocking.
He tried not to gag at the sight. Seeing James replaced by this mocking imitation of a human was nauseating, even as a mere disguise. He couldn’t bear to imagine how the first generation of cured humans felt, seeing loved ones crushed into lifeless husks by their Federation handlers and wondering if they could perform submission convincingly enough to not suffer the same fate. The humiliation alone would be enough to break most species.
Humanity, however, was not most species. Even in the face of a genocide bordering on speciocide, with so many of their people killed or maimed, they managed to maintain that spark of life. They found allies on Venlil Prime and refuge in remote colonies where the Federation’s grasp was distant. They made themselves too useful to kill outright, put on a face of passivity while preserving their culture in secret. While it was difficult to watch James play the part of a model human citizen, it was nothing more than an act.
Sasha never bothered with an act. She held her head high. How she’d survived the Terran genocide with such an apparent distain for the powers that be was a mystery to Tressa, though he knew well enough not to ask her directly. She strode down the street, sweeping her covered eyes around in movements which Federation officials deemed “Predatory”. Biologically superior species had eyes which could see everything around them at once, and didn’t have to twist their heads around in a revolting motion just to get a good look. In their infinite wisdom and mercy, they’d tried to cure humans of the inclination; even provided them with a widened field of view through the mask’s cameras. If any exterminators saw Sasha rejecting their gift by looking around in a way that came naturally to her, there could be hell to pay.
Tressa patted down the side of his coat, making sure the pistol was there. It was. He relaxed marginally. The crowd didn’t seem to be taking any notice of their prideful human compatriot anyway. As long as they didn’t run into any authorities, they’d be fine. It wasn’t a long walk to the Rising Star anyway; they could get in, find the package tucked underneath some chair, get out, spend a while milling about the city to avoid drawing suspicion from any wayward surveillance algorithms that were supposed to be decommissioned years ago, and be on their way.
Sasha suddenly stopped. Being a full head taller than the rest of the crowd, she would naturally be the first to spot trouble. She craned her head forward to get a better look at something off in the distance, and swore quietly but audibly.
With no warning, she ducked her head low and veered off into a disused alleyway while motioning for the rest of the group to follow. A steady walk turned into a brisk jog, not stopping until she reached some sort of rusted-out balcony that opened up a view of the city ahead. She crouched down, retreating slightly into the shadows while making room for the rest of them to watch from the abandoned walkway.
She flicked her head as if to silently direct their vision, but the gesture was unnecessary. They could all see the problem, glinting in the eternal evening sun. A number of problems, actually; a small herd of Venlil in silver suits which swarmed around the base of the Rising Star hotel like flies. All armed to the teeth and moving in one sickening single motion as they covered ground, a precession of glittering grim reapers which stood directly between them and their target.
A patrol of Exterminators.
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You have been a good woman your whole life, but you also have carried a secret with you that fills you with silent shame and embarrassment, because your fantasy doesn't match your personality at all. There is something secretly submissive in you that yearns to be satisfied. You long for a dominant, sexy, man to take control of you and discipline you. You want to feel helpless...dominated...NOT in control. You want to have your panties forcibly taken down and be spanked like a naughty school girl. You want to be pushed down over the sofa, feel your skirt lifted, your moistened underwear pulled aside. You want a big, hard cock to invade your slippery wetness, stretching you wider than you thought possible and making you feel oh so delicious!. You are a normal person, constrained by society's conventions and frustrated by your inability to realize your innermost fantasies. You want to be spanked with your panties down and you want to be fucked hard! -- you are already getting wet right now just thinking about it.
I am a well educated, intelligent & professional man who is physically fit and accustomed to dealing with naughty women like you. I will lecture you and instruct you to pull your skirt up around your waist as I kneel before you and pull your panties down to your thighs. The delicious smell of your aroused pussy will rise to meet me. You will feel the cool air on your bush and revel in the delicious anticipation. Then I will instruct you to stand against the wall with your legs spread and your hands above your head while I slowly pace about behind you and your clit tingles with excitement. You will feel my eyes on your pussy and this thought will excite you even more. Then I will call you sternly and bend you over a chair so that your pussy is in full view - wet, exposed, vulnerable. Oh, the shame of it. I will stroke your clit gently and when you try to stop me I will slap your cheeks hard.
Then I will commence the spanking proper. Perhaps I will use my hand. If you resist too much I will use a slipper or my leather belt. It will sting, but not be intolerable, and every now and again you would feel my fingers probe your fragrant slippery slit, making you gasp with pleasure and ache for penetration. Maybe I will tell you to reach between your legs and spread your lips apart with your fingers as I kneel behind you and slide my tongue between your sopping aromatic folds. I will continue spanking your now very red ass and you will be torn between tears and screams of delight. When your punishment is over, I will instruct you to kneel in front of me and take my big cock deep into your mouth, making you almost gag as I hold your hair and fuck your face while you moan approvingly and look up at me, your eyes wild with desire. When I am convinced that you want my cock badly enough I will turn you around on your hands & knees and I will wait as you kneel in that position until you BEG me to fuck you, and then I will grab you firmly by your hips and RAM my hard cock into your wet & swollen pussy hard and fast; banging you the way you were meant to be banged, until we both collapse in a sweaty heap of sexual bliss.
I know you are wet after reading this so lets do something about it..