I finished playing LiS 1. I'm left with a hollow feeling, like when you just watched a really good TV show and don't know what to do with your life after it has ended. At the same time it's a good feeling, because what an amazing story this was! I loved it from beginning to end.
Someone enthusiastically recommended this game to me in the past and I was too ignorant to immediately listen and play it. Well, months or even years later I decided to trust their judgement because I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to revisit the feeling of friendship that I haven't felt for a while. This game gave me all these feelings. The deeper into the game I got, the more I felt attached to the characters and wanted to know more, wishing it would last forever. Unfortunately it didn't, like barely anything ever does. Actions always have consequences. A small decision can have major effects. It is just the way things are and will always be. This was shown to me when I noticed the consequences of Max trying to save Chloe's father, and it left me in tears. I made the tough decision in this fragment, and was so relieved when Max went back to the present and found Chloe, alive as ever.
It made me think a lot: if I could revisit the past, knowing everything I know now, would I change anything? I don't know. I'm leaning towards a negative answer. There's no way of knowing what any small decision could result in, what domino effect I could be causing by changing anything at all. You can't save everyone. Some things are possibly just meant to be, whatever happens just happens and it is what it is. Imagine if I were to change anything to try to make life better in the present, I would still be left with the knowledge of all that has been, but is undone now. Does that make sense? It wouldn't change my feelings, because I would still be the same person in my heart, in my head... I can't undo my knowledge of these events. In an alternate reality I could step out of the front door and cross the street 5 minutes earlier than I did in the main timeline, and I could be run over by a truck just by making that seemingly insignificant decision. Nothing feels insignificant now. I have regrets, but it's how it's meant to be. All you can do is move forward. The present is the present, the past and the future should be left where they are.
I'm left with a question. There are many stories from people that had a sudden gut feeling and it saved their life. When a sudden urge to move to a different room saved them, or for no explainable reason they suddenly felt like they had to check up on someone and this also saved that person. Or even feeling, knowing, that someone has just died, without being close to them. How does this happen? Does this say anything about alternate realities? What does this mean? I have no answers, but it's an interesting question to me.
This was just a rant about all these thoughts, since I can't really discuss this topic with anyone I know. Anyone who wants to add anything to this discussion, feel free to do so.

Chapter 1:
Jerry Brenson was having a hard time not getting pissed off at the way the car kept jerking around, making it damn near impossible to roll his tightly held cigarette. What a piece of shit it was anyways, it looked like the cross between an impregnated white pill and a scarecrow with all its frayed edges of tobacco poking out like straw.
"Would you stop driving like a goddamn animal!" he bellowed at the driver. Then he resumed his work on unraveling the piece of shit and evening everything out. The tip of Brenson's tongue stuck out of his mouth as he worked at it. Within a few seconds the passenger side front tire plunged into a half-foot pothole and Brenson's jaw clenched shut on that tender red meat sticking out of his face. In an instant it resembled a tiny pink balloon swelling up and getting ready to pop.
"FUCK!" Brenson screamed after a long second of seething white pain, which was now commencing to roll like waves through the bottom of his jaw, and somehow up into his fucking forehead! Before he had time to return from the moments that threw his whole being into a chaos of agony, he knew with dreadful certainty that he had bit off a chunk of his tongue. He would see it there if he opened his eyes and looked down. And with that, an image of a huge bulging red thing on the floor that was flopping around like a decapitated fish came to him. With wide eyes that seemed to burst open like fireworks, both hands flew to his mouth so that Brenson suddenly looked like a little girl getting the best birthday present of her life.
And then, hallelujah, he thinks, praise Jesus, God, the Buddha, anyone and anything that saved his precious tongue. It was still there. Hurt like hell but it was still there. He looked around on the floor in a sudden surge of paranoia (maybe a part of it really was down there) and to his blessed relief the only thing he saw were a pair of work boots stuffed onto his oafishly large feet.
All of this occurred in about 3 seconds, after which Brenson's brow contorted into a fierce angle of rage, and a powerful sense of the injustice and incompetence and of all the damned stupid negligent habits of this buffoon of a partner settled on him. He turned to the driver and smacked Dale Enrsten upside the head.
"Ouch!" Dale wailed in his deep Mississippi drawl. The car swerved to the left when Dale's arm instinctively went up to protect his face. "What the hell was that for?" He asked stupidly.
"For nearly getting my tongue bit off asshole. Now drive."
Dale returned a frown towards Brenson, and tried as he may to appear the least bit intimidating, Dale looked more comical than anything. There was something about his fat head and thin brown hair on a receded hairline that gave the air of an overly large boy preparing for boarding school.
Dale turned back to the road and decided that what would cheer him up would be a couple of chili dogs, add the cheese please, with a bud light and a pack of skittles. There ought to be a gas station in the next mile or so, god knows when the last time they saw one passing through this shit hole was. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a smoke, no two smokes, then handed one over to Brenson.
"My apologies captain. This road's covered in more potholes than your mom's vagina."
Dale cackled out a wheezing laugh and then lit up his smoke. He puffed out a large plume of white smoke that was torn away by the passing air out Dale's open window. He looked out that window, and glanced nervously at all the red stone. Their surfaces were inundated with marbled cracks. Every so often he'd see a pale bush growing between a couple of rocks. They looked more like skeletons than plants. Yes it was true, Dale Ernsted hated the desert. He hated all deserts. They made him feel like a clock was always ticking, and when it went to zero baby, oh my oh my, Dale baby if you’re out here, you gonna be fish food. Well not out here I wont, he retorts back to his own morbid fantasy, more liable to be lizard food, or coyote. Yeah, that's right, Dale thinks there probably are coyotes out here, and if the car broke down, well not a lot to eat out here but a couple of dehydrated dying men. What would be a better treat for a pack of hungry canines?
And following this train of thought Dale wonders what it would be like if Brenson and he really were surrounded by a pack of coyotes, how many would it take, maybe five? Six? Would Dale watch Brenson go first, or would it be Dale who Brenson catches a glimpse of getting his arm torn off from the shoulders down when the wolves begin demanding his own full attention. Look at that, now they turned into wolves. He didn’t think there were wolves out here. His expression changes into a frown of contemplation.
"Are you listening to me?" Dale hears Brenson angrily ask. The wolves go away. He realizes Brenson had asked him something.
"What's that?"
"Find a place to pull over I need to take a leak"
Dale's small eyes dart around at the escarpment and mesas and the fine layer of brown dirt swirling over the two-lane highway.
"No, I think there's a gas station up a bit. Not too much farther now."
Dale doesn't say anything else. He turns the knob on the radio until Bon Jovi is playing We’re Not Gonna Take It, and guns the Camry down the long stretch of desolate waste before them.
The desert sun was lowering in the west, making the car’s long shadow race ahead of them. By the time they see the dusty gas station with a white roof and big red letters painted on a discolored sign reading QuikStop, the sun was almost touching the horizon and Brenson had to pee like a mad horse. One or two stars could be seen faintly wavering in the turbulent purple sky fading into black.
Dale pulled up to a gas pump and he and Brenson got out of the car.
“Well” Brenson stretched out the word just as he was stretching out his back, leaning heavily into it with his arms on his hips, “Give me the money and I’ll get some food and beer. You get the gas”.
Dale reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty.
“Two cheese chili dogs and skittles” he said miserably. Brenson did a quick nod and walked off.
Dale found that he wasn’t doing anything but standing there watching Brenson walk closer to the gas station when the thought popped into his head: you know I think might kill that fuck, yeah I might. And then he turned around as if it was just a cloud passing by.
He was listening to the gulping sounds of gasoline filling up his tank when he saw a white toyota pull up and park on the side of the gas station near the ice chest and propane tanks. There were two people in the car. They looked like Mexicans to Dale. A man and woman. They got out of the car, shut the doors, walked around the corner, and entered the gas station. Dale wasn’t particularly interested in them but then something caught his eye. He thought he saw movement in the backseat of the toyota.
There it was again.
He realized it was a child.
It was a girl with long brown hair tied up in a ponytail. A little Mexican girl. Kids shouldn't be left in a hot car all alone he thinks righteously. But what should he expect from these people? Look at that piece of shit rig. He realized again that he was in a trance, staring angrily at the back of the Toyota.
Dale's eyes surveyed from the Toyota to the gas station entrance. The glare of the sun reflected everything outside so it was impossible to see in through the windows. Then something inside him went on autopilot. He had something to do he realized, and he had to do it fast.
He fastened the nozzle back onto the pump and briskly walked over to the white Toyota. His heart began racing. He peered in at the girl in the backseat. No one else was in there. She was wearing a blue tank top and black shorts. There was a doll, something from a disney cartoon in her hands, Dale insanely thinks, but is barely aware of any of these thoughts as the door of the Toyota slowly opens up and the girl turns her head away from her doll, up towards her mama with a smile, and sees Dale’s huge head lurching in like a troll plucking a princess from a tower.
Her face shrivels into a scream but before she can let out the breath, Dale’s meaty hands are over her mouth, and without any effort he pulls her out of the car and clutches her entire body in a bear hug. There's a heart pounding moment when she sounds like a grunting dog struggling in a trap and he knows her scream will escape from his sweaty armpit. Then there's an instant of pure lucid absurdity where he seemed to see himself from the outside. What would the girl's parents do if they walked around the corner right now? He couldn’t just put her back in there and go about pumping gas again could he? Oh I'm just ole friendly Dale giving your girl here a nice good hug cuz I could hear her cryin' for mommy.
Then he kicks the Toyotas door shut for god knows why and scrambles to his car. He hustles to the trunk, realizes the switch is up front, and skids to his knees at the driver's side door. He’s pressing the girl so hard against his chest he can almost feel her head bouncing off his beating heart.
Then he hears the satisfying click of the trunk unlocking, and with surprising speed he places the girl in the bed of the trunk, takes a bandana out from his back pocket and ties it like a rope around her mouth. The girl’s eyes, shaking with terror, watch grimly as the troll closes out the darkening sky with a metallic clink.
Then Dale jumps into the driver's seat, turns on the engine, and cranks up the radio. Another song by dear old Bon Jovi by god! Dale feel’s exhilarated. He doesn't even know it yet. All he knows is this music sounds better than anything he’s ever heard before, and why wouldn’t you look at that, he’s not even sore with Brenson anymore for slapping him in the face earlier. He can’t wait to have a beer! And there's ole Bren heading back towards the Camry now.
But then Dale realizes with a jolt of panic, the parents! The girl’s parents are going to be out any minute! With the mother of all anxiety attacks Dale’s car speeds towards Brenson as he walks out of the gas station at a magnitude that probably made Brenson think oh fuck I’m going to die by the look on his face, but Dale’s car screeched to a halt just a few feet away.
“What the fuck’s that about” Brenson sneered. The sneer was more one of habit than anything else as Brenson was so surprised that there wasn’t really room for anything else. His arms were full of supplies and he almost dropped them all over the ground.
“Get in now!” Dale yelled. He reached his arm over and threw open the passenger door. Brenson sat down and before he could shut the door, Dale shut it himself by accelerating in a curve out the gas station parking lot, and wouldn’t you know it, he didn’t even use his turning signals when he brought the Camry onto the highway and raced into the black eastern sky.
Chapter 2:
“Jesus man, you think I robbed the place?”. Brenson was unsure what had gotten into him. “Shut up for a minute. Give me a beer”.
Brenson had never seen Dale so serious. The man’s face looked like a machine. His thin lips were pressed so tightly you could barely see them. And he was scowling at the road. His eyes kept bouncing to the rearview mirror. Brenson could see beads of sweat rolling over Dale's pockmarked forehead. And the odometer was reading 95 mph. He sure as hell hoped he wouldn’t suddenly get another dose of Dale’s special potholes. He made sure his tongue was planted firmly on the roof of his mouth and his seat was buckled.
“Uh Dale..are you alright there partner?” Brenson asked.
“You seem like somethin just bit you in the ass.”
Dale guzzled down his bud light, burped and wiped his mouth, then reached for another one. After he cracked it open and took a good long gulp, he bellowed “Wooo! Lordy..oh yeah” He was heaving deep breaths between each word. Then his gaze turned away from the road and locked with Brenson's eyes.
“Pal, when you were over in that gas station there..” he paused and glanced towards the backseat of the car as if someone were sitting back there. He couldn’t keep it hidden from Brenson now could he? They had 100 miles left to drive.
Brenson looked back and then over at Dale again.
“ain't quite sure how to say this", the look on Dale's screwed up face as he thought about what to say next made Brenson think of a large boy again, one that was trying to work out a hard math problem like how much his groceries would cost.
"I may have picked up a passenger,” Dale finally said.
“What?” That came out of left field and Brenson didn't know what it meant.
“I just kind of..took her” he said this last as if Dale himself was surprised at what he was saying.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Brenson was getting a sick feeling. What fuckup did Dale just get him into now? He knew Dale liked cats and sometimes he would take them off the streets or out of people's yards if he liked how they looked. And he knew Dale had about 9 cats stuffed away in his trailer, but Brenson wasn't hearing any meows coming out of the back seat now was he? And Dale's eyes were looking at something far away, unfocused on something so far away like Venus.
And then Brenson noticed a muffled sound like there was a load of groceries rolling to the side in the trunk as Dale took them around a tight bend. For just a moment he was worried that maybe he had put the beer back there and it was gonna get all fizzy, but then he remembered the beer in his hand and the rest on the floor by his feet near that imaginary chunk of meat flapping around down there. He felt the tip of his tongue and took a swig.
"What the fuck did you do" Brenson remembered the two Mexicans that walked into that gas station. He had eyes on them the whole time.
“Dale?” Brenson asked with a looming understanding that sped towards him like a Mack truck. Dale had done something magnanimously fucked up.
“What the fuck did you do!”
“She was boiling back there!” Dale pleaded. He was an eight year old child again, explaining to an angry stepmom why she had found a drowned cat in the bathtub. He didn’t have any choice, it had bit him and that was not okay, that was not okay by any standards of civilized man. What else could he do?
“Dale!”
“I saved her Bren!”
They were both yelling now.
“She was gonna be dead back there! You saw those mexis didn’t you?”
“Pull over!” Brenson demanded.
“No.”
“Pull over now!”
Dale kept on speeding. The odometer read 105. To Brenson it felt like the flimsy car could at any moment flip over a hundred times if the slightest gust of wind brushed against them.
“Pull over right fucking now or I’ll beat the shit out you right here!”
Brenson’s fists were clenched into a barb of hairy knuckles. He was really going to do it Dale observed, and then they’d both be piles of scrap strewn all over the road.
Dale gave a defeated sigh and took his foot off the accelerator. He was going to have to show Bren one way or another. They were already miles past that shit hole station anyways. What the hell. The Camry disengaged from warp speed and soon Brenson could hear the crinkle of gravel under the tires as the Camry pulled off onto the shoulder.
Outside the night was as silent as the land was empty. A brilliant splash of stars painted the canopy of the sky in a way that gave Dale a cosmic sense of his own importance. He shuffled over to the back with Bren, a disappointed look of guilt was likewise splashed across his face, why no mah, I’m not the one that drowned Muffin, but ya know, she wouldn’t stop biting. But Dale remembered the feeling of her slick fur bunched up between his fingers and the way her intricately delicate neck felt like so many scrawny bones. A jolt of disgust seemed to roll through him like a shockwave and he tried to shake off the memory of that limp cat as fast as possible.
Then that cave of darkness opened up and it was nighttime outside, and the girl saw with a cold panic that made her cry that there were two trolls looming over her now. They were both huge and disgusting. The one on the left looked like a giant baby with patches of wiry fur in tufts up and down its neck and chin. Its teeth were yellowed and it was smoking a cigarette. She didn't like how it was eyeing her, like she was some kind of precious crystal that it wanted badly.
The other was just as big, not as fat though, more muscular. He had a mop of scraggly black hair and a full beard covering the mouth. He looked like a biker. And he looked like he was really mad at her. She heard herself crying.
"Mamá" She tried squeaking through the rope. "Donde mi mamá"
And then, no, no please, everything was getting dark again. She howled and squirmed but the lid of the trunk did not care.
Brenson was biting his bottom lip. He was supremely pissed off now. What the fuck was this lunatic thinking! He looked at Dale and was about to begin a royal case of pummeling his fat ass into the ground for getting Bren caught up in this bullshit, lord knows he's had a clean record apart from a mild six months in Kentucky State Penitentiary when he was twenty two years old. And this asshole, this stupid fat asshole made him an accomplice to whatever crazy bullshit was flying around in that fat fucking head of his!
But Bren noticed that far away in the direction they had come were a pair of tiny headlights. They were heading this way.
Instead of beating Dale into a mess worthy of the crime of getting Bren caught up in kidnapping charges, he said "Lets get the fuck out of here". And then jumped back into his seat, slamming the door.
"Come on!" He yelled out when he saw that Dale was still standing on the side of the road like an idiot. Dale hurried up, revved on the engine, and the Camry was back on the highway doing 92 mph. Bren cracked open another beer and drank the whole thing in one go. He didn’t complain about the speed.
Chapter 3:
It was about two in the morning when they pulled up to Bren’s trailer. Bren got out and walked around to Dale’s side. He was mildly drunk. Bren put his hands on his knees and bent down as if he was going to say something to Dale, but in the end he turned around and left without saying anything. He was too pissed off.
“See you in the morning.” Dale called out after him in an annoyingly loud voice, but Bren didn’t turn around. His thin white door shut loudly and Dale pulled away and drove off to his own trailer at the end of the gravel road.
At this point he had a conundrum on his hands. He had to get the girl inside without her making a lot of noise. And then once inside..what? Tie her up? Keep her in his bathroom? It’s not like he had a basement to put her in. And what the fuck was he doing anyways? His hand reached for his forehead. He was thinking. Then he unlocked the trunk and when the dim light in the trunk came on he saw with stabbing horror that the girl was dead.
“NO!” He shouted at her as if it were her fault.
"Oh dear Jesus no!”
He felt like he was about to cry. It was the cat all over again. He really didn’t want to kill it. But then he saw the rhythm of her small diaphragm. She was sleeping. Dale oh dale oh dale, what are you doing?
He wiped the sweat off his brow, then reached in and picked her up. She weighed about as much as a pillow, and when Dale opened the door of his trailer, a cat seemed to catapult itself outside making him trip over his own feet. "Shit! Henry!" He gave an involuntary yell over his shoulder when he saw which one did it. Then, understanding that he totally did not have anything under control, he stopped in his doorway and simply stood there with the little girl cradled in his arms. She felt warm. His girl. Yeah, that sounded right. It was his girl now. His little Mexican girl.
A few more hungry cats came out of the shadows begging for food. He shushed them and kicked his leg around without putting any real effort into it just to make them go away.
He had to secure his girl.
But how was he going to get any sleep tonight? He had to be absolutely sure that she could not get away. Then as he was walking in, thinking about how he would tie her up (he did have some duct tape, rope, maybe some wire ties..oh but he didn't want to hurt her wrists), he felt a sudden uneasiness about Brenson. Did Dale think he'd go to the cops? Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut and the music loud. He should have slowed down when Bren asked and he should have… Wait, just wait one cotton pickin minute Dale, he says to himself. The girl. The girl first, then Bren. Maybe Bren was still awake and he'd pay him a little visit, have a little chat just to make sure they were square, just to see if everything was cool, but only after he was sure the girl could not escape.
But should he actually leave her alone?
"Get moving!" he said to himself. And then walked into the back of the trailer where he kept a tool shed. The girl was still sleeping in his arms. Whatever nightmares she could possibly be having, would she really want to wake up?
He chose duct tape, the principle reason being it was easiest to reach while clutching a small human being. And although she felt like a feather before, the longer Dale held her in that death grip, the heavier she seemed to get.
He laid her gently down on a Layzee Boy and found himself holding his breath and needing air when he was certain she was still sleeping. Dale unfolded the leg rest, and then very delicately began unwinding the duct tape around her legs. This turned out to be a bitch because the duct tape was prone to making offensive scratching sounds as it was unpeeled from its spool.
About an hour later the girl was strapped in the chair in an extended position. Mounds of duct tape secured her arms, legs, torso, hands and feet. He took special care to untie the bandana from her face, knowing that she could suffocate in her sleep if it stayed on there. That special feat gave him a sense of pride for remembering. He already got one point in the game of taking care of her by damn. Though he'd have to figure out how to keep her quiet. Lastly, he strapped down her head using a generous supply of tape.
Now he surveyed his work like a skilled practitioner, his mouth closed, eyes narrowed, and giving short nods of satisfaction. Yes he did do a good job. Both on the tape job, and on the girl. She was adorable. He was imagining what it would be like three years from now, when she had forgotten all about that old shit hole family she had, a fact that Dale would NEVER bring up, and how happy they would look playing in a park, eating hotdogs. He's pushing her on a swing and look at that! At the very end of the pendulum's arc she leaps through the air, legs pointing like arrows in perfect form! She glides through the air and lands on her feet. Both arms reach up into the sky, she beams at Dale saying look what I just did daddy! Then she's running, his little girl is running right at him! She leaps into his arms and oh god how he hugs her, squeezes her, suddenly he notices that her skin is so soft, there's a gleam in her eye, he looks at her mouth
Somebody knocked twice on his front door.
The force of that sound coming from that door made Dale almost scream. The cloudy glaze over his eyes burned away as fast as if Jesus Christ had just now ripped open a hole in the sky and let all of heaven's mighty armies come march on through.
His head jerked up and banged against the corner of a kitchen cabinet that he had been standing near but he barely felt it because panic and paranoia were through the fucking roof ladies and gentlemen. That's right, Dale Ernsted was about to melt into a puddle and seep into the floor.
But he had to do something about the door. He crept slowly, as if the slower he moved the more invisible he would become. At this point he was trying to make himself as flat against the wall as possible so he could peek out the curtains without the intruder noticing. He quickly poked his face into the curtains and looked out the window. There was a man still standing at Dale's door. And the man instantly turned towards Dale and looked him in the eyes.
Dale screamed and put a hand over his mouth.
It was Bren. It was just fucking Bren. He pulled away from the window and noticed he was breathing like he had run a half marathon.
Dale opened the door and there was Bren pissed off as ever before. He didn't ask to come inside but came inside he did, brushing past Dale without saying a word. He stood in Dale's living room, hands on hips, something like concern on his face, and was just standing there gaping at that girl stuck in all that mound of duct tape. He was shaking his head in disbelief. Then Bren turned around and said in whispered tones, "What in fucking Christ is going on here Dale?"
They both walked outside and Dale shut the door.
Inside the trailer the girl remained taped to the Lazee Boy, breathing those deep occasional breaths that are only ever seen in people deep in REM sleep. Then she opened her eyes. If Dale could see those eyes now he would say they looked evil. To Bren, who had a larger vocabulary than Dale, he would say cunning.
In truth she had never been asleep. And although she heard only a little of the conversation between the two ogres that captured her, she knew that Baby Face, as she thought of Dale, believed she was asleep. And for this she thought he must be the dumbest person imaginable. What moron would think anything but a tranquilized rhinoceros was asleep after all that had happened to her.
She played through the sequence of events that led her to this terrible situation. It was an unreal situation. How could this happen to her? But that's not useful, she thinks, it isn't useful to wonder about why, only how and what to do about it.
She took the opportunity while the two trolls were outside to scan as much of the room as possible. Looking for doors, windows, anything that could be used as a weapon. Although she knew she had little chance of using anything but a gun against either of those two guys. They were big and mean looking. But she thought Baby Face probably had a gun, either on him or by his bed, maybe in a closet.
She would have to escape. She knew there was a door in the back, though she couldn't see it, because Baby Face had brought her back there and she could feel the outside air coming in. It seemed to be some kind of extension to the trailer. And when Baby Face had stood on his toes reaching high up to get something off a shelf, she stole a glance and saw that it was some kind of shed that led outside. There were at least two doors. It was going to hurt so bad to take this tape off. She didn't know what to do about that yet. She could barely move any part of her body.
Then she heard one of the men approach the door and the hinge began to squeak open.
Dale poked his head in and stared at her for a good ten seconds. She was still sleeping. Good. Then the door closed.
Her name was Mariana and her eyes were now looking up at the ceiling, lips quivering, trying to hold back the tears from escaping. One did though and it traced a small trail down her cheekbone before it finally fell to the floor. She hoped her cheek would dry before the trolls came back inside.
Chapter 4:
That same morning Bren woke up to a pounding headache that felt like a vein was about to burst from the left side of his head. His bones creaked as he got out of bed and he walked to his refrigerator and pulled out a beer.
He wasn't trying to get drunk, those days were long past him. It was just to get rid of the headache. He had work today. And it was Bren's turn to drive so he was gonna have to waltz over to dumb fuck Dale's house and drag his ass out of bed. Although he wasn't so sure how much stock he put in folk traditions and rules of the game, so to speak, now that his relationship with Dale has been, shall we say, tested.
Although he wasn't as angry as he was just a few hours before while he chewed out Dale for being the stupidest motherfucker he ever laid eyes on, he still felt he should give him an ass pounding after he, Bren, resolved this entire state of affairs. Because it would be Bren, not Dale, who would have to do that. As much as he wished he could abandon Dale and just say fuck it, he was deeply concerned about his own involvement in what transpired the night before, and he was gravely imagining getting fifty years behind bars because of some lunatic he decided to take up a business deal with. Who was the real retard here, Bren thinks in a self deprecating way, who would get into business with someone like Dale?
Never mind all that, he would have to do something about this. He could not allow Dale to go off on his wild fantasies. Bren's chief concern was that Dale would fuck up somehow and land Bren in prison. He was slowly shaking his head back and forth as he sipped his beer, realizing just how deep the sinking sand really went in this case, all the anger he felt the night before came rushing back tenfold as he realized what he would have to do. What he would make Dale do. As punishment.
Meanwhile Baby Face was still sleeping. Mariana heard him snoring. She decided to let herself sleep after he had passed out on the floor near this duct tape prison. She would need her strength and people need to sleep as much as they need to eat was what she convinced herself with to even allow her to try to sleep. It wasn't even a guaranteed deal. Who could sleep during something like this?
But she found that when she closed her eyes and knew that Baby Face was drunk out of his mind, and that meant he would probably be asleep for awhile, then she could sleep. And oh how she drifted down, pulled down just as she was pulled out of that car, with a monster waiting for her at the bottom. A monster that looked like some huge grotesque baby thing that had snot pouring out of its nose like a fire hose held her, its decaying fingernails scraped at her, and it cackled at how amazing she was, licking her back and purring like a cat.
She screamed and then she was back in her car with all her things! Not in a dream, she was actually back in the car and her parents had told her they would pick her up a snickers.
She knew Baby Face was out there. Scrambling up on her elbows she looked for him out the window. He was pumping gas and smoking a cigarette at the same time. What a stupid freak! Yuck! But he was going to come over here. She watched him looking at something over at the entrance, and then his head was turning towards her. She ducked. And then slowly peeked her head up and saw that he was walking over here. He looked like some kind of rodent, like a rat that was sniffing out cheese.
She needed to leave. Mariana grabbed the door handle and shaked at it but it wouldn't open. None of them worked. She was trying to remain calm, kept finding her right hand reaching up and twirling her hair and then stopping herself. She licked her chapped lips. She had an idea.
The door opened and before Baby Face stuffed his stinking head in through the open door, Mariana turned around and asserted herself. She loudly and very clearly said "Dale! Where is your gun?"
The monster stumbled backwards as if shot, and fell slightly to its knee. The way its knees popped back and forth and the way its elbows gesticulated in erratic ways made Mariana think it wasn't even alive. It was some kind of zombie. And when its head rolled back up, and it looked at her, its teeth clacking together like a puppet being pulled up by the strings too quickly, she saw that Baby Face, Rat Baby Face, had long white whiskers and huge front teeth. They were stained with cigarette smoke but they still looked sharp.
It said in a gravelly voice choked with beer and chili, "under my bathroom sink, where I always keep it.", driblets of chili dripped down its white gums, which also held a healthy portion of gooey chewing tobacco. Beer froth dripped out its eyes as it jumped into the car with Mariana and began stroking its long bony fingers through her hair saying all the while in the voice of a corpse "How pretty..how pretty..how pretty". She wanted to puke and get away from it but - then Rat Baby Face opened its mouth and bit into her neck.
Mariana woke up blinking away tears. She swallowed and took in a deep breath through her nose, somewhat rocking back and forth, but otherwise totally immobilized.
That's when she heard Baby Face snoring. That's also when she noticed the bathroom out of the very furthest edge of her peripheral vision.
Mariana knew what she had to do.

FADE IN:
INT. A SEEDY BAR - NIGHT
Jacket, a man in his mid-twenties, sits alone at the bar nursing a drink. The bartender eyes him warily.
BARTENDER You new in town?
Jacket nods.
JACKET Just passing through.
The bartender doesn't seem convinced.
BARTENDER You look like you could use a job. I know a guy who's always looking for muscle.
Jacket takes a sip of his drink, considering.
JACKET I'll think about it.
BARTENDER Suit yourself.
The bartender walks away, leaving Jacket alone with his thoughts.
CUT TO:
INT. JACKET'S APARTMENT - NIGHT
Jacket is lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He's surrounded by newspaper clippings, each detailing a gruesome murder.
JACKET (to himself) This is what it's come to, huh?
He reaches for the phone and dials a number.
CUT TO:
INT. A DARK ROOM - NIGHT
Jacket is sitting across from a man in a suit, known only as "The Phone Guy".
THE PHONE GUY I hear you're good with a weapon.
JACKET I've been told.
THE PHONE GUY I have a job for you. A group of Russian mobsters have moved into town. They're making trouble for my associates.
JACKET What do you want me to do?
THE PHONE GUY Take them out. All of them.
Jacket nods.
CUT TO:
INT. A RUSSIAN MOBSTER'S HOUSE - NIGHT
Jacket bursts into the house, guns blazing. He takes out the first few guards with ease, but the rest of the gang is waiting for him.
A brutal gunfight ensues, with Jacket using every trick in the book to take out his enemies. He fights his way through the house, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.
Finally, he reaches the mob boss. They stand across from each other, guns drawn.
MOB BOSS Who are you?
JACKET Nobody.
They fire at each other, and the mob boss falls to the ground.
CUT TO:
INT. THE PHONE GUY'S OFFICE - DAY
Jacket enters the room, covered in blood.
THE PHONE GUY (smiling) I knew I could count on you.
JACKET What now?
THE PHONE GUY There's always more work to be done.
Jacket nods, knowing that he's found his calling.
FADE OUT.
{continue the script}
FADE IN:
INT. JACKET'S APARTMENT - NIGHT
Jacket is sitting in his apartment, surrounded by newspaper clippings of his recent kills. He's lost count of how many he's taken out.
JACKET (to himself) What have I become?
He hears a knock at the door and cautiously approaches it, gun in hand.
JACKET (CONT'D) Who is it?
VOICE It's me, Rick.
Jacket recognizes the voice of his neighbor and unlocks the door, peering through the crack.
RICK (surprised) Jacket, what's with the gun?
JACKET Just being cautious.
Rick enters the apartment and looks around at the clippings.
RICK You're not in trouble with the law, are you?
JACKET No, just taking care of some business.
RICK I don't want any part of this, man.
JACKET You won't be. Just stay out of my way.
Rick nods and quickly exits the apartment.
CUT TO:
INT. A SEEDY STRIP CLUB - NIGHT
Jacket enters the club and is immediately greeted by a group of thugs.
THUG Hey, you're not supposed to be here.
JACKET I'm here to see the boss.
The thugs laugh and move in on Jacket, but he easily dispatches them with his guns and fists.
He finally reaches the boss, a middle-aged man with a cigar in his mouth.
BOSS (smiling) I've been waiting for you.
JACKET What do you want?
BOSS I want you to take out a rival gang. They've been encroaching on our territory and I can't have that.
JACKET How much?
BOSS Ten grand.
Jacket nods and leaves the club.
CUT TO:
EXT. RIVAL GANG'S HIDEOUT - NIGHT
Jacket approaches the hideout and sneaks in through the back. He takes out the guards and begins to make his way through the building.
He reaches the top floor and sees the rival gang's boss, a young man in his early twenties.
JACKET (to himself) Kid doesn't know what he's gotten himself into.
He opens fire and a gunfight ensues. The young boss is no match for Jacket's skill and is soon lying on the ground, bleeding out.
Jacket makes his way out of the building, knowing that he's just made himself even more enemies.
CUT TO:
INT. JACKET'S APARTMENT - DAY
Jacket is sitting on his couch, looking at his hands. They're covered in blood.
He hears a knock at the door and cautiously approaches it, gun in hand.
JACKET (CONT'D) Who is it?
VOICE It's The Phone Guy.
Jacket unlocks the door and The Phone Guy enters.
THE PHONE GUY (smiling) I have a new job for you. A big one.
Jacket looks at The Phone Guy, knowing that he can never leave this life behind.
FADE OUT.
{Continue the script}
FADE IN:
INT. ABANDONED WAREHOUSE - NIGHT
Jacket is standing in front of a group of men, all dressed in suits. The room is filled with boxes of drugs and money.
JACKET (to the men) What's the job?
LEADER We need you to take out a rival cartel. They've been causing problems for us and we need them eliminated.
Jacket nods, his expression unreadable.
JACKET How much?
LEADER Twenty-five grand.
Jacket nods again and takes the job.
CUT TO:
EXT. RIVAL CARTEL'S COMPOUND - NIGHT
Jacket approaches the compound, guns at the ready. He takes out the guards and begins to make his way through the building.
He reaches the top floor and finds the rival cartel's leader, a ruthless man in his forties.
JACKET (to the leader) It's over.
LEADER (smiling) You think you can stop us?
A gunfight ensues, with Jacket using all of his skills to take out the rival cartel's men. The leader is the last one standing, and he's no match for Jacket's speed and accuracy.
Finally, the leader falls to the ground, dead.
CUT TO:
INT. THE PHONE GUY'S OFFICE - DAY
Jacket enters the office, looking tired and worn.
THE PHONE GUY (smiling) You did good, kid. Real good.
JACKET (to The Phone Guy) I'm done.
The Phone Guy raises an eyebrow.
THE PHONE GUY Done?
JACKET I can't keep doing this. It's not who I am.
The Phone Guy considers this for a moment before nodding.
THE PHONE GUY I understand. But just know, if you ever need work, you know where to find me.
Jacket nods and leaves the office.
CUT TO:
EXT. JACKET'S APARTMENT - DAY
Jacket is sitting on his balcony, looking out at the city. He takes a deep breath and sets his gun on the table next to him.
JACKET (to himself) It's over. It's finally over.
FADE OUT.
{Write a Sequel to the previous script you just wrote}
FADE IN:
EXT. JACKET'S APARTMENT - DAY
Jacket is sitting on his balcony, enjoying a cup of coffee. He looks relaxed and content.
Suddenly, his phone rings. He hesitates for a moment before answering.
JACKET (on the phone) Hello?
THE PHONE GUY (V.O.) Hey, Jacket. It's me.
JACKET (sighing) What do you want?
THE PHONE GUY (V.O.) I need your help.
JACKET (shaking his head) I'm done with that life.
THE PHONE GUY (V.O.) I know. But this is different. It's personal.
JACKET (skeptical) What do you mean?
THE PHONE GUY (V.O.) One of my guys was kidnapped. I need you to find him and bring him back.
JACKET (resigned) Alright. Where do I start?
CUT TO:
INT. THE PHONE GUY'S OFFICE - DAY
The Phone Guy hands Jacket a file.
THE PHONE GUY This is what we know. The kidnappers are a small-time gang operating out of the industrial district.
JACKET (nodding) I'll check it out.
CUT TO:
EXT. INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT - NIGHT
Jacket makes his way through the dark and desolate district. He finally reaches the gang's hideout and sneaks in through the back.
He takes out the guards and makes his way to the back room, where he finds the kidnapped man tied up and gagged.
JACKET (to the man) Don't worry, I'll get you out of here.
As Jacket unties the man, he hears footsteps approaching.
Jacket readies his gun and waits.
The gang leader enters the room, flanked by his men.
GANG LEADER (smiling) Well, well, well. If it isn't the great Jacket.
JACKET (calmly) Let him go.
GANG LEADER (laughing) You really think you can take all of us?
A gunfight ensues, with Jacket using all of his skills to take out the gang members. Finally, he faces off against the gang leader, who puts up a good fight but is ultimately no match for Jacket's skill.
Jacket and the kidnapped man make their way out of the hideout, with the sun just beginning to rise.
CUT TO:
INT. THE PHONE GUY'S OFFICE - DAY
Jacket hands the man over to The Phone Guy.
THE PHONE GUY (smiling) I knew I could count on you.
JACKET (turning to leave) Don't call me again.
THE PHONE GUY (calling after him) Jacket, wait.
Jacket stops and turns back to face The Phone Guy.
THE PHONE GUY (CONT'D) You should know that there's a new player in town. They're making some big moves, and I think they're going to cause some problems.
JACKET (resigned) I'll keep that in mind.
FADE OUT.

Studio Version SUGGESTED SCALE: 1-4: Not good. Regularly skip. 5: It’s okay, but I might have to be in the right mood to listen to it. 6: Slightly better than average. I won’t skip it, but I wouldn’t choose to put it on. 7: This is a good song. I enjoy it quite a bit. 8-9: Really enjoyable songs. I rank them pretty high overall. 10: Masterpiece, magnum opus, or similar terminology.
Different Gear, Still Speeding - (Average: 6.57/10)
1) Four Letter Word - 7.84/10
2) Millionaire - 6.87/10
3) The Roller - 7.62/10
4) Beatles And Stones - 6.50/10
5) Wind Up Dream - 6.30/10
6) Bring The Light - 5.68/10
7) For Anyone - 5.00/10
8) Kill For A Dream - 6.66/10
9) Standing On The Edge Of The Noise - 6.05/10
10) Wigwam - 5.58/10
11) Three Ring Circus - 5.50/10
12) The Beat Goes On - 8.44/10
13) The Morning Son - 7.36/10
Singles/Bonus
1) Man Of Misery - 4.86/10
2) Sons Of The Stage - 6.92/10
3) World Outside My Room - 6.88/10
4) Two Of A Kind - 4.12/10
5) In The Bubble With A Bullet - 7.46/10
6) Across The Universe - 7.71/10
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - (Average: 8.12/10)
1) Everybody's On The Run - 8.86/10
2) Dream On - 7.04/10
3) If I Had A Gun... - 9.33/10
4) The Death Of You And Me - 8.52/10
5) [I Wanna Live In A Dream In My] Record Machine - 7.75/10
6) AKA... What A Life! - 8.14/10
7) Soldier Boys And Jesus Freaks - 7.08/10
8) AKA... Broken Arrow - 8.42/10
9) [Stranded On] The Wrong Beach - 8.60/10
10) Stop The Clocks - 7.50/10
Singles/Bonus
1) A Simple Game Of Genius - 9.32/10
2) Alone On The Rope - 9.13/10
3) The Good Rebel - 7.05/10
4) Let The Lord Shine A Light On Me - 9.33/10
5) I'd Pick You Every Time - 6.70/10
BE (Average: 6.87/10)
1) Flick Of The Finger - 8.67/10
2) Soul Love - 7.07/10
3) Face The Crowd - 6.00/10
4) Second Bite Of The Apple - 4.87/10
5) Soon Come Tomorrow - 7.41/10
6) Iz Rite - 7.22/10
7) I'm Just Saying - 7.16/10
8) Don't Brother Me - 5.50/10
9) Shine A Light - 5.77/10
10) Ballroom Figured - 8.00/10
11) Start Anew - 7.96/10
Singles/Bonus
1) Dreaming Of Some Space - 3.33/10
2) The World's Not Set In Stone - 5.72/10
3) Back After The Break - 7.23/10
4) Off At The Next Exit - 8.31/10
5) Girls In Uniform - 5.28/10
6) Evil Eye - 7.05/10
Chasing Yesterday (Average: 8.33/10)
1) Riverman - 9.01/10
2) In The Heat Of The Moment - 8.03/10
3) The Girl With X-Ray Eyes - 7.62/10
4) Lock All The Doors - 8.11/10
5) The Dying Of The Light - 9.16/10
6) The Right Stuff - 8.60/10
7) While The Song Remains The Same - 8.51/10
8) The Mexican - 6.91/10
9) You Know We Can't Go Back - 8.39/10
10) Ballad Of The Mighty I - 8.99/10
Singles/Bonus
1) Do The Damage - 7.15/10
2) Revolution Song - 7.47/10
3) Freaky Teeth - 7.89/10
4) Leave My Guitar Alone - 7.12/10
5) Here's A Candle (For Your Birthday Cake) - 6.25/10
As You Were (Average: 7.77/10)
1) Wall Of Glass - 7.92/10
2) Bold - 8.15/10
3) Greedy Soul - 7.78/10
4) Paper Crown - 8.11/10
5) For What It's Worth - 8.12/10
6) When I'm In Need - 6.48/10
7) You Better Run - 6.95/10
8) I Get By - 7.32/10
9) Chinatown - 7.08/10
10) Come Back To Me - 8.58/10
11) Universal Gleam - 7.63/10
12) I've All I Need - 9.12/10
Singles/Bonus
1) Doesn't Have To Be That Way - 7.50/10
2) All My People / All Mankind - 6.15/10
3) I Never Wanna Be Like You - 5.62/10
Who Built The Moon? (Average: 6.94/10)
1) Fort Knox - 6.92/10
2) Holy Mountain - 7.44/10
3) Keep On Reaching - 6.99/10
4) It's A Beautiful World - 7.43/10
5) She Taught Me How To Fly - 9.26/10
6) Be Careful What You Wish For - 5.90/10
7) Black & White Sunshine - 6.53/10
8) Interlude (Wednesday Part 1) - 5.15/10
9) If Love Is The Law - 7.38/10
10) The Man Who Built The Moon - 8.56/10
11) End Credits (Wednesday Part 2) - 4.75/10
Singles/Bonus
1) Dead In The Water - 8.90/10
2) God Help Us All - 7.64/10
Black Star Dancing (Average: 6.86/10)
1) Black Star Dancing - 6.34/10
2) Rattling Rose - 6.40/10
3) Sail On - 7.83/10
Why Me? Why Not.
1) Shockwave - 7.32/10
2) One Of Us - 8.33/10
3) Once - 9.25/10
4) Now That I've Found You - 7.33/10
5) Halo - 6.48/10
6) Why Me? Why Not. - 7.95/10
7) Be Still - 7.97/10
8) Alright Now - ?

First Previous Next
Cover
There, beyond the mighty door, another world opened before their eyes. It was a world of cog and wheels, of halogen lights and of steam, where pistons and brass pipes were a part of the architecture just as much as stone or brick, if not more. The floors were uneven plates of rusted, corrugated metal worn down by the centuries and corroded by humidity, and the lights embedded in the walls were faint and strained to keep shining, their light also a hum that filled the spaces with noise. There was a gash in the ceiling, a wide aperture from where a ray of white moonlight shone in an inner garden that was overgrown and overrun by nature, reclaiming that space and other spaces with its green growths. For in fact, moss and lichen spread from there like an advancing tide, following the trail of humidity and feeding off the light and heat of the incandescent lights.
“It doesn’t lead to the surface.” Ishrin observed, looking at the ceiling and through the hole.
“Perhaps there is a hidden passage.” Lisette offered her explanation.
“Or maybe it’s just weird and strange like the rest of this place. Am I the only one?” Melina asked.
“You are not.” Lisette stated.
At times the lights flickered, the power that kept them running surging and then stabilizing again, and their hum was a scream, and the scream was agony of a place that was dying a slow death through the centuries. The door far behind them, ajar one second ago, slammed itself shut and the sound echoed.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Melina said. “It feels like everything is moving, beneath the surface.”
“I do have the same sensation.” Lisette said. “But we need to press on.”
Ishrin cocked his head. “Her bracers are on the line. Come on!”
Melina groaned. “Fine. Still creepy tho.”
Indeed, little sounds, groans and hisses of the pipes, strains of metal and mechanism seemed to come from all around. While what they could see was all perfectly still, the noises betrayed that somewhere below the apparent peaceful façade, things were alive and moving, and perhaps watching them with unknown means. Sir Westys’ and his team were walking cautiously now, their pride long forgotten, squeezed between Melina at the front and Lisette at the rear for more protection. They listened to the stronger adventurers’ conversations with a mixture of irritation – this was the case for Sir Westys – and envy at the much more relaxed attitude that only being a seasoned veteran could ever give them. This wasn’t to say that Ishrin and his team were being careless.
There were many things that could hurt them in the world. In fact, even though his coming to Noctis was relatively smooth, Ishrin learned very quickly on his adventures that the world was much more dangerous than it seemed. The mountain realm, for instance. That completely erased his sense of power he gained when he slew the Sycoraptor in the forest where he also met Lisette. And while encounters like that of Lucius in Obscuria still told the tale of a world where the true powerful people were rare in cities and whatnot, places like this revealed the other side of the coin: that dangers and powers beyond reckoning still dwelled beneath the surface, and one needed only look for them in the right places. Very much like his old world of Eternia. Except that here, he theorized, there was the guild. And what the guild did was maintain order and the apparent status quo in the cities and in the countryside around them, or more in general it kept order where order was needed for business to flourish, while confining danger to be only outside its sphere of protection.
Melina too was suddenly thrust in what seemed like a whole different world than what she was used to live in, where danger was everywhere and even her Tier 15 – that once she thought as being powerful with a power unobtainable by any but the luckiest – was just average.
The rooms were many. Ishrin led the way, at times stopping to check with his teammates, at other times to take in his surroundings. He had made another water compass and was holding it himself, letting it float next to him with a bit of effort using his telekinetic powers.
There was no magic here. The air was not devoid of it, but its presence in the air was no more than the usual suffused glow of ambient magic, and none of the walls or things that cluttered the corridor and rooms had any magic inside of them. This made Ishrin feel blind, in a different way than he did in the mountain realm where he was blinded by too much magic, more like he was in the absolute dark, with only a faint glow that was light, yes, but didn’t reveal anything, not even shapes. Of course, he still had his normal vision, but used as he was to having both senses at the same time, he felt extremely uncomfortable.
Not all was bad. The reactive armor, surrounding him but invisible, was charging and this made him feel like he was finally investing his overflowing mana into something for a later use. Beside him Liù was having a great time exploring the place, touching the little brass chandeliers with small halogen candles, examining the many copper and iron cogs on the floor, fallen from damaged pipes on the ceiling, and sometimes she even snuck into said pipes where they were large enough, only to then have to be cut free when she got stuck.
Everything was covered in grime. The greasy, dark fatty substance used to lubricate mechanisms and that was now mixed with dust, and plant matter. Footsteps echoed wetly.
From the distance, faint at the beginning but ever more present in the consciousness of the seven adventurers, a rhythmic clang of metal against metal reverberated through the corridors. Nobody could pinpoint where it was coming from, beyond the feeling that it was coming from deeper in the underground complex, for the sound traveled through the pipes and the hidden hatches in the walls, the service tunnels and the air vents, coming to them as a cloud of slightly delayed sounds from all directions.
An open space. The ceiling rose immediately after they crossed the threshold of a great gate that stood ajar, as if blasted out of its hinges, until it reached so high up that vapor and cooled down steam began to hide some of its features. Inside the fog were, like little searchlights, points of brightness that spread and diffused through the thick air until an orange hue was ever present up there. Below, the floor was uneven stone, cracked and wet, with moss and small ferns poking out of the cracks. Sometimes metal plates that were bolted to the stone were still visible under the vegetation, reflecting the cyan light that came from the far end of the room. There, three circular openings were faintly visible through the mists, and there was a strong light coming from behind them, and in that light the silhouette of three great machines could be seen. Great automata they were, with circular bodies and long, prehensile arms, and their heads were large squares that were dull and dark.
Until, suddenly, they weren’t. Deep, red and foreboding lights came to life like sinister eyes as a screech of grinding metal and awakening old mechanical pieces pierced the air and deafened the adventurers. Everyone almost jumped to their feet, not even having had enough time to take three steps into the room before they were shaken out of their contemplation by the sudden sound. Not everyone reacted the same. Ishrin took in the room he was in, immediately spotting the three now moving figures who were dragging themselves free from the alcoves they were in. The shadows they projected through the misty air were deep chasms of darkness, and the three circles where they once stood immobile revealed a path beyond, that was unreachable.
Melina and Lisette both panicked. In the commotion they lost sight of Sir Westys and his party, the four boys having seemingly vanished into the fog. There were shapes and shadows moving in the distance, but they were faint, and far, and it was impossible to tell if it was them or just the many reflections of the shiny and wet, greasy metal that played with their senses, with their perception. Their panic didn’t last long however, and they both showed their competence and experience, their focus homing in laser-like on the enemies ahead.
The central automaton was closest. Its size was the smallest of the three, but even then it stood at more than four times as tall as Ishrin, and with only the sound of the metal groaning and the hiss of pneumatics, it raised one of its many limbs of welded plates up in the air and slammed down. Immediately the limb hit a field of invisible telekinetic force and was pushed to the side, but it didn’t happen with the ease that everyone was expecting it to happen. In fact, Ishrin had to kneel on the ground and his knee had dug deep into the rock, cracking it and leaving a deep dent when he, slowly, pushed himself back to his feet. He strained.
“Battle formation!” Ishrin yelled, immediately jumping to the side to dodge another incoming arm. The other two automata were each converging towards one of the two girls, and they were bigger, although slower and with less appendages.
Two grunts of strain and effort told him all that he needed to know. In a matter of milliseconds, the battle was on. Sparks raged from his right side, where Lisette dashed towards the metal construct with her blades unsheathed, and was slashing at it while dancing around its body, climbing on it, dodging the prehensile limbs that uselessly slammed into the ground and broke unseen pipes that began to spew gases in the air. She searched for gaps, weak spots where she could plunge her blades and sever vital parts of the grand machine of animated metal.
On his right, the bright flashes of magical green, tinted with a little hint of white and slight blue he had never seen before, were the sign that Melina too was engaging with her enemy.
This made him relax enough to allow him to focus on his own opponent. Liù was also orbiting him like a small sentry, deploying small faint lasers that mapped the structure of the automaton, until they focused on a particular point at the end of one of its limbs.
Danger :o
Ishrin jumped to the side, slightly diverting the giant arm, and firing a Magic Pebble with his sword at it. The projectile hit the metal and dug into it, melting it and leaving behind a circular hole roughly the size of a fist, red with heat and hissing. But the damage was minimal, for it only hit plate and not vital moving parts. As he dodged, he tried to see what Liù was highlighting for him, and he noticed the multicolored scattering of the light, the hue of a crystal he recognized. He had seen it last in Obscuria, tipping an arrowhead that was capable of penetrating Tier 13 defenses with ease.
“Careful—” he tried to warn his teammates but had to dash again and ended his sentence with a grunt.
From the other side of the room, through the clang of metal, he saw a glimpse of Lisette weaving around a similar crystal, coating a long flexible sword at the end of one of her automaton’s limb. From behind instead came the wild rush of wind of Melina’s magic, and a strained yell.
“Noticed! They have crystal blades!” she yelled when she had a small window of rest, before disappearing again in a flash of verdant energy to dash at her opponent.
Ishrin’s automaton was different than theirs. It shifted, and its limbs reorganized and changed until they morphed into different weapons: hammers, flexible swords, whips. And all these weapons were coated with the same crystal, the same dangerous substance that could hurt him somehow.
Suddenly a bright red light was in front of his eyes. He had gotten distracted, but Liù was ever watchful and had highlighted the vector of impact of the automaton’s flexible sword as it descended upon him with a red hologram, and there were ghostly images of him dodging and reposting to the attack, simulating what he could do to counter it. He grinned, taking a stance and exploding out with the full strength of his Tier 11 power, and he used telekinesis to push himself against the ground and change course mid-air until he landed right where one of the thing’s limbs were attached to its body. Before the automaton could react, he blasted the joint with Pebble after Pebble and then jumped away. With the joint weakened, he pulled at it from afar and yanked it free, and it came loose in a shower of black ooze that sizzled and smoked where it hit the ground.
The recoil sent him sprawling on his back. Even though Liù was there to catch him, he still ended up on the ground, feeling the wet of the stone and the odd warmth of a gas leak on his back. His pupils widened, and his mind raced. A giant crystal-coated hammer was descending upon him. His heart sped up. This was a slip-up. And almost fatal one. He could not get out in time.
The hammer hit, and for a moment there was silence. It was like even the other fights were momentarily suspended, as if both the automata and the girls were watching with their breath stuck in their throat was had happened to Ishrin. There was a small cloud of dust that had risen where the hammer had pulverized the stone, and sent Ishrin’s body several layers of pipes and service tunnels below the surface.
The hammer slowly came loose. The crystal on its surface was cracked.
A blue light. The small holographic body of Liù, surrounding her real indestructible body that was the SPAWN AI cube, flew out and up to the ceiling as if running away from something.
The dust slowly settled around the crater. There was only the sound of hissing vapor and dripping water.
Everything was still.
Lisette and Melina held their breath. Time ticked and ticked. Nothing was coming out of the hole.
The girls could see that Ishrin’s opponent was now turning against them, to team up with the other automata and finally tip the scales of the battle.
A single thought on their mind.
“We will fight until the end. Even if we die.”
Resolve in their eyes, they prepared for their last battle.
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Royal Road is where you can help me the most! Luca DR's Fictions Royal Road
My Stories
Everywhere at the end of Time
My Series
Earth's chosen
Isekai of the Ultimate Ritualist
Immense Space

My mother and I have had a very rough relationship for most of my life. When I was around 10 or so, she started drinking a lot and she quit her job that she had for over 10 years. Because I was the oldest child, that meant a lot of the responsibilities came to me with my younger siblings (there are 4 of them, 2 of them were literaly toddlers/babies). She had many spouts of working small jobs, which meant I'd have to babysit on the days we were over there (my parents are separated and myself and 2 other siblings would go to my dad's for half the week, the other two have different fathers). But then even when she wasn't working, her drinking got worse, and I'd still have to babysit. This went on until I was about 14, and CPS got involved and took us all from her. I'm 24 now, almost 25, and things have improved between my mother and I, but not much. She was barely around during my teen years. She had no place for me to stay when my dad and stepmother packed my things and kicked me out a month after graduating high-school, because of course, she was still drinking constantly.
Since then she doesn't drink as much now, so she is easier to have a relationship with. But she also expects me to just fully forgive her and trust her after all of those years I lost taking care of her children, going through my teen years with no support, and having to find other family to live with when I got kicked out at 18 with no driver's license or job. As I'm getting older, I'm realizing that not only is my mother an alcoholic, but she is a narcissist. And the more I'm learning about who she is, the more I realize, maybe I don't want a relationship with her at all. It's crazy because this is all I wanted when I was 15, 16, 17. I just wanted my mom like everyone else had theirs.
But some things have happened recently that have caused me to maybe think about cutting contact. I'll try to explain it without dragging it on too long, so I'm sorry if I fail at doing so:
About a month ago, I told her a movie was being re-released and I was really excited. We both really enjoy this movie, so she said we will have to make a plan to go see it. Well about 2 weeks ago, I visited 2 of my sisters, and they told me they went and saw the movie. All of them, with our mother, as a whole family (minus one siblings who lives in another state). But no one invited me. I was hurt by this, but not too badly, but I did decide to confront my mother about it, since I was the one who suggested we go in the first place.She immediately pushed all blame onto me and said she didn't invite me to come along because I'm "always busy." So you can't send a fucking text? How hard is that? Am I crazy for thinking that is out of line to ask my mom to at least try to invite me? If I was busy then oh well, but she could've at least tried.
So anyways she said that her and I could just go. I told her I didn't really want to and I wasn't feeling like it, because it really would've been fun to experience it with the whole family, and not just taking me because I was an afterthought. She gets mad and says that if I wanted to go so bad that I should've made plans well before they went. So once again, it's my fault that I wasn't invited, because I shouldve made the plan first??? She can't just apologize and say she should've just sent a quick text. Since that happened, I've been more distant because her reaction hurt my feelings, and I'm dealing with a lot of other stuff mentally. My mom has a tendency to text me literally every day sometimes (when she doesn't go back to her old ways and go on a drinking bender). I don't text anyone every day, and keeping up with the constant communication is very exhausting to me.
So a week has past since the movie debacle, and we're on to last Monday now. She texted me asking how I'm doing at around noon. I was very busy with work until around 4:30, and spent time decompressing and wasn't on my phone. Then at 6 pm, I get a knock on my apartment door. It's my mother. And she stopped by to make sure I was okay because I didn't answer at noon. Let me repeat that. My mother was so "worried" about her adult, nearly 25 year old daughter, not answering her for 6 hours. 6 hours!!! Not even a whole fucking day! And she knows I work. She knew I was busy that day.
So I get a bit defensive and she immediately gets mad and says I should appreciate that she cares about me enough to take the time to come to my house and check up on me. I simply tell her that I am an adult, and that I should be allowed not to text her every single day. I tried setting a boundary and saying that it is stressful for me to have to keep up with the constant communication. She literally just walked away while I was in the middle of a sentence and hasn't spoken to me since.
So here's one last bit of info. One of my sisters ended up being put into my grandparents care during the CPS stuff, and has stayed with them since. She lives in another state with them, so we don't get to see her very often. I have some past issues with my grandparents, my grandfather especially. Without getting into details, he made me very uncomfortable a few years ago while they were living in the same state as me. They were who I went to live with when I was kicked out of my dad's. I told my grandmother what he did to make me uncomfortable and she ignored me and chose not to believe me. I worry about my sister and have tried to get her taken out of their care in case my grandfather tries to be weird with her, but my hands are tied unfortunately.
So fast forward to this most recent weekend. I get a text from my grandmother saying they are in town, and they'd love to go to dinner. I made en excuse as to why I couldn't, because I have no interest in being in the same room as my grandparents, but of course I'd love to see my sister. They are here until next Saturday, so I still have time. But I didn't even know my sister would be in the state, because my mom failed to tell me.
So I texted one of my other sisters today to ask if they've seen her with our mom yet, or if there was a plan to. She replied "we all saw her yesterday and will probably see her again before she goes." I just started sobbing.
So my mom is so angry with me over me setting a boundary and asking for space last week when she showed up to my place, that she A) could not even give me a heads up my sister would be here and B) won't even tell me when they're seeing her so I don't have to put myself in an uncomfortable position by having to see my grandparents. She knows what my grandpa did and that I don't want a relationship with him or my grandmother. I don't even know if this is the right place for this post, but I am just so hurt and baffled. How can my mom not see that this all could've been avoided if she hadn't blamed me for her not inviting me to the movie, and then if she hadn't gotten so angry with me for setting what I believe to be a pretty normal boundary for an adult?
Any advice or kind words would be appreciated. I am super sad that this is happening. I think it may be time to cut off contact with her. I know it may seem so dramatic for me to end my relationship with her, but it's a long time coming. She always disrespects me and when I stand up for myself, she never apologizes and instead finds a way to make it my fault. I'm so tired of sitting here wondering why I deserve to be left out, especially when my siblings are alive and well mainly because of my raising them all those years, when I should've been allowed to be a kid and have fun. She treats the other kids so different than she treats me, and it hurts. I'm so tired of being my mothers punching bag. And I am more than tired of being punished by trying to live a normal and peaceful life after such a traumatic childhood. But then if she can't bully me, she starts texting the other 2 that are the next oldest when she's drunk, and I don't want that for them. They shouldn't have to deal with what I did. I want to protect them, but I also know with my mental health being as bad as it is, that I cannot carry the weight of my mother and all that comes with her forever. I'm just very lost and sad. Thank you to all who reads this and to anyone who may comment. I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to let me vent about this.

This is a collection of short stories that have something to do with current events. Enjoy.
2023-03-20

The Uneven Divide - Part 3

(Part 1 and 2 in first post of Collection)
“I see a city on a disk. Though all the powers of the world would like to watch it fall, it won’t. I look at it floating above it all. Above There’s political turmoil. Beyond the grip of local markets, this city spins around the globe. You make your business everyone’s, and in turn, everyone profits from your presence.”
I see a land so cold,” I continued. “That it smokes as if it’s on fire. Like the Mother Sphere pulls you up, the frost brings your people together. This inseparable unity warms each building by your people’s sheer attraction for the Lands of Over-There. What us foreigners see as a frigid barren disk of ill fortuity, where people live barred up inside out of necessity, it’s instead a fortress from anything cold, which hosts every fervent hearted opportunity.”
The lock beeped. The door crept open. She kicked her feet off. A skinny man with both our ages walked in. He was wearing a three-piece suit. This wasn’t uncommon, as each layer made the heating bill less hard to look at. His name and the chain on his matte black visitor’s badge were contrasted with gold.
They spoke in their language.
He said something like hi, how are you, what are you doing here?
She answered something along the lines of hi, I’m doing great, in a meeting, you?
He went on saying precisely “I’m doing twice well”—which is an interesting expression meaning; I was already doing well, but from the moment you asked about me, I started doing twice as well—then I think he said he was also here for a meeting, and “who is he?”
She told him my name, then his name to me. Whom I will refer to as Gotnaym of Over-There.
He greeted me, I presented myself with a customary nod. Which could’ve been considered curt in our culture.
Then it got too wordy for me to understand. They switched languages as he walked over to extend his hand.
Mid-shake, he said in perfect speech, “She tells me your consultancy in There is no circus. I might have some questions later, my son is investing abroad.”
Then he laughed. I tried my hardest to make my confusion pass off as surprise, all while making sure not to loosen my grip nor lose the tempo of the motion, as I smiled in what I hoped to have looked like an agreeing pose.
“He’s not interested in any clown ventures I hope, Mr. Gotnaym,” I said. “I’d be out of my league if he were.”
“That’s exactly why I’d hire you,” he explained. “Thankfully, we’re a line of miners, Mr. Consultant. Hard-working people, who bring along like-minded experts. There are no full-time artists on these disks, I’m afraid.”
I was ready to let go but he wasn’t as willing.
“It’s always a fine moment to meet someone glad to buy into their family,” I concluded. “But I might not be the right hire for advice on how you ought to spend your own money. I don’t know if she's told you my line of work?”
This made him laugh some more. He was still shaking my hand.
“She has, yes!” He looked at her after placing his free hand on my shoulder side. She was completely motionless. “Funny man,” he said in his mother tongue.
“Don’t let me interrupt you, Mr. Consultant. Please continue while we wait,” he said, finally releasing his grip to grab a seat by the backrest.
“While we wait?” I asked him.
“I just is inform,” she said. “Next meeting is push to soon. Temporary lockdown here. Please continuing, Mr. Consultant. You no leaving now.”
“Emergency?” I read in their eyes the impending dread they covered up with an interest in listening only, so they wouldn’t have to think.
“Gladly,” I said. “I guess I’ll find out soon. Thank you for giving me this time out of your day.” She had some relief mixed in with her emotions. The rest of her micro-expressions were of a combination I’ve never noticed twice. It was too particular to recreate in writing or in a film.
“Mr. Consultant talking how city infrastructure be one with immigration,” she explained. “I asking what he see in city.”
“Where was I?” I asked me.
“You were reporting how the cold brings us people together,” he told me.
Wondering if their door wasn’t soundproofed had flooded my head with blood, which drew along this fresh thought frenzy and the terrible idea that anyone could’ve heard us earlier.
“Right,” I said to start hushing my blushing. “The problem. Your city is nothing more than a cold flatland sprinkled with tall boxes where folks come and freeze to death. That’s what they see from below, down in There. When I booked my ticket, my friends argued about who would get what if I didn’t make it back.”
The suitedman sat down.
“To outsiders, to the frigid ones, these lands get people to ratify off on an early will. I mean—I signed a waiver just for the elevator ride… Too many who travel to your disks don’t come back home. Most get working visas. The deal is: you spend four months a year here, and that pays for six of vacation. The smart ones, like I’m sure your son is, do five years to invest in There’s Venus coin traps. Then they sit back and never visit again. They risk their days for the money. Not for your city, not for the people here. They say they come to live out the rest of their lives at the mines. Then if they’re lucky enough not to get shipped home as a popsicle, they go to their folk waving their phat wads of cash in the hands with the least fingers lost to the frostbite.”
“I asked the locals last night. Why would you sell everything for this? Leave your families, abandon your lifestyles—What pulled you in? They all gave me the same answer. The same one I have. The first time I came here, it only took me two days. Two days to fall in love.”
“You maybe fall in loving after no long enough, Mr. Consultant,” she said.
“Are you telling me you don’t feel the same?”
“I think,” Gotnaym interjected. Then he paused. Sort of like cutting someone off on the freeway only to slow down right after.
“I think what my colleague is trying to express here … is that all of this sounds a bit too poetic.”
He looked at her to see if she’d agree. Which, she did.
“I also think we’re both happy you really are loving the experience here, Mr. Consultant. But it takes more than feelings to move to a place like this. The ones who do immigrate are steadily emigrating in larger numbers. The workforce won’t meet the upcoming demand. We start terraforming the east perimeter straight after the election next quarter. That’s a projected two years to find enough workers, build and house multiple villages. Provided the right candidate wins.”
At that moment, I was glad to have mistakenly not skipped our philosophy professor’s class on The Ethics of Language. I got my dates mixed up and thought it was a mandatory attendance lab. She explained how Over-There’s main export was subject to ethical scrutiny. They extracted such a lucrative resource, that they could afford to import all else. From food to people. Two entirely different things, that they’d fail to source locally in any useful quantity. Therein laid the dilemma. Their dialect had evolved so as to not differentiate between workers or wheat in regard to imports. As for commodities in business, they began treating both as such on paper. Written words have real-world applications. That same export was also what their disk was made of. One giant mother-cluster of concentrated minerals.
“How long is a mine active on these disks?” I asked.
“About a half lifetime depending on the weather. You’re looking at the investment of the century, my Frozen-Nozen. Literally.”
This suddenly explained why I so easily passed off as a consultant. At least, that’s what I was thinking then. They were probably ready to pay everyone and their kids to get as many opinions on this as possible. I can’t believe I used to give mine out for free.
“Frozen-Nozen?” I asked.
“It’s a term for those who aren’t afraid of a bit of outdoor labour,” he said.
“I see. Couldn’t you just advertise that fact in There?” I pitched.
“I don’t get it.” He mimed a billboard with his hands. “Come up to Over-There, and freeze your nose off for a living wage.”
“That’s not what I meant, but really, why not? People are nomadic opportunists. They’ll move and let the frost nip at their nose if you promise them a round fiddy years of job stability. If they become permanent residents.”
“No one plans on spending fiddy years in a work village, Mr. Consultant. They’re built as temporary housing. They share a shower per unit.”
“Isn’t that an issue? People need a good quality of entertainment to stay someplace so dull when they can glance at other options. They’ll want something they can’t get anywhere else. Couple that with the appeal of privacy. Your child population levels are dropping? Intimacy widely increases from zero to one shower per household. I’d start hiring full-time artists to get some inspiration flowing. Let couples make their own entertainment. Get some comfier architecture. They'll make babies. Or get your engineers to make leisure versions of your military rovers. With enough room for two. Watch them hit wild speeds in the east bumpy lands around their camps.”
“How much would that cost?” He asked. To my relief, he then immediately reconsidered. “No, these plans are staying under permafrost. We want to attract workers, not activists.”
I must’ve looked confused.
“Much leaving people, because activist come Over-There and saying mine is kill nature. Much tourism satire is Come visit before disk is all holes,” she quoted.
“If it’s really destroying the ecosystems then I’m afraid there isn’t much—”
“What ecosystem?” He interrupted. “Nothing but people live here, Mr. Consultant. And we only cover 15% of our whole island. Most of us are all in this city. The claims are false.”
“Then why do enough of both your people and mine believe these activists?” I insisted. “Who I’ve never heard of, so they must all be online. Is complaining just something to do? How does that affect where people live?”
“Emotion of being … more purposeful than normal people,” she said. “Important maybe to many action people. But also, wireless community There having very addictivity.”
“Adictivity?” I asked. “I mean—or, what do you mean by addiction?”
She explained how our wireless communications in There were designed to get individuals to react before thinking.
Anyone reading this today won’t understand the complexity of the issue, so I’ll try to translate the way people like your great-great-grandparents used to communicate. I suggest you ask them about it if they’ve opted for resurrection therapy.
We had these sorts of primitive portable screens that were usually carried around in pockets. Pockets were these holes in our clothes that would hold stuff. When we mostly owned material items, we needed a method of having those things at our disposition. And because we only have two biological hands, most would prefer to walk about with lighter objects in all kinds of pouches. From books to babies, bags of fabrics were significant to us.
The most important pouch was the pocket. That’s the place where people put stuff they wanted to hold closest to their person. That’s because not having them nearby caused an immediate sense of emergency. Their money, their analog keys, their smokables (non digital drug consumable), the time of one day divided into 86,400 different times… Most would also keep their touch screens in their pockets.
We’d communicate through a revolutionary medium termed, “social media.” If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s because presently, that’s our only form of expression left. So we just call it talking.
Fun fact: in 1402, both words were banned if put together. For all generations coming after the criminalization of social media, to try and curb the addiction, so we could gain control over the technocratic overlords of the virtual space. Clearly, that didn’t work, but I won’t bore you with the details in this format for much longer.
To quickly finish this history lesson then, we nicknamed those screens “phones.” They were these physical things that you’d feel right on your skin. And you had to push around to type words or record either your organic image or sounds, or disproportionately more often, those of a cat. A real cat. They aren’t a digital invention! Then you’d post those representations in places called “the Internet.” The Internet would be referred to as the world today.
Humans had to mind-travel via their phones to access the world before. And they’d navigate through it by utilizing their biological hands like a bunch of Neanderthals. On Social Media in the Internet realm, other people would have to move their fingers around their screen to come look at what you posted. Can you imagine? It’s like if today, someone had to do something to hear you.
They would then react to what they saw. Kind of how people used to communicate what they thought through their body language. The only difference was that in the Old World, a public would react to a speaker on stage, and everyone went on their way afterwards. No longer under the influential energy of a cheering or booing crowd, they could think about the message. On the Internet, it would stay up, and we could keep reacting to it. Even years after something was said. The public reaction would get louder and louder and it was like it never stopped to calm down and reflect. Excitement is not a friend of thought.
As people posted more and more, they did less and less of anything else. The goal of the communication was only to react. Always as fast as possible. People started doing activities only so they could post. They lost the enjoyment of doing for the sake of doing. Everything became a reason to get a reaction out of others. Everyone became amateur stage performers. Professionals had to be trained in that regard. They had to learn how to handle themselves when their work would become a series of reactions to trigger a chain of reactions. The users of primitive Social Media never stood a chance.
It’s what she explained during our impromptu board meeting that afternoon. It’s what changed the way I saw the world as well. I watched as her theory turned out to be sufficiently accurate, and I caught myself wondering for a moment if she hadn’t had something to do with the unravelling of the events.
If you’re Neanderthal enough to remember the sound of genuine vocal chords, I invite you to imagine how she expressed it all to me in her riveting broken accent. It’s why I wrote it how she said it.
The year is 1282 again. It’s cold, the exit doors are locked down, I have an actual phone in my physical pocket…
She asked me to see mine. A ritual at the time. So I showed her. She didn’t look impressed, so I asked her to show me hers. It was nice. Real nice. So nice in fact, that I started feeling a bit shy and ended up subtly putting mine away as she explained.
“People addicted to making posting. More posting, more liking, more emotion of purposeful existing. But so many content, so much other people also looking for … valid of purposeful life, because now, day no with phone is like food no with taste. Is boring. Why eat? Why do anything? But problem happen when truth is people wanting. Because goal of social media is react, react, react. Chain reaction like nuclear. Have be fast. Social media not receive, think, maybe react if wise. Social media no survive this way, very boring if not in-person meeting for exchange serious ideas. No win Internet point for taking time, finding truth, telling people wrong too. No good feeling also, if thinking, no posting, no outside influence saying yes you living and you be valid person. So no react, no valid existence.”
She paused. We both glanced at one another to confirm what we had already decided. Neither of us were going to interrupt her train of ideas. I was impressed. Not by what she was saying, though. It wasn’t anything we didn’t know. It was more that she could almost speak our language when she carried herself in her flow.
“People define value by number of attention they getting. They getting attention by posting posting posting, reacting reacting reacting, and no thinking thinking then maybe posting after long. Thinking bad for business if business is price of reacting. Business need people pushing button not after long. Social media Model is job of push button. Worker build city, push button too you thinking. But building infrastructure, opportunity, thinking involved more than even writer, Mr. Consultant. Bad thinking kill in building city.”
It took me a second to break character. Then I remembered who I really was. Eventually I realized she had just insulted me. I gave a warm chuckle. This disrupted Gotnaym’s attention. She went on.
“Influencer is job of push button to getting more people pushing button before thinking. Influencer is good if follower push button with no thinking. Even in war business, reacting not always best strategy. Pushing … gun button?”
“Trigger,” he helped.
“Pushing trigger no thinking is not same like pushing trigger because quick thinking. Influencer like is … study with school only to becoming teacher after. But only attaining knowledge in reacting more. Not attaining quick thinking. Not same. This worrying functionary like Mr. Fore Gotnaym, because how control crowd online that only goal is react react react, no thinking? On Internet, better no thinking. More reacting, more people see their reacting first and reacting to it so more people also get reacting, more people only agree for attention, and more message get famous. More message famous, no worry if true, more people believe. More people believe, less people believe when truth happen. Look at phone, Mr. Consultant.”
I took it out of my pocket.
“Make posting,” she said. “I showing you.”
The suitedman visibly refrained himself from stopping me. I was two days behind on checking in with my Internet experiment, so I did what she asked. When I connected to Social Media, my feed was filled with alerts on posts. Something about disinformation and people fighting over the truth of the universe and if it was really the end for us. The media application wasn’t this agitated two days ago. Warnings on misinformation were mostly centred around past events, never regarding upcoming ones from what I had seen before.
“Is this why we’re in a lockdown?” I asked.
“Yes…” she reacted.
“So why does it say that it’s all a fabrication?”
The room fell dead quiet. Her bottom lip quivered and she turned around to burst in muffled sobs. She just broke down. It was surreal. The man stood up to whisper something. She nodded with her head down, so he walked towards me. Then past me and to the windows, making sure I followed him by spinning in my chair. My back ended up facing her.
“Under different circumstances, you wouldn’t be locked down with us, Mr. Tourist,” he said.
Uh-oh, I thought. This culture seemed to have developed a taste for cleverly employing names.
“But there’s no use in locking you up for espionage either, it looks like your people are willing to let you rot anyway.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. She sniffled and told us I could turn around now.
“Don’t worry kid. You’re either the best spy I’ve met and you can die with dignity, or you’re the worst ever, and you’re worth more to us as living propaganda if we make it out of this,” he said, patting my shoulder as he walked by.
“I didn’t get your answer,” I mumbled as I turned around. Then I understood that he was trying to make her laugh.
“Either you’re the best,” he repeated. “Because I haven’t heard even a single high-school rumour about you. Or you’re the worst, because you were really a shit consultant just then.”
She drew in a chopped breath, which she released in a soft chuckle of relief. I thought maybe this was a prank. But then why was she crying?
I asked her what was going on. She nodded at him and he told me he wasn’t joking. They really considered that I was a spy from There. This theory didn’t hold any water in the end. The umbrella company under which the most popular international platforms operated, had somehow been convinced to place a warning on the forecast of a natural disaster headed for the disks. The corporation happened to have all their servers in There’s jurisdiction. All the privately owned media companies followed suit just to try and survive.
Gotnaym explained how anyone with any scientific authority who had attempted to voice their doubts had immediately been shadowbanned. They injected their profiles with a fake number of views and likes, and used bots to make it look like there were people engaging with their content. As far as the whole globe was convinced, as far as the citizens of Over-There were concerned, this admonition had been discredited a month before the announcement of the disaster. The United OV Body sent out an emergency text message, an even more primitive form of communication, confirming the threat to their civilians, but it was in vain. The videos debunking the warning had timestamps dating too far back. And the Internet had already decided that it was all a hoax. Eighteen world leading scientists, all saying it was propaganda. The people in this city didn’t believe they were about to die.
How could I have missed this? Especially if I had checked everything everywhere online before buying my ticket?
Like a kid again, it slipped out.
“Why?”
He rubbed his thumb and two fingers together. Money.
“Environmental warfare is not a crime, Mr. Tourist. And you seem to be collateral damage to them.”
They showed me a video of myself reassuring the world that I was okay, and that no one on this disk believed any of the disinformation propagated by the unhinged astronomers. That Over-There’s authorities were perfectly aware that it was all a hoax. It was dated two hours before I set foot on the disk. On the plus side, I never did get over a hundred million views before. To most of the world, I was a hero, here to bring down the anti-science disinformation machine. They were looking at an AI-generated video of me. They even got my voice right. My family had liked my video. My dad had sent me a message saying he was proud.
I looked up and plunged my eyes in her frightened face. It stripped me forever of any good feelings. In one hour, I felt the lifelong dissatisfaction of a hard drug addict. That day, I lost my faith in reality. To this day, I cannot enjoy anything. Not after what happened. I feel too guilty.
“Shouldn’t technological warfare be a crime, though?” I said.
“You could call a stick with a pointy rock on its end a technological advancement.”
It was becoming trickier to think straight. How can you? When you’re about to take a final blow, and there’s nowhere to run, no strength to block. It was like getting pre-concussed.
“How long until it happens?”
“It might not. We’re waiting on people to show up here and determine if it can be avoided. So try to think of something else in the meantime,” he said.
We said nothing.
“There is one thing neither of you can avoid, though… So you might as well make your peace with it now,” he added.
“What it is?” She asked.
“Mr. Tourist is about to meet your father.” He said. Then he looked at me. “Or is it Mr. Consultant to him?”

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Alien: Isolation	1.7 TF2	$3.56 PP	-
Aliens: Colonial Marines Collection	1.3 TF2	$2.75 PP	-
Amnesia: The Dark Descent	0.7 TF2	$1.4 PP	-
Among Us	1.5 TF2	$2.96 PP	-
Among the Sleep - Enhanced Edition	0.4 TF2	$0.83 PP	-
Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey	2.0 TF2	$4.13 PP	-
Aragami	0.5 TF2	$0.93 PP	-
Arizona Sunshine	2.0 TF2	$4.12 PP	-
Arma 3 Apex Edition	1.6 TF2	$3.23 PP	-
Arma 3 Contact Edition	2.3 TF2	$4.79 PP	-
Arma 3 Jets	1.0 TF2	$1.97 PP	-
Arma 3 Marksmen	0.8 TF2	$1.62 PP	-
Arma 3	1.7 TF2	$3.56 PP	-
Assetto Corsa Competizione	2.6 TF2	$5.24 PP	-
Assetto Corsa Ultimate Edition	2.7 TF2	$5.59 PP	-
Automobilista 2	3.4 TF2	$6.98 PP	-
Autonauts	0.4 TF2	$0.83 PP	-
BATTLETECH - Mercenary Collection	1.2 TF2	$2.4 PP	-
BIGFOOT	4.2 TF2	$8.67 PP	-
BIOMUTANT	2.0 TF2 Refer To My Other Thread	$4.2 PP Refer To My Other Thread	Humble Choice (Mar 2023)
BPM: BULLETS PER MINUTE	0.6 TF2	$1.2 PP	-
BROFORCE	1.1 TF2	$2.18 PP	-
Baba Is You	1.4 TF2	$2.84 PP	-
Back 4 Blood	4.8 TF2	$9.86 PP	-
Bad North: Jotunn Edition	0.8 TF2	$1.73 PP	-
Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition	0.4 TF2	$0.78 PP	-
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition	0.4 TF2	$0.9 PP	-
Bang-On Balls: Chronicles	2.9 TF2	$5.99 PP	-
Banished	2.1 TF2	$4.31 PP	-
Barotrauma	1.4 TF2	$2.97 PP	-
Batman - The Telltale Series	0.9 TF2	$1.85 PP	-
Batman Arkham Collection	1.2 TF2	$2.4 PP	-
Batman: Arkham Knight	0.6 TF2	$1.22 PP	-
Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series	1.0 TF2	$2.03 PP	-
Batman™: Arkham Knight Premium Edition	1.4 TF2	$2.93 PP	-
Batman™: Arkham Origins	0.6 TF2	$1.21 PP	-
Batman™: Arkham VR	0.6 TF2	$1.17 PP	-
Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II	1.5 TF2	$3.09 PP	-
Battlefleet Gothic: Armada	0.8 TF2	$1.7 PP	-
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock	0.5 TF2	$1.0 PP	-
Battlezone Gold Edition	2.0 TF2	$4.17 PP	-
Besiege	1.6 TF2	$3.25 PP	-
Beyond Blue	2.0 TF2	$4.04 PP	-
Beyond The Wire	0.4 TF2	$0.78 PP	-
Beyond Two Souls	1.7 TF2	$3.56 PP	-
BioShock Collection	1.0 TF2	$2.11 PP	-
BioShock Infinite	0.9 TF2	$1.76 PP	-
Bioshock Infinite: Season Pass	0.8 TF2	$1.54 PP	-
Blacksad - Under the Skin	0.5 TF2	$0.93 PP	-
Blair Witch	1.1 TF2	$2.27 PP	-
Blood Bowl 2 - Legendary Edition	0.9 TF2	$1.75 PP	-
Blood Bowl 2	0.5 TF2	$0.99 PP	-
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night	1.7 TF2	$3.53 PP	-
Boomerang Fu	0.6 TF2	$1.27 PP	-
Borderlands 2 VR	3.6 TF2	$7.39 PP	-
Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition	2.9 TF2	$6.02 PP	-
Borderlands 3	1.5 TF2	$3.0 PP	-
Borderlands 3: Director's Cut	1.5 TF2	$3.06 PP	-
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection	3.1 TF2	$6.33 PP	-
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel	0.6 TF2	$1.17 PP	-
Brutal Legend	0.6 TF2	$1.21 PP	-
Bully: Scholarship Edition	3.0 TF2	$6.1 PP	-
Bus Simulator 18	1.7 TF2	$3.56 PP	-
CHUCHEL Cherry Edition	0.5 TF2	$0.95 PP	-
Call of Cthulhu	1.0 TF2	$2.06 PP	-
Call of Duty: WWII	12.5 TF2	$25.54 PP	-
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger	0.6 TF2	$1.18 PP	-
Call to Arms - Basic Edition	2.3 TF2	$4.79 PP	-
Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront	5.4 TF2	$10.98 PP	-
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018	0.9 TF2	$1.83 PP	-
Carcassonne - Tiles & Tactics	0.6 TF2	$1.19 PP	-
Celeste	2.7 TF2	$5.44 PP	-
Chess Ultra	0.7 TF2	$1.44 PP	-
Children of Morta	0.7 TF2	$1.51 PP	-
Chivalry 2	3.2 TF2	$6.54 PP	-
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare	0.5 TF2	$1.04 PP	-
Chronicon	1.6 TF2	$3.18 PP	-
Cities: Skylines Deluxe Edition	1.4 TF2	$2.93 PP	-
Clone Drone in the Danger Zone	3.1 TF2	$6.29 PP	-
Code Vein	2.0 TF2	$4.09 PP	-
Coffee Talk	2.0 TF2	$4.12 PP	-
Company of Heroes 2 - Ardennes Assault	1.8 TF2	$3.71 PP	-
Company of Heroes 2 - The Western Front Armies	0.8 TF2	$1.72 PP	-
Company of Heroes 2	0.6 TF2	$1.13 PP	-
Company of Heroes 2: Master Collection	6.0 TF2	$12.28 PP	-
Company of Heroes Complete Pack	5.4 TF2	$11.07 PP	-
Company of Heroes	1.7 TF2	$3.52 PP	-
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts	0.8 TF2	$1.67 PP	-
Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor	2.0 TF2	$4.14 PP	-
Conan Exiles	1.6 TF2	$3.21 PP	-
Construction Simulator 2015	1.2 TF2	$2.46 PP	-
Contagion	0.5 TF2	$1.08 PP	-
Control Ultimate Edition	1.7 TF2 Refer To My Other Thread	$3.43 PP Refer To My Other Thread	Humble Heroines: Warriors, Dreamers, and God Slayers
Crash Bandicoot™ N. Sane Trilogy	7.9 TF2	$16.17 PP	-
Crawl	1.7 TF2	$3.49 PP	-
Creaks	0.4 TF2	$0.73 PP	-
Creed: Rise to Glory™	2.2 TF2	$4.45 PP	-
Crusader Kings II: Royal Collection	2.5 TF2	$5.18 PP	-
Crusader Kings III	3.4 TF2	$7.01 PP	-
CryoFall	0.4 TF2	$0.76 PP	-
Crysis® 2 Maximum Edition	0.8 TF2	$1.72 PP	-
Cultist Simulator	0.7 TF2	$1.39 PP	-
DARK SOULS™ III Deluxe Edition	23.8 TF2	$48.76 PP	-
DEATHLOOP	2.1 TF2	$4.25 PP	-
DIRT 5	4.0 TF2	$8.19 PP	-
DMC - Devil May Cry	0.6 TF2	$1.15 PP	-
DRAGON BALL FIGHTERZ - Ultimate Edition	4.8 TF2	$9.87 PP	-
DRAGON BALL XENOVERSE 2	1.8 TF2	$3.74 PP	-
DRAGONBALL XENOVERSE Bundle Edition	1.1 TF2	$2.27 PP	-
DRIFT21	0.5 TF2	$1.0 PP	-
Dark Deity	0.4 TF2	$0.9 PP	-
Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin	8.2 TF2	$16.76 PP	-
Darkest Dungeon	0.6 TF2	$1.2 PP	-
Darksiders Genesis	1.1 TF2	$2.34 PP	-
Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition	0.6 TF2	$1.32 PP	-
Darksiders III	0.8 TF2	$1.72 PP	-
Darkwood	0.4 TF2	$0.78 PP	-
Day of the Tentacle Remastered	0.4 TF2	$0.91 PP	-
DayZ	6.3 TF2	$12.99 PP	-
Daymare: 1998	0.4 TF2	$0.79 PP	-
Dead Estate	1.3 TF2	$2.7 PP	-
Dead Island - Definitive Edition	0.9 TF2	$1.77 PP	-
Dead Island Definitive Collection	1.6 TF2	$3.18 PP	-
Dead Island Riptide - Definitive Edition	0.8 TF2	$1.69 PP	-
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record	1.2 TF2	$2.39 PP	-
Dead Rising 3 Apocalypse Edition	1.7 TF2	$3.46 PP	-
Dead Rising 4	0.9 TF2	$1.75 PP	-
Dead Rising	1.0 TF2	$1.96 PP	-
Dead Rising® 2	1.1 TF2	$2.18 PP	-
Death Road to Canada	0.6 TF2	$1.18 PP	-
Death's Gambit	0.7 TF2	$1.42 PP	-
Deep Rock Galactic	3.9 TF2	$8.04 PP	-
Deponia - The Complete Journey	0.7 TF2	$1.4 PP	-
Descenders	0.4 TF2	$0.78 PP	-
Destroy All Humans	0.7 TF2	$1.39 PP	-
Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut	0.9 TF2	$1.88 PP	-
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided	1.5 TF2	$3.17 PP	-
Devil May Cry HD Collection	1.7 TF2	$3.49 PP	-
Devil May Cry® 4 Special Edition	1.4 TF2	$2.85 PP	-
Dinosaur Fossil Hunter	0.4 TF2	$0.9 PP	-
Distance	0.7 TF2	$1.51 PP	-
Distant Worlds: Universe	0.6 TF2	$1.27 PP	-
Doom Eternal	2.0 TF2	$4.09 PP	-
Door Kickers	1.1 TF2	$2.16 PP	-
Door Kickers: Action Squad	0.4 TF2	$0.76 PP	-
Dorfromantik	1.9 TF2	$3.97 PP	-
Dragon Ball FighterZ	1.7 TF2	$3.44 PP	-
Dragons Dogma - Dark Arisen	0.8 TF2	$1.63 PP	-
Drake Hollow	0.4 TF2	$0.89 PP	-
Drone Swarm	0.5 TF2	$0.96 PP	-
Duck Game	2.2 TF2	$4.6 PP	-
Dungeon Defenders: Awakened	2.7 TF2	$5.45 PP	-
Dungreed	0.9 TF2	$1.79 PP	-
Dusk	1.1 TF2	$2.2 PP	-
Duskers	0.5 TF2	$0.99 PP	-
EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1 The Shadow of New Despair	2.3 TF2	$4.64 PP	-
ELEX	0.7 TF2	$1.47 PP	-
EVERSPACE™	0.8 TF2	$1.57 PP	-
Elite: Dangerous	1.3 TF2	$2.59 PP	-
Empire of Sin	1.2 TF2	$2.49 PP	-
Endzone - A World Apart	0.6 TF2	$1.31 PP	-
Europa Universalis IV	1.1 TF2	$2.2 PP	-
Exanima	2.3 TF2	$4.71 PP	-
FTL: Faster Than Light	1.2 TF2	$2.52 PP	-
Fable Anniversary	3.3 TF2	$6.69 PP	-
Fallout 76	1.6 TF2	$3.3 PP	-
Fantasy General II	0.5 TF2	$0.95 PP	-
Farming Simulator 17	0.5 TF2	$1.06 PP	-
Firefighting Simulator - The Squad	3.9 TF2	$8.08 PP	-
First Class Trouble	0.4 TF2	$0.86 PP	-
For The King	1.2 TF2	$2.37 PP	-
Forager	1.4 TF2	$2.81 PP	-
Forts	2.7 TF2	$5.44 PP	-
Friday the 13th: The Game	2.3 TF2	$4.79 PP	-
Frostpunk	1.2 TF2	$2.52 PP	-
Full Metal Furies	0.6 TF2	$1.15 PP	-
Furi	0.5 TF2	$0.99 PP	-
GOD EATER 2 Rage Burst	0.9 TF2	$1.82 PP	-
GRID - Ultimate	1.0 TF2	$2.01 PP	-
GRIS	0.4 TF2	$0.89 PP	-
Gamedec	0.4 TF2	$0.75 PP	-
Gang Beasts	3.0 TF2	$6.03 PP	-
Garden Paws	0.8 TF2	$1.66 PP	-
Gas Station Simulator	1.2 TF2	$2.42 PP	-
Gears 5	4.6 TF2	$9.34 PP	-
Gears Tactics	4.2 TF2	$8.67 PP	-
Generation Zero®	1.0 TF2	$2.13 PP	-
Genital Jousting	0.5 TF2	$1.06 PP	-
Goat Simulator	0.5 TF2	$0.94 PP	-
Godlike Burger	1.4 TF2	$2.83 PP	-
Golf With Your Friends	1.1 TF2	$2.34 PP	-
Gordian Quest	1.4 TF2	$2.85 PP	-
Gotham Knights	5.6 TF2	$11.55 PP	-
GreedFall	0.9 TF2	$1.85 PP	-
Grim Dawn	2.2 TF2	$4.51 PP	-
Grim Fandango Remastered	0.5 TF2	$1.11 PP	-
Guacamelee! 2	0.6 TF2	$1.26 PP	-
HITMAN™2 Gold Edition	3.0 TF2	$6.06 PP	-
HIVESWAP: Act 2	2.0 TF2	$4.07 PP	-
HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED™	1.5 TF2	$3.11 PP	-
Haiku, the Robot	1.5 TF2	$3.12 PP	-
Hard Bullet	1.0 TF2	$2.06 PP	-
Hearts of Iron III Collection	0.5 TF2	$1.01 PP	-
Hearts of Iron IV: Battle for the Bosporus	1.3 TF2	$2.75 PP	-
Hearts of Iron IV: Cadet Edition	1.7 TF2	$3.49 PP	-
Hearts of Iron IV: Death or Dishonor	0.9 TF2	$1.83 PP	-
Hearts of Iron IV: Waking the Tiger	1.6 TF2	$3.28 PP	-
Heave Ho	0.6 TF2	$1.13 PP	-
Heavy Rain	1.7 TF2	$3.55 PP	-
Hell Let Loose	8.3 TF2	$17.07 PP	-
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice	1.1 TF2 Refer To My Other Thread	$2.16 PP Refer To My Other Thread	Humble Heroines: Warriors, Dreamers, and God Slayers
Hello Neighbor Hide & Seek	0.4 TF2	$0.76 PP	-
Hello, Neighbor!	0.4 TF2	$0.91 PP	-
Hero's Hour	1.2 TF2 Refer To My Other Thread	$2.49 PP Refer To My Other Thread	Humble Choice (Mar 2023)
Heroes of Hammerwatch	0.5 TF2	$1.11 PP	-
Hitman Absolution	0.8 TF2	$1.57 PP	-
Hitman Blood Money	0.7 TF2	$1.46 PP	-
Hitman Game of the Year Edition	1.2 TF2	$2.48 PP	-
Hollow Knight	2.6 TF2	$5.3 PP	-
Homefront	0.5 TF2	$0.96 PP	-
Homefront: The Revolution	0.8 TF2	$1.59 PP	-
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak	0.4 TF2	$0.76 PP	-
Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number Digital Special Edition	0.6 TF2	$1.2 PP	-
Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number	0.6 TF2	$1.13 PP	-
House Flipper VR	0.9 TF2	$1.77 PP	-
House Flipper	2.0 TF2	$4.18 PP	-
Human: Fall Flat	0.9 TF2	$1.8 PP	-
HunieCam Studio	0.4 TF2	$0.73 PP	-
HuniePop	0.4 TF2	$0.89 PP	-
Huntdown	1.2 TF2	$2.51 PP	-
Hurtworld	2.0 TF2	$4.01 PP	-
Hyper Light Drifter	1.3 TF2	$2.73 PP	-
Hypnospace Outlaw	0.7 TF2	$1.44 PP	-
I Am Fish	0.4 TF2	$0.76 PP	-
I Expect You To Die	1.3 TF2	$2.65 PP	-
I-NFECTED	6.1 TF2	$12.5 PP	-
INSURGENCY	1.6 TF2	$3.19 PP	-
Imperator: Rome Deluxe Edition	1.0 TF2	$2.09 PP	-
Imperator: Rome	0.5 TF2	$1.04 PP	-
Injustice 2	0.7 TF2	$1.48 PP	-
Injustice: Gods Among Us - Ultimate Edition	0.6 TF2	$1.33 PP	-
Into the Breach	2.0 TF2	$4.12 PP	-
Into the Radius VR	5.1 TF2	$10.54 PP	-
Ion Fury	1.5 TF2	$3.03 PP	-
Iron Harvest	1.0 TF2	$2.12 PP	-
Jalopy	0.5 TF2	$1.04 PP	-
Job Simulator	8.7 TF2	$17.81 PP	-
Jurassic World Evolution 2	1.7 TF2 Refer To My Other Thread	$3.42 PP Refer To My Other Thread	Humble Choice (Mar 2023)
Jurassic World Evolution	0.4 TF2	$0.91 PP	-
Just Cause 2	0.5 TF2	$1.04 PP	-
Just Cause 3 XXL Edition	1.0 TF2	$2.09 PP	-
Just Cause 4: Complete Edition	1.4 TF2	$2.78 PP	-
Just Die Already	0.4 TF2	$0.8 PP	-
KartKraft	3.0 TF2	$6.1 PP	-
Katamari Damacy REROLL	1.1 TF2	$2.19 PP	-
Katana ZERO	1.0 TF2	$2.04 PP	-
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes	2.6 TF2	$5.31 PP	-
Kerbal Space Program	1.5 TF2	$3.07 PP	-
Killer Instinct	6.8 TF2	$13.91 PP	-
Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe Edition	0.9 TF2	$1.88 PP	-
Killing Floor 2	0.6 TF2	$1.28 PP	-
Killing Floor	0.6 TF2	$1.15 PP	-
Kingdom Come: Deliverance	1.6 TF2	$3.36 PP	-
Kingdom: Two Crowns	0.9 TF2	$1.9 PP	-
Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning	0.9 TF2	$1.83 PP	-
King’s Bounty : Ultimate Edition	0.8 TF2	$1.69 PP	-
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Premium Edition	0.5 TF2	$1.06 PP	-
LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham	0.4 TF2	$0.84 PP	-
LEGO Batman Trilogy	1.4 TF2	$2.88 PP	-
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4	0.5 TF2	$1.12 PP	-
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7	0.7 TF2	$1.53 PP	-
LEGO Lord of the Rings	0.5 TF2	$0.94 PP	-
LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars	0.5 TF2	$1.04 PP	-
LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga	0.5 TF2	$1.06 PP	-
LEGO® City Undercover	0.6 TF2	$1.3 PP	-
LEGO® DC Super-Villains Deluxe Edition	1.9 TF2	$3.81 PP	-
LEGO® DC Super-Villains	0.4 TF2	$0.84 PP	-
LEGO® Jurassic World™	0.4 TF2	$0.81 PP	-
LEGO® MARVEL's Avengers	0.4 TF2	$0.75 PP	-
LEGO® Marvel Super Heroes 2 Deluxe Edition	1.1 TF2	$2.3 PP	-
LEGO® Marvel Super Heroes 2	0.4 TF2	$0.9 PP	-
LEGO® Ninjago® Movie Video Game	0.4 TF2	$0.73 PP	-
LEGO® Star Wars™: The Force Awakens	0.6 TF2	$1.21 PP	-
LEGO® Worlds	1.8 TF2	$3.76 PP	-
LIMBO	0.5 TF2	$0.96 PP	-
Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective	0.7 TF2	$1.43 PP	-
Lake	0.8 TF2	$1.59 PP	-
Last Oasis	1.2 TF2	$2.42 PP	-
Layers of Fear 2	3.4 TF2	$6.94 PP	-
Layers of Fear	0.5 TF2	$1.08 PP	-
Legion TD 2	0.9 TF2	$1.92 PP	-
Len's Island	3.6 TF2	$7.37 PP	-
Lethal League Blaze	0.9 TF2	$1.86 PP	-
Lethal League	0.7 TF2	$1.5 PP	-
Library Of Ruina	3.0 TF2	$6.22 PP	-
Life is Feudal: Your Own	0.4 TF2	$0.81 PP	-
Little Inferno	1.3 TF2	$2.74 PP	-
Little Misfortune	3.6 TF2	$7.38 PP	-
Little Nightmares Complete Edition	1.6 TF2	$3.2 PP	-
Little Nightmares	0.8 TF2	$1.6 PP	-
Lobotomy Corporation Monster Management Simulation	4.9 TF2	$10.0 PP	-
Lords of the Fallen Game of the Year Edition	0.8 TF2	$1.69 PP	-
Lost Castle	0.9 TF2	$1.85 PP	-
Lost Ember	1.3 TF2	$2.67 PP	-
Lost Planet™: Extreme Condition	1.0 TF2	$2.0 PP	-
Luck be a Landlord	2.7 TF2	$5.57 PP	-
METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN	0.7 TF2	$1.5 PP	-
MORTAL KOMBAT 11	1.6 TF2	$3.37 PP	-
MX vs ATV Reflex	0.4 TF2	$0.8 PP	-
MX vs. ATV Unleashed	0.4 TF2	$0.72 PP	-
Machinarium	0.9 TF2	$1.87 PP	-
Mad Max	1.3 TF2	$2.72 PP	-
Mafia II: Definitive Edition	1.3 TF2	$2.63 PP	-
Mafia III: Definitive Edition	2.0 TF2	$4.0 PP	-
Mafia: Definitive Edition	2.2 TF2	$4.49 PP	-
Magicka 2 - Deluxe Edition	0.4 TF2	$0.72 PP	-
Maneater	0.5 TF2	$1.06 PP	-
Manhunt	1.2 TF2	$2.53 PP	-
Mars Horizon	1.1 TF2	$2.2 PP	-
Mass Effect™ Legendary Edition	5.8 TF2	$11.95 PP	-
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne	0.6 TF2	$1.18 PP	-
Max Payne	0.9 TF2	$1.85 PP	-
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries	2.6 TF2	$5.4 PP	-
Medal of Honor	2.0 TF2	$4.05 PP	-
Mega Man Legacy Collection	0.6 TF2	$1.22 PP	-
Men of War: Assault Squad 2 - Deluxe Edition	1.2 TF2	$2.44 PP	-
Men of War: Assault Squad 2 War Chest Edition	1.1 TF2	$2.27 PP	-
Men of War: Assault Squad 2	1.0 TF2	$2.01 PP	-
Messenger	0.4 TF2	$0.88 PP	-
Metro 2033 Redux	0.6 TF2	$1.28 PP	-
Metro Exodus	1.6 TF2	$3.37 PP	-
Metro Redux Bundle	1.1 TF2	$2.34 PP	-
Metro: Last Light Redux	1.1 TF2	$2.35 PP	-
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition	0.8 TF2	$1.65 PP	-
Middle-earth™: Shadow of War™	0.7 TF2	$1.41 PP	-
Middleearth Shadow of War Definitive Edition	1.2 TF2	$2.48 PP	-
Mini Ninjas	0.5 TF2	$1.01 PP	-
Miscreated	1.4 TF2	$2.83 PP	-
Monster Hunter: World	3.5 TF2	$7.15 PP	-
Monster Sanctuary	0.5 TF2	$0.94 PP	-
Monster Train	0.4 TF2	$0.85 PP	-
Moonlighter	0.4 TF2	$0.91 PP	-
Moons of Madness	1.8 TF2	$3.67 PP	-
Mordhau	1.7 TF2	$3.49 PP	-
Mortal Kombat X	0.7 TF2	$1.53 PP	-
Mortal Kombat XL	0.9 TF2	$1.85 PP	-
Mortal Shell	1.8 TF2	$3.61 PP	-
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021	1.0 TF2	$2.13 PP	-
Motorsport Manager	1.3 TF2	$2.73 PP	-
Move or Die	1.0 TF2	$1.97 PP	-
Moving Out	1.0 TF2	$2.02 PP	-
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden - Deluxe Edition	1.6 TF2	$3.21 PP	-
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden	0.8 TF2	$1.57 PP	-
My Friend Pedro	0.6 TF2	$1.25 PP	-
My Time At Portia	0.5 TF2	$0.94 PP	-
NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja STORM 4 Road to Boruto	2.3 TF2	$4.71 PP	-
NASCAR Heat 5 - Ultimate Edition	0.5 TF2	$0.99 PP	-
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4	1.8 TF2	$3.59 PP	-
Naruto to Boruto Shinobi Striker - Deluxe Edition	1.3 TF2	$2.58 PP	-
Necromunda: Hired Gun	0.8 TF2	$1.54 PP	-
Neon Abyss	0.5 TF2	$0.96 PP	-
Ni no Kuni™ II: Revenant Kingdom - The Prince's Edition	2.3 TF2	$4.64 PP	-
Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix	0.4 TF2 Refer To My Other Thread	$0.74 PP Refer To My Other Thread	Kart Club: Best Indie Kart Racers Bundle
Nine Parchments	1.4 TF2	$2.94 PP	-
No Time to Relax	1.7 TF2	$3.5 PP	-
Not For Broadcast	0.5 TF2	$1.0 PP	-
ONE PIECE BURNING BLOOD	0.9 TF2	$1.82 PP	-
ONE PIECE PIRATE WARRIORS 3 Gold Edition	1.1 TF2	$2.25 PP	-
Offworld Trading Company™	0.7 TF2	$1.51 PP	-
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Bare with me. I have a lot of sensory issues mostly with sound and dogs make it a lot worse. The dogs themselves are my stepdads dogs, he lives with us so they’re mine too.
There’s 4 of them. 4 very loud barking dogs, all 5-7 years old. I can’t handle it sometimes with how they howl at me for standing up, walking around or being too close to the door. My stepdad will not let anyone else even attempt to train them so they only listen to him. Him (which he didn’t have to go to) and my mom went on separate business trips leaving me with the dogs and my sister.
Day 2 of like 4 and I’m already loosing my mind with how much they move and whine and bump into me and of course howl. 4 howling dogs for 5-10 minutes over me moving shoes. I thought escaping to my room in the basement would be enough to get away from the tapping of nails, the licking or whining but 3 of them came down. 2 are on my bed with me, one is on the floor. I like them while they quiet but I want peace alone with my cat.

Previous -------------------------------- Next chapter soon(tm)
I am no authority in Chinese, translation, or Taoism. I have no cultural or religious Taoist background. English is not my first language. Chinese text might be wrong, I don't know how to read or write Chinese. Translation might be inaccurate, comments might be mistaken. The comment section is usually great and provides useful insights. Sources linked in comment section, sort by oldest.
Feel free to share your favorite translations in the comments so we can all compare and learn together, also feel free to ask anything or correct any mistakes. You are free to copy, change, improve, expand, and/or share this text with whoever. No recognition or mention of OP is required. Enjoy!

Chapter 10:
載 營 魄 抱 一 ，
Carry like a tent oneself’s being (spirit) embracing Unity [,]
能 無 離 乎 ？
Are you able to empty depart? hoo! [?]
專 氣 致 柔 ，
gather Qi (essence of life) deliver soft [,]
能 嬰 兒 乎 ？
Are you able to (be like) newborn child? hoo! [?]
滌 除 玄 覽 ，
remove to look at mysterious (with desire) [,]
能 無 疵 乎 ？
Are you able to empty defect hoo! [?]
愛 民 治 國 ，
love the people rule nation [,]
能 無 知 乎 ？
Are you able to empty know? hoo [?]
天 門 開 闔 ，
Heaven door open and close [,]
能 為 雌 乎 ？
Are you able to do/be female? hoo! [?]
明 白 四 達 ，
bright – pure – intelligent in four directions [,]
能 無 知 乎 ？
Are you able to empty know hoo! [?]
生 之 、 畜 之 ，
Like giving birth as livestock [,]
生 而 不 有 ，
give birth yet no have it [,]
為 而 不 恃 ，
do/be yet no rely on [,]
長 而 不 宰 ，
long yet no slaughter [,]
是 謂 玄 德 。
it is by nature correct to say mysterious Virtue [.]

​
comment:
​

Carry like a tent oneself’s being (spirit) embracing Unity [,]

載 "load/carry"; Meaning: 车 a vehicle, sound: 𢦔 a weapon.
營 "camp"; Meaning: 宮 palace or two rooms with a roof, sound: 𤇾 glimmer or two torches.
魄 "vigowhite soul"; A half of the living soul. Meaning: 鬼 ghost, sound: 白 white.
抱 "embrace"; meaning: 扌a hand, sound: 包 to wrap around.
一 "one"; translated in this chapter as Unity. Probably in reference to Tao or the Virtue of Tao.
*Note Manwangdui characters for spirits are different. Might add them later, or if someone comments on it it would be great. Thanks!
"To carry on your back your own body and embrace Unity,"
Another reference to "body behind yet body first" using Ancient Chinese souls as references. More on the topic of hún and pó here.
"To carry the heaviness of the physical body behind your own back, while not considering yourself as different (better or worse) from everything else."
​

Are you able to empty depart? hoo! [?]

離 leave/depart; Depicts a bird 隹 being caught in a bird trap 罕. Based on the original meaning "to catch a bird".
I usually make space for multiple questions: ¿Can you depart from your body? ¿Can you depart from embracing Unity?¿Can you catch your body like a bird? ¿Can you catch Unity in a bird trap?
Hoo! *Exhale* (like blowing inside the wooden flute).
​

• Other translations: Renamed authors like Iñaki Preciado translated this as a single question: "¿Can you make your spirits embrace the One and not abandon it?".

​

gather Qi (essence of life) deliver soft [,]

專 specialize/monopolize; Depicts a hand (寸) spinning a wheel (叀). Original meaning "turn"
氣 air (Qi); Also translated as Chi, Ki, or life-energy.

• "air"; to later on make a reference to "air-ing" yourself, or becoming "flexible".
• "essence of life"; the energy inside every living creature in Chinese beliefs/culture.

致 send/delivecause; meaning: 攵 "reach", sound: 至 "tap",
柔 soft/gentle/flexible; meaning: 木 tree, sound: 矛 spear,
"Gather Qi and deliver flexible"
The gathering of Qi is referenced in multiple practices, both religious and philosophical. Body and mind.
"Not to lack your needs and to take care of your physical and mental well-being, while also being able to [致 deliver] (the duty/service) and adapt to the circumstances (flexibility)"
​

Are you able to (be like) newborn child? hoo! [?]

嬰 infant; 賏 sea shells 女 Meaning: woman
兒 son;
"Can you imitate a newborn child?" or "Can you return to the state of a newborn child?"
Hoo!
​
​

remove to look at mysterious (with desire) [,]

滌 "wash/cleanse"
除 "remove"
涤除 to wash away and divide.
覽 look at; Meaning: 見 "see", Sound: 監 "watch carefully".
​
"wash away from yourself looking with desire what is considered mysterious, divide the looking from the desire".
Notice it is not asking "to look down" to avoid looking at mysterious things, but merely being aware of the desire when it arises and to "not to cling" to that desire. It would be impractical to cover your eyes to avoid looking at things or to ask someone to never desire anything. I thought subjective clarification could be useful.
​

Are you able to empty defect hoo! [?]

疵 defect, flaw; 疒 "sick" meaning and 此 "this" sound.
Easily interpreted as "looking with desire is sickness, can you avoid it?"
but I also like to add: "are you able to stop seeing the act of desiring as a defect?"
or more broadly "Are you able to empty the meaning of the word defect?"
So then both ideas can merge:"Can you empty your desires? While not imposing the same condition on other people, can you think of them as not different from you?"
Hoo!
Other translations are as follows:"Can you clean your mysterious mirror, until it reflects (or has) no defect?"
​

love the people rule nation [,]

愛 love; Sound: 旡 To choke on, meaning: 心 heart
國 nation;
"To love the people while ruling the nation". I like to add: "and love the people ruling the nation"
​

Are you able to empty know? hoo! [?]

"Are you able to empty the knowledge that you carry in your bowl?"
​
Other translations:
"Can you love your country and rule them with empty knowledge (or no knowledge)"
or more recent translations: "Can you love your country and your governor and guide them with WuWei?"
[Note: This last one changes 知 [know] for 為 [do/be]. I feel it loses some of the precision from Manwangdui, but I already messed up with the "perpetual" since Chapter 1, so what do I know about what is best? Pick whatever fits you and keep time and space in consideration, dear reader. Also, comment below. I would love to add more translations and interpretations, changes, etc.]
​

Heaven door open and close [,]

開 open; Depicts an open door.
闔 close; Depicts a closed door.
"The doors of Heaven open and close,"
​
My step-by-step interpretation:
​

• "The door of heaven" might be a reference to chapter 1:
  • "The mysterious 衆 妙 之 門 door of crowds of wonders" The door that opens and closes and contains and manifests ten thousand creatures.
    • empty name is 天 地 之 始 Heaven and Earth's beginning,
    • giving it a name is 萬 物 之 母 ten thousand creature's Mother, in reference to Tao.
• Door open and close are, both, dual and perpetual processes
  • Door closes: death. bad luck. injury. failure.
  • Door opens: birth. good luck. healthy. success.
  • The infinite process of creation and destruction. "The beginning and end of the universe"

Therefore the first half might be referencing Tao, as the process, the existence as a whole. The experiences and changes in every individual as things happen in their life.
Interpretation from some scholars :
"To experience life with all of your senses"
​

Are you able to do/be female? hoo! [?]

雌 female; a bird. Used for females of a species.
"Are you able to be female? hoo!"
"Are you able to stay calm? are you able to give birth?"
From Chinese opposites male and female, meaning the male is "war, doubt, and active" while the female " peace, calm, and passive" able to 生 "give birth/come to life".
Therefore:
"While life happens and good and bad occur to you at any point in time,
Can you stay calm? can you be loving like a mother? can you avoid pointing out the flaws in other people?"
Hoo!
[Note: Recent translations added a "no" in front of "female", translating it as "not be discouraged". Possibly from biblical influences from [1 corinthian 16:13] where the male is associated with courage, and other more modern terms under the same influence like "man up" and "be a man". I choose to avoid that in this translation.]
​

bright – pure – intelligent in four directions [,]

Referencing qualities,
明 bright (good, useful, kind, intelligent)
白 white, pure: (clean, doesn't lie, doesn't cheat, not arrogant, etc)
四 in four directions
達 intelligent or arrive at.
​
"To be good, to be pure to help in every direction"
​

Are you able to empty know hoo! [?]

"Are you able to empty your bowl of knowledge?"
or "are you able to make no distinction and help everyone equally?"
​
translated also as:
"Can you penetrate with clear vision the universe world without knowledge/using intelligence?"
​

Like giving birth as livestock [,]

畜 livestock; meaning: 田 "field", sound: 玄 deep.
"Giving birth like livestock, coming to life like livestock (domesticated animals)"
​

give birth yet no have it [,]

"Give birth yet not possess the child you gave birth to, come to life yet not have a life of your own"
​

do/be yet no rely on [,]

Do things, become things; yet don't rely on them (or don't cling, don't dwell on the things or what you became)don't be arrogant while doing it.
​

long yet no slaughter [,]

宰 slaughterule; 宀 barracks where 辛 slaves live
"help to prosper (yourself, home, family, city, nation, world); yet don't slave."
Less literal:
"help them grow inside and outside, but don't force them on one path, let them choose."
or maybe just "have a long sword but don't slaughter"
​
A common saying would be in place:
Give someone a fish, he will eat for a day.
Teach someone how to catch fish, he will eat for the rest of his life.
This is just adding to it:
"help them prosper, but don't force them into something they don't what to do on their own."
​

it is by nature correct to say mysterious Virtue [.]

德 Virtue; Virtuous people have a straight 直 heart 心. 直 also represents the sound.
Original form of 德. The 彳 (walk) component was added later.
"It is naturally correct to call it Mysterious Virtue"
"This is called Mysterious Virtue."

Previous
Writer's note: Short sections with updates about all kinds of people. And Vickers faces his greatest threat ever.
Enjoy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"So the last round is a four person free for all?" James asked as he saw the tournament finale.
"Yes." Amina said. "Once you've been struck seven times you'll be locked out of the fight and you'll be immobilized and shielded until it's over. Here's what's going to happen."
"So we're really not going to talk about the centaur in the room?" James asked.
"James focus." Amina said, ignoring his quip. "You, myself, and this Raend fellow are going to team up against the Glag."
"Okay so it as A... Glag?" James asked. "Glag isn't its name."
"It's both." Amina said simply. "That's neither here nor there. We need to work together to defeat the Glag or else we'll all be defeated within the first minute of the fight."
James's eyebrows furrowed at that. He looked over at the spot where the Glag(?) was standing in the corner of the room. Once again it seemed to be staring straight ahead with its mouth agape and drooling out the slurry of stone and saliva.
"That thing?" He asked. "You sure?"
"Okay." Amina said with her hands in front of her face in a prayer position as she took a deep breath. "James, that thing is a sentient variation of an earth elemental. It's faster than it looks. It's.... well... it's not SMARTER than it looks. But it is much more clever than you're probably giving it credit for. Besides which, remember what the devices on out chests are designed to signal for?"
James looked down at the small brass and crystal device. "Yeah. Hits." He said.
She poked his forehead with a finger. "Hits that would be lethal in a real fight." She reminded him. "Which for you and me means basically anything anyone in this tournament can throw at us. Now. Tell me. What's lethal for an elemental made of stone?"
"Oh." He said once he thought of the question for a moment.
"Yeah." She said. Then she made a face and her hand moved to her stomach.
James quickly looked around to see if anyone was watching, and when he saw the one other humanoid fighter in the room, presumably Raend, was busy reading a book, he turned to Amina and moved to provide her a bit of cover.
"You okay?" He asked.
Amina took several deep breaths and steeled herself a bit. "Yes. Though morning sickness is an incredibly inaccurate term."
"Need some water or something?" He asked. Then he thought of the hit she'd taken at the end of her fight with Gorna. "Say, maybe this wasn't a good idea. Having you in this tournament."
"Not a chance." She said as she spit a bit of saliva out into the nearby spittoon. "Besides. There's no way you win against that thing with only two people."
"Seriously?" James asked. "We are talking about that guy right?" He reiterated with a thumb over his shoulder as the two of them approached Raend.
Glag continued staring passively at the rack of spears that was in front of him.
------------------------------
Vickers had just finished talking to the owner of the building that the letter had specified, the same one he had been converted in, when he heard a familiar armored gait approaching. He folded the letter from the council and put it in his back pocket, and was walking around the wagon with the silver barbed mesh that would line the rooms for Five and Driscoll when he ran into the owner of the familiar stride pattern.
"Well. Looks like we get to-" His voice trailed off as he looked at the unexpected arrival. Then he looked up higher. "You're not Atrafar." He said with a cocked eyebrow. The hand that had just put the letter away slid up his back until it was resting on his pistol. He'd had to break off and then file down the trigger guard to be able to use it again.
"No. No I'm not." The massive, grey and white muzzled, werewolf in Outer Light armor said with a cocked eyebrow of its own.
"The council sent you?" Vickers asked. "You're overseeing the conversion?"
The wolf looked down at his armor for a moment. "Looks that way." He said. "I assume that you're Chief Anthony Vickers?"
"Yeah." The SEAL answered as the large wolf began to slowly look him up and down.
After a few moments of awkward silence the newcomer spoke up again. "Night brothers are rare. You're smaller than she makes you sound." He said as he approached the wagon and casually lifted one of the silver mesh bundles with his gauntleted hand.
Vickers donned a confused expression. "Than who makes me sound?"
"My daughter." The wolf said as it carefully walked into the building with the bundle, grabbing one of the tool bags from the side of the wagon with his empty hand. "Atrafar. I'm Outer Light Commander De'Lius Dauntless. Retired. Though I've been recalled for the next few days." He said as he disappeared into the door. "Let's get to work."
Vickers tried to bite his lip, forgetting that his new facial structure didn't exactly allow that particular expression. "Fuck." He said under his breath.
He reached over to one of the remaining bundles on the wagon and tried to lift it. It took a bit of effort, and he wasn't able to one hand it like the Commander had. But eventually he got it onto his shoulder and went inside as well.
"Fuck fuck fuuuuuuck." He said as he went inside.
------------------------
Werner slowly emerged from the third and final slumber to the sight of the healing ward's ceiling.
"There she is." Said the voice of Margaret Choi. "How are you Ambassador? Are you with us?"
Werner felt the back of the bed raising a bit, putting her into a slanted seated position.
"Yeah." She said before breaking into a yawn. "How did it go?"
"Well that really depends on you." Nurse Choi said. "As far as everything on our side is concerned the procedure went off without a hitch. How do you feel?"
She thought about it for a moment. "I fell okay I guess." Then a slightly more pressing issue presented itself. "I need to pee really badly."
"Well that's good." Nurse Choi replied. "I only removed your catheter about an hour ago. So that'll be a good chance to make sure that part went well. Though I'm sure it did. Come on and stand up."
Werner did as instructed and saw the Minotaur, Shrend, standing off to the side and looking at her charts. "Healer Farstorm." She greeted him.
"Welcome back Ambassador." Shrend said with a warm smile. "Things went well. Please follow Mrs. Choi and she'll get you where you need to go."
Ten minutes later, and much more relieved, she was back in the room and undergoing tests. They ran her through a familiar gamut of motor skill, walking stability, and various cognitive tests. Nurse Choi compared the results to the records that Earth had sent over for them.
By the time they were done it was nearly night again, and Werner was hovering on the border of breaking out into tears.
"Well Ambassador." Shrend said as he and Nurse Choi looked over the results and comparisons. "I don't want to count my drakes before they hatch. But if these results mean what Mrs. Choi says they do, then I think it's been a success. I really need to work on understanding English so I can read these more easily." He joked.
"I haven't scored that well since I was in my twenties." Werner said as she fought to keep her eyes dry.
"Well hopefully it stays that way for a long time." Nurse Choi said as she placed a hand on Werner's shoulder. The other hand grabbed a towel and handed it to her. "It's okay to be happy." She whispered softly.
Werner took the advice and let herself cry for a bit. The Nurse rubbed her back a little as she slowly got herself back under control and wiped her face.
"Thank you so much." She said between sobbing bouts.
"Oh. No need for that." Shrend said. "Healing and helping people is what we do. Now let's see about getting you back to your quarters and we'll have you back tomorrow for a bit more testing."
"Okay." She said as she let the nurse help her back to her feet.
She didn't stumble, or misstep at all in the ten or so minutes it took to get back. And by the time she got there she felt like she was floating.
--------------------
"You want to do what?" King Farrick asked.
"I've been ordered to restart testing on transmittal of living specimens to Earth from Petravus your majesty." Col. Muhammed said flatly. "We've set up a pressure chamber that can handle that particular issue and help them depressurize. Plus we have reason to believe that our world has become magically saturated enough that even a Petravian citizen should be able to survive the trip. Though, obviously we'll be starting with Earth citizens."
She pressed a button and a series of windows appeared on his screen, showing videos of people performing feats of strength and speed similar to what some of the Earth people in the castle were capable of now. Some of the videos showed people performing magical spells, though they were all simply, fire and wind attacks, moving earth, summoning light. Some of them showed people accidentally dealing with the carnage that some of that resulted in. There was a news segment, with Petravian subtitles put in place for him, talking about something called an "Influencer" dying after they attempted to fly over something called the Grand Canyon.
"I had assumed as much." He said after a few minutes of watching the curious footage. No matter how many times he saw them, videos amazed him. "I take it that you intend to have the Ambassador send over a few of the people we released."
"That's the long term goal." She admitted openly. "For now we intend to start with small wildlife. Rats or something equivalent. We're not looking to risk any human, or humanoid, life just yet."
"Hmm. Fair enough." He concurred. "You might be happy to know that my healers say that Ambassador Werner has emerged from her final rejuvenation session and all signs point toward a healthy recovery."
The Colonel smiled, and for the first time King Farrick thought it might have been a genuine one.
"That's excellent news." She said. "If the therapy proves fully successful, or hell even partially, that will revolutionize the medical field on our world. Did Nurse Choi take notes?"
"Extensive ones." The King said. "As did our chief healer."
"I look forward to reading them. Whenever you're willing to send them."
The King leaned forward a bit, knowing that he was at an advantage in this exchange
"Tell me." He said as he continued watching the footage that was rapidly changing on his screen. "What kind of magical trouble are the people over there causing?"

Interdimentional Villain Exchange Program -1- A Very Bad Day

​
Today…
..is a BAD day.
I knew that from the moment I woke up and found out that I overslept so much that I didn't have any hope of making it in time for combat training.
But if being late was the only bad thing that happened today I would be singing praises to all the gods above and below. But of course, it was not. Not even close. The next thing that went completely sideways was the aforementioned combat practice that I was late for. Normally it's intense, but not an unpleasant experience. If I can say so humbly, that's mostly because combat is actually one of my strong suits.
The flow of blades, the rhythm of spellcraft and swift movements of ached flesh always seemed very harmonious to me. It all accumulated in a beautiful symphony of combat that I could play better then almost any of my peers.
However, the keyword this time is “almost”.
Being second best is however a small comfort if The Best is still so much stronger than you that the only thing you can do is to struggle to at least mitigate the beating you receive. And since I annoyed the instructors by being late in the morning, of course I got assigned to be the sparring partner of Serena after the instructor she usually spared with had “something better to do”. Serena was not a particularly malicious person. At least not too much. One cannot become a top student of Mordath Villain Academy without being at least decently malicious and sadistic after all. However for some reason she seemed to respect me of all people.
OK I'll admit it. “Respect” might be a bad word to describe it. It would be more accurate to call it a “begrudging acceptance”. I'm not sure why but it's probably because, despite my relatively poor academic achievements compared to the rest of the group, I could not be crushed under her heel like an “annoying bug” during battle practice.
I was bestowed the honor of being an “average rodent” by her instead. That might not have seemed much different to me… or the rest of the students… or the instructors… or anyone else for that matter, but to her it apparently made a difference.
Enough of a difference to fight me seriously during the sparring sessions at least. And the result was all but pleasant for me. Especially considering the fact that we are at the Mordath Villain Academy, and not some third rate training facility. Here a spar ends only when the time ends. The founder of the academy was Mordath, the Onyx Lich himself after all, and for that man, no half measures were acceptable. And since he founded the academy, he would not stop halfway and do everything in his power to guarantee results. Unfortunately for me, there isn’t really that much that's beyond his power. And as a result, the next four hours of combat practice I had experienced were hell incarnate.
I fought desperately with everything I had, and after a couple of seconds, or maybe a minute if I was lucky I made a mistake, and got stabbed, beheaded, gutted, frozen, burned, or one of a thousand other ways miss prodigy chose to torture me with that round.
After suffering such fate the magical wards on the arena would activate, heal me, rejuvenate my muscles, refill my mana reserves and in a few seconds announce the beginning of the next round.
I “died” about a hundred times today already, and all I had to show for it was a cut off finger and a frostbite on her eyebrow. Some would call even that result impressive, but I preferred to call it humiliating.
How can I be satisfied with dying a hundred times for a finger and some dead skin? Give me a break. Who would be ok with that? I'm not that pathetic.
Probably.
But even still, if that was all of it I would call it a particularly unpleasant monday, and that would be it. But today was indeed, a BAD day.
Before I could even finish washing the literal buckets of my own blood from my hair, I was jumped by a bunch of guys under the showers and gotten beaten senseless for “daring to lay a hand on their love”.
Honestly… how pathetic can you be to be so obsessed with a person that doesn’t even know you exist.
I could not even protect myself properly. The guys that jumped me were a bunch of comically muscular brutes that probably eat rocks and shit out sand, while I was just a naked human mage without any magical armor, spell focus, and my head half submerged in water.
I'm only above average at fighting… I'm no Serena. I can’t do miracles.
So there I was, lying naked, half of me covered in blood, the other half beaten blue and black, with my hair still covered in shampoo and my brain spinning on its highest gears to figure out how to even get up.
And then, as if nothing happened a secretary walked into the showers and started to speak to me as if nothing was wrong.
“Oh. Here you are, boy! I was just looking for you! Come with me quickly. The Headmaster is looking for you.”
Now imagine my shock. A headmaster was looking for me. Dark Lord Mordath, the Ruler of the Underworld, the Runic Monarch, the FUCKING GODSLAYER, was looking for me.
Not just for anyone closest, not just for anyone of specific species or gender for some of his deranged experiments, but for me specifically.
What the fuck?
Why?
And you know what the worst part is? It wasn’t even time for lunch yet. And that means this day is only just beginning.
Secretary of course didn’t bother inquiring about my present condition. The academy only had four rules and none of them were broken by simply beating a student up. It was a villain academy after all. They are going to teach us, but how we live is the last of their concerns. And since no rules were broken, the secretary naturally didn’t care either.
He did at least give me enough time to get dressed before quite literally dragging me to the headmasters office, but that was a small comfort if you take into account that he most certainly did not give me an opportunity to go find a healer, or at least drink a healing potion, so my whole body was still colorful like some sort of abstract art piece with bloodstains and bruises covering most of it.
Well, at least it didn’t look like I got any of my bones broken so there is that…
And after a short, at least objectively, journey to the headmasters office we were greeted by a set of huge doors. They were enormous, made of gold and so absolutely covered in precious stones that one might think they were there to compensate for something, although none would dare to say that considering who the creator of the doors was.
As we closed in, the unimaginably heavy doors started to open on their own letting us into the spacious chamber behind.
And in there sat two people, to whom I can attribute my current missfortune. One of those people was someone that I did expect to see here, after all the onyx skeleton dressed in vibrant purple robe was none other than the headmaster himself, the other one however, left me confused.
He looked like a tall and muscular, yet slender man with ashen skin, three pairs of leathery bat-like wings on his back and two antler-like horns that extended from his forehead and regularly sparked with magical lightning. Yet despite his intimidating appearance it was not his looks that caught my attention, it was his aura.
That man was powerful.
Very powerful.
As a mage I am naturally very adept at sensing manaflow, and magical fluctuations, which allowed me to instantly recognise how strong the person in front of me was. The magical energy danced around and flawed into him as if he was a maw of some incomprehensible eldritch horror slowly devouring the very universe around him. It was almost enough to match the cyclone of mana generated by The Headmaster which up to this point remained by far the strongest magical phenomenon I had ever seen.
Terrifying.
“Here you are! We were starting to get worried that You are not going to show up at all!” said The Lich, his voice seemingly happy yet carrying a barely perceivable tinge of annoyance. “We don't have much time so i will tell you why you were called and what you are to do, and you will do it, are we clear?”
“Yes sir!” I could only answer this way. Even though I wanted to curse at the undead bastard in front of me. Even though I had a feeling I would not be happy with what I'm supposed to do, who could disobey the will of Mordath The Godslayer? Certainly not me.
“All right then. I was having a chat with my friend here, and he was bitching about how difficult it is to conquer his world for a demon…”
“Demon Lord.” Interrupted the stranger “I did not kill the entire gods damned demon realm monarchy to be called just a demon”
“Yeah. Yeah. Whatever you say Sparky” Agreed the Lich and waved his hand before continuing, seemingly oblivious to a overbearing magical pressure his guest started to emit as a result of his remark “Well the point is, he thinks us undead have it easy, and i think he is full of shit, and simply cannot admit that i'm better than him.”
The Lich finished, and seemed content to remain silent as if everything has already been explained.
“I… understand my master. But how does this connect to me?” I said. More than a little confused.
However instead of the lich, it was the demon in the room that answered with a sneering tone.
“Isn’t it obvious boy? The old sack of bones over here said i'm over exaggerating the difficulty of my goals, and to prove it he offered to send one of his students to complete three tasks I attempted, and failed to achieve”
Hearing that my mind went blank. How in hell am I supposed to achieve something that even this monster of a person failed to accomplish? Is this some sort of devilish joke I'm too human to understand?
“Well then what will you do?” Asked the headmaster, apparently unconcerned by my shocked expression. “Do you accept this task, keep in mind that I would be very disappointed in you if you choose to refuse…”
And that was it. Ever since we were kidnapped by that old fuck, and forced to “learn proper villainy” under him we were made to understand that disappointing Him meant death, and not a quick one at that. So since he said what he did I did not really have a choice in the matter.
“Ok i'll do it” I said, my tone expressing exactly how willing i truly was to undertake this task “When do i start? I had to take my things and…”
“No. I don't think that will be necessary.” Said the demon handing me a piece of crumpled up parchment “And you will be starting immediatly”.
Just as he finished his sentence a phantom hand suddenly gripped me by the shoulder and started dragging me towards a portal that suddenly opened on a nearby wall. I yelped in surprise and only had a time to glance hatefully at the two figures still standing in the room before I fell through the runic circle comprising the portal.
I did not have time to ask any questions, but when I was still traveling through the dimensional corridor of the portal spell I got some time to reorganize my thoughts and realized something unusual about what was said in the office.
There is no Demon Lord.
The demon realm monarchy is a bunch of subjects that serve under Mordath for milenia now. And most importantly why would the thrice cursed lich make fun of the demon for his inability to conquer a world that was already conquered by him instead of killing him for disobedience?
It just didn’t make any sense. Unless…
But just as I was about to finish this train of thought I was thrown out by the rapidly shrinking portal door and was stunned by what I saw. In front of me, in the great expanse of the beautifully azure sky there were tens, maybe even hundreds of floating islands of different shapes and sizes, each one floating on its own, or in some kind of bizarre archipelago of floating stones.
At that point I knew my inference was true. I was no longer in my world. I was in fact so stunned by the realization, that I failed to notice an even more important fact of significantly more pressing nature. It was only when I finally noticed that the wind was only getting faster, and all the floating islands around me seemed to be rapidly moving upwards did I finally catch on to the fact that this damn demon didn’t even bother to open the portal on the ground.
So there i was.
Mentally exhausted, brutally beaten up, and now rapidly falling into oblivion in a universe that I don't even belong to, with a set of three impossible tasks to complete…
I believe that taking all of it into consideration I can say that without a shadow of a doubt, Today…
…Is a BAD day.
Next

I’m not sure where else to ask for advice on this. I currently have two cats and I am planning on adopting a puppy in a few months. I keep trying to think through the logistics of keeping puppy away from the cat food and water dishes, which are currently on my kitchen floor.
I was originally thinking I would gate off my kitchen and that’s where puppy would stay during waking/at-home hours since there is less to destroy in there, the floors are easy to clean, and when I’m home I’m usually in the kitchen. It would be easy enough to just move the cat dishes into another room, and then the kitchen will be for puppy until it’s old enough to have free reign of the house. However, the cats’ litter boxes are in the basement, which is only accessible via the kitchen. Moving the litter boxes is not an option, so the cats need access at least to the basement door.
Do I just find a different space to give to puppy, and accept that there will be some damage to the hardwood floors that are outside of the kitchen? I plan on having a crate with a playpen connected if this is the case. How do you handle the cat food/water dishes with a puppy around?

Previous / First
Writer's note: Short sections with updates about all kinds of people. And Vickers faces his greatest threat ever.
Enjoy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"So the last round is a four person free for all?" James asked as he saw the tournament finale.
"Yes." Amina said. "Once you've been struck seven times you'll be locked out of the fight and you'll be immobilized and shielded until it's over. Here's what's going to happen."
"So we're really not going to talk about the centaur in the room?" James asked.
"James focus." Amina said, ignoring his quip. "You, myself, and this Raend fellow are going to team up against the Glag."
"Okay so it as A... Glag?" James asked. "Glag isn't its name."
"It's both." Amina said simply. "That's neither here nor there. We need to work together to defeat the Glag or else we'll all be defeated within the first minute of the fight."
James's eyebrows furrowed at that. He looked over at the spot where the Glag(?) was standing in the corner of the room. Once again it seemed to be staring straight ahead with its mouth agape and drooling out the slurry of stone and saliva.
"That thing?" He asked. "You sure?"
"Okay." Amina said with her hands in front of her face in a prayer position as she took a deep breath. "James, that thing is a sentient variation of an earth elemental. It's faster than it looks. It's.... well... it's not SMARTER than it looks. But it is much more clever than you're probably giving it credit for. Besides which, remember what the devices on out chests are designed to signal for?"
James looked down at the small brass and crystal device. "Yeah. Hits." He said.
She poked his forehead with a finger. "Hits that would be lethal in a real fight." She reminded him. "Which for you and me means basically anything anyone in this tournament can throw at us. Now. Tell me. What's lethal for an elemental made of stone?"
"Oh." He said once he thought of the question for a moment.
"Yeah." She said. Then she made a face and her hand moved to her stomach.
James quickly looked around to see if anyone was watching, and when he saw the one other humanoid fighter in the room, presumably Raend, was busy reading a book, he turned to Amina and moved to provide her a bit of cover.
"You okay?" He asked.
Amina took several deep breaths and steeled herself a bit. "Yes. Though morning sickness is an incredibly inaccurate term."
"Need some water or something?" He asked. Then he thought of the hit she'd taken at the end of her fight with Gorna. "Say, maybe this wasn't a good idea. Having you in this tournament."
"Not a chance." She said as she spit a bit of saliva out into the nearby spittoon. "Besides. There's no way you win against that thing with only two people."
"Seriously?" James asked. "We are talking about that guy right?" He reiterated with a thumb over his shoulder as the two of them approached Raend.
Glag continued staring passively at the rack of spears that was in front of him.
------------------------------
Vickers had just finished talking to the owner of the building that the letter had specified, the same one he had been converted in, when he heard a familiar armored gait approaching. He folded the letter from the council and put it in his back pocket, and was walking around the wagon with the silver barbed mesh that would line the rooms for Five and Driscoll when he ran into the owner of the familiar stride pattern.
"Well. Looks like we get to-" His voice trailed off as he looked at the unexpected arrival. Then he looked up higher. "You're not Atrafar." He said with a cocked eyebrow. The hand that had just put the letter away slid up his back until it was resting on his pistol. He'd had to break off and then file down the trigger guard to be able to use it again.
"No. No I'm not." The massive, grey and white muzzled, werewolf in Outer Light armor said with a cocked eyebrow of its own.
"The council sent you?" Vickers asked. "You're overseeing the conversion?"
The wolf looked down at his armor for a moment. "Looks that way." He said. "I assume that you're Chief Anthony Vickers?"
"Yeah." The SEAL answered as the large wolf began to slowly look him up and down.
After a few moments of awkward silence the newcomer spoke up again. "Night brothers are rare. You're smaller than she makes you sound." He said as he approached the wagon and casually lifted one of the silver mesh bundles with his gauntleted hand.
Vickers donned a confused expression. "Than who makes me sound?"
"My daughter." The wolf said as it carefully walked into the building with the bundle, grabbing one of the tool bags from the side of the wagon with his empty hand. "Atrafar. I'm Outer Light Commander De'Lius Dauntless. Retired. Though I've been recalled for the next few days." He said as he disappeared into the door. "Let's get to work."
Vickers tried to bite his lip, forgetting that his new facial structure didn't exactly allow that particular expression. "Fuck." He said under his breath.
He reached over to one of the remaining bundles on the wagon and tried to lift it. It took a bit of effort, and he wasn't able to one hand it like the Commander had. But eventually he got it onto his shoulder and went inside as well.
"Fuck fuck fuuuuuuck." He said as he went inside.
------------------------
Werner slowly emerged from the third and final slumber to the sight of the healing ward's ceiling.
"There she is." Said the voice of Margaret Choi. "How are you Ambassador? Are you with us?"
Werner felt the back of the bed raising a bit, putting her into a slanted seated position.
"Yeah." She said before breaking into a yawn. "How did it go?"
"Well that really depends on you." Nurse Choi said. "As far as everything on our side is concerned the procedure went off without a hitch. How do you feel?"
She thought about it for a moment. "I fell okay I guess." Then a slightly more pressing issue presented itself. "I need to pee really badly."
"Well that's good." Nurse Choi replied. "I only removed your catheter about an hour ago. So that'll be a good chance to make sure that part went well. Though I'm sure it did. Come on and stand up."
Werner did as instructed and saw the Minotaur, Shrend, standing off to the side and looking at her charts. "Healer Farstorm." She greeted him.
"Welcome back Ambassador." Shrend said with a warm smile. "Things went well. Please follow Mrs. Choi and she'll get you where you need to go."
Ten minutes later, and much more relieved, she was back in the room and undergoing tests. They ran her through a familiar gamut of motor skill, walking stability, and various cognitive tests. Nurse Choi compared the results to the records that Earth had sent over for them.
By the time they were done it was nearly night again, and Werner was hovering on the border of breaking out into tears.
"Well Ambassador." Shrend said as he and Nurse Choi looked over the results and comparisons. "I don't want to count my drakes before they hatch. But if these results mean what Mrs. Choi says they do, then I think it's been a success. I really need to work on understanding English so I can read these more easily." He joked.
"I haven't scored that well since I was in my twenties." Werner said as she fought to keep her eyes dry.
"Well hopefully it stays that way for a long time." Nurse Choi said as she placed a hand on Werner's shoulder. The other hand grabbed a towel and handed it to her. "It's okay to be happy." She whispered softly.
Werner took the advice and let herself cry for a bit. The Nurse rubbed her back a little as she slowly got herself back under control and wiped her face.
"Thank you so much." She said between sobbing bouts.
"Oh. No need for that." Shrend said. "Healing and helping people is what we do. Now let's see about getting you back to your quarters and we'll have you back tomorrow for a bit more testing."
"Okay." She said as she let the nurse help her back to her feet.
She didn't stumble, or misstep at all in the ten or so minutes it took to get back. And by the time she got there she felt like she was floating.
--------------------
"You want to do what?" King Farrick asked.
"I've been ordered to restart testing on transmittal of living specimens to Earth from Petravus your majesty." Col. Muhammed said flatly. "We've set up a pressure chamber that can handle that particular issue and help them depressurize. Plus we have reason to believe that our world has become magically saturated enough that even a Petravian citizen should be able to survive the trip. Though, obviously we'll be starting with Earth citizens."
She pressed a button and a series of windows appeared on his screen, showing videos of people performing feats of strength and speed similar to what some of the Earth people in the castle were capable of now. Some of the videos showed people performing magical spells, though they were all simply, fire and wind attacks, moving earth, summoning light. Some of them showed people accidentally dealing with the carnage that some of that resulted in. There was a news segment, with Petravian subtitles put in place for him, talking about something called an "Influencer" dying after they attempted to fly over something called the Grand Canyon.
"I had assumed as much." He said after a few minutes of watching the curious footage. No matter how many times he saw them, videos amazed him. "I take it that you intend to have the Ambassador send over a few of the people we released."
"That's the long term goal." She admitted openly. "For now we intend to start with small wildlife. Rats or something equivalent. We're not looking to risk any human, or humanoid, life just yet."
"Hmm. Fair enough." He concurred. "You might be happy to know that my healers say that Ambassador Werner has emerged from her final rejuvenation session and all signs point toward a healthy recovery."
The Colonel smiled, and for the first time King Farrick thought it might have been a genuine one.
"That's excellent news." She said. "If the therapy proves fully successful, or hell even partially, that will revolutionize the medical field on our world. Did Nurse Choi take notes?"
"Extensive ones." The King said. "As did our chief healer."
"I look forward to reading them. Whenever you're willing to send them."
The King leaned forward a bit, knowing that he was at an advantage in this exchange
"Tell me." He said as he continued watching the footage that was rapidly changing on his screen. "What kind of magical trouble are the people over there causing?"

I (19 F) have been with my boyfriend (19 M) for a year and a half. We have such a great relationship, and we are very healthy when it comes to just us. However, my boyfriend has a very controlling, overbearing family that I've lived with and continue to live with for a year and a half due to me being an out-of-state student and not being able to afford college, and his mom basically took me under her wing because I was struggling. I've had problems with his mom in the past because she is known to be emotionally immature in some aspects, and we have clashed pretty badly before, but she has changed in some ways, and things are somewhat better. Fast forward to recently, and my bf has a girl cousin with whom he has been close to since he was little. We all use to be a trio really close up until recently. We have both been feeling some type of way when it comes to my boyfriend, but it's never been as bad as now. I'm going to say how we both feel about each other and my boyfriend, which leads up to the fight. His cousin lives with his grandma, and I live with his mom and his siblings. I had a problem with her because she would be at the house every day, but not only that, she felt obligated to my bf's attention anytime we would come into the house from work or something; she would even be loud in the house and do the same things he's interested in to try and make him come out of his room to give her attention, or she would feel neglected by him. She's 22, by the way. She had a talk with him about how she misses their old relationship, basically before I came into the picture, and how close they used to be and how she misses them hanging out, which is valid to me; you miss hanging with your cousin, no biggie; but some things she said rubbed me the wrong way about how she misses their relationship before I was in the picture, but I had let that go. This situation had gotten worse from then to the point where it started affecting our relationship and we almost broke up, so I flew back home and we decided to try long distance because his cousin isn't just someone you can talk to and how do you just bring up, "Hey, you're over your aunt's house too much, you're loud and need my boyfriend's attention constantly, and you feel neglected has gotten annoying," but while I was away for a month, while I would be face timing my boyfriend, she would purposely try to get his attention away from me and even make it known that she wanted a hug from him which upset me because you only do this when I'm on the phone with him and your physically there with him, I haven’t seen him in almost a month and you're still trying to get his attention. I fly back down to help them move, as I am planning to live there again because my boyfriend said he was going to set boundaries. His mom helped me fly down to surprise him. He was happy to see me, but his cousin wasn't happy. The second day I'm there, she tries to keep making it known she doesn't like me or want me there; she refers to me as "that girl" or anything but my name, and I just keep ignoring it out of respect for my bf to not escalate the situation. She even goes up to my boyfriend and says "when is your girlfriend leaving?" which upsets him. His mom is made aware of this situation as well and just says it's the devil. So then, I am now in a separate room away from everybody eating the food that my bf just bought me, and she double takes and sees me in there and stands in the hallway. Someone asked her whose trash is on the floor, and she proceeded to say, "Idk, ask that girl in there." I hear her because she clearly wanted me to, and I close the door to avoid a situation. She then opens my door and demands, in an aggressive tone, for me to get my trash, as if I were her kid. Mind you, they are in the middle of moving, so there is trash everywhere, and the person who asked just wanted to make sure I didn't need it anymore before they threw it away. As she finishes demanding me and walks back to the hallway, I say, "You can say please," and I shut the door with no aggression. As I took my trash (the food I was eating) outside, I heard her cursing and getting mad, and she started to get really aggressive to the point where my boyfriend's family is trying to hold her back, and she's calling me out my name, saying she's going to beat my a** and to let her go so she can lay a hand on me. My boyfriend is in distress, his two little sisters are crying, and everything happened so fast and went left all because I stood up to her and finally defended myself. They calm her down, and my bf goes to talk to her and set boundaries, and she admits I didn't do anything to her. Jump ahead to the next day. We are all at the new house now, and his mom says she's not going to be coming over like she used to and how she's done with her because the cousin cursed out his mom as well. At this point, his cousin goes so far as to try and get his mom against me, saying how I don't need to be there and how I talk about my bf's mom and just really toxic things, and telling his mom she's going to get what's coming to her messing with me. All 3 of us are on the same page about not having her around until she at least apologizes or acts like an adult. Fast forward to yesterday, present time, and his mom came up to me saying how her mom and my bf's cousin are coming over for a few hours, and I am bothered but I let it go because it's just a few hours, I guess, but no instead the grandma is never to be found and the cousin ends up sleeping over. My boyfriend's mom had lied. My boyfriend's cousin doesn't feel the need to apologize, and she thinks she did nothing wrong. My bf and I don't know what to do anymore because his mom lied to us and she also likes drama, but my bf and I don't have the funds to move anywhere, and even if things go back to normal with his family, I am damaged by this situation and don't know if I could ever feel comfortable with the thought of her around or even know her intentions in the future, as she is possessive over my boyfriend and this whole situation is about him, and she thinks I am jealous of their relationship, so we have resulted in breaking up and I go back home because they are close and eventually will regain their closeness back but I know myself and I will always feel some type of way about her. My bf could live with me back home, but he says he's not ready to, plus my mom's area is boring, and I think that could be one of the reasons he's not ready. We would like some advice on what to do without the result of breaking up. (Sorry for the long post)
TL;DR: My boyfriend's cousin tried to fight me because she thinks I am jealous of their relationship and don't want them to be close.
.

This is an incident that occurred late 2019 when I was studying abroad. I was drinking my usual two cups of coffee in bed one morning, when I had the sudden urge to pee. I had been holding it in while finishing something on the computer and now the urge was really bad. I got up and sprinted to the bathroom. As I stopped at the toilet and prepared to urinate, I felt extremely light headed.
The next thing I remember I woke up on the wooden bathroom floor. I had fallen down and hit my head on the floor after fainting at the toilet. I stood up confused and then experienced something that felt like a seizure for about the next 15 minutes. It was horrible. I couldn't speak. It felt like an earthquake was happening inside my brain. I struggled to move properly. I think I fell to the ground again, gasping, struggling to utter shouts for help, but I couldn't. I could only make guttural grunts/gasps. Sometimes I managed to make staggering steps, other times I crawled. After some minutes I made it to my room door. I managed to open the door and started banging on neighboring doors for help, but no one was there. I crawled back inside. Eventually, this seizure or whatever it was subsided. I immediately called my dad to relate what had happened. I was able to walk, talk, think and do everything normally as soon as the seizure-like-thing subsided. I felt no pain in my head nor any headaches afterwards.
My university arranged for me to immediately see a primary care physician who did a basic check-up. She didn't seem to think that what I had experienced was a seizure. She said sometimes after fainting, people can feel as if they're having a seizure. She told me not to worry, said I was dehydrated from the caffeine.
For some reason, I never brought this up to my doctor back home, because I didn't experience any further symptoms the months afterwards. I kind of just forgot about it.
Lately, though, this incident has been worrying me, especially hitting my head on the wooden floor from a standing position, followed by the seizure-like-event. Do you think I suffered a concussion or traumatic brain injury from hitting my head? And do you think my experience after fainting/falling was indeed a seizure? What could the consequences of this event be for my future health? I'm worried about similar seizures recurring at random points in the future, as well as sudden death syndrome due to the trauma from my head hitting the floor.
Should I discuss this with a neurologist, and perhaps get a brain scan? Again, I notice no lingering symptoms of anything from that event, at least so far. It's been four years.

“She’s a witch.”
“I think you said bitch wrong.”
It’s hard to laugh when you’re exhausted, but Marti was never not able to get one out of us. Between panted breaths we laughed. Tommy’s face growing red with anger and embarrassment at the joke at his expense.
“I’m serious!” He managed to blurt when the laughter finally died down enough to get a word in.
“So am I!”
Again, laughter erupted from the bottom of our thirteen year old hearts once more breaking the silence of the forest we were supposed to be hiding in if by chance the cops were actually called as a result of our impromptu prank just a few minutes prior.
Living in a small town meant a lot of boredom. Some kids had big problems like gang violence and drive-by shootings, drugs, and crippling poverty, and even though those problems existed for your typical small town Ohio kids, at least to some extent. Our biggest problem was always boredom.
As a matter of fact, every problem that every small town had ever had could probably be traced back to boredom in one way or another. Why is that guy doing heroin behind a Walmart? Because once upon a time he was sixteen and bored, so he stole some of grandmas pills. Why did the schools football teams locker building get burned down? Because some kid was bored and decided to ruin the football team’s stuff. Why are there a bunch of kids laughing in the middle of the forest just outside of town? Same reason, they were bored and decided to ding dong ditch the senile old lady down the street.
If I’d had known for half a second . . . If I’d even had a hint of foresight about how everything would’ve turned out for us then I’d have suggested something else. Anything else, but hindsight’s 20/20. Especially for young kids.
“Guys, I’m freakin serious. Okay?” Tommy doubled down. His fists now balled up. His voice breaking a little bit with the overwhelming irritability at the laughter. “Anyone who’s ever messed with Ms. Abernanthy has been cursed.”
“Come on man.” I said trying to diffuse Tommy’s anger a little bit. “There’s a lot of places in this world, beautiful places! Jamacia, Hawaii, Switzerland. All sorts of places a powerful witch could have a good ass life, and you think there’s one living in that little brown double wide on Sycamore street? In London Ohio?”
A few more chuckles amongst the group of friends before Tommy finally resigned his argument with an exasperated sigh. As we came around from our fits of laughter and jokes we began to realize that the sun was setting.
“Wow, what a surprise.” Charlie spoke up. “No one cares that their doorbell got rang! Looks like our outlaw days are done y’alls. Just in time for dinner too. Convenient full pardons are convenient!”
“No doubt.” I responded as the group made their way out of the forest and began to cut across the large meadow towards town. “Marti, you eating with us tonight? Dad says it’s fine.”
“Appreciate it dude, but mom says we’ve got plans tonight. We’ll steal your dads Marlboros some other time okay?”
More laughter as the friend group split ways and headed home . . .
Ding
Dong
Diiing Doong
At first when I heard the doorbell ring, I just sort of brushed it off. I’d thought that maybe it was just some part of a dream I’d been having or something. Even in my almost full sleep state I knew that no one in their right mind would be ringing our doorbell at three in the morning. As I adjusted my pillow and threw my head back down on it though I heard it again. Resonating throughout the otherwise silent house in a way that was almost maliciously haunting given the time of night.
Ding
Dong
Diing Doong
It hadn’t been my imagination. There was someone at the door. Before I could even get up however, I heard the gruff and commanding voice of my father as his heavy footsteps stammered groggily past my room.
“I swear to Christ if that’s one of your goofy friends.” He mumbled to himself as he staggered past my room in his barely lucid state.
Several moments later I heard the front door open. Followed by my father shouting in surprise as several loud bangs and clashes filled the house with a chaotic cacophony of sound.
I ran out as quickly as I could towards the front room of the house to see my fathers silhouette fumbling for the light switch. As he turned it on, and my eyes adjusted to the sudden flash of light. I could see that he was intently scanning the front room. His bright green eyes bouncing back and forth like a radar scanner. Laying on the ground around him was a broken ash tray and several books that must’ve gotten knocked off of the shelf they’d previously been resting on.
“What happened dad?”
Quickly he put his finger out in a sort of ‘stop talking’ gesture as his eyes remained transfixed on the room around him. After a few moments of nerve wracking silence, he finally responded.
“There’s a bat somewhere. Flew in when I opened the door.”
“Who rang the doorbell?”
As if remembering what it was the led us to the front room in the middle of the night in the first place my dad looked back over his shoulder to the wide open front door, and the dimly lit street beyond it. He peaked his head over the threshold and looked around for a moment before closing it.
“No one . . . Some kids ding dong ditching maybe. Crazy ass teenagers, when do you guys even sleep nowadays?”
I laughed quietly at dad’s remark before looking around the front room to try and spot the bat.
“You’d think it’d be freaking out or something you know? Like, fluttering around and trying to find a way out?”
“Yeah . . . You’d think.”
A thorough search of the front room gradually turned into a thorough search of the entire house, but aside from the fallen books and ash tray in the front room there was nothing amiss. Just another normal small-town house in its small town neighborhood. Finally after about an hour and a half of searching my dad threw his arms up in defeat.
“Screw it, guess he’s staying. I gotta get ready for work anyways. Go back to bed kid, we’ll find it tomorrow. No one ever got killed by a stray bat.”
Although I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with the idea of sharing a house with a wild animal for the night. I knew he was right. It was almost four thirty in the morning now, and I was tired. Besides, if it’s afraid then it’ll probably just hide, and they sleep during the day so it shouldn’t be a huge issue . . . Hopefully.
“Alright, night dad. Have a good day at work.”
“Yeah. . . .”
Ding
Dong
Diing
Donng
I had just slipped into that sort of half realm between awake and asleep when I was abruptly brought back to consciousness by the doorbell ringing again. The red digital illumination of my alarm clock read 6:33am. I sighed to myself in annoyance and frustration as I turned over on my back to prepare to pull myself out of bed once again to try and discover who was ringing our doorbell again, and that’s when I saw her.
Suspended from the ceiling upside down was the darkened shadow of a person. Long tangled hair draped low and messy, almost touching the floor. From within the tangled mess of hair were two bright yellow eyes that burned through me like fire. As I screamed and clambered my way to the headboard of my bed to try and pathetically create some distance between myself and this horrible thing in my room the figure reached its arms out in a sort of ‘crucifix’ posture. From the aurora of its terrible yellow eyes I could see a wide mouth full of sharp teeth. I screamed again at the top of my lungs as the room filled itself with the mind numbing sound of the doorbell coming from the figures wide open mouth.
DIIIINNNNNNGGGGGG
DOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGG
DDIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNGGGGGGG
DDDOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGGGGG
DIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGG
DOOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGGGGG
As the deafening noise trembled every ounce of my being the figure contorted its way off of the ceiling and plopped onto my bed in an awful and grotesque fashion. Even in my panicked state I couldn’t understand how it could’ve moved the way it did without breaking its neck and spine.
I tried to make a jump from my bed to the door, but I wasn’t quick enough. I got to the edge of the bed before I felt a tremendous weight pin me back on to the mattress and hold me down. Sitting on my chest was the figure. Those horrible eyes burrowing into my soul. That wicked mouth hanging open as if it were going to swallow me whole.
She’s a witch.
The memory of Tommy’s voice echoed in my head.
I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know if it was just the fear, and Tommy being the only name on my mind in that moment. I don’t know if I’m just a selfish coward. I just . . . Don’t know, but as that god awful thing sat on top of me. As her mouth and those evil yellow eyes drew closer and closer to my face I shouted at the top of my fear fueled lungs.
“IT WAS TOMMY! IT WAS TOMMY! HE RANG YOUR DOORBELL! IT WAS TOMMY! PLEASE!”
Suddenly, with no warning, and no possible way of occurring. The weight was off of my chest, and the figure was gone.
I don’t know how I managed to fall back asleep, maybe it was just the adrenaline dump that knocked me out, but before I knew it I was waking up to the image of my sun filled room.
After a lot of talking to myself. I had barely managed to convince myself that last nights events were just the result of a horrible dream. I had read somewhere that waking up in the middle of the night and then going back to sleep could result in very lucid dreams. That, I decided. Was what caused that awful dream.
Ding
Dong
Diiing
Doong.
I felt an anchor drop into my stomach as the doorbell rang. Slowly I made my way to the front door and with a lot of hesitation finally managed to open it.
Standing at the other side of the door was Tommy’s mom. A look of obvious concern on her face.
“Did . . . Uhm, Did Tommy by chance come to your house last night? I’ve been to everyone’s house that he knows, and no one’s seen him. I don’t understand why he would just leave the house like that. Please. If you know something, please just tell me.”
They never found Tommy. Not even the faintest glimpse of a clue. Everyone eventually stopped looking for him after about a year. Everyone but his mom, she never stopped looking. She died last year. I heard she was staring expectantly at the hospital door the entire time. Waiting for her son to come walking through . . . The police say he either ran away, or was kidnapped and killed by some vagabond who had seen us in town the day prior.
I’m the only one who truly knows what happened to him, and I’ve never been able to tell anyone that It was all my fault.
Tommy was right.

I would have loved to see a series where we follow the story of a CIS commandegeneral from their start as an inexperienced commander that is extremely jumpy and pisses their pants whenever there's an explosion or sees a Jedi to a commander that will gladly fight an entire clone legion with nothing but five(5) B-1’s and a spoon.
We could see MC’s tragic origins for example their parents dying because of Republic negligence or corruption. We could also see MC trying to rationalize the war crimes the CIS commits and maybe have an episode where they and a friend/love interest accept the surrender of a republic fleet only for the captain or Jedi in charge to use the white flag of truce as a shield to do the same thing Anakin did over Ryloth and kill the MC’s friend/love interest then have the MC slaughter the “Republic Dogs” and be condemned as a war criminal by the republic and have this haunt the MC for the rest of the series by having the population of planets MC liberates/conquers (depending on who you ask) thinking that MC is going to slaughter them forcing him to constantly fight revolutionaries.
And maybe at one point have MC get captured by the republic and be interrogated by a Jedi or clone and have an argument about which side is the evil one and which one is the good one both pointing out the flaws of the others but not the flaws of their own sides. Then have MC escape and accidentally kill a Jedi padawan (who's a child/teen) And have the master of that padawan be the main antagonist of the series who as the series goes on gradually turns more evil/insane going from a commander similar to Obi-wan and Anakin to eventually one more like Pong-Krell (or however you spell his name)
MC could also form a bond with his command droid whether that might be a B-1, a Tactical Droid, or a Super Tactical Droid by giving it something of great value to the MC.
Then when order 66 happens and the droid army is deactivated they have a showdown where the MC finally kills the now twisted Jedi then MC reactivates his droids retreat to a separatist holdout then have a 3 episode long side where the MC desperately tries to fight off the Empire and eventually die in a glorious last stand fighting for the CIS to the bitter end.
At the end of the episode we could do something similar to the clone wars but instead of Vader inspecting Asoka’s Venator it could either be MC’s B-1 command droid or Tactical Droid or Super Tactical Droid teaching rebel recruits about its experiences with MC or alternatively cough cough enter scene:
The sun shined through holes in the long-since-collapsed ceiling, and the local flora could be found everywhere.
The camera zooms in on a Super Tactical Droid its body crushed by rubble and a blue scarf with a two-headed lizard on it that covered most of its neck and in front of it was an old console covered by years of dust (those round holographic tables we see in TCW)
Then the silence of the room was broken by the sound of dozens of running boots on the other side of a moss-covered door.
The sound of the running boots stopped just outside the door instead replaced by the clanking and banging of equipment.
The door was suddenly blown off its hinges and sent flying into rusted metal walls or the bodies of long dead droids, white smoke seeped in through the new opening where the doors had just been.
Twelve(12) stormtroopers rushed in with their blasters at the ready, they quickly secured the room and a figure entered the room.
The camera moved behind the new figure who wore a white outfit and helmet, the figure looked around the room until it saw the old Separatist droid.
The figure walked to the droid and bent down before it then carefully removed the scarf careful not to damage it.
One of the stormtroopers walked up to the figure before asking:
Stormtrooper: “Sir what do you have there?”
The figure stood up holding the scarf in one of its hands caressing it gently with its thumb before answering the trooper.
???: “This is the legacy of a brilliant general and the legacy of someone who lost everything”
Though the Stormtrooper was wearing a helmet it was quite obvious that the trooper was confused.
Stormtrooper: “I don't understand”
The figure slowly turned around the camera ever so slightly zooming in on its head until it had finally turned around revealing its red eyes and blue skin.
Grand Admiral Thrawn: “Tell me trooper what do you know of General MC?”
The screen then cuts to black.

Howdy, folks. Long time Diablo-enjoyer here. I wanted to play just a couple hours of the D4 early access weekend so as not to burn out on the early game pre-release. Instead I became totally captivated by the sorcerer and spent most of Sunday digging through everything she has to offer. So now– hours later–I thought it might be fun to organize my thoughts and share them with you all.
Let’s get a few things out of the way first.
1) I played exclusively on world tier 2. I cannot comment on WT1.
2) I dabbled in the other two classes, but I only dug deep on sorcerer. Everything here is strictly in-class. I’m not making any assumptions or assertions about how sorc stacks up to rogue or barb.
3) I didn’t have time to get to absolutely everything. Someone has to clean up this house, you know! (It’s me. I’m the one that has to clean the house. The cats sure aren’t doing it.)
4) Obviously, everything here only applies to what’s available so far. There’s probably a skill I’m going to talk smack about which, with the right legendary aspect, full 50 point build, and perfect paragon board, turns out to be a certified ripper. That’s fine. We’ll get there when we get there. I maintain that it would be cool if stuff was good more or less from the time you can use it, though, and will be operating under that principle.
5) I will express negative opinions toward some aspects of the design in this, but I have deep and abiding respect for the designers of this game. Every game, for that matter. I dabble in design and even the baby card games for babies that I’ve worked on in my spare hours seem overwhelmingly difficult to make at times. People make games. Real people. I don’t ever want to forget that and, if you choose to comment, I ask you not to forget it either.
6) Furthermore, I have deep and abiding respect for you and your opinions. No kappa. I’m not here to yuck your yum or tell you you’re doing something wrong. If you’re having a good time, you’re winning the game and I salute you.
7) What this all adds up to, is that I have spent a lot of time playing, taking notes on, and thinking about this game and in particular this class this weekend. It’s led me to some moderately firm opinions. If you disagree, I think that’s great. I want you to disagree with me. Let’s talk it out. But please be chill and respectful. If something I say about the game angers you, I would ask that you not damage your mental health and mine taking it out here. Thank you, truly.
So, the sorcerer. Pretty nifty, huh?
The tl;dr is that I think the class is very cool, and the game is very cool, and I had a lot of fun.
But.
There are definitely some things that stand out to me as not well balanced. A couple of skills seem to dominate the pack, and a few are outright stinkers. What I’m going to do is go through each skill individually, then fire off a few random thoughts.
And one more time for the back row: I liked this game and I liked this class. All criticism comes from a place of love, and for the desire to be as good for as many people as it possibly can. I wish to see the game elevated, not torn down.
On to the skills!

BASIC

Sad to start on this note, but I think the sorcerer basics are woefully underdeveloped. Spark, Frost Bolt, and Fire Bolt practically feel like the same skill. All three of them are just little baby bolts of energy that don’t look or sound particularly interesting. And mechanically, the impact of their base damage as well as the upgrades are so minimal that most of the time I’d rather just be dodging while my mana recovers.
Arc Lash though? Arc Lash is where it’s at. The numbers are better–as they should be since it’s a close range skill–but they’re much better. Add it to the wide cleave and this is the beginning of a solid basic skill. Also it’s very visually distinct, I love the orchestra conductor animation with the lash whipping back and forth.
I realize it’s probably too late to make such a sweeping change, but the three bolts could actually, literally be the same skill–call it “Elemental Bolt”--and the upgrades could apply different elemental effects, making room for other, more interesting skills basics. (Yes this would break the current skill->improvement->specialization layout followed by all the other skills, I think that’s OK.)
In any case, the other major failing of the basics is that they don’t generate any mana by default. I would really like to feel a bit of a push/pull dynamic between Basic Spell/Big Spell. And right now, they generate no mana, or very meager mana with the right upgrades, in addition to outputting damage that feels insufficient and upgrade effects that feel marginal. I say bump their numbers (generously), and consider adding some base mana regen. Maybe 3-5? Make me feel like I have a reason to weave them into my attack patterns.

CORE

Overall this crop is much better. Thematically distinct, with solid visuals and good game feel. Numerically though, there are some stark disparities. Starting at the top and going counter-clockwise we have…
-Incinerate feels like the worst of the lot. Channeled spells are always tricky to get right; standing still is dangerous and, for me at least, less interesting than bobbing and weaving. I don’t think Incinerate threads the needle. The damage output and mana cost don’t justify the downside of planting my feet. Looks cool as hell though.
-Fireball is… it’s fireball, you know? It’s a classic, and it’s doing what I’d expect it to do here. Pretty middle of the pack in terms of numerical output, quality of life, and visual flair.
-Frozen Orb is functionally a very similar skill. It has more AoE, the utility of chill, and some razzle-dazzle to the animations. But the damage is so much lower than fireball that it feels lacking. I think it needs a damage bump. (But maybe I just look back too fondly upon my days as an Ice Queen in Diablo 2. xD)
-Ice Shards is the core skill I spent the least time with. I tried it in a couple different packages, but couldn’t find the use case. If I’m being honest, it kinda feels like a Basic after a couple of upgrades, not a Core. If you love this one I definitely want to hear from you.
-Chain Lightning, I’m pretty confident, makes the rest of these spells look like chumps. It is good at clear, good at single target, and the mobility it affords is unparalleled. You just fire it and go. Seriously, look at the numbers it does for the cost, and then remember that you press that button once and can’t miss, provided your cursor was on any monster, and you get to duck dive and dodge while it bounces hither and yon, smiting your foes. I don’t think it’s too strong though, I think it feels perfect. Just what I want from a Core. If the others could be brought up to this level. I’d be extremely happy. One complaint though… why doesn’t it look like chain lightning? ;__; Come on, gimme the classic forked lightning, baby! I miss it so much here.
-Charged Bolts: Another Core that probably looks better if it’s put more on par numerically with Chain Lightning. The shotgun spread of random projectiles is another classic, and being able to get bonus effects for dumping them into a single target at point blank range is pretty cool.

DEFENSE

I think these skills are overall in a pretty good place.
-Flame Shield seems almost there. The burn numbers feel a touch low and the cooldown a touch high. It’s not a “true” defensive skill, more of a mixed use skill. And since at least one solid defensive cooldown seems pretty necessary, I’d like to see this one have a bit more muscle as an offensive skill, or a bit more defensive power added in somewhere. Maybe some bonus resistances? But then it starts to infringe on Ice Armor’s design space, so I’m not sure.
-Teleport is a staple for a reason, and this version is great. The upgrades are fine if you want them but they’re far from necessary. A true one point wonder, a classic for a reason. And I love the VFX. 10/10 no notes.
-Ice Armor is a solid defensive option for any build that’s cool (haha get it cool) with standing still and getting punched in the face. I still think that archetype is going to need more support than is currently available–whether through late/postgame stuff we haven’t seen or through some adjustments to skills like Incinerate–but I’m willing to bet this will feature in many such builds.
-Frost Nova is very, very good. Reasonable cooldown, good area. Making it inflict Vulnerable is great, and lengthening the Vulnerable duration against bosses who are immune to Freeze is a smart move. Relevant in all situations.

CONJURATION

I’m just gonna say it up top; Hydra is here, everyone else can go home now. Details follow.
-Hydra is bananapants compared to the other two. The DPS value is good, both against groups and single targets. The damage to mana ratio is obscenely high. The upgrades are great, especially the one that gives a bonus head when healthy. That’s just 33% more damage, straight up, in almost every situation. Honestly this is the one sorcerer skill in the game that could get nerfed and probably still be good, I think.
-Ice Blades makes me so sad. I find it possible that in the late game/postgame, with enough cooldown reduction and ways to make enemies vulnerable, you could do a really cool thing where Ice Blades makes Ice Blades which make Ice Blades… until you have an Icy, Bladed army slicing up the whole map. It’s certainly the first thing I thought when I read the package over. But right now it’s verging on useless. It moves and attacks so slowly, for a pitiful amount of damage. Even if it turns out to be a build-around late game powerhouse, it needs help now.
-Lightning Spear feels like the actually appropriate power level for this group. Hydra clowns on it numerically, but that’s not Lightning Spear’s fault. My one complaint is that visually, it’s insufficiently distinct from Chain Lightning. I’m not 100% sure but I think they’re actually the same projectile! This look is fine for Lightning Spear, so to restate, please make chain lighting look like, you know. A chain of lightning. ^{___^}

MASTERY

This is a flock of strange ducks to me. In essence, Meteor, Firewall, and Ball Lightning feel like Cores in disguise. They’re just nukes. Blizzard set my expectation that these skills would be utility-based supplemental damage dealers. Kinda like how Conjurations are longer-lasting, fire-and-forget, continuous damage dealers. But ¾ feel like Cores; repeatable nukes to spend most of your mana on. In a vacuum this is fine, my only real quibble is that you have to spend points passing through the cluster of Core skills. And in a world where this is true, I would like to see more options for passives to buy in the Core cluster for builds that evolve to use a Mastery instead of a Core as the bread and butter damage button. (Bread and Butter Damage Button is the name of my cottagecore heavy metal band, btw.) Now let’s look at each skill individually.
-Blizzard does what you want Blizzard to do. (The skill that is, not the development studio; I make no claims as to whether or not Blizzard Entertainment is doing what you, personally, want them to do. ^__). This is the epitome of “nailed it” for this skill group.
-Meteor, man. When I first read the description of Meteor in the Diablo 2 manual I lost my damn mind. Then I cast it, sat there for a minute and said to myself, wait, is that it? Then Diablo 3 gave me the Meteor I’d imagined so many years earlier. Several different kinds in fact! This meteor? It makes the cut. Sorry, that might feel like a tangent, but the A/V, the game feel, the fantasy of Meteor is of particular importance to me. From a usage perspective it seems to fill its own niche, so that’s great, and the numbers seem solid.
-Speaking of Diablo 2, y’all remember Firewall owning the world? Conceptually this skill has never been my favorite. It seems like it should be a defensive or zoning tool, but Diablo enemies have zero sense of self preservation and will happily charge to their death for even the slightest chance to stab you just one time. That’s fine though, I know lots of other people love Firewall as a primary damage dealer. I don’t however feel like the numbers are there. Enemies in this game move pretty fast and I never felt like I found a way to kite enemies effectively for the damage to come out at a reasonable speed, especially for the mana cost.
-Ball Lightning isn’t working for me on any level. It doesn’t move fast enough to reliably hit distant targets; it doesn’t move slowly enough to reliably multi-hit close targets. Also, it’s really infringing on Frozen Orb’s design space. It’s a primary damage dealer in the form of a slow orb that pierces all targets. I actually think this skill would feel a lot better if the basic usage became the immobile version that can proc from one of the legendary aspects. That’s getting close to Firewall’s turf though.

ULTIMATE

Two of these feel like Ultimates to me, one doesn’t. Can you guess which before reading? Try it! Or don’t that’s fine, too.
-Deep Freeze is very, very good. Almost like an upgraded, long-cooldown Frost Nova. Immunity, plus barrier and Chill/Freeze that persist after that, plus (modest) damage in a (huge!!) area. Powerful, versatile skill.
-Inferno also feels appropriate to call an ultimate. Unique VFX with real wow factor, and chunky damage on a long cooldown. Though I do think maybe the vacuum effect should be inherent and that upgrade replaced with something else. It doesn’t feel quite powerful enough without it.
-Unstable Currents leaves me pretty cold. For one, I usually wanna really feel my ultimate when I hit that button. For another, it seems like the lowest impact (and highest variance, thanks to the random spell cast) of the three, but also has the longest cooldown for some reason. I think it’s a really neat idea, But it’s not quite coming together for me, and I don’t know what I would suggest be done with it.

ENCHANTMENTS

There are simply too many of these for me to have spent much time with most of them. But my game sense tells me that, most of the time, Fireball is going to be really hard to beat. Really, really hard. A huge percentage of this game is about clearing packs, and Fireball clears packs. It has limited utility against bosses, but it’s free to switch your Enchantment before a boss fight. At least for now? Maybe in postgame dungeons we’ll be locked in, like a D3 rift? But then again, we’ll get a second slot eventually, so I don’t know. Spending one skill point or getting a point in Fireball from an item right now feels as close to mandatory as anything for Sorcerer.

RANDOM NOTES

Here are a few brain droppings that didn’t fit into the above.
-Why isn’t Stun a searchable keyword in the sorcerer tree?
-Part of the reason I advocated for some inherent mana restoration from Basics is because mana recovery feels a bit too slow. Maybe more than a bit. There are a dozen different knobs that could tune this, from Basics feeling punchier and/or recovering mana, to base mana regen going up, to it being more common on gear, to base spell costs being lowered a touch… You get the idea. I wanna use my cool skills, let me use my cool skills, that’s all I’m sayin’. Probably in the late and postgame this will cease to be an issue, but I’d still like to fire off my main skill a bit more often.
-Please show me the number of points required to reach each tier of skill so I can more effectively pull and replace single points. For example, even after I have two points in Basics, I would like to see on screen somewhere–maybe off to the side, maybe on a tooltip–that it takes a total of two points invested before I can put points in Core skills. (Obviously this is more for stuff way further down the tree, that was just an easy example.)
-We won’t know until later in the game, but is there ever a reason to deliberately mix elements? I’m all for a good Only Lightning, Other Elements Need Not Apply sort of build, but I also like the way D3 had skills and gear that encouraged mixing and matching. Right now it looks like the more you can mono-focus the better, so I’m hoping gear and/or Paragon Boards will open up some builds that combine two or even three damage types.
That’s all I have for now! What do my Sorcerous Comrades think? Satisfied? Underwhelmed? Haha Hydra go brrrr? Counting the minutes until June, but until then, I'd love to hear from you.

Sunday morning rolls around and my family and I get ready to head to the markets as per our weekly ritual. When we arrived we parked and head into the racecourse where the markets were held.
We were walking around for about 30 mins or so before my mum found an antique stall. She fell in love with a wooden TV unit.
It was beautifully stained oak wood, with stained glass on the side cupboard doors and solid oak on the front cupboards. As soon as she saw it she bought it instantly and got her now, ex husband to take it to the car, it was too heavy for any of my sibling and I to help, so we all ended up going to the car.
Once the unit was loaded in and my mum was satisfied it was well hidden and safe, we headed back to the stall as my mum had seen a bookcase and chest that looked to be a set with the unit.
We arrived back at the same spot but the stall had disappeared. My mum asked the neighbouring stalls if they know where the antique stall had gone and everyone said the same thing: “There are no antique stalls here.”
Defeated and confused my mum decided that that was it for the markets and we headed home.
First night the unit was brought into the house, I heard loud knocking coming from the living room. It grew louder an only continued for about 30 seconds, but was enough to make me sleep under my blanket the rest of the night in 30°C.
Next morning after walking into the kitchen to get ready for school feeling like death, I saw that my older brother and mum had similar tiredness as me.
I was too tired to ask, but thankfully my brother did it anyways and come to find out they both heard the exact same knocking from the night before. It happened daily.
2 weeks later, it got worse. At around 2/3am the couples of weeks after, I saw a figure standing in my doorway looking away from me. Took my chance and slipped under my blanket again. This continued happening and the figure kept creeping closer and closer every night I awoke.
2 days later my mum encountered a man in a wheel chair sitting at the end of her bed staring at her and her ex, watching them sleep.
On the same night my my older brother saw a woman float past his room at the back of the house facing the backyard with only her upper half, the window was only on the top 1/3rd of the wall, so about 3-4 meters above ground.
My mums ex didn’t believe her until he woke up one day in the middle of the night, this has now been about 3 days after my brothers sighting. That was the final straw for us.
We found a new rental within 2 days and left everything behind. To whoever moved in after us, we hope you made it. We hope you were able to stay hidden. We hope you were able to stay quiet.

Should I Hire a Private Investigator to Help to find a lost relative or catch a cheating spouse
When we think about private investigators, most of us imagine something out of a movie: The private investigator sits in his car, chomping a sandwich and smoking a cigar while he tries to catch a cheating spouse and lover in a clandestine embrace. But is this the way it is in real life? Yes and no.
How a Private Investigator Might Help
Private investigators are often hired to Help to find a lost relative or catch a cheating spouse, and they can be very helpful for a variety of reasons. However, more often than not, the evidence they collect is more circumstantial than what you see in the movies. When the case involves extramarital affairs, the couples are usually discreet enough that the film is PG-rated at best. Still, every P.I. has stories of catching people in the act and capturing some very private, revealing moments on film.
The Illusion of Privacy
Most people close the blinds unless they’re on an upper floor in a building where they believe they can’t be seen from the ground. But what if a private investigator manages to take video from an upper floor in the building across the street? If a house is in a secluded area, the spouse who has hired the private investigator can give the P.I. permission to walk onto the grounds of the house. The illusion that the lovers can’t be seen because of the seclusion of the house is just that; an illusion. The investigator can easily record their activity through the windows.
Example One: Video Recording
In one case, a male client knew his wife was having an affair, but the investigator hadn’t been able to get any real evidence. So, the P.I. suggested that the client go on a short trip. It wasn’t long after the client went out of town that a strange car appeared at the house. The P.I. called the client and asked him to come back to town, after which the client and P.I. entered the house together and retrieved the client’s gun.
They could hear the wife and her lover in a downstairs bedroom, but the door was locked. The investigator stood by with the gun visible on his hip and a video camera in his hand while the client removed the door to the room and yanked the bed covers off of his wife and lover. The investigator had rehearsed with the client what to say because it was important that he not threaten his wife’s lover in any way. Needless to say, this relationship ended in divorce, and the investigator’s film was instrumental in the husband’s case.
Example Two: Setting Your Spouse Up to Admit Guilt
In another situation, a male client was able to intercept his wife’s emails and learn that she was seeing a man who was arriving in town the next evening. She told her husband that she was going out with the girls, but when the investigator followed her, she ended up at a hotel. He observed her coming out of the hotel with her boyfriend, and while they were gone in the boyfriend’s car, the client moved his wife’s car from the parking lot. The investigator contacted the police to let them know that even if the car was reported stolen, it wasn’t actually stolen. Of course, if the wife reported the car stolen, she would have to admit that she had parked it in a hotel parking lot.
When the wife returned and frantically looked for her car, the client drove up in a van and threw all of her clothes onto the ground. He had gathered them in garbage bags just for this purpose. She was now officially caught and could no longer deny her affairs.
Example Three: Workplace Monitoring
In another case, an employer was related to the spouse of an employee who was suspected of having an affair with a coworker. The employer hired an investigator to place a hidden video camera in the office, which caught the married employee and lover having sex numerous times during the day. So, this couple was not only guilty of avoiding work, but they were committing acts of illicit sexual behavior
Most of the time, people have affairs with just one person that they’ve met at work. This is why the first question an investigator usually asks a client is: Where does your spouse work, and who works with your spouse? Investigators say it’s much less common for a married person to pick up several lovers in bars or to be caught involved in prostitution. But it certainly isn’t unprecedented.
Example Four: Following Someone
In one case, it was discovered that a man had placed a profile on a dating website, stating that he was separated. He began dating women in the area, and the investigator was surprised to find the man out with different women on different evenings. Eventually, the man picked up a woman at a bar and engaged in a sexual act with her in his car in a parking lot. The private investigator was able to shoot video of the couple through the window of the car.
Avoid Hiring Friends to Watch Your Spouse
What if someone asks a friend to follow the spouse or place a wiretap on the spouse’s telephone? This is a recipe for disaster. First of all, wiretapping is illegal a violation of both federal and state law. There are trespassing and harassment laws as well that the average person might not understand, so a friend could be criminally prosecuted for making an inadvertent mistake. Besides criminal charges, the injured parties could take the friend/amateur investigator to court for monetary damages.
Even if the friend stays within the law, a non-professional is much more likely to tip off the party who is being followed. Once the spouse knows they’re being watched, obtaining evidence is next to impossible. This mistake can be costly since private investigators generally charge by the hour. Tipping off the spouse may require considerably more time on the part of the professional investigator, resulting in added cost. One private investigator likens it to getting an estimate on a malfunctioning transmission only to go home and take the transmission apart. When you have to return the transmission to the mechanic in dozens of pieces, the estimate will be higher because it will take the mechanic longer to put the mess back together again.
When Should a Private Investigator Be Hired?
Even if there is nothing more than a suspicion of something amiss in the marriage, consulting with an hacker is a good idea. If the matter ends up in court, the evidence gathered by the P.I. is much more likely to be admissible in the case if it has been gathered with the guidance and direction of an hacker.
Some people believe they can confront their spouse and find a way to work on the marriage. While this is certainly a possibility, if the cheating party is unwilling to work on the marriage, it’s helpful to have the evidence before the confrontation takes place
Feel free to contact us at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) for expert guidance