Wake forest football ranking

Hello, IMAM! Recently, I placed three orders – two were direct orders from indie houses, and one was from the destashes. One of the direct orders contained two candles, which will actually be reviewed separately from the perfume oils (which I will focus on here).
While I chose the samples all based on notes, I make a point of not double-checking when I test, going in as blindly as possible. Now, on to the reviews!
Possets
“Dance with Me” – Refreshing and refined at once. A perennial favorite. A superb coumarin-laced lavender combines with fizzy pink grapefruit, and it all rests on a bed of white musk. Enchantingly innocent but with loads of guile.
This was one of the few General Catalog fragrances from Possets that intrigued me (I’m mostly interested in stuff in the retours that can’t be purchased as samples from the site, because of course I am). When I placed my Possets order last year this almost made the cut, though I ultimately decided against it because I felt like it was better suited to warmer weather.
One note before we go further: I used to be extremely wary of grapefruit as a note. This was due to a disastrous experience in my early teens with Clinique “Happy” (mainstream) where it turned astringent and just plain wrong on my skin. Upon learning from Fragrantica that grapefruit is a main note of “Happy,” I blamed the fruit and vowed to stay away from it. Years later I would try a different grapefruit scent and actually have a lovely experience, causing me to reevaluate my reaction to “Happy.” (I’ve since learned the culprit was apple, whose fragrance molecule contains aldehydes, which I sadly cannot wear. I don’t think I like lily-of-the-valley much, either. Yes, this means I miss out on a lot of great fragrances.)
Admittedly, I was expecting more of a fougère when I tested this, like a very citric unisex scent. I am actually surprised by how low-key the lavender is. The opening grapefruit packs a delicious punch – it is ruby red and sparkling (but not aldehydic). After settling, the vanilla surges to the fore and turns this into a Grapefruit Creamsicle, if that is possible; though next to the skin a slightly perfume-y grapefruit is still detectable. (The notes, surprisingly, don’t contain vanilla, only coumarin / tonka bean.) I am genuinely shocked at how good this is.
Rating: 5/5 – new springtime go-to?
The next two fragrances I tried both by themselves and layered with others.
Arcana Craves
“Fresh Ginger” – fresh, bright, spicy, juicy ginger root
Out of the vial, this alternates between smelling like grated ginger and… pickled ginger. I’m not joking. No joke, I was visualizing wasabi next to it. And on the skin… whooooooo boy. GINGER LOVERS UNITE!
This is a ginger HG. Perfectly consistent, and perfectly piquant – never powdery. On its own the longevity is between 5 and 6 hours; and so far I would say it’s the same when layered with “Garnet Grapefruit” for a spicy citric punch.
I’m not normally a “layer” person, but “Fresh Ginger” can presumably be layered with many types of fragrances: citrus, floral, resinous / spicy, etc. It’s extremely versatile. I’m also just as likely to wear this by itself (like I do my “Candy Cane”).
Rating: 5/5 – Now I just need to find a wasabi perfume…
“Garnet Grapefruit” – The simple scent of refreshing, citrusy red grapefruit. More of a literal interpretation than a perfumey scent.
One of my main wishes going into this one was that it wouldn’t be like “Peach”: beautiful on my skin but gone in 20 seconds. Luckily, I can smell “Garnet Grapefruit” on my arm after a workday has passed; however, the scent always hugs the skin. In order to get this hyper realistic grapefruit to project, it must be layered over something.
I have actually enjoyed layering this over Possets “Dance with Me,” believe it or not! It does make that grapefruit more food-like and less “sparkling,” but no less enjoyable. And both GG and FG actually make quite the layering pair (as I’d thought when I purchased these).
Rating: 5/5 – I am on a roll right now!
“White Cake” – vanilla-infused white cake with a fine, delicate crumb
This one was a surprise 1mL freebie in my order; unfortunately, I have a bad history with a lot of cake scents. They’re usually too sweet for me, especially when not combined with a grounding, non-gourmand note. I opened that vial and the first thing I smelled was icing. Thick, sugary buttercream. I almost didn’t even test this at all, but told myself to quit being a big baby and dabbed a small amount on my arm.
Yes, at first this was pure icing, and I thought about scrubbing. I felt like the mean Ms. Dubrow at the end of Dunston Checks In (childhood favorite), submerged in a ruined multi-tiered cake. (It’s not a pleasant downfall in the movie, and it wasn’t pleasant for me to smell.) Eventually, however, it calmed down into a crumbly vanilla scent. I can’t imagine how sweet “Yellow Cake” must be if it’s sweeter than this, since the beginning of “White Cake” almost made my teeth hurt. I suppose I could play around with layering this… but I really don’t want to.
Rating: 1/5 – aaaaaaand my streak ended
The next two scents were for the purpose of comparison, and a revisit to a house with which. I haven’t had much luck.
Poesie
“Athena” – sun-baked Mediterranean herbs and earth, a rich and resinous vanilla spiked with a complex blend of incense and spice, exquisite grey musk
This was a fragrance I had quite a while ago – long since ran out. I’ve been thinking about getting a FS, but instead I decided to compare a sample to another one that seemed to have similar notes. In any case, “Athena” was the only Poesie fragrance of the sample set I’d bought that actually worked with my skin. (“Black Cat Cuddles” also wasn’t too bad, though it did get quite peppery on me.) I think it worked because it wasn’t a sweet scent – all the sweet scents all had a kind of Band-Aid / plaster accord in their base. But not “Athena.”
And this revisit was much the same: dry vanilla, the kind that makes me envision cracked Mediterranean earth. Then the rosemary hits. In warm weather the rosemary is much stronger, but in winter the vanilla still wins out in the end. This is refreshing, not to mention soothing to smell on an upset stomach.
Rating: 5/5 – delightful
“Villa Diodati” – pungent wild rosemary and fresh balsam pine, crystal clear lakewater, dry, dark vanilla
I have been curious about this one for a long time. On its face, the notes list seemed similar to that of “Athena,” but the lake aspect intrigued me. Finally, I procured a sample in the destashes to form a comparison.
And lake water is, in fact, the star of this show – coming to the fore in a cologne-like aspect, enough to remind me of Davidoff “Cool Water” (mainstream). This reads quite masculine to my nose. While it’s a very pleasant scent, incorporating the rosemary and pine (not much vanilla to be had) into its aquatic nature, it’s still something I would rather smell on my (hypothetical) boyfriend than myself.
Although I’m glad I still like it, because the vial slipped out if my had when I tried to close it, and about half the contents spilled onto my rug. ☹
Rating: 4/5 – If you’re looking for an indie alternative to “Cool Water,” look no further.
“Selene” – magnolia grandiflora, moon musk, calming clouds
This was a freebie, and one I couldn’t recall from Poesie’s catalog. So I went into this truly blind. Sniffing out of the vial I couldn’t pick up much, and the fragrance doesn’t heavily project on skin. However, it is still a detectable amber accord. Normally I dislike amber, but I was able to tolerate it here because it leaned slightly more “candle” than “powder,” and wasn’t combined with something that would give me a headache (e.g., sandalwood, which I often see is combined with amber). I guarantee the “clouds” portion of the notes list means amber. I’m more surprised that I wasn’t able to pick up the magnolia specifically; but then again, I’m not a floral perfume fan.
Rating: 3/5 – it’s nice, if you like this sort of thing
Altogether, I’m wondering if Poesie is a house worth revisiting formally – outside of the teas, which I already love. 😊 I just know to stay away from their sweeter accords. Like perhaps “Oyster!” or “Bijou,” or even “Forest Cat”…
Nui Cobalt
“Snow Cat 2022” – lightly toasted marzipan, ivory amber, chilled coconut milk, and the soft fur of a purring kitten
This one was another freebie in my haul (from the direct NC order). The Cats Collection never really interested me, except for maybe “Ginger Cat,” so I couldn’t recall the notes I’d seen for “Snow Cat” (before or after re-blend). Therefore, this is another one where I went in totally blind.
Out of the vial, this smelled vaguely citric… maybe rhubarb, instead? And then the coconut hit, and I got optimistic. Perhaps this would be like “Avalanche,” but maybe even better? I tested with high hopes, but sadly they were not delivered upon. The drydown for this was quite amber-like (much like Poesie “Selene”), except there was also something in here that reminded me vaguely of cough medicine. (I don’t like the smell of almonds, so maybe it was the marzipan accord doing this?) Alas, it wasn’t strong enough for me to consider scrubbing, and before the four-hour mark it was gone.
Rating: 1/5 – no purrs to be had here, sorry
“The Wings of the Morrigan” – soft, smokey leather with a splash of red wine, an offering of black cherries and bitter chocolate, the steel and stone of the battlefield
Another freebie, and one which I had completely forgotten existed! No idea what to expect when I sniffed the vial (though I assumed it had everything to do with Celtic mythology and not Dragon Age). The accord I picked up reminded me of the sparkling ginger ale of “Atrophilia.” I can’t wear aldehydes, so this made me a bit nervous to test…
It doesn’t “sparkle” on the skin, though. The dominant note I pick up is cherry, and unfortunately I’m not a cherry fan (due to its similarity to almond). In the base there definitely is a smokiness and something that I can now identify as leather – it must be synthetic, because I didn’t break out in hives at the testing site (I’m allergic to birch, and birch tar is often used for leather notes). I can see the gothic appeal for others, but sadly this is not for me.
Rating: 3/5 – swooping is bad
“Ghost Train” – stark white copal, cedarwood, coal dust, grey cashmere, cardamom, toasted marshmallow, and shining steel
I remember wanting to try this one because it sounded so weird, even though another NC fragrance I’d purchased due to perceived weirdness wound up not working for me at all. (That was “Excelsior!”) However, by the time I received this I actually forgot what it was supposed to smell like altogether. Prior to testing, I worried this would be too metallic (the “train” aspect), but on skin this bloomed.
For the most part, this was a deliciously spiced marshmallow. I hesitate to call it a cinnamon hot cocoa concoction, because it was more sophisticated than that. And running underneath this sweet & spicy accord was something metallic, yes, but also something… green. Just slightly green. Almost like ivy growing over an abandoned train car. (I think the “green” in this case is cardamom.)
And then it hit me: this was what I’d wanted Fantôme “Ectoplasm” (spooky, goopy marshmallow over bone-chilling white musk, sweet amber, a gossamer sugar glaze, dark myrrh, and creeping greenery) to smell like! That one had just been the marshmallows, though (I didn’t get the “creeping greenery”) – but here, I also got the eerie train car, likely filled with ghosts.
Rating: 5/5 – nice to be so pleasantly surprised
“Sultry” – two dark, lascivious vanillas swirled with dragon’s blood, heavy velvet musk and the secrets of an old rootworker’s conjure cabinet
This is a GC fragrance that was sort of on my radar, but I was surprised to smell something so… “traditional” out of the vial. It smelled heavily of amber, which really doesn’t work on me, and I genuinely wondered for a bit if there was a sandalwood note I missed (the dragon’s blood is rendered cold here). On skin it didn’t develop a whole lot, though it stayed for several hours before becoming just slightly soapy. Not offensive enough to be a scrubber, but so completely not me. It reminded me a lot of Haus of Gloi “Depravity” (clove, nutmeg lurk amongst the sweetest offerings of coconut, on a bed of rich golden amber, laden with dustings of sandalwood and spilled wine) in its profile – “Depravity” projects more, though. Altogether, very much a femme fatale boudoir scent.
Rating: 2/5 – calling all femmes fatales…
“Seduction” – opulent flowers, piquant cloves, warm scarlet musk and hoodoo roots tangled in a potion of simmering vanilla
The last of the freebies was the second to last sample I tested, and honestly… very similar to “Sultry.” The only difference was a note in the middle like toasted coconut. But otherwise, almost identical “traditional” development with slightly soapy drydown.
Rating: 2/5 – eh…
“House of Identity” – smoked vanilla, sweet resins, red musk, marshmallow, and fiery woodsmoke
The final fragrance I tested was the only one I ordered directly from NC (along with my two candles), because it was the only one from the Astrology collection that I thought I could wear. I remember thinking it sounded incredibly interesting.
In reality, this smells like toasted coconut and cucumbers drowning in cologne. At times this has almost the same masculine aroma as Poesie “Villa Diodati,” but other times it’s definitely more of a “perfume” than “cologne.” Perhaps that makes this totally unisex, but for vaguely aquatic or even subterranean coconuts I much prefer NC “Medusa” to this.
Rating: 2/5 – just reminded me of other fragrances I liked more
The end of this testing run kind of fizzled out, after an amazing beginning. Altogether, out of 13 fragrances I plan to keep 5 – which, on the surface, isn’t a lot; but both my FS bottles were slam-dunks! So in terms of volume, it’s about fifty-fifty, which (with these kinds of hauls) is a pretty good turnout. I also have a feeling I’ve tried everything from NC that will work on me, for the time being, and should give that house a rest in favor of others.
If I were to rank the fragrances:

1. Possets “Dance with Me”
   
2. Arcana Craves “Fresh Ginger”
   
3. Nui Cobalt, “Ghost Train”
   
4. Poesie “Athena”
   
5. Arcana Craves “Garnet Grapefruit”
   
6. Poesie “Villa Diodato”
   
7. Nui Cobalt “The Wings of the Morrigan”
   
8. Poesie “Selene”
   
9. Nui Cobalt “House of Identity”
   
10. Nui Cobalt “Seduction”
    
11. Nui Cobalt “Sultry”
    
12. Arcana Craves “White Cake”
    
13. Nui Cobalt “Snow Cat 2022”
    

Context Leader
Pierre du Borjat, also known as Cugnyet, was born in 1476 in the town of Borjat in Auverne and spent his early years studying at the University of Bologna, where he gained a reputation as an intelligent and diligent student.
After completing his studies, Pierre du Borjat began working at the Banco dei Medici, the foremost Italian merchant bank (Banca d’affari), where he gained valuable experience in finance and diplomacy. However, the bank dissolved in 1499, and Pierre du Borjat was forced to seek out new opportunities.
In 1500, Pierre du Borjat became a citizen of Fribourg, one of the most recent additions to the Swiss Confederacy. He quickly rose through the ranks, with a combination of bribery and friends in high places and after changing his surname to Wett was elected Amtsbürgermeister, or mayor, of Canton Fribourg in January 1509.
Speaking his native French, German and Italian, Pierre Wett is a skillful diplomat with an insatiable interest in finance and trade, but untested in other areas of governance.
Context Country
Geography
The canton is bounded to the west by Lake Neuchâtel, to the west and the south by the Condominium of Vaud, and to the east by the canton of Bern. The canton lies on the elevated Swiss Plateau. In the west the lands are flat, but towards the south east of the canton, the lands rise to a hilly region. This region is commonly called pre-Alps but is part of the Bernese Alps.
The river Saane/Sarine flows from the south to the north of the canton. Together with its tributaries it drains most of the lands in the canton, then joins the river Aare. The river Broye drains the west of the canton and flows northeast into Lake Morat. The southwest part of the canton is drained by the river Veveyse, which flows south into Lake Geneva.
Economy
Several types of industry developed in Fribourg as early as the 13th and 14th centuries. The extension of the city along the east bank of the Saane/La Sarine made about this time was indicative of a strong economic upturn. In Galterntal, water power was used for various mills. Along the Saane new trade districts developed with the towns of Au, Neustadt and Matten.
The tanneries and cloth manufacturers, strengthened by widespread sheep raising, led to an economic boom in the 14th and 15th centuries. This helped Fribourg by making its trades well known throughout central Europe. A gradual decline in cloth making in the second half of the 15th century occurred as local farmers replaced their sheep with cattle.
Current Situation
Both Fribourg and Solothurn, which had participated in the Burgundy Wars, wanted to join the confederation which would have tipped the balance in favour of the city cantons. The rural cantons were thus strongly opposed. In 1477 they marched upon the cities in protest. Conflict over the accession was avoided in 1481 during the Tagszatsung of Stans where the Forest Cantons were convinced to accept the accession. Now just three decades part of the Confederacy, the Canton of Fribourg is looking to extend its influence and secure peace and prosperity.
​
N.B.
I'm hyped to join this community.

https://www.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/cg1p8marcoxnt93s_igs_rep_page/
Humble Turkiye-Syria Earthquake Relief Bundle leftovers
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Roombo: First Blood
Rover Mechanic Simulator
RRRR
Rustler
Sakura Agent
Sakura Angels
Sakura Beach
Sakura Beach 2
Sakura Fantasy
Sakura Magical Girls
Sakura Shrine Girls
Sakura Spirit
Samorost 3
Serial Cleaner
Seven enchanted edition
Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
SIMULACRA + SIMULACRA 2
Sins Of The Demon
Shadowrun Hong Kong Extended Edition
Shoppe Keep
Shoppe Keep 2
Smile For Me
SKULLY
Smoke and Sacrifice
Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing
Soulblight
Space Pilgrim Academy: Reunion
space run galaxy
Speedrunners
Spellspire
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky
StarCrossed
State of mind
Stealth 2: A Game of Clones
Stealth Bastard Deluxe x 2
Steamburg
Still Life 2
Storm Of Spears
Strider
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
Sudden Strike 4
Sundered
Super Hexagon
Supraland
Super Mutant Alien Assault
Super Panda Adventures
Swag and Sorcery
Syberia
Syberia II
Syberia 3
System Shock: Enhanced Edition
Tabletop Playground
Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation
Teleglitch Die More Edition
Telefrag VR
Teslagrad
Testament of Sherlock Holmes
Time Mysteries 3: The Final Enigma
The Amazing American Circus
Tharsis
The Ball
The Deed
The dropping of the dead
The Dwarves
The Hex
The King's Bird
The Last Door: Season 2 - Collector's Edition
The Lost Crown
The Purring Quest
There Came An Echo
The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game
The Signal From Tölva
Think of the Children
This War of Mine
ToeJam & Earl Back in the Groove
Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation
Tomb Raider V: Chronicles
Tomb Raider Legend
Tomb Raider Underworld
Tooth and Tail
Train Station Renovation
Treasure Hunter Simulator
Tropico 4
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
Underhero
Unrest
Valnir Rok Survival RPG
Vane
Velocity Ultra Deluxe
Vertiginous Golf
Viking Saga The Cursed Ring
Wanderlust: Travel Stories
Wandersong
warlock 2
war tech fighters
Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest
Without Within 2
Whispers of a machine
Wings of Vi
Yoku's Island Express
Youropa
Zoo Park
​
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TIER 4
Acceleration of SUGURI 2
Age of Wonders III
Alien Spidy
Almost There: The Platformer
Angvik
A New Beginning – Final Cut
AtmaSphere
Battle vs chees
Circuit Breakers
Corridor Z
CreaVures
Cubicle Quest
Dagon – The Eldritch Box DLC
Dashing Dinos
Death Fungeon
Drawful 2
DungeonUp x 2
Earth 2150 Trilogy
Enclave
Endless Space – Collection
Evergarden
Formula Car Racing
Fluffy Horde
Gorky 17
Guts And Glory
Hacknet Deluxe Edition
Haegemonia: The Solon Heritage
HIVESWAP: Act 1
Holy Potatoes a Spy Story
Homefront
Horizon Shift
Joggernauts
Journey of a Roach
Learn Japanese to survive Hiragana Battle
Left in the Dark: No One on Board
Leisure Suit Larry 5 - Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work
Leisure Suit Larry 6 - Shape Up Or Slip Out
Little Racers STREET
Lock Parsing 2
Love is Dead
Midnight Mysteries 3: Devil on the Mississippi
Memoria
Moss Destruction
NAIRI: Tower of Shirin
NeuroVoider
No Time to Explain Remastered
One Finger Death Punch
OneShift
Out of Reach: Treasure Royale
Pesterquest
Purrfect Date – Visual Novel/Dating Simulator
Raceland
Regions Of Ruin
Regular Human Basketball x 2
Rencounter
Renoir
Return to Mysterious Island
Resort Boss: Golf
Rym 9000
Seraph
Shooting Stars!
Silence
Sky Break
Space Pilgrim Episode III: Delta Pavonis
Space Pilgrim Episode IV: Sol
Spandex Force: Champion Rising
Steel Rats
Super Daryl Deluxe
Sword Legacy Omen
Taxi
The Adventure Pals x 3
The Deed: Dynasty
The Emerald Maiden: Symphony of Dream
The Spiral Scouts
The Uncertain - The Last Quiet Day
Tiny Troopers
ttv2
Twilight City Love as a Cure
Two Worlds: Epic Edition
Tumblestone
Unhack
Unhack 2
Viking Saga The Cursed Ring
White Noise Online
World Keepers Last Resort
Zombie Party x 2

​
Humble Turkiye-Syria Earthquake Relief Bundle leftovers
​
Ticket to Ride
Strange Brigade
System Shock Enhanced Edition
Pilgrims
Flynn: Son of Crimson
Into the Pit
Worms Rumble
Backbone
119 Operator
211 Operator
Calico
X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
Zombie Driver HD Complete Edition
Space Crew: Legendary Edition
Monaco
Death Squared
Lust from Beyond – M Edition
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
Remnants of Naezith
Planet TD
Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue DX
XEL
Little Orpheus
Detached: Non-VR Edition
Agent in Depth
Meow Express
Arcade Spirits
Non-Stop Raiders
The Inner World
The Amazing American Circus
Soulblight
Stacking
Hack 'n’ Slash
MirrorMoon EP
Cosmic Express
Cris Tales
Orbital Racer
Symmetry
Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
Alchemist’s Castle
Soul Searching
Doughlings: Arcade
Doughlings: Invasion
Quadrata
Rym 9000
stikir
Cats and the Other Lives
Soulflow
Izmir: An Independence Simulator
Guns & Fishes
Pill Baby
Project Chemistry
Pixross
Frick, Inc
Sunlight
​
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TIER 0
Back 4 blood eu
Destiny 2 Planet of Peace Exclusive Emblem
Dirt Rally 2.0 + 3 DLC
F1 2012
F1 2019 Anniversary
Grand Theft Auto Vice City
Remnant from the Ashes
Road to Guangdong - Story-Based Indie Road Trip Driving Game
the wolf among us
​
TIER 1
Absolver
Bloodstained Ritual of the Night
borderlands Game of the year enhanced Edition
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection EU
Chernobylite Enhanced Edition
Darksiders genesis
Deep Rock Galactic
Doom Eternal
Duke Nukem Manhattan Project
DUSK
Elex
Endless Space 2 – Deluxe Edition
friday the 13th
Geometry Wars 3 Dimensions Evolved Mystery
Genital Jousting
Grid Autosport
Grid ultimate edition
Golf With Friends
GoNNER BLüEBERRY EDiTION
guild wars 2 heroic edition
guild wars nightfall
Hitman Absolution
House Flipper
Just cause 3 XXL
Kingdom Rush
Kerbal Space Program x 2
Legend Of Grimrock
Lego Marvel 2 Deluxe
Little Dragons Cafe
Mafia III: Definitive Edition
MAIN ASSEMBLY
Maneater
Mordhau
Orn the tiny forest sprite
Outward US x 2
Overcooked 2 + Surf and Turf + Too Many Cooks
pathfinder wrath
PGA TOUR 2k21 x 2
Phantasmagoria
Portal Knights
Pro cycling manager 2019
Project Cars
Project CARS 2 + Japanese Cars Bonus Pack
Risen
Sairento VR
Scum
Second Extinction
Sonic Forces
Spyro Reignited Trilogy x 2
Starbound
Star Trek Bridge Crew
State of Decay 2
streets of rogue
Summer in Mara
Superhot VR
Tales of Zestiria
Team Sonic Racing
Tekken 7
The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion GOTY
The Division + DLC US
Tomb Raider GOTY
Total War: MEDIEVAL II – Definitive Edition
TRINE 2 Complete Story
TRINE 3 The Artifacts of Power
Tracks - The Train Set Game
WARHAMMER 40,000: Gladius- Relics of War
Warhammer 40000 : Mechanicus
Wasteland 2 Directors Cut
Wasteland 3
valkyria chronicles IV Complete
X-com 2
​
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TIER 2
ABZU
Armello x 3
asterix obelix xxl3
Band of Defenders
batman arkham knight
Battle Chasers: Nightwar
Beyond Blue
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Book of Demons
CHAOS CODE -NEW SIGN OF CATASTROPHE-
Choice Chamber
Chess Ultra
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civilization IV Complete Edition
Civilization 5
Dead by Daylight
Death and Taxes
Degrees of Separation
Drake Hollow
Driftland: The Magic Revival x 2
Endless Space 2
Europa Universalis IV
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FEZ
Flying Tigers: Shadows Over China - Deluxe Edition
Forced
From Space
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Golf With Friends
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Hotshot Racing
human fall flat
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1
Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition
Just Cause 3
Killing Floor 2
King's Bounty: Crossworlds
King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North - The Complete Edition
Last Oasis
Manhunt
Megadimension Neptunia VII
Men of War: Assault Squad 2 - War Chest Edition
METAL SLUG 3
Metro Last Light Redux
Miscreated
MO:Astray
Morphopolis
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021
Natural Selection 2
NecroWorm
Neo Cab
NEOVERSE
Not For Broadcast
Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
Odyssey - The Story of Science
OF MICE AND SAND -REVISED-
One Step From Eden
Opus Magnum
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Pillars Of Eternity
Phoenix Point Year one edition
Planespace Torment Enhanced Edition
Plunge
Quantum League
Quest of Dungeons
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Roarr! The Adventures of Rampage Rex
Sanctuary RPG: Black Edition
Scribblenauts Unmasked
Scythe Digital Edition
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Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut
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the long dark survival Edition
The Stillness of the Wind
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The town of light
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The Wild Eight
Train Valley 2
Trüberbrook
Tropico 5
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XCOM: Chimera Squad
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Zwei: The Arges Adventure
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TIER 3
112 Operator
911 Operator
Acorn Assault: Rodent Revolution
Ageless
AI War 2
Alan Wake's American Nightmare
Alien Shooter 2 Conscription
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
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angry video game nerd
Arcana Hearts 3
Armada 2526 Gold Edition
arma X
As Far As The Eye
Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
Atari Vault
AVEN COLONY
Before we Leave
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BLACKHOLE
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Bomber Crew - Deluxe Edition
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Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
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Cepheus Protocol
Chaos Reborn
City Siege: Faction Island
COLT CANYON
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
Crazy Belts
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Creeping Terror
Crowntakers
Crying Suns
CTU: Counter Terrorism Unit
Cybarian: The Time Travelling Warrior
Cyber Hook
Dad Quest x 2
Dark Heritage: Guardians of Hope
Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage
Darksiders Warmastered Edition
Dark Strokes The Legend of the Snow Kingdom Collectors Edition
Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
Death to Spies: Moment of Truth
Death Squared
DESOLATE
Detached
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Dimension Drifter
Distrust : Polar Survival
Double Dragon IV
Draw Slasher
Duke Nukem Forever x 2
Dungeons 3
Dungeon Siege II
DV: Rings of Saturn
EarthNight
EarthX
Eliza
Enforcer: Police Crime Action
ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition
Epistory - Typing Chronicles
Etherborn
Etherlords I & II
Evergarden
evoland
F1 2018
Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered
Farming World
Fire
Fort Triumph
Fury Unleashed x 2
Garfield Kart
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Goat simulator
Golf Gang
God's Trigger
Go Home Dinosaurs
Going Under
Gone Home + Original Soundtrack
Grim Legends 2: Song of the Dark Swan
GRIP: Combat Racing
Guilty Gear Sign
Gunscape Standard Edition
Hacknet + DLC
Heaven’s Vault
Heavy Burger
Heroes of Annihilated Empires
Hexologic
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Hive Jump
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Hue
Hyperspace Invaders II: Pixel Edition
In Between
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INMOST
Inside My Radio
Iris and the Giant
Iron Fisticle
John Wick
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ken follet
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King Oddball
Knights of Pen & Paper 2
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Laser Disco Defenders
Leisure Suit Larry 7 - Love for Sail
Lemuria Lost in Space
Levelhead
LIBERATED
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Lostwinds
Lovecraft’s Untold Stories
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Luxor 3
Mages of Mystralia
Magrunner: Dark Pulse
Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom
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MirrorMoon EP
Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine
Moon Hunters
MotoGP 15
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MOUNT & BLADE
MXGP - The Official Motocross Videogame
My Memory of Us
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Narcos: Rise of the Cartels
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Newt One
Nex Machina
Neverending Nightmares
Neverout
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Night Call
Nowhere Prophet
Odallus: The Dark Call
Of Orcs And Men
Offworld Trading Company + Jupiter's Forge Expansion Pack
Omen Exitio: Plague
Orbital Racer
Out of Space
Overload
Overlord II x 2
Pac-Man 256
PAC-MAN™ CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION 2
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port royale 3 gold
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red orchestra 2
Re-Legion
REMOTHERED: BROKEN PORCELAIN
Remnants of Naezith
RESIDENT EVIL HD
Rezrog
Retimed
Ring of Pain
Road Redemption
ROCK OF AGES 3: MAKE & BREAK
Röki
Roombo: First Blood
Rover Mechanic Simulator
RRRR
Rustler
Sakura Agent
Sakura Angels
Sakura Beach
Sakura Beach 2
Sakura Fantasy
Sakura Magical Girls
Sakura Shrine Girls
Sakura Spirit
Samorost 3
Serial Cleaner
Seven enchanted edition
Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
SIMULACRA + SIMULACRA 2
Sins Of The Demon
Shadowrun Hong Kong Extended Edition
Shoppe Keep
Shoppe Keep 2
Smile For Me
SKULLY
Smoke and Sacrifice
Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing
Soulblight
Space Pilgrim Academy: Reunion
space run galaxy
Speedrunners
Spellspire
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky
StarCrossed
State of mind
Stealth 2: A Game of Clones
Stealth Bastard Deluxe x 2
Steamburg
Still Life 2
Storm Of Spears
Strider
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
Sudden Strike 4
Sundered
Super Hexagon
Supraland
Super Mutant Alien Assault
Super Panda Adventures
Swag and Sorcery
Syberia
Syberia II
Syberia 3
System Shock: Enhanced Edition
Tabletop Playground
Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation
Teleglitch Die More Edition
Telefrag VR
Teslagrad
Testament of Sherlock Holmes
Time Mysteries 3: The Final Enigma
The Amazing American Circus
Tharsis
The Ball
The Deed
The dropping of the dead
The Dwarves
The Hex
The King's Bird
The Last Door: Season 2 - Collector's Edition
The Lost Crown
The Purring Quest
There Came An Echo
The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game
The Signal From Tölva
Think of the Children
This War of Mine
ToeJam & Earl Back in the Groove
Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation
Tomb Raider V: Chronicles
Tomb Raider Legend
Tomb Raider Underworld
Tooth and Tail
Train Station Renovation
Treasure Hunter Simulator
Tropico 4
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
Underhero
Unrest
Valnir Rok Survival RPG
Vane
Velocity Ultra Deluxe
Vertiginous Golf
Viking Saga The Cursed Ring
Wanderlust: Travel Stories
Wandersong
warlock 2
war tech fighters
Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest
Without Within 2
Whispers of a machine
Wings of Vi
Yoku's Island Express
Youropa
Zoo Park
​
​
TIER 4
Acceleration of SUGURI 2
Age of Wonders III
Alien Spidy
Almost There: The Platformer
Angvik
A New Beginning – Final Cut
AtmaSphere
Battle vs chees
Circuit Breakers
Corridor Z
CreaVures
Cubicle Quest
Dagon – The Eldritch Box DLC
Dashing Dinos
Death Fungeon
Drawful 2
DungeonUp x 2
Earth 2150 Trilogy
Enclave
Endless Space – Collection
Evergarden
Formula Car Racing
Fluffy Horde
Gorky 17
Guts And Glory
Hacknet Deluxe Edition
Haegemonia: The Solon Heritage
HIVESWAP: Act 1
Holy Potatoes a Spy Story
Homefront
Horizon Shift
Joggernauts
Journey of a Roach
Learn Japanese to survive Hiragana Battle
Left in the Dark: No One on Board
Leisure Suit Larry 5 - Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work
Leisure Suit Larry 6 - Shape Up Or Slip Out
Little Racers STREET
Lock Parsing 2
Love is Dead
Midnight Mysteries 3: Devil on the Mississippi
Memoria
Moss Destruction
NAIRI: Tower of Shirin
NeuroVoider
No Time to Explain Remastered
One Finger Death Punch
OneShift
Out of Reach: Treasure Royale
Pesterquest
Purrfect Date – Visual Novel/Dating Simulator
Raceland
Regions Of Ruin
Regular Human Basketball x 2
Rencounter
Renoir
Return to Mysterious Island
Resort Boss: Golf
Rym 9000
Seraph
Shooting Stars!
Silence
Sky Break
Space Pilgrim Episode III: Delta Pavonis
Space Pilgrim Episode IV: Sol
Spandex Force: Champion Rising
Steel Rats
Super Daryl Deluxe
Sword Legacy Omen
Taxi
The Adventure Pals x 3
The Deed: Dynasty
The Emerald Maiden: Symphony of Dream
The Spiral Scouts
The Uncertain - The Last Quiet Day
Tiny Troopers
ttv2
Twilight City Love as a Cure
Two Worlds: Epic Edition
Tumblestone
Unhack
Unhack 2
Viking Saga The Cursed Ring
White Noise Online
World Keepers Last Resort
Zombie Party x 2

Australia is a member of the ASEAN Football Federation since 2013, seven years after joining the AFC, and this is quite simple: Australia's proximity with the region. In fact, Australia is closer to Indonesia and East Timor than with far more successful South Korea and Japan.
Australia also has a football league, the A-League Men, founded in 2004 and played the first season in 2005. Since then, A-League Men has made slow expansion, though aggressive attempts have been made as part of Football Australia's Vision 2035 in order to cement Australia's position as a football country in Asia and Oceania.
When talking about inner relations with other Southeast Asian nations though, the reality is far from simple, due to complicated issues related to history and past experiences. When Southeast Asians talk about exporting their footballers, they tend to look at Japan and South Korea as destinations and not Australia. Overall, Southeast Asians consider Japan and South Korea culturally closer than Australia, largely because they share a common skin. In fact, years under Japanese and Korean coaches, especially with the success of Korean tactician Park Hang-seo with Vietnam (who departed in January 2023), attracted Southeast Asians to these countries even more. For instance, in 2020, K-League agreed to give one extra slot for players from Southeast Asia to compete in the highest competition of South Korean football, whereas Japan's recent successful 2022 FIFA World Cup display boosted popularity of J.League in ASEAN, are demonstrations of how effective the football diplomacy can be for these two East Asian hegemons with the lesser developed Southeast Asian nations.
But while football diplomacy has been weaponised to zenith by Seoul and Tokyo, the reality is very harsh for Southeast Asian players. Many Southeast Asians found difficult to compete at the highest order of both J.League and K-League. Many Southeast Asian footballers have struggled to make foothold in East Asia, often due to the very harsh training methods in these countries. Yet the grassroot problem may have been the key. Southeast Asia has a weak grassroot movement, even in countries with superior facilities like Thailand and Malaysia, plus widespread corruption and mismanagement in Southeast Asia denied these countries a greater place in the globe. If we look at Southeast Asian nations in their footballing history with the hegemons of Asia, only Thailand and Vietnam have reached the final round of FIFA World Cup qualification, the latter gained ASEAN first-ever win in this phase; digging further, only Indonesia qualified for a World Cup, but that was under the Dutch colonial rule, after winning independence, Indonesia has never qualified under its new name. Within Japan and South Korea, only one player from Southeast Asia really broke through: Chanathip Songkrasin, often coined "Messi Thai".
Outside Japan and South Korea alone, Southeast Asian players may also find it difficult to even compete in other Asian leagues. For instance, the Saudi Pro League, one of Asia's best and richest football leagues, is historically protectionist and only recently raises their profile with the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo. Yet Saudis tend to discriminate Southeast Asians and consider them inferior, which is also a common practise in Gulf monarchies, so accepting these "inferior" Southeast Asian footballers would mean potential humiliation of their football status (there are no renowned Southeast Asian footballers in Saudi Arabia or GCC countries). Playing in Persian Pro League of Iran is quite difficult as well since Iranian clubs do not have the same financial muscles and Iranian football is quite culturally conservative.
In this case, A-League Men may have been represented a rather unique opportunity: the league can actually become a potential plan B to save Southeast Asian footballers' careers. There are some potentials if Southeast Asian players can play in A-League Men:

1. Australia, by proximity, is closer to ASEAN. It's also facilitated by the fact that Australia is a member of the AFF, which qualified Australia into ASEAN competitions.
2. Australia has a strong football reputation since joining Asia. Outside two World Cups as an Oceanian representative, Australia has never missed a World Cup since entering Asia.
3. Australia has also had a strong World Cup record. The Socceroos has reached the round of sixteen twice, most notably in 2022 (alongside Japan and South Korea), where Australia stunned Tunisia and Denmark on their run and almost made a comeback against Argentina, the eventual winner.
4. Since joining the AFF, Australia has been largely seen as the actual, and only hegemon of the Southeast Asian region. Australia has won one AFC Asian Cup and has been the only AFF country to have played, and qualified, for World Cup by its own strength.
5. In club football, Australia has one AFC Champions League winner in modern time, something no Southeast Asian clubs achieved after Thai Farmer Bank back in the 1990s.
6. The A-League Men is still on the expansion and it will be beneficial for Southeast Asian footballers to move to Australia. Japan and South Korea have strict laws regarding footballers, whereas Saudi Arabia is not interested, while Iran has little financial incentives. A-League Men is still considered to be light compared to the four as their football is still on the building up.

Yet with all reputation Australia has, there are significant obstacles that challenge A-League Men's attempt to attract Southeast Asian footballers:

1. There is still a significant mutual suspicion against Australia among Southeast Asians. Southeast Asians still see Australia as a Western country intruding into Asia. This is not unique to Southeast Asia though, but also widespread in Central Asia and Western Asia. This is due to Australia's history as a settler-nation because of British colonialism and subsequent European migration to the country.
2. Australia's historical White Australia policy has been long seen as racist and anti-Asian. This made very few Asians to see Australia as an Asian country. Despite abolishment in the 1970s, in particular after the Vietnam War ended, but Australia is still being seen as a European nation within Asia. This has only increased mistrusts between Southeast Asians and Australians.
3. Australia has attempted to join the AFC as far as the 1960s, but cultural tensions and distrusts had hindered that opportunity. Not until 2006 that Australia was approved as an AFC member and, only Japan and South Korea opened their arms to Australia. The rest still perceived Australia with suspicion and there were even accusations that Australia benefitted too much while contributing little to the continent, as seen with the oil-rich Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf after the 2015 AFC Asian Cup.
4. Despite being an AFF member in 2013, other Southeast Asian nations have excluded Australia from the regional AFF Championship with apathy toward the country's somewhat superior football strength. The Aussies thus can only participate in limited youth tournaments of the region.
5. The AFC has approved a quota that all Asian domestic leagues must include one foreign AFC player - but this is something the A-League Men has not followed. As such, Southeast Asian footballers feel it a barrier preventing them from playing in Australia.
6. There is a sense that Australia has not committed enough to football. This is because despite reputation as one of Asia's Big Five, football is only the fourth largest sport in Australia (despite being the most played sport by common Aussies). Southeast Asians aren't familiar with Australia's other sports like rugby or Australian own football version (which is not the same to association football).

But as Southeast Asian footballers continue to struggle in Japan and South Korea, as well as the fear of not being accepted by Saudi Arabia's top clubs, this made Southeast Asian players in a crossroad. In such an occasion, Australian football makers need to emphasise the possibility of bringing Southeast Asian players into their ranks. This should be done to improve Australia's football credibility while addressing the serious concern about Australia's AFC integration.
The opposition against Australia among AFC members may not likely to die down, but if Australia can offer a pathway that ensure Southeast Asian footballers a chance to play in Asia's highest order, the country may soon realise that, by mending ties with ASEAN nations, they can actually come forward for a common pan-Asian football vision. Australia is seeing a growing expansion of the country's football league, with A-League Men being expanded to 14 teams in 2024 and a second-tier domestic league is about to begin in the same year, and this can actually be the opportunity for Australia to boost their football market as the alternative way for Southeast Asians.

​
Humble Turkiye-Syria Earthquake Relief Bundle leftovers
​
Ticket to Ride
Strange Brigade
System Shock Enhanced Edition
Pilgrims
Flynn: Son of Crimson
Into the Pit
Worms Rumble
Backbone
119 Operator
211 Operator
Calico
X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
Zombie Driver HD Complete Edition
Space Crew: Legendary Edition
Monaco
Death Squared
Lust from Beyond – M Edition
Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
Remnants of Naezith
Planet TD
Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue DX
XEL
Little Orpheus
Detached: Non-VR Edition
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Meow Express
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Soul Searching
Doughlings: Arcade
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Quadrata
Rym 9000
stikir
Cats and the Other Lives
Soulflow
Izmir: An Independence Simulator
Guns & Fishes
Pill Baby
Project Chemistry
Pixross
Frick, Inc
Sunlight
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Back 4 blood eu
Destiny 2 Planet of Peace Exclusive Emblem
Dirt Rally 2.0 + 3 DLC
F1 2012
F1 2019 Anniversary
Grand Theft Auto Vice City
Remnant from the Ashes
Road to Guangdong - Story-Based Indie Road Trip Driving Game
the wolf among us
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Absolver
Bloodstained Ritual of the Night
borderlands Game of the year enhanced Edition
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Chernobylite Enhanced Edition
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DUSK
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Risen
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Starbound
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ABZU
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FEZ
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Forced
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King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North - The Complete Edition
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Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021
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the long dark survival Edition
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112 Operator
911 Operator
Acorn Assault: Rodent Revolution
Ageless
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RRRR
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warlock 2
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Youropa
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TIER 4
Acceleration of SUGURI 2
Age of Wonders III
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Horizon Shift
Joggernauts
Journey of a Roach
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Leisure Suit Larry 6 - Shape Up Or Slip Out
Little Racers STREET
Lock Parsing 2
Love is Dead
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Memoria
Moss Destruction
NAIRI: Tower of Shirin
NeuroVoider
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OneShift
Out of Reach: Treasure Royale
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Purrfect Date – Visual Novel/Dating Simulator
Raceland
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Resort Boss: Golf
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Space Pilgrim Episode IV: Sol
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Taxi
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The Spiral Scouts
The Uncertain - The Last Quiet Day
Tiny Troopers
ttv2
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Two Worlds: Epic Edition
Tumblestone
Unhack
Unhack 2
Viking Saga The Cursed Ring
White Noise Online
World Keepers Last Resort
Zombie Party x 2

First - Previous - (Soon to be released)
_______________________
Memory transcription subject: Kilet, Venlil Aeronautics Mechanic
Date [standardized human time]: August 24, 2136
My eyes glancing over to the corner of my pad, reading the time. Damn.. It’s already the next paw? I moved my hands up to my eyes, trying to wipe away the grogginess that had seeped into me. Giving my face a few baps my gaze settled for combing the net once more. It had been hours since I sent my reply to Miles, but he hasn’t responded yet..
Maybe he backed out?.. Could humans do that? Does their side let them back out?
I let the thought mull itself over in my head for a while. A small sense of relief bubbled up inside of me. My mind considering the fact he may have just terminated contact, but I did my best to end such subconscious feelings.
He wouldn’t do that, his first message sounded like he was excited. It’s probably just his rest claw, that’s all.
As I returned my focus to a video I had accidentally clicked on, I felt the familiar feeling of my pad vibrating. A drop-down bar alerting me to a notification from the exchange app filled the top half of the pad’s screen. Immediately, my claws worked to press the notification, the pad silencing the video and displaying my chat with Miles. My eyes scanned his new message with a zeal that managed to surprise me.
“Kilet! I’m so glad you accepted my contact, you work as an aeronautics mechanic? That sounds kinda similar to what I do actually! I’m an engineer stationed on a UN ship orbiting Earth. You asked about the military, right? Well, it’s got its ups and downs. Lots of kids half your age sitting in officer spots thinking they know better, while us NCOs clean up their messes! Then you got the privates that manage to fuck up something as simple as right time, right place, right uniform!”
Most of what he said made sense, officers, they were the leaders, a lot like us, We have General Kam, I assume he’d be an officer in the human military. Though, the fact he said they were so young seems a bit counter productive, why trust the inexperienced to lead? Then he typed up something about an NCO? What in the Stars does that mean? My dexterous claws began to type a reply.
“No problem, this is all kinda much for me too! I bet we do pretty similar things, though engineers do more of the planning on our side, they don’t like to get their paws dirty. I had a couple questions, if you wouldn’t mind. So.. What is an NCO? The Venscript your words came back as just has it as three characters. Also why would your military trust the inexperienced to lead?” Hitting send I only had to wait a moment before a reply came.
“Ah, shit, my bad, the military has so many acronyms for things. Even our own kind doesn’t know them all. Basically, an NCO is a Non-Commissioned Officer, They are technically enlisted, while an officer is commissioned. Officers give orders, decide on a plan, and take charge. An NCO, depending on rank is the one to put that plan into action, works the kinks out, gets the lower enlisted to do their job. Also, we don’t trust the inexperienced. On the platoon level, you have your platoon leader, who’s either a fresh-faced second lieutenant, or a slightly more experienced first lieutenant. He’s paired with either a senior staff sergeant, or sergeant first class. The NCO at that level has been in the military for a decent chunk of their life, so the new officer relies on the advice of their NCO counterpart to lead the platoon. Usually you got three platoons in a company, which is all overseen by a Captain, his NCO counterpart is a First Sergeant. Above a company, you have a Lieutenant Colonel and Sergeant Major who oversee a battalion, by now both NCO and Officer have more than enough experience to be considered damn good soldiers. Above them you have your Colonel and Command Sergeant Major, they are usually in charge of a Brigade. Then it’s usually a Brigadier General and Command Sergeant Major for Division and above them is a Core, which is led by no less than a Major General (two stars) and no higher than a General (four stars) and a highly experienced Command Sergeant Major. I know that’s probably a lot, but that’s just the US military structure, there are I don’t even know how many other militaries on Earth. Sorry for the overload haha.”
My eyes scanned through his message as the rank structure of the predator military wormed its way into my head. Should he really be telling me this? I'm a random Venlil he’s never met! What if I wanted to use it against them? Does he really not see the harm in telling an alien species how their ENTIRE military works!? Still, his lengthy explanation made sense, it was basically like any other corporation, just with extra steps.
“Well.. That certainly is a lot, but it sounds pretty detailed. You said you were an NCO, right? Speh, I hope the Venscript doesn’t butcher your acronyms, what rank are you?” A tinge of curiosity washed over me as my mind drifted to thoughts of talking to some major player in the predator army, though I quickly reigned those thoughts in. He said he worked on a ship, not that he commanded one.
“I'm a Sergeant, we call it E-5. The ‘E’ part means ‘Enlisted’ and the ‘5’ part stands for the rank of Sergeant. I don’t make too many big calls haha, but I got a team of three soldiers under me. Pretty much I just get told by our lieutenant what parts of the ship are due for maintenance and then tell my three guys what to fix and when it’s got to be done. Nothing too glamorous, but tell me a little about you, I can’t sit here and talk about myself all day!”
Another unfamiliar word, ‘day’ Looking it up on the net I managed to find that it’s the Terran expression for when their part of the planet is hit by sunlight. So Earth isn’t tidal locked like Venlil Prime? I should have figured that, not many planets are. My head thought about things I could describe about myself, not a lot was coming to mind…
“Uh.. Well, I like music, but any sentient does really, so I guess that doesn’t help. Venlil music is pretty calming, or there’s a lot of emotion in it, some songs are sad, some are happy, it just depends on what the artist wants to convey. Besides that, I enjoy the occasional drink or two, but my job is pretty demanding, so I don’t get out very often.” That’s seriously the best you can do Kilet? You’re talking to someone who just recently learned about other life, and this is all you got?
“Music is definitely needed on the ship, we’re stuck up here in a metal box for what feels like eternity, just chilling out definitely soothes the mind for a bit. Human music is pretty similar actually, but I've read we have quite a few more genres than most other species! Maybe I can show you a bit sometime. Though, I can relate to the workload, we work some pretty insane ‘claws’ as you guys would say, but when we get some shore leave, or a weekend on the ship there’s plenty to do. Video games, movies, a few restaurants, or just our own stupidity to keep us company.”
My mind drew a bit of a blank, of course I knew what movies, and restaurants were, but what did he mean by ‘their own stupidity?’ Did he also mean that Terrans regularly engage in simulations to pass the time? This must be how they got so good at hunting!
“So.. I know what a few of those things are, but what are ‘Video Games?’ I don’t think I've heard the expression before, but I imagine we venlil have something similar.” Miles’ reply came shortly after my own message. At least I wasn’t boring him away from me.
“Well, it’s basically like.. A virtual game that you play to pass the time. Most Terran games are pretty violent, but that’s more our drive for competition! We always want to improve our own skills, I personally enjoy a nice cathartic session of Farming Simulator 2135. Life gets pretty hectic over here, so spending some downtime tilling the virtual fields lets me forget the stressors of the day.”
He’s saying he likes virtual farming? I can’t say that I liked the idea of farming myself, but it’s better than being addicted to one of the more ‘violent games’ they have available to them..
__________________
Memory transcription subject: Sergeant Rowan Miles, Engineer Aboard the USS Patriot
Date [standardized human time]: August 24, 2136
I had just finished my reply to my new fuzzy friend when a loud crash echoed down the hallway. Setting my phone down on my bunk, I made my way down to investigate. The sight that greeted me was none other than my three joes lying on the floor with mop handles and tipped over mop buckets. “What in the name of fuck are you three idiots doing!?” In truth, I wasn’t pissed off, it was kinda funny actually, but I knew a camera was lurking somewhere down this hall, and didn’t feel like getting an ass-chewing tonight. Private Murrey was the first to stand up and address me.
“Sarnt.. We uh, Morrales and I-”
I cut the boy off, raising my voice as I stepped inches from his face. “I can’t FUCKING hear you, Private! Your mouth is moving, but all I hear is SHIT!!” Murray, Morrales and Peters snapped as straight as a board, placing their hands behind the small of their backs and feet shoulder width apart. “Hooooooooooly sheep shit, Privates! It’s like God himself came down and touched my ears, THANK YOU!! Now, continue!” This time, it was Peters that spoke.
“We were jousting with the mop buckets, Sarnt.” He answered with as straight a face as he could, hardly flinching while at parade rest.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and looked upwards towards the low ceiling. “Fucking idiots, Listen, Dumbasses, we don’t get a lot of time off, but for putting your retarded asses on the hot seat, guess what? I want this entire fucking hallway swept and mopped. Time. Fucking. Now, Privates!” The trio scrambled away and slowly jogged down the hallway carrying the mops and buckets, raising my voice. I shouted at them as they fled, “HURRY UP, WAITING ON YOU, ASSHOLES!” watching as their light jog increased to a brisk one. Turning away, I headed back for my bunk. Idiots, they haven’t memorized where the cameras are by now?
Sitting down on my bunk, I used my thumbprint to get past the lockscreen, checking to see if Kilet left any messages.
“I can imagine, what’s it like being cramped on a ship for cycles on end?”
“Miles?”
“You there?”
I let out a tired sigh and began to type a response since Kilet was still shown as ‘online.’ “Sorry, sorry, you know how I mentioned we have our own stupidity to keep us company? Well, let's just say my boys got a little too stupid for their own good, now they get to clean the hallway.”
“Oh.. sounds kinda stressful, What were they doing to get such a ‘reward?’”
A lighthearted chuckle escaped from me as the notion of sweeping and mopping being a ‘reward’ in a sense it kind of was, I could have smoked the dogpiss out of them. “Well, they decided to use our mop buckets as vehicles, on camera, I'm sure the Commander wouldn’t like to see something like that go ‘unrewarded’ as you’d say.”
“Sounds like you guys have a lot of rules, though I think I can understand not wanting your soldiers to be wheeling around a military ship in mop buckets, I bet I could fit in one of those pretty easily!”
The thought of pushing Kilet around in a mop bucket through the corridors of the ship gave me quite the mental image, for some reason, I imagined him wearing a pirate’s hat standing triumphantly one foot propped against the lip of the bucket. Land-Ho, Human! Bring the ship port-side to the sandbar! We’ve treasure to bury! Shaking my head a few times to drive the image from my head I typed up a reply. “That just gave me the best idea, but hear me out, you’ll need a hat, and I'll need to convince the specialist at security to have the cameras experience a mysterious blackout.”
__________________
Memory transcription subject: Kilet, Venlil Aeronautics Mechanic
Date [standardized human time]: August 27, 2136
I spent the next three paws falling into a rhythm, waking up, checking my pad for messages, giving a quick reply, going to work, and spending the rest of the paw chatting with Miles. At first I didn’t quite know what to say, or how to talk, but eventually the words just came naturally from me. Every paw I came home looking forward to telling Miles all about work, how Vemlix screamed at another mechanic, or how Logistics ordered the wrong part for some thrusters. I tried to ask Miles about the U.S.S Patriot, but he insisted he couldn’t tell me much, mostly because most of the specs were ‘classified.’ I guess the UN actually protects most of their secrets well. Instead, I told him all about the transport shuttles, how I diagnose things, and how I fix them. It became obvious to me he’s a really good listener, even letting me ramble on and on about how stressful the claws used to be prior to the borders being shut down.
Arriving home after another late claw of work, I plopped down onto the couch and opened my pad as per my routine. Pulling up the exchange app, I let my claws work over the Venscript keys, typing up my usual messages to Miles.
“Hey, You, what are ya up to? No LTs giving you the runaround like yesterday, I hope?” Hitting send I began to wag my tail in the air, patiently watching the chatbox’s animation indicating he was typing a reply.
“Hah, I wish, Lt. White forgot to include fluid checks on the preventative maintenance due today, when I tried to correct him he got all pissy, and insisted it wasn’t until next week, I had to pull out the calendar and show his West Point ass just how wrong he was, but hey, I got some exciting news!”
Leaning closer to the pad, my thoughts began to fill with useless jargon as to what Miles could mean. Exciting news? Did he get a promotion? Did one of his ‘joes’ manage to fix something all on their own!? “Ooooh, what happened? Don’t keep secrets, go on, tell, tell!”
“Well the UN is taking us off the Earth defense rotation, some other unlucky sops get to take our spot! Instead we’re being docked in orbit just above Venlil Prime. That’s not even the best part! The crew is due for some shore leave. I’ll get to come planet side for a little bit and meet you in person! Ain’t that gonna be great?”
My initial reaction wasn’t quite what I hoped it’d be, a primal fear got stuck in my throat as shivers crawled up my tail and spine. I’ve never actually spoken to a human face to face. Messages were one thing, but even that took some time getting used to.
I tried to list off how many humans I've even seen in person, but that quickly became harder and harder to remember.
I've seen a few around in the Capital, but I've never actually approached any and only from far away. Am I ready to meet one? Am I ready to talk to one?
My thoughts raced out of my own control for several ‘seconds’ as the humans would say. Shaking my head, I quickly reigned them back in. Miles wouldn’t hurt me, he’s listened to whatever I’ve said, as boring or menial as it was, he’s asked me more about myself than most Venlil I know! He just looks different.. That’s all, Kilet.. Suppressing my initial fear at the thought, I tried to keep as much primal terror out of my next message.
“Wow! That’s amazing news, Miles! You’ll love Venlil Prime. The Capital is a gorgeous city, I’ll show you around the sights and maybe a little of the country, though a few of the Venlil might not be so kind out there. A lot of us are still scared of humans, but I'm sure that will all pass with a little time.”
Where will he sleep though? There’s no guarantee a Venlil would give a hotel or room to a human.. It could sour his whole perspective. Or worse.. Upset him. Still, the idea of hosting a predator I just met in my house wasn’t exactly the most appealing thought. Besides, I doubt the owner of my complex would appreciate getting complaints from the other tenants. Without giving Miles a chance to reply, I began typing another message.
“Do you have a place to stay over here? The military wouldn’t just dump you planet side and say ‘figure it out’ would they?”
“Usually, yes, that’s exactly what they’d do, but we’re not on Earth, plus the diplomatic incidents that could occur from us just wandering about the civilian side are endless in the eyes of the big-wigs. As far as I'm tracking, they are gonna put us up at a building near the government complex. The locals near there are the most exposed civilians to human presence.”
Relief flooded my brain as soon as the thought of hosting him was expelled. As nice as this was going, sleeping, fully exposed to a known predator, was just a little out of my comfort zone..
“Well, that’s good, though it’s kinda disheartening to hear how they’d treat you if you were getting shore leave on your home world, what if some of you don’t have the means or ability to get a place to stay off the ship?”
“Most of us would just return to the ship every night and go out during the day. Typically, we have a recall time regardless, like ‘You can go no further than two hours away from the ship in case of emergency recall’ sort of thing.”
I was about to type up a reply when I saw the familiar three rotating dots next to Miles’ name, erasing my message I decided to wait to see what he wanted to add.
“Shit, sorry, Kilet, but I gotta go for a bit. Command meeting with all the engineers about this month's tasking and duty rosters. Commander got pissy cause some lazy sham artist decided he was too good for CQ”
The only thing I managed to understand from all that jargon was ‘Gotta go for a bit,’ ‘Command Meeting,’ and ‘Taskings.’ As for what a ‘month,’ ‘CQ,’ or ‘sham artist,’ I have absolutely no idea. Though, if he said he had to go, he probably didn’t have the time to explain.
“Alright, I’ll talk to you later, Miles, just message me whenever.”
Without much to do, and Miles seemingly busy, a curious thought popped into my head. Without noticing I found my claws pulling up Rivis’ profile, I clicked the ‘call’ button and turned up the pad’s volume. After two rings I heard a ‘click’ and the familiar voice of my dark furred friend.
“Hello? Call to tell me you backed out on your partner, eh?”
I slapped my tail against the couch cushion out of annoyance, my words laced with a similar amount of sarcasm. “No, Actually, I called to see how you and your partner are going. Miles and I are doing great, thank you very much.”
Rivis let out a soft chuckle that almost sounded like a series of squeaks before speaking. “Zoey and I are alright, though the texting app doesn’t like half the stuff I bring up. It’s always ‘Inappropriate topic this’ or ‘inappropriate topic that.’ Worst part is I know it’s for my sake, but I wish there was some way to turn it off. How can I learn about these humans without seeing all sides of them?”
I didn’t exactly mind the restrictions myself, they were there for a reason, to ensure curious Venlil aren’t scared off at a moment's notice, but I didn’t really have the energy to get into a biological sparring match with Rivis right now. “I hear you, I kind of run out of things to talk about too.”
“Well, that’s just your own fault. You have an infinitely curious alien that thinks you’re the most adorable thing they’ve ever seen at the tip of your claws, and you can’t think of a single thing to talk to them about?”
It took me a ‘second’ to get through Rivis’ reply, a light bloom forming over my snout as I pondered just how ridiculous my previous statement actually was. “Fine.. I see your point, but what should I ask?”
“Their culture? Their history? Personal and general, Their herbivore diets? Their hobbies? Their music? Their science? Their religion? I can keep going.”
…You really are braindead, Kilet.
“Okay, okay, I get it. When Miles gets back I can ask about some of that stuff, but I was also curious, do you have any plans to meet Zoey?” This was the question I really wanted the answer to, Rivis put on a brave face for these humans, and I haven’t seen him show anything besides curiosity. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was all just a front, or short lived bravado.
“Of course, we’re just waiting for a window when either the exchange program offers, or she can visit here on Venlil Prime. Whichever comes first really. How about you?”
“Yeah, Miles is coming over for shore leave in a bit. I told him I’d give him a tour of the city, take him to a few local hotspots. Nothing too fancy, but I'm sure he’ll appreciate it.”
“Mmmmhm, I'm sure he will too, you really can’t be too overbearing on him. With the way the humans know they affect most Venlil, you’re almost granted immunity, they’ll assume responsibility for any offense. They’re dancing around our feelings right now, you’d have to be an idiot not to see that.”
I took a short pause as I really listened to Rivis’ words.. They sounded ‘wrong’ somehow, off.. “Rivis.. Don’t you think that’s a little manipulative?” He had always been a very grounded Venlil, but I just assumed he was more quizzical than most, but to be honest I never had a lot to compare him to.
“Maybe, but it doesn’t change the fact that’s how this first contact is treating it. Zoey told me so many humans applied to the exchange program, but hardly any made it in. Meanwhile our government was practically begging us to sign up. Listen, all I’m saying is don’t feel nervous about what to talk to Miles about, you can’t be wrong, Kilet. I have to finish up cleaning, but let me know how it all goes on your end.”
I heard the beep of the call end as I sat on my couch, a little stunned by just how easily Rivis described it was to manipulate these predators, maybe that isn’t what he meant. The possibility of a Venlil lashing out, acting scared all to get pity and trust from a human felt far more predatory than anything these humans have shown me so far..
“Bye, Rivis” my empty words rang out to no one on the other end of the call as I sat the pad down, a new dilemma surfacing in my mind. I hope no human meets a venlil like that.. No sentient deserves having their trust turned into a toy.
__________________
First - Previous - (Soon to be released)
Thanks so much for reading Chapter 4 of ‘A Change of Pace’ things are starting to kick off between Miles and Kilet, who knows what future shenanigans are held in store for the two? I like to think I'm getting better at this whole writing business. Yall can be the judge of that! So long as you guys enjoy the story I'll keep at it! As always, thanks to all the fanfics that inspire me! I’ll list them at the bottom as per usual. A giant thanks to SpacePaladin for their amazing universe, and I could never forget my lovely Proofreader(s) for this chapter, a big thanks to you guys as well!
Proofreader(s):
NovaLux
"A silly little man"
Fanfics that Inspired me:
End of the Line
Foundations of Humanity
Nature of a Giant
Lost and Found

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One day, a dull young man from Japan gets caught up in a heroic summoning and goes to another world. The next time he wakes up, he's not in a castle with a king, but in a deep forest since the summoning failed! You'd think he'd be at a loss, but he starts living a life of survival with a positive attitude that doesn't involve deep thought! Then, before he knows it, he saves the cursed forest and m ... Read Isekai ni Otosareta… Jouka wa Kihon! - Chapter 13.1 - MangaPuma. Read more at https://mangapuma.com/isekai-ni-otosareta-jouka-wa-kihon/chapter-13-1

Shout-out to u/better_solution_743 For nabbing 13 updoots last chapter. Tel is confirmed best girl.
‘- - -’ Is passage of time. ‘= = =’ Is change in perspective.
First Prev Next Royal Road
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Pan severed the stray thread as she pulled the final stitch, finishing the pants she had been working on to distract herself. She held the item up for inspection while thinking of the other pair that had failed in a unique way during a test of a particular design. She wished to allow a large range of flexibility so as to still wear them during her more acrobatic moves in sparring, but ended up with a pair missing a critical section.
Her cheeks flushed as she thought of why they still remained as such.
“They are excellent, Huntress Pan.” Volta complimented from her position by the door.
Pan glanced to the new female, a slight pout wiped from her face. The cleaner had assumed more of a ‘maid’ role than the Paw would have thought prudent, often working as an assistant and escort when she had finished her main duties. She knew Joseph would have simply sent her to relax when she was not working, and Pan herself had tried much the same, but Volta seemed to prefer to serve when she was not ensuring the cleanliness of the den.
It was claimed as repayment for the new attire that Pan had crafted for her, but something about the lingering glances she often caught from the corner of her eye said different.
She didn’t mind the female’s presence, despite the first sun that she had arrived being somewhat unorthodox in their interactions. Volta was efficient and skilled in her field, her work thorough and completed swiftly. The only complaint that Pan might have would be the reverence the new addition seemed to have for her.
She laid down the item next to the top that she had completed the previous sun, the two items were designed to emphasize her form as opposed to simply providing warmth. Harrow’s comment about clothing being for their mate’s enjoyment as much as their own had stuck with her. She knew Joseph enjoyed her fur, the comfort he felt while idly playing with it was quite evident in the bond, but she also remembered the burning gaze he gave her on the rare occasion that her coat clung to her flesh due to rain or such, so she designed these articles with that in mind.
“I am merely excited to see my bond’s reaction.” She answered softly, a small smile being all she could reasonably force upon her face. He would be returning this sun or the next, and she wished for nothing more than to welcome him personally while donning what he may find attractive on her body.
The weak expression was due to the numbing she felt as the suns progressed, each moon the motions becoming more and more foreign, the colours of the world around her becoming desaturated and less inviting. Were it not for her kit and Harrow’s company, she feared there might not be much for her mate to return to.
“He would be a fool to be anything but captivated.” Volta assured firmly, the warm expression seeming impossible to copy in the moment in spite of the complement being a rare acquisition for the defective.
“He is many things, Volta. All i can do is present to him my best and hope that he enjoys my efforts.”
The blue-furred female gestured to the garments she wore of Pan’s design, a scaled down version of attire that she had been planning for Sahari for quite a long time. The two shared quite a similar build, save for Volta’s smaller height, so she was a material-efficient model. The only change that is to be made between the two sets is that Sahari’s would be using a treated healroot insert to accent her natural beauty with a gold glow. I was about time she repay the old favour as well as the newest of accompanying her bond to ensure his safety.
“If this is any indication of your skill, Huntress Pan, then i can only feel envy that such would be presented to him.”
Pan gave her an amused furrow of her brow, the flirtation from one of her own extrinsic. “Do you perhaps know of Harrow’s progress on the repairs?”
Volta exhaled softly, her advances rebuffed yet again. “The last i saw of her, she was complaining to her mate. It seems that the electrical here is quite the enigma.”
The Paw nodded, not faulting Harrow for failing to fix the latest issue that the Head herself caused, but still wishing Joseph was here to do so. He would likely have had it fixed within a short while of the occurrence. The power to the facilities wing was not the worst issue they could have had, the weather warm enough to facilitate the preparation of their meals over the fire outside, but the lack of a terminal after the female’s experiment meant that Robert would not be able to contact them until Harrow was able to sort the issue.
They did manage to complete the scans for Silva, a process which instantaneously sent the information apparently, but it sparked a curiosity within the orange-furred Lilhun. She immediately tried to make an outbound communication to Robert, once she had figured out the menu in order to do so, and the process blew the newest fuse upon attempt. It seemed that receiving was much more power efficient.
She blinked away the threat of tears as she remembered the moon with Joseph where they enjoyed a moment alone with naught but each other’s company, the lack of music to remind her of the time with her Human being a sorely missed addition to her suns.
“I shall deliver the blanket to Harrow then. I may as well ask for a detailed report while i am there.”
“Shall i accompany you?”
Pan shook her head as she gathered the large black pelt of a ‘mono-deer’, the thick fur soft after many treatments. “I would ask of you to extend your tasks to encompass the new constructions as well as the existing buildings, if you would like. There is no need to strain yourself, but they have been somewhat neglected as demands grow.”
Volta returned the request with a somewhat dismayed smile of acceptance. “Of course, Huntress Pan. As you command.”
The female turned on her pads and left before Pan could respond, a somewhat guilty feeling overcoming her. She knew that Volta had been working quite fervently to gain a proper place in the pack, if not simply to impart a good impression upon the Paw, but the constant flattery had made her somewhat uncomfortable and she wished some time with one whom would treat her as she was.
A slight sigh slipped from her lungs as she left her work area and went to deliver the item to Jax’s room. She heard a series of soft clacks when she entered the Hub, her kit noticing her entrance and approaching with a bounce to her step. Violet held a tablet for display.
[Back now?]
Pan situated the blanket to fit under one arm as she stroked her kit’s head. “He should return this sun at the earliest, yes.”
Violet flipped the tablet, another prepared question presented. [Gate?]
She tilted her head as she tried to place the single word within a more complex inquiry. “Are you requesting to await him at the gate?”
Violet nodded, fidgeting with the tablet anxiously. Pan felt a warm smile appear, a rare occurrence recently.
“It should be warm enough for you now. Would you like to go together once i have finished my errand?”
The Atmo bounced excitedly, a burst of colour in the otherwise dull world that had invaded the Paw.
“He may not return quite yet, but we best be ready to receive him regardless. Just promise to return to the den if it becomes too cold or otherwise uncomfortable, okay?”
Violet nodded again, nuzzling into Pan before walking off to continue whatever she was doing before she was disturbed. From the pile of tablets, Pan assumed she was working on her English lettering and Lilhun script to communicate better. She felt her heart warm as she continued onward.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Not finding Harrow within the den, she decided to leave the pelt upon their bed and search elsewhere. Soft plods above and a disruption of the skylights suggested she was overhead to continue her attempts at repairs.
Pan exited the dorms to the farm plot, taking a moment to appreciate the work that some of the pack had put into planting several crops. None had produced anything of value yet, but some of the plants had sprouted and Astra, Atrox’s mate, has proven their profession true with her efforts.
“Hey Pan! I figured it out!”
The white-furred female turned to look at the voice which came from on high, Harrow waving down to her with a harness fashioned from ironwood rope. The excitable movement caused her foot to slip, sending the Head careening off the roof. Pan’s eyes widened until a breath of relief was allowed as the harness did what it was supposed to, Harrow dangling upside down with a series of startled blinks.
“So that’s why Joe insists on ironwood over palm.”
Pan couldn’t find it within herself to laugh despite the casual remark being at odds with the potentially dangerous mistake. Harrow righted herself, climbing the rope to the roof and sitting on the edge while running a claw under where the harness had pressed into her skin.
“Joe made some adjustments after my fur got caught. Looks like it worked. Still sucks to have it dig in though.”
Pan smiled weakly at the mention of her mate. “I am also relieved that it worked. You said you figured something out?”
Harrow brightened. “Yeah! I’ve been rerouting power for the past few suns based on what Joe said he hadn’t done yet. I found something neat while i was poking around, too! Should make for a nice ‘welcome back’ present for him.” She glanced back at the panel she had left open.
“Thank you for fixing it.”
Harrow waved her off. “I wanted to listen to music anyway. It’s just a bonus that we can help Joe find out what’s going on. At least now Rob can call.”
Pan nodded in return. “Violet and myself with be waiting for Joseph at the gate later. Would you be able to take any communications should they arrive?”
“That won’t be a problem. Send for us if you see him!”
“I will. Do try to remain on the roof this time.”
The orange-furred female grinned. “As much as i love getting hurt, i suppose I’ll have to humour you.”
Pan caught the mildly concerned gaze as she left, but she was far from a state to reiterate how she felt in the moment. Something itched in the back of her mind, compelling her to venture out to find him. It wasn’t a rational thought, merely an instinctual one pressing her to action. It felt unnatural to be without his influence for so long and it was beginning to tear at her core.
Regardless, she was expecting him back soon and Violet required a caretaker since Mama has been with the other new Atmo helping along various projects, whenever she wasn’t being conscripted by Atrox for whichever artistic pursuits the male seemed to have imparted a fondness of onto her, that is.
She made her way to Joseph’s room, forcing herself not to spend an unreasonable amount of time simply touching the items he had left behind as she dressed in her new attire, a long coat thrown over to ensure that he would be the first to see it.
Satisfied with the way it fit on her, and it then promptly hidden, she left to gather Violet.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Given her increasing time isolated within the den to prepare for Joseph’s return, many of the extended pack actually acknowledged her presence, though it was mostly just a glance and the occasional nod in her direction. Cohesion in the settlement has been established, more or less, so her intervention hadn’t been as needed. It was nice to have the time, but it also led to prolonged periods of anxiety in the isolation.
None of that mattered for the moment, however, because Violet was in the process of walking up to all who would so much as enter her sight to hold a tablet in greeting, bouncing excitedly when each offered a vocal one in return, though some seemed more perplexed than others upon being presented their language by one whom they had only seen once before.
Violet had prepared several basic plates that would be used more frequently and had them secured to her shoulder for ease of use. They were mostly for answering simple questions or saying ‘hello’, but they served as good practice as well as to introduce others to the fact that she would be able to communicate more efficiently soon.
The joyous kit returned to her side as they passed another construction that was taking place slightly outside of the general arrangement they had settled into, it being another den to finally clear out more of the barracks. The warehouse had been completed for a sun or so it seemed, so they had moved on with more expansions that may be required. With more Atmo to work on things, a walkway had also been started on the perimeter wall, allowing the pack to patrol the edges once it was completed. It barely had enough room for more than a single Lilhun to stand, but it was progressing steadily, if slowly due to the nature of the work.
Arriving at the gate without running into Jax or Nalah was odd, or would have been, if not for the blond-furred female leaning against the wall and gazing into the trees with forlorn eyes.
“I see i am not the only one to await their return.” Pan commented as she approached, Violet quickly presenting her greeting to Nalah when she turned to acknowledge them. The female smiled at the small Atmo.
“Hello Violet. Pan.” She glanced back into the woods before adjusting her stance to rest her back against the structure instead of her shoulder. “Yeah, I’m waiting. They should be back this sun at the earliest, yes?”
Pan wore a wooden smile as Violet fetched another tablet to display her affirmation. [Yes]
“They should, assuming nothing delayed them. A reasonable expectation would be the next sun, though i remain hopeful.”
Nalah cycled a breath as she observed Pan, a mirthless expression returned. “I would hope they return sooner, but i doubt we would be so lucky.”
“As long as they come back to us, i will be grateful.” She fixed her coat as it threatened to part. “Regardless, i will wait for them.”
Nalah spared another glance to the forest. “I will return to my duties then. Whistle when they get here, if they do show up.”
“I will.” Pan nodded as the planner left with hesitation, leaving just her and her kit to await her bond’s arrival.
But he did not return that sun.
Or the next.
Or the next.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The rain fell lightly for a change, the usual heavy thrumming across the buildings instead being nearly absent in all facets as the mist wet the buildings. Nalah sighed, conceding that it would be a free sun for everyone who would otherwise be working on the recent constructions. It wasn’t that she wanted to work them into the ground, but that she was distracting herself.
She had been away from Sahari before, that was nothing new, but she had gotten used to having her near for quite a while now. The muting sensation left her weary and tired, unsure of herself in most situations without her bond to covertly confer with by merely knowing how she felt on a subject. It made her feel empty.
Then there was Pan.
The white-furred female seemed ready to tear the forest apart by claw to find her mate, the only thing stopping her being the den-kit coming out to visit her since she had not left the gate since she began waiting on the second sun. She wasn’t returning to rest nor eat, Harrow bringing out food for her when it became apparent that she was determined to remain outside.
Joseph was late by several suns in his return. The first sun was merely an optimistic estimation that could be proven hopeless by even the smallest inconveniences. The second sun was a reasonable expectation, should all go well. The third was much within the same vein as the second, and the fourth was a pessimistic prediction based on several issues arising.
The current fifth sun was one of worry, enough so that Nalah almost wished to join Pan in her endless vigilance.
She knew that the Paw would remain outside and wakeful again, Pan hasn’t even been resting recently, but staying out in the weather would not bode well for her health, and Joseph would be upset with them all if they allowed her to fall into illness due to none assisting her.
Nalah donned her coat, taking a moment to appreciate how hard Pan has worked to ensure that at least the main pack were able to be warm and dry in the environment they found themselves in. There was plans to extend such luxuries to the extended pack, but there was much hunting to be done to collect the material for that to happen. Jax was planning on taking some of the members out, but the delay of the Grand Hunter has, in turn, postponed the excursion until either he returns or...
There was no need to humour the thought further.
She exited the den, passing the four Atmo as Mama led something of a sculpting group with Violet, the latter quickly displaying a tablet in greeting towards Nalah which the Lilhun responded to as warmly as she could with the additional stress.
Violet seems to remain cheerful, though expectant of her surrogate blood-father’s return. The second sun in which Joseph did not return was met with Robert calling, a communication to which Harrow answered in lieu of Pan or the Grand Hunter. The den-kit was brought in after a short while and left with a smiling Harrow following closely behind, some arrangement met without her telling anyone else due to it being a ‘surprise’. Nalah was more than happy to allow them their secrets, especially if it meant that the overall mood of the den would remain high.
The doors closed behind her, the soft ticking of droplets landing on her hood being louder due to the material, though far from enough to be unpleasant. The ambient air smelled strongly of earth and more than a hint of pairings enjoying their personal dens during a sun of rest. The soft yearning for her bond struck her as she passed the buildings.
Sat by the gate on the wet ground resided Pan, the female clutching herself and staring out into the woods. She gave no reaction nor acknowledgement when Nalah approached, only turning an ear when she placed a paw on the female’s shoulder.
“Come inside, you will fall ill at this rate.” Nalah crouched as she spoke, an attempt to gauge the Paw’s reaction given.
She remained silent for a long moment before eventually responding. “I will wait for him.”
“He will be distraught if he returns to you being sick.”
She flinched, eyes temporarily breaking from the trees to consider. “I would rather see him as soon as i can.”
Nalah sighed softly, trying to think of how to convince the female to oblige their concerns. “Would you have him see your fur muddied and matted?”
A blink was given, followed by a cursory glance to the stained coat that the rain had allowed dirt to bleed into. Her steadfast determination wavered as she internally debated her response, but Nalah struck while the thought was fresh.
“Come. I will assist to ensure you are most presentable for when he returns.”
Pan opened her mouth to argue, but Nalah pulled her to her feet with minimal resistance.
“I will hear no argument. He will be delighted to return to his mate at her most radiant, no?”
The Paw gazed downwards with a small but pained nod. With a weak smile of satisfaction, Nalah escorted her back to the den, calling to a wandering pack member to watch the gate in their stead. A mental note was added to construct a room into the gate to allow those who were to watch from it a place to shelter from the elements.
She guided the female inside the den, turning to enter the dormitory wing and proceeding to the baths. More assistance than would normally be required was given, the female lacking the will to do more than exist.
Nalah helped her disrobe, noting the new garments but choosing not to mention them. She took the time to assist Pan with lathering her fur and washing out any mud that had worked its way into her coat. The seamstress remained silent, her gaze focused upon the abyss. Nalah felt an itch when she observed the female, a pang of loneliness striking.
Her extended absence from Sahari had left her much the same way, but she had kept herself driven in her goal of reuniting with her saviour. No sun went by where she remained idle, each often populated by bouncing from job to job to schooling within her hectic schedule with only small blocks of time to rest before she needed to reach her next destination.
Warehouses, construction sites, janitorial work, and even customer service. She had worked anywhere that would humour her requirements and pulled in as many within a sun as she could, frequently studying while on her breaks so that she could gain the qualifications needed to join the military in the field she sought. It wasn’t the most glamorous of pursuits, but she would have smiled every moment of manually cleaning toilets while being yelled at by superior officers as long as she could be with Sahari again.
She helped rinse out the soap, adding conditioner to both of them in a small attempt to bring normality to the Paw while assisting her own efforts to be presentable for her bond. Silence that had been disrupted by the falling water returned until Nalah felt the need to speak, if only to comfort the female.
“Were you aware of how i met Sahari?”
Pan glanced at her, some of the efforts showing a small effect at her attempts to sooth the white-furred Lilhun. “I only knew that you were previously acquainted.”
Nalah snorted a laugh, leading both of them to the baths to relax in the warm water. “One could say that. She rescued me from a pirate base on a neglected portion of a derelict planet.”
Pan blinked, a genuine curiosity playing behind the otherwise muted light in her eyes as she seated herself on the submerged ledge.
“She brought me to a small town that owed her a few favours and dropped me off at a facility for people like me. Those who ended up with a bad set in life through no fault of their own.” Nalah looked to the skylights, the waning light speaking of the falling sun. “It was a warm den, in spite of the type of people that ended up there. Everyone just wanted to escape their past and work for a better future. It worked, for what it was. They helped me through the nightmares, the trauma, and assisted in getting me my first job. It wasn’t much, barely a job at all really, but i was given cleaning equipment and pointed at a small storefront. It gave me something to do. Something to distract from my thoughts.”
She looked at the Paw, the latter nodding while staring into the water in understanding.
“Sahari remained for a while, though i suspect it was out of a feeling of responsibility for the female she had dragged along with her rather than any affection for me. Regardless, the talks of how i was adjusting warmed my frozen heart.” She took a breath. “I fell for her fully, and shortly after, bonded wholly.”
Pan’s eyes lit with recognition, actually absorbing the meaning of the topic at paw. “You feel as i do?”
Nalah nodded, though suspected that her initial separation had eased the impact to a great degree. “She left after less than a year, but i was hers by then. I never told her, simply wishing that she would notice and reciprocate. It was a foolish desire, in retrospect, but one i held dearly nonetheless. It was years until we were dropped here and i finally seen her again. Even just her presence made everything i went through worth it.”
“Years... I do not think i would be able.”
“I doubt i would be as composed should that occur again.” Nalah clarified quietly. “I have grown too used to her warmth. Her touch. The joy her laughter brings me... I would rather reach the Void than be separated for so long.”
Pan silently thought, her dull eyes watching a small wave caused by their movements. “She had lost her bond.”
“She did. She had also lost her love in the process. It was no expectation of mine that she might feel for me as i do her. I still do not expect such, but i relish the contact she allows between us.”
“She bonded to Joseph.”
Nalah nodded solemnly. “I know. I worried that he might take place within her heart and leave all my efforts worthless.”
“Do you worry still?”
A soft laugh escaped her. “Not so much now. It has become apparent that she sees him as an important person, yes, but not as one she wishes her own.” A grin formed on her muzzle as she regarded the Paw. “Though i hold little doubt that she would deny if he were to pursue her for a moon.”
Pan cracked the smallest smile, a great victory for Nalah. The blond-furred female refocused herself with a breath.
“I followed her once i could. Admittedly, it may have been an unsettling move, but i couldn’t think past seeing her again. I poured my all into finding her, where she was going, and how to join her. The draft made it rather easy to narrow down the possibilities. Money made the rest work.”
“I think that i would lack the strength to do what you did.”
“It was hardly strength.” Nalah dismissed lazily. “It was escaping my past by feverishly pursuing one who wanted me not. Even now, i can do little more than pine for beyond that which she allows. I suppose i should just pray she finds one whom she may take comfort in and support her from the side.”
“Perhaps it may be time to tell her?” Pan’s eyes held the slightest spark, though it quickly extinguished as Nalah shook her head.
“I couldn’t do that to her. We are of little options with the size of our pack. I wouldn’t wish her to feel forced due to the circumstances.” She sunk into the water, eyes closing slowly. “I don’t want to hear her say no.”
Pan opened her mouth to respond with a pained expression on her face when the baths door banged open, Volta breathing heavily and speaking with a hurried tone. “A group approaches the gate. We need Huntress-”
Pan flew out of the bath with no concern for the words of the blue-furred female, a towel hastily acquired on her way as water fell from her fur. Volta jumped to the side to avoid being bowled over by the rushing Paw, glancing at Nalah with confusion.
“Smart decision.” The lead planner commented dryly, the splashing of water echoing throughout the room as she exited the bath herself to dry off. “I have little doubt you would have been maimed should you have remained in her path.”
The cleaner furrowed her brow, unconvinced or unsettled by the assertion. “Surely you jest.”
Nalah returned a deadpanned stare. “She suspects her bond has returned. I pity any who would be stupid enough to disrupt her.”
“The group is of greater number than the five you had sent.” Volta disputed.
“Good.”
“Good?”
Nalah smiled, leaving the baths to fetch clothing so she may join them. “It would mean that he has succeeded in many ways.”
Volta frowned. “And if you are wrong?”
The blond-furred female pulled a shirt over her head, taking a moment to consider what would occur if the group was anything but friendly. A sharp nod was given when she quickly reached the conclusion. “Then Pan will require another bath.”
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Pan ran as hard and as quick as her body would allow, hastily securing the towel to her person as naught but a single thought raced through her mind in time with her claws digging into whatever her feet landed on to gain purchase.
Please be him.
A flash of hope. A scream of need. An isolated desire to reunite with her bond burning like acid through her veins. There was little more that her consciousness could process other than the primal push to keep him in her claws no matter what.
Her legs burned, her lungs struggled, her heart raced. All pained like no other but were eclipsed by the agony within her without him. A gnawing infection of stagnation without his influence.
So she ran, bursting through the outer doors and increasing her speed on the muddied grass that had been trampled into loose pathways as members travelled from location to location. A route to her loved one. A guidance to her healing, should all be as she prayed.
Naught but the wail of blood through her ears could be heard, the flushed adrenaline pushing her heart to its limit to reach him. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed. It was her very soul willing the world around her to cease as she moved.
The frame of the gate filled her vision as she approached it, her goal nearing with every step. Her pupils strained her eyes as they filled themselves with everything they could capture within her sight for the slightest hint of him, renewing their efforts when she still did not.
Her steps slowed, the entrance reached. Her vision was a haze of exhaustion and insufficient oxygen reaching her system through hyperventilated breaths. A low voice called, the sound the clearest she had heard in many suns. The rich bass and warm presence like a salve to her ears. She didn’t know what was said. It didn’t matter. All she could do was rush to the origin, driven by nothing but instinct.
She crashed into someone, a moment of rage at her goal being obstructed being muted as the first scent reached her.
Joy. Confusion. Worry. Relief. Guilt.
But above all: Love.
She cried, the searing heat of the moisture burning her cheeks as she wrapped her arms around him, her claws piercing the armour she held herself against, her paws desperately holding him close lest he evaporate in her grasp. Her body trembled, her legs giving out under her. She was gently lowered to the ground to rest on her knees, her bond following her descent.
He didn’t question her for her actions, instead wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pulling her into his neck, the Paw breathing deeply to internalize his scent yet again as tears mixed with the rain through her closed eyes.
“Sorry I’m late.”
She trembled at his words, pulling herself into him tighter as if to merge with him where they kneel. The sound of his heart pumping more comforting than any sound she may have otherwise heard in her life, her ear pressing itself to his throat to be closer to the origin.
“It’s okay. I’m here now.”
His voice rumbled through her, the sensation as familiar as breathing and just as necessary to her yearning soul. A muffled prayer fell from her as all became right with the world.
An excited clicking came from behind her, yet she did not separate. She felt her mate shift his head to look towards their kit, the bond transferring the pleasing warmth of him seeing Violet again, until a deafening roar of joy and sorrow struck him, only to be overwhelmed by affection.
She felt their kit join the embrace, a natural addition to her instincts, so they did not fight the intrusion, instead welcoming it openly.
Joseph cried as he pulled Violet in tightly. It was a choked utterance of emotional overload, but not one iota of it negative. Nothing existed but fulfillment within him, and in turn, her. The two sobbed without concern for the small group that joined them to observe the meeting.
“What did she write?” Nalah inquired, the slight aspiration suggesting she had run to catch up.
Harrow laughed, her own voice strained. “Robert offered to help her learn English. When i mentioned that she wanted to make a sign for Joseph, he taught her a phrase that he thought his brother would like.”
Pan could hear Jax laughing, his breathing the easiest due to his more stamina based endeavours. “And what might our den-kit have written?”
Harrow’s voice grew warm, yet wistful. A slight crack to her voice as longing mixed into her response.
“Welcome home Dad, i missed you.”
​
Next
A/N: They return! RR hit 6k, You guys made it clear you wanted some Jax lore, and I’m laying seeds for future events! Again. Given my history of taking 30 chapters to have them pay off, who knows what it will be! Time to see how this all effects the den!

Had he lived beyond the Iron Curtain, my uncle would have spent most of his life in a mental asylum. In Communist Czechoslovakia, however, mental asylums primarily served as a means of punishing political opposition so my uncle was relatively free.
Well, for most of his life at least.
Rural existence doesn’t really lend itself to the nuances of mental health, so no one dwelled too far into his peculiarities. He was never formally diagnosed with anything and I wouldn’t dare try to play doctor, but rest assured he was far from stable. The village just considered him crazy and left it at that.
Well, for most of his life at least.
There was a horseshoe shaped scar above his right eye. When I was a kid I presumed he was strange because of that scar, but decades later, in hushed whispers after family reunions — I would find out my uncle was born strange.
As a child he would walk out onto the hill at the edge of the forest and howl at the moon like a rabid animal. He shunned the regular toy trains and wooden soldiers that the other boys would play with and instead made his own dolls of sticks and straw. Once he was old enough not to require constant supervision my uncle would disappear into the forest for days on end and would only return back to the village for food and water. When, in his late teens, my uncle arrived at the breakfast table with blood dripping down his forehead his parents just assumed he had gone out on another misadventure.
The boy was strange, but he was not deemed dangerous. As cryptic as his speech was, as incomprehensible as his behavior was — the village had agreed that he was harmless. The boy was strange, but he would never hurt a living soul.
Until the autumn of ’78 that notion held true.
Much of my early childhood was spent following my uncle around the village. While his erratic behavior was a cause for concern among most of the village, I found him fascinating. While the other adults in my life wanted to lecture me on cleanliness and how a young man should act, my uncle would tell me strange fairy tales about the magical creatures of the forest. The vodníks, the bogienky, the Baba Yaga — my uncle would fill my head with tales of fantastic beasts that roamed beyond the confines of the village. The talk of responsibility and cleanliness that all the adults in my life would subject me to was senseless noise compared to the mysterious sermons my uncle would impart to me.
In ’74 or ’75 my great-grandfather died. A couple months after the village funeral much of the family loaded themselves into their Trabants and Ladas and drove out to Poprad, the nearest city where the inheritance proceedings would take place. Even though my uncle had a downright antagonistic relationship with cars, when it came time to depart, he pushed me over to the middle seat and joined in on the ride.
The man never shaved. For most of the drive through the hills his unkempt beard kept on rubbing against my face. I distinctly remember being irritated at the prospect of having to ride between him and my grandmother. My face itched and I was angry about not being consulted on the seating arrangements in the car but by the time we arrived in the city my spirits calmed. My family promised a solemn reading of the will. My uncle promised a stroll around the city.
I chose my uncle. While my parents got ready for the reading of the will and arguments over who inherits what land, me and my uncle set off on walk through the center square. At least, that’s what he announced to the family.
Our course quickly changed.
The main square of Poprad was filled with all sorts of fantastic things a village boy might find amusing, but my uncle had other plans. He led me out of the center towards a roadway. The cement houses that surrounded the road proved to be of some interest but after a while they disappeared as well. All that was left was a busy road surrounded by fields.
For what felt like an eternity we dodged cars with nothing to shield us from the summer sun. I was starting to grow frustrated with my uncle again, I even started to complain about my legs hurting, but before my frustration manifested into a childish outburst the true destination of my uncle’s pilgrimage was revealed — the Poprad airport.
I wasn’t raised under a rock. I watched cartoons. I knew planes existed. I just never saw one in the flesh. Decades down the line I would become an aerospace engineer, the moment clearly had an impact. That initial burst of pure fascination of seeing a real flying machine will stick with me till the day I die — but it will always be tainted by what my uncle said to me.
My uncle grabbed me by the shoulder and pointed towards the airfield. With utter disgust and rage in his voice he told me that “The devil drives in one of those machines. You have to keep your eye on them.”
Over the years I had chosen to forget about my uncle’s inexplicable hatred of planes and just focused on the moment when I fell in love with engineering. Yet over the past couple of days, I have thought long and hard about what he said that summer afternoon.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about the holy water incident of autumn ’78.
The construction of the new fire station was the most interesting thing to happen in the village all year. The rickety church would still be the highest building in the village, but it would only retain its position because it stood on top of a hill. The two story cement structure grew day by day and even half-finished it managed to dwarf all the cottages around it.
That autumn I spent every afternoon at my great-grandfather’s grave. My parents thought I sat by the tombstone because of some sudden burst of filial piety and they relaxed their stances on chores in response. Truthfully I just sat there for a good view of the fledgling fire station. Watching the building be constructed in individual steps, from the metal scaffolding to the mixing of the cement was utterly fascinating to 12-year-old me.
It was during one of my afternoon observation sessions that the holy water incident took place. I was watching the workers mix cement to fill up the metal skeleton of the second floor when the doors of the church burst open. Out came running my uncle, with a jug of water cradled in his arms. After him, flustered and red in the face, came the village priest. Behind the sprinting priest, peeking out of the church doors like nervous sheep, came the attendants of afternoon mass.
The construction of the new fire station was the most interesting thing to happen in the village all year, but the holy water incident quickly overshadowed anything that had happened all decade. My uncle dashed down the church hill towards the construction gripping the stolen jug of holy water. A handful of workers were attending to the cement mixer but with savage shouts my uncle dissolved their huddle. With the intensity of a fire-fighter at an ammunition depot my uncle started to pour the holy water into the cement mixer.
The priest was beside himself with zealous rage, but the man of cloth wouldn’t touch my uncle. One of the construction workers, however, unbound by oaths of non-violence, tried to intervene. He grabbed my uncle by the shoulders and tried to pull him away from the cement mixer so that the holy water would not be squandered.
My uncle had never been a violent man. It was perhaps because of his harmless nature that the village tolerated his bizarre behavior. My uncle had never been a violent man, but when the construction worker attempted to stop him from pouring the holy water into the cement he turned around and planted his fist square into the construction worker’s nose. The impact of the punch could be heard from atop of the church hill.
The construction worker reeled back from the hit and landed straight on his ass in the gravel. As the man in dirty overalls collected the blood from his bleeding nose my uncle finished off what he set off to do. He poured the rest of the water into the cement mixer, and then, when the holy jug was empty, he screamed a cry of victory:
“Charcoal!” he yelled, “Charcoal for the long winter!”
Back then, those words meant nothing to me.
My uncle continued to scream about the charcoal until the workmen restrained him. Had he punched one of the villagers the issue would have ended there. My uncle would be chastised for his behavior, perhaps beaten a bit, and then he would be left to his own strange ways. My uncle, however, did not punch some unimportant hick. He punched an out-of-towner who came in to help with the construction. This out-of-towner also happened to be a good friend of the head of the fire safety committee. He was not going to let his broken nose go unpunished.
The police arrived shortly before sunset. By the time the sky was dark my uncle was gone.
They say he died of pneumonia in prison a couple years later, but no one really bothered to check. Once my uncle was driven out of the village his existence fell comfortably into the realm of myth. People would occasionally mention him at family reunions but he was more of a punchline than a human being by then.
The crazy uncle.
The crazy uncle we don’t talk about much. He had slipped my mind too. For a couple weeks after the holy water incident I was curious about his fate, about why he would pour holy water into a cement mixer, about the charcoal for the long winter — yet soon enough those questions were buried beneath the universal blues of puberty. By the time I got out of high-school I scarcely remembered I even had a crazy uncle.
I studied engineering in Prague and, when the Bolshevik system collapsed halfway through my studies, I fought tooth and nail to move to the West. I finished off my masters in Delft and then, through a lucky set of coincidences, ended up flying across the ocean to Arlington.
I spent most of my life in the US, away from my roots. I got married, had kids, got divorced and worked myself to the bone in the process. When my father died my schedule was far too hectic to make the flight back home. All I managed to do was to sit by his grave overlooking the now defunct fire station. My father was gone and, after a week or so of visiting, I found my mother on her way as well.
I didn’t show up for my flight back to the states. Instead, I stayed in the village where I was born.
The first couple of weeks were confusing. The village was much smaller than it was in my memories of youth. Everything was quieter, more peaceful and when night came the darkness was so total, I felt like I could grip it in my fist. The once mighty fire-station had become an empty building that served as a makeshift town hall and a place to have funeral receptions. The only thing that didn’t seem to have aged was the rickety church and that was just because if it got any more unstable it would collapse.
After the disorienting arrival I adjusted to my new rural life. My mother was confined to her bed, so I spent most of my time in the cottage tending to her or listing through the many books I promised myself I would read after I retired. The days started to blur into each other and I found myself much calmer than I had been in decades. Rural life had turned out to be rather blissful.
Then, a snake fell from the sky.
Verona Halčín, the mother of the mayor, reported one day that a snake fell on top of her as she was making her way up the church hill. She was much older than my mother, but Verona’s religious zeal and need to be the center of attention kept her animated well past her years. The mayor’s mother claimed that the snake had been a punishment from God. The village veterinarian claimed that the snake was probably just some bird’s dinner. The mayor claimed that the snake issue would be addressed.
I did not busy myself with the snake affair. My mother’s health had deteriorated to the point where I would wake up in the middle of the night in fear that she had died. I was more concerned with the impending funeral arrangements than a snake in the church yard. It was during one of my paranoid middle-of-the-night wake-ups, however, that I found something new to worry about.
It must’ve been around 2 in the morning. I found myself sweating in bed and my mother’s snoring had gone worryingly silent. I made my way over to her room to find her lying on her side, still alive and quietly breathing. That’s when I heard that terrible sound.
It started off as a quiet rumble but quickly gained in dark tenor. Soon enough the whole cottage was shaking. Somewhere above us something terrible moved. It sounded like thunder amplified through a metal cave. The terrible noise was unlike anything I had ever heard before and its mere presence made any thought impossible. It wasn’t until the dark roar had fizzled off into the distance that I realized that the noise sounded strangely familiar.
I just couldn’t place my finger on it.
My mother has been hard of hearing for years now. She slept through the deafening roar and, when I asked her about it in the morning, she excused it as a simple thunderstorm somewhere off in the distance. Her explanation didn’t calm me.
In the evening, once my mother had gone to sleep, I found myself in need of company and a drink.
Off in the village pub the air was rife with discussion about more alleged snake sightings. Some claimed the snakes were a sign of divine judgment, others claimed that there was a stork nest in the steeple of the church — all were very convinced of their theories. The discussion was losing in its civility and threatened to burst into violence, yet before fists and chairs started getting thrown around mayor Halčín banged on the table and demanded calm. The steeple of the church would be inspected on the following morning. All discussion of snakes was to cease till then.
In that brief silence between the shouts I thought of bringing up the strange howl I had heard in the night, but before I did someone beat me to it. The city kid spoke up.
We had both moved to the village around the same time, but I had roots. He didn’t. The kid asked about the strange noise in the night and all he received from the table were stares.
Halčín told him it was just thunder. The rest of the table murmured in approval.
The kid didn’t take it. He said he saw a glimpse of the thing. Something had flown above the village. The kid started saying something about the thing shining with red light but before he could get into any proper descriptions Halčín stopped him in his tracks.
It was thunder, Halčín reminded him. The sound the boy had heard was thunder and any further discussion was spreading panic just like the snake talk. He was told, in no uncertain terms, that further input on the subject was not welcome.
I had grown up around Halčín and knew not to contradict him. The kid didn’t seem to need the years of experience. He knew to stay quiet as well. After the mayor had shut him up the kid finished his drink and left. I was happy I didn’t bring up the sound myself. Eventually, with a couple of drinks, I convinced myself that Halčín had been right — all I heard was some far off thunder.
At least that’s what I told myself.
I couldn’t fall asleep that night. I had drunk enough to become sluggish and my internal monologue had descended from words into vague notions, but consciousness refused to depart. I laid in bed, listening to my mother’s strained snoring, trying to remember why the sound I had heard the night prior sounded so familiar.
My mind was far too dulled to even properly recall the sound, but by the time the bedside alarm clock creeped towards 2AM it was no longer necessary. The sound was back. As if it had been tied to my mother’s snores it slowly crawled into reality. The roar above grew louder and louder until everything else ceased to exist. The windows of the cottage shook, my face grew numb — everything in the world descended into nothingness to make room for that deafening sound.
Perhaps because of exhaustion, perhaps because of fear; I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed. I laid under my covers with my eyes wide open staring at the ceiling trying to fully concentrate on that terrible sound outside.
Well before the noise reached its deafening zenith, I placed it.
It was unlike any engine I had ever witnessed; it was much louder and darker than anything I had encountered in the decades of my career — but the noise was unmistakable.
A plane was flying at an extremely low altitude above me.
I wanted to get up, to look at what sort of engine could produce such a horrid sound — yet lying in that bed I found myself paralyzed. The roar from the skies above, even muffled by the walls of my wooden childhood home, was so loud it made my teeth chatter. All notion of physical strength drained my body and I was left motionless in bed.
When the roar finally died down, when the night settled and all I could hear was the bubbling of the far off stream and the snoring of my aged mother — I put on my shoes and walked outside. Somewhere off in the distance that terrible sound still rumbled, but aside from the burning moon the sky was clear. Standing there, searching the night sky for a hint of a plane my uncle’s words crashed into my internal monologue:
“The devil drives in one of those machines. You have to keep your eye on them.”
There was a terrible storm the following day. Hail the size of fists dropped from the sky and the gentle bubbling stream that led through the village threatened to turn into a flooding river. I had spent the whole day inside tending to my mother, but later I would find out that there had been a death at the church. A farmhand had been sent up to the steeple to check if a stork had made a nest there, but during his ascent the wind had shifted and the ladder he was climbing turned loose. The farmhand met his end against the metal fence of the church. His death was not quick.
On any other occasion the death of the farmhand would have overshadowed all happenings in the village for weeks. The events of the following night, however, pushed the youth’s death into obscurity.
My mother had gone to sleep well before midnight. I was alone in the cottage, sitting by the window and occasionally watching the clock sluggishly turn closer to 2 AM. All that kept me company was her snoring, but beyond the glass I could see other cottages were lit up just like mine. The storm had prevented me from talking to the other villagers about the roaring jet engine, but it was clear others were awaiting its return as well.
We all sat around our windows, expecting answers.
Instead of clarity, however, the village received destruction.
I spent hours waiting by the window just so that I could see the source of that deafening sound. The closer the clock got to two the more my knees started to ache. Something deep inside of me demanded I turn away. Something deep inside of me knew that what was hiding behind that window was best unseen. By the time the rumbling started off beyond the hills I had to grip the windowsill to stay upright.
My teeth clenched and my eyeballs bulged and I had to press my face against the glass — but I saw it. For a mere collection of seconds that will forever be scarred into my memory — I saw it.
It was unlike any plane I had ever witnessed.
Whatever make the airbus was, it was bigger than anything I had ever worked with or seen. If you took the Antonov, painted it jet black and then pushed its size to the very limit of aerodynamics and then pushed a bit further — that’s how big the plane above was. On its massive wings sat two blood red lights that shot tendrils of pain from my eye-balls to the back of my skull. Every moment I spent looking at the machine I could feel my sanity slip away. I did not last at the window for long. soon enough I was curled up on the floor with my palms shielding my ears.
Before my body gave out, however, I noticed the most horrid thing of all:
The plane was flying dangerously low. The plane was flying dangerously low and heading straight for the steeple of the church. Beyond the metal screech I could not hear the impact. I could not hear anything. The universe distilled itself into cacophony and only a single thought, a single memory broke through —
“The devil drives in one of those machines. You have to keep your eye on them.”
Well after the noise had rumbled off beyond the valley, I was still lying on the floor. My mind had been completely sandblasted by fear and every inch of my body felt foreign. It wasn’t until I heard shouts from the outside that I managed to crawl to my knees.
The church had indeed been hit. The steeple had been knocked down and reduced into nothing but kindling that burned over the graves. The rest of the church was also burning. It was as if the plane had sparked the fire itself.
The sight of the eldritch airbus had been enough to drive me to the floor, but the fire had brought me back to my senses. Without much conscious thought I pulled on my shoes and ran to the old barn in search of buckets.
Dozens of villagers helped. Quickly, we organized into a chain of young and old and strong and weak — but our efforts did nothing to stem the blaze. It would take a solid hour for a firetruck to make its way through the winding hills of the valley. Well before the flashing lights appeared there was nothing left of the church worth saving.
When the bucket party had given up, chaos spread through the crowd. The city kid, the one that had first talked about the howl of the plane at the pub — he claimed he had taken a video of the crash.
His phone, however, had shorted out and refused to turn back on.
I had seen the plane. Others, who had waited with their lights turned on, had seen the plane as well. In the chaos we did our best to support his claims, but our voices were quickly drowned out.
Verona Halčín had seized the narrative and started to preach. There had been no plane, she swore. What we had witnessed was a strike of God. He had started with snakes dropped from the sky, then he brought down a mighty storm and now, at the zenith of his rage, he had struck down the steeple of the church. Her fervor quickly shifted from abstract accusations of godlessness to finger pointing.
She said it was the kid, and other outsiders, who had tainted the village. There were voices of reason in the crowd, but they were few. With the church still burning and the crowd wild with panic Verona’s words turned to absolute fury.
The kid quickly fled.
Fearing that Verena would search for a new scapegoat, I made my exit as well.
When I returned home, I was shocked to learn that my mother had slept through the entire affair. Even as the sirens of the overdue fire truck arrived by the church, her heavy snores scarcely changed in rhythm.
I did not wake her up that night. I feared that the sudden shock might push her to the grave and, even if her heart could handle being pulled out of slumber — I couldn’t imagine how I would explain what had happened to her.
The roar from the sky was much louder than it had been the night previous. With each passing sunset the plane got closer and closer to the village. The airbus cut through the church steeple as if it was a tower of toothpicks. I dreaded to think what would happen the following night.
When my mother awoke, I brought her breakfast and tea to bed. I had no idea how to broach the subject of the low-flying airplane. At first I tried to find a way to transition from our casual morning chat to the impending danger, but when no obvious path presented itself I simply came out with it — I told my mother that an incomprehensible jet had crashed into the steeple of the church. Tonight, I told her, it would fly much lower and create untold suffering.
It was time for us to leave the village.
My mother took the confusing news with nothing but a twitch of the eyebrow. When I told her about the church, when I insisted that we get in the car and drive to the city, when I told her we were in danger — she simply shook her head. Wordlessly, she pushed away her plate, climbed out of bed and shuffled her way over to the window.
When she was still able to climb the church hill my mother had been a religious person. She had never missed Sunday mass and, whenever anyone in the family was making a change in career or undergoing surgery, she would provide nightly prayers to hedge bets with the almighty. Seeing the burnt down husk of the village church that morning, however, elicited no emotion from the woman. She simply gazed out of the window and then, almost in a whisper, said:
“Charcoal for the long winter.”
My mother wasn’t looking at the church. She was looking at the old fire station.
When I asked her to repeat herself, she acted as if she said nothing at all. I asked about my uncle, about the charcoal, about the planes — yet all she did was shake her head and pity her poor brother’s soul. Then, she quickly changed the topic of conversation. She was going to cook lunch. I was to bring her some wood for the stove.
I made a couple weak attempts at salvaging the mystery of my uncle, but my mother pretended she couldn’t hear me. The thought of staying in the village despite the imminent danger was undeniably absurd, but I knew the old woman wouldn’t get into my car willingly.
When I went outside with the wood basket it started to snow.
As we ate lunch she talked a lot more than usual. My mother had always been chatty, but age had slowed her down. By the time I had arrived in the village it was clear my mother had become unaccustomed to conversation. As we dug into the goulash though, my mother’s sentences connected and she even seemed animated. She spoke of my childhood and my dad and other family members no longer present. She even mentioned her brother.
She asked me if I remembered how scruffy his beard was.
I was happy to see my mother so animated, but I had to ask. As I brought up the airplane and the charcoal and the water spilt into the cement mixer, her face softened. This time she didn’t pretend she didn’t hear me. She shook her head and smiled and told me everything would be okay.
There was something in her voice that made me believe her.
By the time we finished off lunch the world beyond the window was white. My mother’s post-lunch nap quickly turned into deep sleep and I went out to chop some wood. With my head full of memories I drifted into the sunset.
Well before two I was sitting vigil.
Just after the sun set a handful of cars made their exit from the village. Each pair of passing headlights nudged me towards the idea of escape, yet I knew it was already too late. The hill roads that led back to civilization were already dangerous to drive through during the day. Setting out after dark was suicide.
So, I waited. With my mother snoring in the other room and the moon-lit world covered in snow, I waited for the plane to arrive. Beyond the window other homes were lit up in anticipation. Knowing that I was not the only one awaiting the arrival of that incomprehensible machine made the minutes counting down to two almost tranquil.
The first sign of that devilish rumble, however, wiped out all calmness from the world. My knees turned weak once more. All I wanted to do was curl up and avert my gaze from the incoming terror. With every ounce of courage I had, I gripped the windowsill and kept my eyes locked onto the trees beyond.
The moment the dark mammoth rose from behind the trees a flurry of pain shot through the back of my skull. It felt like someone was putting out cigarettes against the back of my eyes. The engine of the devil’s machine was so overpowering that my agonized screams were nothing but a gentle tone in the nether regions of my ears.
Each second that I spent looking out of the window was tearing away at any conscious thought that was left in my brain, but I drove my fingers into the wood of the windowsill and kept myself on my feet. I watched the black airbus descend onto the village where I had spent my youth.
I watched the black airbus head straight for the old fire station.
The moment the plane’s nose made direct contact with the cement structure a brilliant light consumed the night. Sparks were flying everywhere. The roar of the engine whimpered away and was replaced with the screech of a thousand metal grinders.
My eyes could handle the approach of the airbus, but they could not withstand the impact. Drenched in tears, they gave out along with my knees. Lying on the floor of the cottage the terror of the plane crash did not leave me. Every flicker of light that bounced in from the window seemed to be ripping the air out of my lungs. In a state of utter panic I gasped for breath and prayed that the world would return to normal.
The cacophony lasted for what felt like an eternity. I was certain that my body would give out and that I would choke in the company of those horrid flashing lights. Yet, eventually, with sudden silence — the noise stopped.
My eyes were drenched in tears and every muscle in my body was shivering, but I managed to climb up to my knees and look out of the window. The plane was gone. The plane was gone and the fire-station still stood. Next to the cement building, blending into the moon-lit night, sat a mountain of black.
I scarcely registered the charcoal before my body gave up.
I spent the whole night on the floor, drifting in and out of consciousness. Dreams never came, but when I did find myself in those brief moments of wakefulness my body refused to get up. I lay on the floor the whole night, desperately assuring myself that I was still alive.
The morning sun streaking in through the windows was a flickering candle compared to the sparks of the crash. Everything felt terribly distant and nonsensical. The universe in which an airbus could dissipate against an old cement building felt far too incomprehensible to reenter after my ordeal. It wasn’t until I found my mother standing over me in the morning that feeling returned back to my limbs.
She had started a fire in the stove and was getting ready to cook lunch. With the same tone that she would dictate chores to me as a child she ordered me to go outside and gather some charcoal.
If I wouldn’t go soon, it would all be gone.
I lacked all energy to argue or try to make sense of the world. I simply grabbed the wood basket and went out into the snow. By the time I had made my way to the old fire-station the mountain of charcoal had turned into a hill. By the time we finished eating lunch most of the stove fuel had been scavenged away.
The whole affair still puzzles me, but after that one bright night the airbus never returned. I do not know what led my uncle to pour holy water into the cement so many years ago, but I understand the purpose now. My strange uncle saved us. He saved the village from an incomprehensible machine that threatened to wipe the village off the map.
He saved us and he made sure we would be prepared for the long winter that was to come.

Tottenham Hotspur face a major decision over the future of manager Antonio Conte. The Italian tactician stunned the footballing world after he spoke to reporters in the wake of Spurs’ 3-3 draw against bottom-of-the-table Southampton last weekend and appeared to slam the team, as well as chairman Daniel Levy. “Don’t play for something important,” Conte … Continue reading “Wouldn’t be surprised” – Pundit comes up with theory why Spurs may wait to sack Conte

Let me start by saying that this is neither positive or negatively skewed overall in any particular direction just my experience with the game.
I've been playing since early beta and I suppose I could be considered a whale. I did the math and it turns out I've spent just under $1500 on the game.
Has spending this amount gotten me cards quicker? Definitely. I own every card in pools 1-4 (and got there much quicker than my friends) and 7x pool 5 cards. My CL is 6588
I can't claim to have good self control. I buy a lot of variants and I buy a lot of gold. Some people might say "boo hoo Mr moneybags" and they're right to not have any sympathy for me I have what everyone wants. I can build any deck in the meta, and I'm aware that I should be happy about it. For the record I'm not loaded, just stupid. I understand people's frustrations who don't want to spend a lot of money but want to be part of the top meta. I totally understand that listening to someone with a full collection complain is like listening to millionaires complain about having too much money.
That aside. My main issue that's leading to me bailing is that the game is actively a chore in my daily life and actually makes me sad and frustrated. It's not due to the mechanics or the meta. I've just realised that ranked is ruining my life.
I spent tonight playing for 5 hours and gained a total of -1 rank. I understand that this is just part of the game and that when climbing the ladder one should expect peaks and troughs. But spending up to 5 hours a night for several months doing something I now realise I haven't enjoyed was a wake up call. Am I bad at the game? Maybe. Though I've hit infinite many times. Is the MMR broken? Probably not it's probably just confirmation bias.
You can draw your own conclusions but I think ultimately the problem is not with the game itself but the way it motivates me. I'm obviously not cut out to play competitive games. Playing to earn rewards is what motivates me and I now realise how toxic that is.
After spending such a huge amount of money I had to look at the bigger picture and put it in context with the rest of my life. I could be choosing to do things I know I'll enjoy rather than a 50/50 chance everytime I open snap. I realise this sounds like quite a sob story but it's really more of a confession and a letter of resignation. Maybe writing it down was the last step in pulling the pin. It's the sunk cost fallacy at work no doubt.
Final thoughts? I dunno. Everyone's life is different and I have no particular insight that's better than anyone else's. Marvel snap was just a well I drank too long and too deep from. I guess it's like gambling. If other people feel like they're in the same situation as me maybe this rambling can help. Maybe stop playing too.
Or don't. It's a fun game when it's fun.

Hi there everyone! My friends and I are organising our trip to Japan for next May. We are in our late 20s and fit. We don’t mind waking up early and walking all day long. We present you our carefully planned itinerary, tell us what you think (is it too packed? Are we missing something? What should we change?)
We will buy the 14-day JR pass and try to make the most out of it using it in Tokyo as well.
We purposefully skip Hiroshima and Miyajima, we think they are too far away, we’ll visit them in another trip
22/5 arrive at Narita airport at 12.30, activate JR pass and travel to Kanazawa (arrive for dinner)
23/5 visit Kanazawa ⁃ Omicho market ⁃ Kenrokuen garden ⁃ Higashi chaya ⁃ Nagamachi
24/5 bus to Shirakawa-go (leave our baggage at the bus station, stay there 3-4 ours). After lunch bus to Takayama and stay there for the night ⁃ Shirakawa-go: Kanda house, maybe open air museum ⁃ Takayama: wander around
25/5 morning train to Nagoya (leave luggage at train station lockers) and walk around, maybe food tour, then head to Kyoto for the night Should we skip Nagoya and opt for Osaka?
26-28/5 Kyoto, with a day trip to Nara ⁃ 26/5: Nijo castle, imperial palace ⁃ 27/5 Higashiyama, Kyomizudera, Gion, Ginkaku-ji ⁃ 28/5 Arashiyama Bamboo forest, Iwatayama monkey park, kinkakuji ⁃ 29/5: Fushimi Inari ⁃ Nara: naramachi, Todaiji, isuiee garden
29/5 Kyoto until lunch, then train to Hakone. Night in ryokan
30/5 visit Hakone with the Hakone free pass. When done train to Tokyo (arrive after dinner)
31/5-2/6 Tokyo ⁃ 31/5: asakusa (senso-ji and Tokyo skytree), Ueno park and Tokyo national museum ⁃ 1/6: Ginza (Tsukiji market, imperial palace) teamlab planets and Roppongi ⁃ 2/6: shibuya (Meiji jingu), shinjuku
3/6 afternoon flight back to Italy
What do you think? Thank you very much, every suggestion is welcome!

part 1: We did not plan for this (1)
part 2: We did not plan for this (2)
Part 3:
Nox woke up and starting getting dressed. He made sure his uniform was impeccable; today was an important day, he was finally getting his own Drop Unit. After checking his uniform was perfect for the third time, he put on his shoulder pad indicating his clan and left his appartement. When locking the door behind him, his neighbour, Frag, was also leaving his appartement.
Frag was a Karsouf, an alien species the Empire had discovered during their exploration for possible outposts in preparation for the war with the ISSPC. The Karsouf were despite their appearance a very peaceful species. Their scaly skin was covered in sharp thorns and their backs full of very long needles, similar to the remaining descriptions of a hedgehog. When the humans came into contact with them a war almost started but was luckily avoided.
“Finally having that promotion, I see, said Frag.
- Yeah, finally my own Drop Unit. After six months on a ship only coming into contact with one ISSPC ship, I thought it would never happen. Nox replied.
- I can imagine. I still wonder why you won’t let non-human species fight in this conflict.
- You know very well it’s because this conflict only concern humans, they destroyed our home planet, it is for us to fight in this war.
- Yeah, I know it’s just annoying some times.”
While it was true that the Karsouf were a peaceful species, once they had started fighting, they were unstoppable.
Nox nodded at Frag and left the building, the dark black uniform of the Dropper, as they were called, making it seem a shadow was waking in the halls. He started heading in the direction of the barracks. The civilians in the street making way for him and making a nod to him. Droppers were a feared and respected unit of the Empire’s military; they were highly trained individuals in hand-to-hand combat, weapons, explosives and guerrilla warfare. I was said that a single dropper could destroy a military base. They were easily recognised by their uniform: deep black military trousers, a navy-blue shirt and a trench coat with a military pattern of various shades of black. Nox’s shoulder pad complemented well this uniform, the pad was of a black background with a red wolf head on it, the symbol of Clan Aka.
Clan Aka were special among the humans of the Empire; because of the planet on which their colony was settled, they had evolved slightly differently. While most humans of the empire were similar in every way to the humans of old, a few clans had gained special attributes as a result from the planets on which they settled, the Aka clan settled on the planet Volcanilis.
Volcanilis was a very harsh planet to live on, most of the sky was grey from the ash released by the omnipresent volcanos of the planet, volcanos that forced the human colony to live underground in extremely hot vents. This led the humans of the colony to develop eyes capable of seeing in the dark, a capacity to withstand extreme temperatures, a very hard skin and a high tolerance for pain. This made members of the Aka clan desirable soldiers for the Empire; however, the night vision eyes of the clan also made it very hard for them to withstand the brightness needed by other humans, leading some of them to become blind. Nox was lucky, his eyes were considered defective on Volcanilis, it was harder for him to see in the dark but it also allowed him to handle the brightness better. Like most humans he had wanted to join the army since is youth, and because of his origins he was quickly promoted through the ranks.
A week ago, he had received news that he would be promoted and given a very special mission. Today was the day where he would find out what that mission was. He finally arrived at the barracks the guards at the entrance saluted him, they looked at him intensely, humans of the Aka clan were rarer than diamonds, it was the first time they saw one. Nox quickly walked through the halls of the buildings, quickly glancing at the mosaics on the walls. The mosaics depicted various moments of the Empire, its creation, the meeting with various species, inaugurations of monuments and more. He stopped walking when he arrived in front of General Murat’s office. He knocked on the door and entered:
“Lieutenant Nox Aka reporting for duty sir.
- At ease Lieutenant, replied the general, I assume you know why you were summoned to my office.
The general stood up and started looking at Nox.
- I do not, sir.
- Please we both know rumours here go around faster than a bottle of vodka in these barracks. Anyway, you are being promoted to Captain, given your own Drop Unit, as well as you own ship crew.”
Nox was stunned, he knew he was getting his own team, but a whole ship crew. Ship crew were generally given to officers with the rank of Colonel or higher.
The general continued: “Since the ISSPC found a way to fight back against our strategy, we have been losing quite a few vessels. The general turned around and started looking out the window, as such we have been trying to find new ways to fight them, so we decided to make a special team, a team that you will lead. Your mission is simple, you and your crew will go behind enemy lines and create as much chaos as possible.”
Nox started thinking, it was a good plan, attacking on two fronts would weaken the ISSPC considerably, and this would simultaneously prevent from reducing the main combat force considerably.
“I assume you wonder why we chose someone as young as you, the general suddenly added while facing Nox, you have been in the army only one year, and have been in only three ship attack total. Well, it is true your clan influenced the decision, he said while pointing at the shoulder pad, the main reasons were that you had a rank that was high enough to give you command and low enough not to cause a major loss in the military’s hierarchy, and while only participating in three attacks, you were the one who took the most enemy lives during them.”
The General made a sign to Nox, indicating him to follow, and started walking down the halls. “You are given a small battle ship, he started explaining, and you crew will be composed of a pilot, an engineer, and your Drop Unit, you will also be given a bit of equipment, but the rest will be for you to obtain, we will not be able to resupply you once you are behind enemy lines.
- Who is part of my Drop Unit sir, Nox asked.
- We have assigned you three people, said the general with a smile. Shock, a member of the Chain Clan, he is trained in explosive and weapon maintenance. Beth, a member of the Stone clan, a specialist in covert missions and an engineer, and finally Jack, a member of the Sparrow clan, a sharpshooter.
- Sir, the team is only composed of people from ‘special’ clans, said Nox.”
The “special clans” Nox was talking about were the clans that varied from the basic human morphology. The Chain clan settled on a planet which was later discovered to contain extremely high quantities of titanium, and that all flora and fauna of the planet also contained high amounts, this led the clan to over time become “metal men”, their skin was 50% titanium, making them extremely hard to kill. The Sparrow clan, did not settle on a particularly special planet, outside of the fact that the planet had extremely high mountains, the settlers decided to utilise their advanced gene manipulation technology to give themselves wings for easier movement, this accidently also gave them “eagle eyes” giving them incredible vision. While the Stone clan were named ironically as they were from a water planet, they developed gills, webbed hands and feet and the ability to handle extreme pressure.
“That is correct, we choose them because of their capacity to fight in most environments giving you more targets. And they all had problems in their previous units.”
The general opened the door to a hangar, inside was a single cargo ship retrofitted with weapons and technology for deep space travel. Next to it was a table with five people in different uniforms playing what seemed like a heated game of cards. One of the members of the group realised the duo was there, got up and saluted the General and Nox, the others soon followed.
The general then exclaimed “Well men, this is Captain Nox, your new CO. He will be leading you on this mission, and hopefully bring you all back alive, which made the General laugh loudly. We also designed a new uniform for you all.”
The General waved his hand and two aids appeared only boxes, one for each member of the crew. Inside were three sets of the same uniform, the uniform was the same as any Drop Unit’s uniform except for a navy-blue owl holding a sword and shield on the back of the trench coat.
“The owl is the symbol of your new unit. You have been dubbed ‘The Knight Owls’. Knight as in ‘knights of the round table’. The general laughed at his pun, now all jokes aside, put on your uniforms and get going.”
The general turned around and left the hangar, the crew looked at Nox.
“Crew, as the general said, go change into the new uniform, get your packs and be ready to leave. You have 5 minutes.”
The crew separated and started preparing themselves. Nox looked at the crew, Shock was as ‘metal’ as a member of the Chain clan could be, he had silver hair, silvegrey skin and grey eyes, he had a clearly muscular body and his arms were covered in scars. Beth was slim with light blue skin, her hair was a mix of crystal blue and deep red and Jack was, ironically, the most colourful of the bunch, his wings were covered of colourful feather with crimson red hair and pale white skin. The pilot and engineer were pretty average humans, their shoulder pads did not indicate that they were part of the special clans, but they clearly seemed competent.
He then looked at the ship, it wasn’t very big but it was enough to house the crew and store equipment. Nox stopped, he saw something in the cargo area of the ship, it was a TX9009. The TX9009 were a series of battle droids, the humans had created to help with managing cargo and moving boxes, they were designed to be similar to humans in structure, with two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes and an oval shaped head; these were painted a pale grey. Their use was stopped when the ISSPC managed to launch a virus making them attack us.
The members of the crew started boarding the ship, the pilot and the engineer approached Nox and both said in unison while placing their right hands on their left shoulder: “May the ash stay grey and the lava red.” It was the traditionally greeting of the Aka Clan, Nox replied with “for as long as we breath and see them” as per tradition.
“How do you know of this greeting, Nox asked, few outside of the clan know about it?
- My brother and I were both adopted and raised by members of Clan Aka when our parents died, responded the pilot. We just wanted to present ourselves, I am Steve and this is my brother Josh.
- My pleasure to meet you both.”
The brothers then joined the other Knight Owls who were waiting in line. Nox looked and them and said: “Soldiers of the Human Empire, we have one mission: Create chaos behind enemy lines, are you ready to do that?
- Yes sir, they all said simultaneously with a mischievous smile on their faces.
- Good, we have been given ‘carte blanche’ for this, so let’s go have some fun, said Nox with a big smile”
The crew laughed and started embarking on the ship.
Nox smiled again, this ragtag group was now his crew. They had one clear mission, disrupt the enemy from behind the lines, and all this with complete autonomy. He knew this, where the knight owls would appear, chaos and destruction would soon follow from seeing their reaction.
Once the ship equipped, they left to perform their mission
The ISSPC had not planned for the return of humanity.
And they clearly did not plant for what was about to happen.

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https://247sports.com/playeluca-puccinelli-46129475/

"Hans you are burning it by god! Be careful!"
Hans pulled the sausage out of the campfire, checking how much of it had charred. Salvageable, but a little crispier than he liked it. Lost in thought again.
"Sorry, sorry I felt my mind wandering, what were you saying?"
The Swiss camp had been buzzing with activity since the sack of Milan. Some of them had headed north to spend some time in the newly Swiss city of Lugano. Not quite swiss but the mountains surrounding the lake were a small taste of home. They would head back south come the new year, no fighting would happen during the winter. Hans turned to his fellow Eidgenosse, a dozen from Bern like him, the silent six from the Forest cantons, the Zuricher brothers, and a the strange chaplain from St. Gallen. They sat around the campfire, drinking beer that the Bernese had brought from their new breweries.
"Another year in Italy, another pay day. You all made off with some good loot from Milan?"
Hans looked around the campfire. One of the men from the forest canton of Uri, Roger rummaged in his tent, and pulled out a beautifully made crossbow, engraved handle, and a strange looking loading mechanism.
"I have been testing it out, with this I will be able to down a boar in a two shots. Or a landsknecht in one. I am very good at killing pig-headed opponents!"
A roar of laughter rose.
They all rushed back to their tents and grabbed something they had looted. Hans held in his hands a finely crafted silver and glass container of olive oil. There were chalices with jewels embedded, some had taken fine art.
"What do you have there, Jonas."
Jonas, from Unterwalden opened a chest and revealed a bundle of finely made clothes. He pulled out a beautifully embroidered silk gown.
"Fine clothes, made from eastern silk and Italian wools. Look at this dress!"
"You definitely have the hips for it!"
Another bout of laughter raged as Jonas turned Red.
"It is for my beloved you mongrel!"
He quickly stashed the dress back into the chest.
"Those are nothing, look at this."
Franz, one of the Bernese pulled out a helmet, covered is beautiful long feathers.
"A helmet huh? I think your wife would be happier with Jonas' dress."
"Not just any helmet, Georg von Frundberg's helmet."
The camp went quiet.
"I saw him, the old man was on the field at Gaggiano. He may be an honourless German but at least he led his men himself. I tried to hit him in his exposed eyes, but my aim was off and I knocked his helmet off. You can see the dent. I hope the bastard wakes up with it hurting at night."
This time only a chuckle. Only one man hadn't moved, the Chaplin from St. Gallen.
"And you Chaplain Huldrych? Anything of note?"
The Chaplain got up from the campfire and began to walk off.
"I will pray for your souls comrades, you will need it. Renting out your bodies like common whores."
The tension was high. Hans spoke up as he saw one of the Uri men follow the chaplain.
"At least Jonas has the attire for it!"
Flagons raised, laughing louder, the days would pass peacefully in the swiss camp.

My friends weren’t exactly enthusiastic about meeting me at a place called the “Death Ridge Lodge,” even after I told them that “Dethritch” was just the name of the shepherd who used to own the land. Truth was, I was more than a little nervous myself. I’d been out of the country for five years; there had been calls and letters, but my friends and I hadn’t seen each other in all that time…would we still have the connection that we once did?
Some of the changes that time had wrought were surprising; others, less so. We’d all expected my stubborn, brilliant friend Jennifer to be an attorney like her father–but in a story straight out of a cheesy Hallmark movie, she’d married a guy from a tiny town in Kentucky and had two kids. Meanwhile, Ned–a loudmouthed, extroverted redhead–had somehow ended up working from a lonely home office as a computer programmer.
And then there was Zoe.
She’d been my crush since our sophomore year of college. It wasn’t just her auburn hair or piercing green eyes; it was the care and honesty she showed in everything she did. Before her, I’d never met someone who really listened, who really cared about other people without working their own angle. We’d all expected great things for her…but in the end, she’d wound up like me. Back in our hometown. Unsure about the future.
But now that so much time had passed, would we even have anything in common anymore?
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. Not even the wailing winter storm and unexpected power outages could dampen our good time. Ned, Zoe, Jennifer, and I gathered around a roaring flagstone fireplace, sharing our favorite scary stories and urban legends. It didn’t matter that the howling wind made going outside deadly, or that snow had cut off the forest road to the outside world: we had warmth, food, booze–and our rediscovered friendship. We also had Lee.
When we arrived, Lee explained to us that he was the off-season caretaker of Dethritch Lodge and the surrounding cabins. During tourist season in summer, the place swarmed with hospitality workers, but from fall to spring Lee mostly had the place to himself. When the blizzard hit, he made a point of checking in on us.
“Temperature's goin’ down out there,” he warned us that fateful night. “Visibility Is almost zero. You kids wouldn’t wanna get lost out there tonight…or any other night.”
“Don’t worry,” Zoe smiled. “We have no intention of going outside in that.” She pointed to the wind-driven snow that was rattling against the window panes.
“It can’t be that easy to get lost though, can it?” Ned–always the contrarian–asked. “I mean, we’re on the side of a mountain. To go one way you just go down, and to go the other way you just go back up, right?”
“Not that simple.” Lee grunted, pulling up a stool. “We’re a hundred miles from civilization out here, and if you can’t recognize any landmarks, all them pine trees out there look the same. Even if you think you know where you’re goin,’ this mountain likes to play tricks. The gentle slope you walk down in fall might be dangerously steep in spring; boulders tumble, streams change course, and paths disappear from one season to the next. There’s dozens of trails criss-crossin’ this ol’ mountain: 1800’s logging roads, game trails, other paths so old it’s impossible to tell who made’em. Trust me, you lose your way out there, all you’re gonna get is more an’ more lost..and then you’ll start to panic. An’ at that point, if hypothermia an’ hunger an’ the bears don’t getcha, ol’ man Dethritch and his dogs will.”
“Dethritch?” “Dogs?” Zoe and Jennifer asked at once.
“Just how much do you four know about Dethritch Lodge?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “I was looking for a place where my old friends and I could meet up over the holidays, the place looked cozy, had hiking and skiing and good reviews…besides, back then, the weather forecast said we’d have a clear weekend...”
Lee nodded, as if that was about what he expected. “It’s an odd place…with an odd history. Just after the Revolutionary War, a man named Jebediah Dethritch showed up here and started construction on a cabin. He said that the mountain had called to him, that he’d seen it in a dream, an’ that Patrick Henry had gifted him the entire mountainside in exchange for services rendered during the war. There was plenty of land back then, and grants were being handed out like candy, so no one called him on it. Besides, folks wanted farmland, not the slope of a damn mountain. They all thought Jeb Dethritch was crazy, but he carved a life outta these hills, swearing that he and the land were one flesh. Jeb and his sons felled forests, dragged out the stumps, and planted orchards; they set up secret garden patches back in the woods; raised chickens, cows, and a flock of sheep. For a while, things were good.” The old man stared into the fire. “If you young people get bored with all this history, just say so…”
“Well, it’s not like we’ve got anything better to do, do we?” Ned scoffed.
“No, please go on. It’s interesting.” Zoe reassured Lee; Ned rolled his eyes.
“Well, the years rolled by. Jeb died and passed his land on to his son and grandson, who went on livin’ the same way he had. Meanwhile, towns were buildin’ up around the mountain. The more they expanded, the more folks demanded proof that the mountain really belonged to the Dethritches. By the end of the Civil War–that’s to say, Jeb’s great-grandson’s time–nobody cared about yellowed papers and ancient claims. Folks wanted the mountain developed, and kept suin’ ‘til they found a judge who agreed with’em. Amos Dethritch got a few acres and the rest went to minin’ and loggin’ companies. But takin’ advantage of the Dethritchs’ land was no easy task. See, the Dethritches refused to accept the court’s decision. They kept livin’ in their hidden shacks on the mountainside, and made life hell for the companies who, from their point of view, were trespassing’ on their property. Every day there were downed trees on the road, supplies burnt, animals missin’...it went on for decades, all the way into the 1900’s. And while nobody had been hurt in Amos Dethritch’s little guerrilla war, it was costin’ those companies more than the mountain was worth. They had to put a stop to it. The first sign of trouble was when Alice Dethritch–Amos’ wife from back east–stopped comin’ into town to sell her honey an’ fruit preserves.. A few days later, Amos was found in the middle of a dirt loggin’ road, surrounded by his three mastiffs. They’d all been shot to pieces. Ten years later, some trappers found Alice and the kids in a shallow grave. They said it looked like they’d died…badly.”
“So who did it?” Jennifer asked.
“Well, nobody can prove nothin’ about nothin,’ but a group of flashy out-of-towners rode in on the last train from Chicago that night, an’ left in the mornin.’ Folks in town said they saw lantern lights goin’ up the loggin’ road, and gunfire in the hollers…” Lee stared thoughtfully into the fireplace. “In a way, though, I guess you could say the Dethritches won out in the end. The mountain never yielded enough timber or coal to justify the expense. The companies that had fought so hard over the mountain–and even killed to keep it–all went bankrupt a few years later. This place was practically abandoned ‘til the national parks craze took off in the 1950’s. Some clever investors bought it off the bank for pennies…they built the cabins and lodge that we’re sittin’ in today.”
“But what does all that have to do with ‘old man Dethritch’ and his ‘dogs’?”
“Well, the mountain wasn’t completely left alone after all them companies closed down. The local men came up here to hunt, grandmothers collected fruit from the Dethritchs’ woodland orchards, and the teenagers…well, they came up here to do what teenagers do. But over the years, rumors began to trickle down about strange sightings in these woods. Some folks got to thinkin’ that maybe Amos Dethritch wasn’t really dead…or if he was, he was still around somehow.”
“You mean like a ghost?” I ventured.
“You call it what you want!” Lee prodded the dying embers. “I’m just tellin’ it how I heard it–and you wouldn’t believe some’a the tales the folks in town have about this mountain. Like ol’ Bruce Higgins, who came back from deer huntin’ all bitten an’ tore up, with his rifle missin.’ He said he’d been chased down the mountain by three snarlin’ shepherd dogs…just like those huge mastiffs found shot to death beside Amos. Miss Nellie Price said she saw the ol’ man himself, stalkin’ through the trees with a hundred-year-old hunting rifle an’ a sack of dead rabbits slung over his shoulder…” Lee rambled on; Jennifer tried to hide a smile.
“I’m sorry…” she chuckled. “It’s just…my dad was a hunter, and he used to see things in the woods too. Usually after his fifth beer. And my Great-Aunt Mildred was convinced she was hearing whispers in her walls…until my mother got rid of the bird’s nest in her chimney. The birdsong had been echoing in the pipes–it sounded like real human voices. My point is, there’s a snowball effect with stories like these. They live rent-free in the back of people’s minds, and when they see something they can’t explain, they just keep adding to them…”
“I’m not sayin’ you're wrong,” Lee grumbled. “I’ve never seen ol’ man Amos myself, an’ I’ve lived up here all my life. But I will say that there’s somethin’ off about this mountain. Maybe it goes all the way back to Jeb Dethritch, or even before that. Otherwise, how can you account for all the disappearances? Like the four high schoolers who went camping up here on a dare back in the 1970’s. Nothin’ was left of them but a trampled down tent an’ the soggy ashes of their fire…”
“Wasn’t there an investigation?” Zoe asked.
“Oh, sure there was. The police concluded that the girls had run away from home. Then when Terry Bannister an’ his nine-year-old son didn’t come back from their hikin’ trip, they blamed wolves. When a local artist’s car was found along a loggin’ road with spikes in the tires and the driver’s-side door hanging off of its hinges, they called it an ‘abandoned vehicle.’ They jus’ towed it back into town an’ didn’t even look for her. Don’tcha see where I’m goin’ with this? Ever since the loggin’ and minin’ dried up, tourism is the only thing keepin’ those little towns afloat. ‘The Ghost of Amos Dethritch and his Three Hell-Hounds’ makes for a fine local legend, but if the summer crowd ever found out about the real, horrible crimes that happen up on this mountain every year…it’d be the death of the whole industry.”
“I call bullshit!” Ned laughed. “This sounds an awful lot like a scary story that locals use to scare us wide-eyed out-of-towners with, am I right?”
“Call it what you want.” Lee shrugged again. “But I wouldn’t go outside ‘til the storm passes, if I were you.” He pulled on his boots and wrapped himself in his winter gear, so weathered and worn that it was all the same uniform tone of grayish-brown. “You kids got everything you need?” We nodded; he waved to us as he trudged out the door.
“Stay safe out there!” I called out too late. The only response was the rattling of the screen door and the howling of the wind–if it was the wind. I thought of the savage jaws of enormous mastiffs and shuddered.
We all slept beside the fireplace that night. Everyone had their own excuse: Ned claimed the rooms were too cold; Zoe said she wanted to have a slumber party; Jennifer had already fallen asleep in her chair. But I knew our real reason for keeping close to each other was that Lee’s tale had unnerved all of us more than we would have liked to admit. We craved the primal comforts of fire, warmth, and companionship. Before going to sleep, I dared to take a look out the frozen window, but all I could see was blackness. Too cold even for a ghost, I told myself with a chuckle, before stirring the fire and curling up in one of the lodge’s thick blankets. My dreams were haunted by worm-eaten faces in shallow graves and shadowy figures on desolate mountain paths; I woke before anyone else in the morning.
I’d always loved the peace of being awake while others slept; I took my time making my coffee and examining what the storm had done to the mountainside. The trees were bent, icy spikes stabbing into an ominous gray sky; at least a foot of snow covered the lodge patio. Frigid air blasted my face as I heaved open the sliding glass door and stepped out into the winter wonderland. Beautiful as it was, something more than the cold was bothering me; it took me a moment to fully realize what it was:
There were no footprints leading to the cabin where Lee was staying.
True, maybe the snow had filled them in–but no smoke rose from the chimney, either. Where had Lee gone? I was leaning out over the railing for a better view when I heard a low growl behind me.
I wasn’t alone on the patio.
Half-frozen drool hung from the mastiff’s gaping jaws; its hazel eyes burned with fury. Another, identical dog growled behind me–they were trying to cut off my escape! I bolted for the door and slid it shut just before a mouth as large as my face smashed into the glass, cracking it. The enormous dog lunged again, widening the spiderweb pattern on the glass. Barks and howls chilled my blood; my friends were waking, but not fast enough:
"Just a few more minutes…" Zoe mumbled while I shook her.
"Holy shit!" Ned screamed, pointing at the mastiff slamming itself into the glass.
"Get to the kitchen!" Jennifer grabbed the fire poker and waved us through before slamming the kitchen’s heavy wooden door. From outside, barks, snarls, shattering glass–
Heavy canine steps across the hardwood.
A long, mournful howl echoed through the cabin…and three sets of paws began scratching at the door. I wondered if the enormous dogs outside were calling to their master.
"Oh my god, oh my god…what the fuck is going on?!" Ned jabbed his finger at my chest like all this was all my fault.
"Is this some kind of sick joke?" Jennifer demanded.
“How should I know?!” I shouted back at Ned.
“I know what’s going on…” Zoe murmured. “Amos Dethritch. We’re on his mountain…and those are his dogs, just how Lee described them…”
“Ghost dogs?!” Ned rolled his eyes, “come on.”
“That mastiff out there just smashed its head against a sliding glass door until it broke! Would you call that ‘normal’ dog behavior?! Listen!” Jennifer put her ear to the wooden door as it shook beneath the dogs’ attack. “They’re not just scratching the door…they’re gnawing on it. Those aren’t ordinary dogs. And speaking of Lee–where is he?”
“I…I don’t think he made it back last night.” I thought of the smokeless chimney and the untrammeled snow. The kindly old caretaker was probably lying beneath it with his throat ripped out. Amos had come for him at last. The door rattled on its hinges.
“We gotta find a way out of here. That door’s not gonna last much longer…” Jennifer whispered, unlatching the small window above the sink.
“Oh, sure! Great plan!” Ned rolled his eyes. “Let’s run through the woods in subzero temperatures in our pajamas! What could possibly go wrong?”
“What do you suggest, then?” Jennifer challenged. As much as I hated to admit it, Ned was right. Last night’s fire was dead, and its warmth was fading fast. If Amos and his dogs didn’t kill us, the cold would. Zoe was already struggling to keep herself from trembling. While the rest of us argued, she had been scrounging for supplies. She’d found a few cobwebby soup cans, three dull kitchen knives, an almost-empty box of matches…and a trapdoor.
It took all our strength to heave it open, and even then the light didn’t reach whatever waited at the bottom. One thing, however, was clear: we were running out of time. The timbers of the kitchen door splintered, treating us to a view of slobbering fangs. The rusty window frame screeched as Jennifer flung it open. I looked down at her bare feet.
“Jen, going out there is suicide!”
“I WILL NOT wait to die in some dark…fucking…HOLE! We gotta make a run for it!” Of course, I suddenly remembered, Jennifer had claustrophobia. That cellar must’ve looked like her worst nightmare.
“I know you’re scared–we all are! But–”
“But NOTHING! I’m going!” Jennifer wiped away her tears with her pajama sleeve and leapt down into the snow. Behind us, the dogs had almost broken through. Ned, Zoe, and I sprinted for the trapdoor and slammed it shut behind us. The mastiffs sniffed around and dug at the floor over our heads–
But only for a moment. A horrifically human whistle split the silent winter air outside, followed by a cruel command–
“SIC HER, BOYS!”
First came barks, then snarls–and Jennifer began to scream.
Maybe it was a blessing that we couldn’t see what was happening out among the frozen trees, but just hearing it was bad enough. I pressed my fists against my ears and shut my eyes tight against the awful ripping and gnawing, barely audible over Jennifer’s screams. When it was finally over, the chattering of our teeth felt like the only noise left in the world. I had forgotten how much the cold could physically hurt. With trembling fingers, Zoe struck a match.
We were in a low-ceilinged dirt cellar. Decades of cobwebs hung like hideous curtains above us, and generations of junk had been scattered carelessly across the uneven ground. We rummaged through it by matchlight, looking for something, anything, that we could use.
“Paydirt!” Ned shouted. He’d found a canvas sack full of moth-eaten wool blankets, leather boots, and parkas beneath a heap of snowshoes. We bundled up immediately, grateful for the warmth, but there was little else of value in the heaped rubbish around us…and we were running out of matches.
“This is weird…” Zoe nudged me. She’d found an old wooden chest full of century-old dresses, leather bags and belts, and a tiny silver locket. The cellar ceiling groaned with heavy footsteps; Zoe instinctively pocketed the locket and grabbed my arm.
“Now where’d the rest of you run off to…?” The voice above us was the same one that had sicced the mastiffs on Jennifer. There was something antiquated, gravelly, and wild about it–something that made me think of the unsettling tale of the Dethritch clan.
“Amos…” Zoe mouthed, pointing to the far side of the cellar. The crumbling stone wall faded into blackness, but as I crawled silently closer I could see what lay above: a coal chute. An escape. The footsteps overhead left the kitchen–I imagined they were heading upstairs to check the bedrooms. We had shoes and a way of keeping warm–even if they were filthy and fit badly. If we were going to try to slip out through the coal chute, it was now or never. Ned’s hand shot out and grabbed my wrist as I struggled to push open the rusted chute cover.
“Are you crazy?!” he hissed. “Did you not hear what happened to Jen out there?!”
“Jen had a point, too…” I whispered. “Whoever…or whatever…is up there is bound to check down here eventually. Do you wanna be down here when that happens?”
“I’ll take my fucking chances!” Ned had found an ice ax in the heaps of junk, and held it with a white-knuckle grip. I realized that my loud-mouthed childhood friend was even more frightened than Zoe and I. To my surprise, Zoe’s cold hand slid into mine.
“Are you ready?” she asked. I nodded. “Come on, Ned…come with us. There won’t be another chance!”
“No way. I’m staying right here!” Ned shook his head. The last I saw of him was his pale, stunned face watching us scramble out into the winter sun. Zoe and I trudged through the snow, afraid to look back…afraid of what might be following. We kept our eyes away from the red patches in the white where Jennifer had met her end, aiming instead for a suspicious trail of footprints that led from the woods up to Dethritch Lodge: one large human and three dogs.
“Ghosts don’t leave footprints, do they?” Zoe murmured. I shook my head, wondering where this insane day would lead us. Zoe and I had barely entered the silence of the pine forest when we heard the gunshot: the BOOM of a shotgun blast.
Ned had been found.
Zoe grabbed my arm; I could feel her warmth through our improvised blanket-coats. It was what I’d dreamed of when I’d planned this vacation: alone with Zoe, holding her close in the winter woods…but my dream had turned into a nightmare. The triumphant baying of the dogs and a man’s maniac laughter carried to us by the wind confirmed what we already feared: our friend was dead. For a long minute we just held each other, listening to our thundering heartbeats: a reminder that we were still alive.
But for how long? The footprints in the snow seemed to follow a sort of game trail…just like the ones Lee said the Dethritches had used. A small creek ran alongside it. My feet were exhausted from slogging through the high snow, but we had to put more distance between us and pursuit. Right around the time I lost sensation in my feet, we rounded a corner and saw a slumped-over hut up ahead.
The footprints we’d been following seemed to originate there. I swallowed hard and looked back at the boulder-strewn mountainside behind us.
“Hide up there.” I told Zoe. “I’ll see if it’s safe.”
“I’ll come with you, this is no time to be a he–” she began.
“Listen. If it’s not safe, we’re both dead. This way, at least one of us makes it.”
“Are…are you sure?”
“If we don’t find warmth, food, and shelter, we’re dead anyway. I’ve got to see what’s in there, and if you–” Zoe shut me up with a strong hug.
“Let me go instead. I want you to keep watch for me.”
I didn’t like the idea at all, but I could see in Zoe’s eyes that her mind was made up. She left me with an extra blanket and the other supplies she’d dug out of the cellar; I set up a vantage point behind a boulder where I could see without being seen…or so I hoped. Now that the sun was setting and my sweat began to cool, I found myself rethinking what I’d said to Zoe. I’d intentionally exaggerated when I’d told her we’d die without shelter–or at least I’d thought so at the time. But as the pine tree shadows reached out for us like long fingers and the temperature dropped, I wasn’t so sure. I wondered if covering ourselves with dirt would keep us warm enough, or if I’d even be able to light a fire with my shaking hands. I fiddled nervously with the first thing I grabbed out of Zoe’s blanket: that weird silver locket. I realized it had a clasp: it was probably one of those necklaces that held pictures inside…
Down below, Zoe was a tiny black shape on the sagging steps of the hut. She pushed open the creaking door–
I was so concerned about what might come out of it that I’d forgotten to pay attention to the path below. I suddenly sensed a presence just a few feet away.
“You alright, son?” A voice muttered behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin before I recognized it: Lee! I could have laughed for joy. If anyone knew a safe way off of this mountain, it was him.
“We were attacked!” I gasped. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think Amos and his three dogs–”
“Shhh!” Lee rasped. “I seen’em on my way down here, but don’t you worry. Everythin’s gonna be alright now. Where’s the girl? Is she…?”
“You mean Zoe? She’s down there by the hut.”
“Good.” Lee whistled...and his voice changed. “SIC HER, BOYS!”
Three huge mastiffs bounded down the path toward the hut, barking loudly, and Lee stepped backward. He held an ancient shotgun in his hands. Only then did I look down at the open heart-shaped locket I held in my hands. The black-and-white photo on the right showed a kindly-looking woman named ALICE DETHRITCH, but the photo on the left was captioned AMOS DETHRITCH…and the face it showed was a familiar one indeed. It was staring back at me from behind the barrel of a gun.
“Amos…?” I gasped. The dogs circled the hut below, howling. Any minute now, they’d corner Zoe…
“Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts? I thought you city folk were supposed to be smart. Try this on for size: maybe Alice Dethritch survived the awful things those flashy out-of-towners did to her. Maybe she had a baby a few months later, a feral kid who raised himself after she died from her lingering injuries ten years later. Otherwise, who woulda buried her for those trappers to find? And maybe later, that kid grew up and decided he didn’t want the family name to die with him. Maybe he kidnapped one’a them high school girls who came up here in the 1970’s and used to her get himself an heir. Maybe that heir is standin’ here right now, pointin’ ol’ Amos’ rifle in the face of yet another trespasser…”
I lifted my hands slowly.
“Just…just don’t hurt Zoe…”
“Hurt her? No, I need her. I'm gonna breed myself an heir, the same way my father did, and raise him to carry on the fight 'til this mountain is ours again. After you four go missin,' even the tourism people won't be able to cover it up anymore–"
Lee Dethritch’s speech was cut short by the half rotten log that slammed into the side of his head. Zoe hit him two or three more times, but I doubt the blows were necessary. Lee Dethritch had met the fate of his ancestors, but I could hear his dogs baying below…from inside the hut.
“You alright?” Zoe asked.
“How did you–?” I wondered.
“That hut must be where he’s been living. It was dim…and filthy…but I saw a pile of rope right around the time I heard those dogs charging down the trail. I tied it to the front door knob and left it open just a crack, while I stood by the back door and waited for my moment. When those dogs charged in, I tugged the front door shut and slipped out the back. Dethritch’s dogs are trapped in there…for now.”
I remembered how quickly the three mastiffs had gnawed their way through the lodge’s kitchen door and shuddered. But would they even pursue us without Lee Dethritch urging them on?
We didn’t wait around to find out.
Night had fallen by the time we reached Dethritch Lodge; it felt like years had passed since we had fled the cellar that morning. Too emotionally and physically exhausted to talk much, Zoe and I distracted ourselves with simple tasks of survival: building a fire, heating water, gathering blankets, reinforcing the doors in case the dogs (or anything else) came back. It had been the longest day of my life, and I ended it curled up with Zoe in front of the Dethritch lodge fireplace.
By morning, the snow had melted; the unpaved, switchbacking road off of the Dethritchs’ mountain seemed just barely passable. Once we started driving, I realized just how much danger we were in: the back of my Corolla fishtailed around every turn, and twice the tires stuck in slushy mud and began to slide…toward the cliffs beside us.
When Zoe got out of the car to help me free it, I saw something that I still can’t explain. Maybe it was just a hallucination brought on by stress, but…
I’d swear I saw another Amos Dethritch look-alike watching us from the woods.
Was the mountain really haunted? Even worse, did Lee Dethritch have a brother?
When I looked again, they were gone.
I didn’t have any answer then, and I still don’t.
But I suggest you stay away from Dethritch Lodge.
X

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Repost due to typing errors (didn't have the right glasses on)🤦🏻‍♂️
25 [M4F] UK/Anywhere.
Well having another crack at this as I'm feeling lucky 🤞🏻
Hello to the wonderful person who is reading this my name is Thomas but my friend's call me Tommy or Tom or Tommo (nickname given after a drunken party) anywho feel free to use whichever name you like as I don't mind. Currently work as a roofer for a construction company which has been my job for the last 9 year's now.
So some technical stuff I'm 5"10 or 5"11 it's been a few years since my height was checked, slim build rocking a bit of a dad bod due to everyone's best friend or worse enemy alcohol (don't drink anymore), dark brown eyes or light hazel depending on light I also wear glasses as my eyesight is ridiculous and I have a shaved head and no facial hair. Pictures on request will be given😎 in my spare time I like to read, take long hikes through the forest amd walking trails near my house, explore museum's, play some video games, meet up with friend's and play football or soccer for my buddies across the pond, spend hours in bookshops and the list goes on. Musicly my tastes are massive I'm currently loving some classical music and jazz beats but I like a lot more music genre's so feel free to ask away.
I'm also a huge foodie and that's mostly meat so I'm basically a carnivore don't worry I'm not a cannibal you may look delicious but I promise I won't eat you...I may have a little nibble though (sarcasm)🤫. I don't mind what other dietary needs other people have as I'm not a person who judge's so feel free to eat whatever you like, I'd also rather spend a night in watching movies and having a cuddle session instead of going out partying. :Quick add I also absolutely love to cuddle so expect cuddle attacks incoming.
I also have a dog who is my best buddy so if you want me then you get him so it's two for the price of one really which I think is a great deal, you'll also get lots of photos of him and his cute fluffy looks. 🐶
I'm not really sure what else to put as I was never good writing about myself, feel free to message me if your curious and want to know more and don't worry I don't bite. 🧛🏻‍♂️👋🏻