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The strangest thing about Builder artifacts is that they stay dormant unless prodded. More than a half dozen species grew to maturity on worlds with Builder artifacts hidden beneath lava flows, embedded in bedrock, or on the deeper ocean's floors. Those Builder artifacts stayed dormant. No signals, no power, no nothing.
However, once they were poked or prodded, they reacted with sudden, often shocking, levels of violence to protect themselves and maintain their integrity. Once the Builder's relic deduced that it was no longer threatened, it once again went dormant.
Other relics, however, react with shocking violence the first time they are encountered.
In every case, it becomes quickly apparent: Even though the Builders are unaware of us, fought on our worlds and in our stellar systems when we were still, at the most, hunter-gatherer species, they do. not. like. us.
Once again, the question remains: Who did the Builders hate with such ferocity that even today they will not allow their relics to be touched?
And the question most academics don't like to exam: Do the Builder's sworn enemies still exist?
And the final question: Are we somehow those enemies?
Or rather, we were? Are we what remains of The Builder's ancient foes?
Was their hate reserved for our ancestors?
Is their hate reserved for us? - Thoughts on The Builders, Hrsh.ket Press, 528 Current Era
WELCOME BACK, COMMANDER
ASSERTING BATTLEFIELD CONTROL
PLEASE STAND BY...
...
...
Commander Jane Marcus Prestini raised her head up from where she had slumped forward in her chair, her face against the soft pad that depicted anime-esque dancing and wrestling Kobold squirmlings. Her eyes focused on the LED dot that moved around the pad, leaving a changing RGB color streak behind it as it moved around and around the pad.
She shook her head to clear the muzziness and looked at screen.
Not at her command screen, which dutifully waited for her to provide input before it went from queue orders to manual control, but at the screen she'd dedicated to log files.
She looked it over and checked.
Jane made a face as she saw she had stroked out fourteen minutes ago. The first clone, completed twelve point three two one eight minutes ago had suffered an explosive cerebral hemorrhage when it was 'kickstarted'. The second clone had been brain dead from the get go. The system had defragged and then run CRC repairs. The third clone had errored out during cellular printing.
She was the fourth.
Jane reached out and pawed at the mini-fridge, pulling out a cold drink. Countess Crey Sexy Battery Acid and Over-Ripe Fruit Medly <> She cracked it open with the same hand she held it with, then took a long drink.
Her vitals were settling down. Blood pressure was still a little high, her Beta waves were kicking a little, her endocrine system was showing a few jots and tittles, but it was within the new tolerances.
The med-system finished its checks and threw the number up on the clock.
793 Minutes 52.82143 Seconds
Her new Lifeclock.
She checked her Actions Per Minute.
Well, the last fourteen minutes were all zero, but just before she'd stroked out she had dropped to eighty-five APM and 2.8 Clicks Per Second.
She made a face.
I wouldn't have even passed initial training with those shitty numbers, she thought to herself.
She ran the cold can over her face, then checked her queues.
None of them had dropped below the twenty-five minutes to complete level.
She hadn't lost too many facilities, although it looked like the Slorpies were concentrating on fabrication and energy production facilities, trying to strangle her logistics systems.
Taking another drink, she used her free hand to dance her fingers across the manual keyboard. The holographic keyboard was a thing of the past.
I'm fighting my way backwards. Rather than updates, I'm regressing. Pretty soon I'll be typing kekekekek.
Voice command was shot. It no longer responded. Even newly fabbed components refused to work correctly. Motion Input and her cyberjack no longer worked.
Cascading software failures.
But she was Commander Jane Marcus Prestini.
And she would not yield.
Cold storage decompression was still running. She had those programs on a loop. Born Whole Fast Bake templates, clone templates, weaponry templates, vehicle templates.
She kept having to send the templates to dedicated facilities to be decrypted and decompressed, building that went by the nickname Arendees.
Her systems were badly damaged. Hard drops. Crossing dimensional rifts. Space-time gates.
She was built for it, but machinery, technology, had a limit that flesh could overcome.
Jane knew it, down to her bones, it wasn't hardware, it wasn't fancy toys, that made the difference.
It was willpower, dedication, and raw flesh, blood, and bone.
She tossed the can away, bouncing it into the reclamator, and pulled out another one without looking, even while she kept fast-fingering commands in. The can gave just a snap, no hiss, and she knew that the nanoforge had errored out and given her either flat stimfizz or an empty can. She chucked it, noted by the sound of the can it was probably full of dust, and grabbed another one.
Snozzberry and Blue Licorice.
She swilled down half of it, poured some down her bare back, then finished off the can and tossed it.
Jane checked her hand, holding it out steady.
The shakes were subsiding.
But she knew they'd be back.
A beeping got her attention and she cursed as she spotted the problem immediately.
She hit the emergency shields, cranked them up high, slammed the blast shutters down, and felt the harness bite hard, yanking her back in the chair.
Ultrasonic missiles fired less than three miles out, from under the swamp-sea, leaving a bright white trail as their sprint drives kicked in, whipped toward her.
Her point defense got most of them.
The rest of them sped over the top of her base.
Instead of orienting for a top-down attack like she had expected, they whipped across.
Jane realized what the attack's actual objective was as the missiles hit and detonated.
No flare of antimatter. No white flash of atomics.
Pure ultra-high-ex shape charges.
The charges hit the mountain just to her north, that mountain that half her base was snuggled up against.
Cursing, Jane ramped the shielding up as high as it would go, ordered her two construction drones into the nearest building and into shock positions, and watched as the entire side of the mountain shivered for a split-second.
With a roar she could hear through her equipment, the entire side of the mountain gave away. She ignored the spectacle as she slammed the integrity fields to the max and ordered the point defense to start shooting at the leading wave.
The rubble slammed down, held back for a moment by her battlescreens and the ferocity of her point defense fire.
Just long enough for Asshat and Bitchmade to make it to the buildings.
The battlescreens gave out, the mechanisms exploding, just as the rock covered the entire base.
Jane kept snapping out orders across the UHF and VHF systems, filling the queues.
She heard the slamming of boulders the size of houses impacting the armor of the command center but kept giving orders.
The rocks that hit the swamp-sea caused huge waves to wash over the debris.
Anything that had compromised integrity shorted out.
She maxed out the queues just as the VHF, UHF, and ULF systems were crushed.
Insulation and lighting strips fell from the ceiling along with tiles.
She cursed, throwing off a strip of insulation, her hands jutting out to take control, her fingers twiddling and tapping as fast as she could.
She activated macros, gave point to point orders, then leaned back.
The command center's internal repair systems had fully loaded queues. The external systems were running hard.
She took nearly five seconds to think without moving. Her APM and CPS monitors beeped but she ignored them.
Right before she had lost communication, one of her hovering drone spy-eyes had shown that the Slorpies had followed up with another hit, this one converting a bunch of the rubble into molten rock that was flowing down over the debris.
That made her grin.
You did it in the wrong order, she smiled.
She took out a drink, going through three before she found one that was drinkable. She reached to the back of the mini-fridge and thumped on the nutriforge with two knuckles.
It hissed back.
Standard tactic would be to clear the rubble ASAP, give her nearest factories the ability to add into the fight, since their command turnaround was measured in picoseconds.
But she was running on UHF, ULF, and VHF bands. That meant putting up new systems.
She hmm'd, checking the map. Brought up a few pieces of equipment.
Adjusting an autonomous mobile sword mark-2 would provide the fast tunneling system. Another modification to a standard system would make it so the AMS2 would leave behind a thick bundle of shielded superconductor cable behind it.
More adjustments. Then run it through the simulation system a dozen times.
AMS systems had a tendency to go rogue after a few months of use, but that wasn't her problem. The software was prone to error cascades now that the Jessica-Syndrome had been beaten.
Of course, she always doubled up with bedrock gapped timer based anti-matter destruction charges.
The simulation beeped and she went back to work.
She compared the time to manufacture and deploy those systems to digging herself out.
Less than a tenth of the time.
She punched in the orders and waited.
Her headache was starting.
The guzzled fizzystims and the Countess Crey Fruit Pies she shoved in her mouth fixed that.
Her screens were blinking that she was cut off from the actual status of the other bases and facilities as well as her fighting forces.
Which is why she kept reprioritizing the Level Two Born Whole templates. They could make autonomous decisions.
Sure, the cloning banks kept blowing out, the Born Whole Digicreche kept crashing, but she just rebuilt them over and over.
Hard cable connection was made. Asshat and Bitchmade signaled they'd made it and managed to repair the systems to the buildings they had sheltered in.
Her screens were still blinking that she was cut off, but she refilled the queues and then ordered all living and DS forces to file status reports.
She watched the timer even as she brought up more and more templates.
Her nose started bleeding.
It didn't matter.
She wiped her nose and mouth, then wiped her gory hand off on her bare thigh.
Orbital and stellar forces had obtained victory sixteen hours ago, but it had been mutually assured destruction at the end. The Slorpies were being very careful to go after any sat-com systems she tried to put up to the point that she'd managed to get them to break off on full on assaults to assault a hard-light frame construction point for a sat-com system.
She gave instructions to Asshate and Bitchmade to dig themselves access tunnels to the next facilities and begin repairs. She prioritized the creation engines and the reclamation yard.
She felt the trickle down her neck from her left ear right when the system beeped that Cockhead and Dipshit had been rebuilt. She ordered them in and leaned back, blinking.
She had a slight red tinge to her vision.
She checked her Lifeclock.
She was in the red.
Jane tabbed a few notes in the system that kept the logs and grabbed another cold drink. The repair spider climbed out from behind the minifridge where it had just finished making repairs and Jane took the time to scratch it with the edge of the can. It beeped with happiness and moved on to the next task.
The first connection was made and her screens started flashing that they were updating.
Jane blinked, clearing her eyes, and checked the queues.
They were good for at least three hours.
She nodded to herself.
Cracking open another can, she lifted it up and inhaled the released carbonation.
It made her sneeze.
She held back the sneeze.
She was dead before her face hit her decorative mat.
-----
WELCOME BACK, COMMANDER
ASSERTING BATTLEFIELD CONTROL
PLEASE STAND BY...
...
...
Commander Jane Marcus Prestini smiled as she shook her head. She checked her Lifeclock, then the logs.
She had been gone 16.73 minutes this time.
Her Lifeclock had slightly longer.
She cracked her knuckles, looked over the monitors, and activated her keyboard.
TRANSFERRING BATTLEFIELD CONTROL
ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL
Jane grinned as she used one hand to go through her menus, checking her queues, as she reached out and grabbed a can of Liquid Hate.
The battle was going against the Slorpies now. She knew they had assumed she was knocked out.
Now she was back.
"You'll be sorry" the can squeaked as she opened it.
The template decrypter beeped and her grin got wider.
Yuriko Template Ready...
flashed on the screen.
"Tier Three... online," she whispered.
Time to teach the Slorpies that they weren't the only ones that could come up with new tricks.
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I'm 32M and I've been in ever increasing pain for years and my dr finally found it's DDD and L5 over S1 vertebrae slip. I experience a lot of fatigue, pain in the lower back that wraps around my right hip and shoots down my butt and into my foot.i also experience pain between my shoulder blades that radiates to my stomach. I worked 7 years in a cleaning job cleaning deli, fresh produce and bakery floors and equipment and now I'm in community aged care. I feel like my pain isn't getting worse but my tolerance for it is waning and I'm giving up. I go the gym 2x a week and lift to build muscle and lose weight to help the pain, and that works for my thoracic pain, but I'm deadlifting 100kg+ so exactly how strong do I have to be to stop my lower back pain? I was 136kg 8 weeks ago now I'm 132. My job now is easier than my old one but I'm so drained all I can do when not at work is sleep. I can barely make myself meals, look after myself or my home (it's a mess) and I'm falling behind in my homework for my aged care course. I can't even play video games or pay attention to tv or read. I used to make art and music but I can't do that anymore. And now I wake up to worse pain when I sleep the wrong way: I like to lie on my front or side with my leg out. I can avoid it when getting to sleep but I wake up in this position and can barely move. I feel like I'm just lazy for not being able to push through it. I had a steroid injection in the lower right and that worked at first but the second injection made no difference. I can't see the surgeon until December. I just wish I could temporarily quit my job to look after myself until I'm fit again but obviously that's not going to happen so I'm just going to constantly have to run on empty until next year. But I love my job and I have so many clients dependant on me. Oh and I can't take ibuprofen either because that interacts with my fluvoxamine. I'm also gender dysphoric (female to male) and I have size 26h chest that's always in the way and exhausting and I'm really slow on organising surgery for it because the first surgeon I saw refused me based on my weight, said I should get bariatric surgery first, and made a joke that I shouldn't eat my rabbits if I have dinner with them. I have a partner, been with him for 12 years he's great but I feel like such a burden because he has neck pain too.

Finding this subreddit has been so therapeutic and validating for me. I’m 26, married to the love of my life (32M) with the most amazing 5yo stepdaughter.
Reading all of your stories has inspired me to sit down and type out my own. I must warn you, there are times when I am the villain. Buckle up. This is a small novel.
If we start at the very beginning, my DH began dating HCBM (33) when they were very young in their early 20s. Shortly into their relationship it became clear to DH that she was struggling with very severe alcoholism. I cannot even begin to write out all of the stories I have heard from DH about her alcoholism. He was very young, didn’t have a positive model for a healthy relationship as a child. He believed he could help HCBM. They were extremely on and off together for almost 7 years. Every time he’d try to break up with her she would weasel her way back in. She would go as far as showing up at his family events because she had his family wrapped around her finger (don’t worry, that changed. Read on.) She almost drank herself to death several times. The police in her town know her by name and recognize her car because her family has had to call in for welfare checks so many times. She’s had bits where she’s gone missing for several hours. Been listed as a missing person. Had the police ping her phone. I’ve read the police reports myself.
Where do I even begin with her family? Her parents are extremely proud. They own two businesses in their small town. They’re the kind of people who are very obsessed with image and making people think they’re wealthy. HCBM started drinking when she was 16. Her parents would deal with her problem by sweeping it under the rug and hiding it. They cared more about their pride than getting her the help she needed. When they were together, my DH was often the one who would drive her to AA meetings. HCBM didn’t like AA because she felt she was above the other people there. Her family now despises my DH, and weaves a narrative that she drank because of her toxic relationship with him. Though her drinking problems existed long before and after their relationship.
I’ll share a few stores in particular with the goal of establishing the absolute delusion that HCBM feeds to anyone who will listen about my DH.
There was one evening where they were at my DH’s uncle’s house in the city. The thing about HCBM is that you never saw her drink until she was drunk. She’d sneak in a bathroom or what have you to drink. DH and HCBM got into some kind of argument and she ran off into the city late at night. DH spent several hours driving around the city searching for her until he finally found her in a bar, making out with a random guy. He said “you can take her home tonight” and left. Several hours later in the wee hours of the morning, HCBM stumbled back to the uncle’s house, wasted and crying.
Another occasion, DH was at work and HCBM was at his apartment (she did not live there) and went to hang out with his upstairs neighbors who were girls. She got drunk with them. When DH got home, he tried to explain to his neighbors that she had a problem and shouldn’t be drinking…. They said “don’t control her! That’s manipulative”. DH went back downstairs, HCBM followed, and they fought. She ran back to the neighbors crying and the girls stormed down into his apartment saying “What did you do to her? What did you do to her?!”
A different time HCBM was drunk she had locked herself in DH’s roommate’s room. He was trying to explain to her that she needed to come out, that it wasn't his room and she couldn’t be in there. HCBM called DH’s mom (now my MIL) and began wailing “he’s doing it again, he’s being crazy again!” God knows what she was talking about. Eventually DH called HCBM’s dad who came to pick her up. HCBM’s dad dragged her by her arm down the stairs rather roughly, and DH got upset, like “hey I get that she is drunk and being a problem but you can’t manhandle her like that” so HCBM’s dad responded my shoving DH up against a wall and holding his arm to his throat.
Shall I go on? There are dozens more. The worst is yet to come.
Anyways, about four years into their relationship, after multiple incidents of infidelity on her part, DH started chatting with other women sporadically. He says he knew it was wrong, but he thought if he could show himself there were other women out there who could make him happy, other stable relationships he could be in, he might be able to get away from HCBM. It was about five years into their relationship that DH actually cheated. And so begins HCBM’s favorite narrative, that DH was an awful, unsupportive unfaithful partner who drove her to drinking because he was so shady. She will never, ever consider the fact that my DH to this day is traumatized from their relationship. He’s been in therapy several times and every single therapist identifies her as a narcissist.
Several years ago when DH and I met I was in college. We had an on and off fling for a while on the coattails of him trying to end it with HCBM once and for all after over six years stuck in a cycle. I think my DH made poor decisions, dumb even. But I sympathize with the trauma bond he was stuck in with this woman, and how difficult it was for him to cut ties with someone who would go to great lengths to insert herself in his life, and with the pressure of his family saying he should be with her. He cut things off with me and fell back in with HCBM. Lo and behold… HCBM gets pregnant. This may be shocking…. But it was not a good situation to be bringing a baby into. HCBM was 28 at the time. She was (and still is) working for her mom at the business she owns because she had gotten fired from every other job for showing up drunk. A side note, her mom owns a gymnastics center where she is a teacher. My DH has told me about several times her mother would text him to come pick her up because she’d shown up drunk. Her mom would get her out of there and just sub in another instructor to cover her ass. Anyways, DH was terrified. However, DH grew up without a father, so there was no way he wasn’t going to be involved in his child’s life. It is an impossible thing to talk about in hindsight because I love my SD so dearly, she turns mine and DH’s world. But DH told HCBM to terminate initially. And to be fair, he was right. It was not a stable situation to bring a child into. Would I reverse time and change anything? Never in a million years.
As you may have guessed, HCBM decided to keep the baby. She repeatedly told DH that if he left, he would not see his child. DH was stuck and miserable. During her pregnancy, while HDBM was parading about as if they were this cute happy couple, DH began to miss me. He realized he had real feelings for me, and he reached out. I loved him the moment I met him, so I was thrilled. I’ll keep this part concise; DH began cheating on HCBM with me, and I knew. It was an ugly decision on both of our parts. Despite how much I loathe HCBM, she is a person. She did not deserve that. DH and I are both pretty ashamed about our choices back then. I’ll go into detail later about how both DH and I have tried to atone for our actions.
When she was about 7 months pregnant, HCBM caught on and contacted me. Those conversations are forever burned in my mind. She said some of the most disconnected, ridiculous shit I’ve ever seen. She was obsessed with the image she was trying to portray to everyone about her life. I’ll never forget one conversation where we were discussing their daughter’s impending arrival… I had said something along the lines of “do you think it’s wise to bring a child into this situation,” and she said “I have lots of help. I’m old enough.”
“I’m old enough.”
Like she’s a kid trying to convince her parents to let her stay out past midnight.
DH and I broke things off before SD arrived. I was heartbroken, but let’s be real, that was a mess. An entire mess.
Still, HCBM thought it was just a brilliant idea for her and DH to move in together. So her parent’s rented them a house in their small town…. DH kept paying the rent on his apartment the city about 45 minutes away. DH has told me how miserable their relationship was, and HCBM knew all about his affair with me. But like I said, she was desperately trying to create this pretend life for herself.
SD arrives, a day I am so glad to celebrate each year. She is truly the joy of my life. DH cried more than she did. He was instantly in love with his baby girl.
About three weeks later, HCBM is back on the bottle.
DH told me about how he’d come home from work and find her drunk. She’d grab the baby and lock herself in a bedroom and cry. DH feared for his child’s safety.
HCBM was only able to breastfeed for a month or so because she stopped producing milk due to heinous dieting. She was obsessed with getting back to her pre-pregnancy weight. She would eat only miso soup for days on end. This poor relationship to food comes into play later. HCBM’s mother was always over at the house. Cleaning up, buying them things. Contributing to the facade.
DH was severely depressed. He continued to stay with HCBM to monitor her drinking and watch out for his daughter. They got to a point where DH would sleep on the couch. One night DH came home and HCBM was drunk again with SD in her care. DH called her parents who came rushing over to remedy the situation as they always do. Shortly after they arrived, HCBM had slumped over on the couch and became unresponsive. An ambulance was called. DH says it was one of his most traumatic memories holding his baby daughter watching the EMT’s resuscitate her mother wondering how he would raise this girl on his own.
After a hospital stay, HCBM returned home and her parents ordered pizza and put on a movie and pretended as if nothing had happened. That was the routine. When DH expressed his anger, his justifiable concern for what was going on, HCBM’s parents treated him as though he was the problem, he was an asshole for bringing it up and blaming her.
It wasn’t long after this, SD must’ve been around eight months old that HCBM was on a binge and DH returned home from work to find the house empty. He frantically began calling people to locate SD when HCBM’s parents informed him that she was with them, and that HCBM had crawled out a window and was missing. A missing person’s report was filed. HCBM’s father told police to check ditches and park benches, as she could often be found there. She turned out to be at some random man’s house, and was located about 36 hours later.
DH was at the end of his ropes. He took the police report and lawyered up secretly.
Here’s a fun new component to the story, remember how I said that DH had began sleeping on the couch? In said police report, it is documented that DH and HCBM were not in a relationship and were merely roommates. Because that was the situation. Behind the scenes, HCBM had met the man of her dreams. Let’s call him PF….. for psycho fiance. Yes, they’re engaged now. We’ll get to that part. PF randomly messaged HCBM on facebook and they began talking. PF was a recovering alcoholic in his 30s with no driver’s license due to a DUI.
Now, recall when HCBM was missing? Her parents searched through her facebook accounts to try and locate her and found her messages with PF, they explained their daughter’s drinking problem and asked PF if she may be with him. She was not. They had not even met yet. But PF thinks this woman who clearly has severe personal issues is just the cream of the crop. He decides to take her out to lunch. By the end of their lunch date, he is love-bombing the daylights out of her. Calling her his wife, his galaxy, all of this grandiose crap.
Two weeks after they met, PF got HCBM’s name tattooed on him. While DH was trying to sort out a plan of action with his lawyer…. HCBM informs him that he has to move out so that PF can move in because he will soon be without a place to live. She wants to invite this man she’s known for three weeks to live with her and her baby daughter. I’ve seen the message she sent to DH, it reads, “I know it seems fast but I know in my heart that he is so good.” HCBM’s parents are thrilled.
Less than a week after PF had moved in and DH was out, the ex parte motion was filed. DH was granted full emergency custody of SD until a hearing could be held. HCBM did not see SD for nine days… and of course, DH was the villain for this.
At the hearing. DH was awarded majority custody, with HCBM being allowed one overnight a week. PF was not permitted to be present when SD was there for overnights until CPS could investigate.
Now, HCBM’s parents funneled money for lawyers, rent, utilities, basically any adult expense HCBM needs is taken care of by her parents. DH did not have the same luxury. He was working himself to death as a single dad trying to pay for his lawyer while the court battle ensued. Almost two months later, DH contacted me. We hadn’t spoken in close to a year. I was off living my own life almost halfway through college. DH just needed someone to talk to about it, and still had very strong feelings for me. I was a shoulder for him to lean on.
We began hooking up, with no real intention to enter into a relationship. I met SD and would watch her while he was at work. There was an obvious deep love between DH and me, but the circumstances were just so insane. Plus, HCBM despised me, and was weaving stories to the court about how DH was an emotionally abusive partner, a narcissist and the reason for all her drinking.
DH and I did not want the drama of HCBM knowing I was around. Since we were operating under the guise that this was just an indulgence and would end at some point, we kept our interactions a secret.
Then, the universe must’ve thought we were owed some karma for what we did during HCBM’s pregnancy. I was diagnosed with ADHD at age five and have had a prescription for stimulants since a very young age.
One morning I awoke and heard what sounded like tiny wretching from the other room. My medication had spilled out in the bottom of my purse as the safety cap was screwed on crooked. SD was playing on the floor and digging around in my purse. DH noticed her putting something in her mouth, realized it was my medication and immediately ran into the bathroom and began making her puke.
I called poison control who instructed us to bring her to the hospital. She seemed relatively normal, a bit dazed maybe. We called the ER to let them know we’d be arriving. We got there and they stuck charcoal down her throat, drew blood, the whole ordeal.
I brought my medication bottle with me to give to the nurses so they knew what she had ingested and to prove it was a legally obtained prescription. I was frantic and bawling, a nurse comforted me and told me that ingestions are extremely common and we had done the right thing by bringing her in.
SD had an elevated heart rate, was fussy and stressed. She was administered medication to help lower her heart rate and as a result had to be admitted to be monitored. The blood tests came back with extremely minimal amounts of my meds in her system, but it was protocol that she be monitored after the medication was given to regulate her heart. If you’re feeling anxious, I’ll add that SD is perfectly healthy and happy, she fully recovered and did not suffer any seizures or damage to her brain/liver etc. which were the primary concerns with this ingestion.
Since she was being admitted, HD had to inform HCBM. I had told him he should tell her immediately, but he did not want to deal with her reaction or her family arriving. I think this was a poor decision on his part. As flawed a person as she is, I do know that HCBM loves SD very much, and I can sympathize with her wanting to be informed if her daughter was being seen at the hospital.
HCBM and her family arrived, I had left to avoid the fallout and gather some things for DH to drop off while he stayed at the hospital with SD. Naturally, HCBM was in a blind rage that she had not been contacted immediately. She demanded that the CPS worker who was mandated to check in because of the ingestion file a report of negligence. The CPS worker declined, saying that there was no negligence to report. That evening, security was called to remove HCBM from the hospital because she was screaming at DH in the pediatric wing. She was told she could return on her custody day.
I went to visit DH and SD the next day, she was back to her old self and able to go home. We were nowhere near prepared for what was about to ensue.
HCBM had weaved a story that I was addicted to drugs, and that whatever I was doing had to have been in a plastic bag in my purse or how else would SD have gotten into it? HCBM and her lawyer filed an ex parte motion. Now I’m sure most of you are familiar with the workings of family court, but for those of you who aren’t; and ex parte motion is an emergency motion. It is a piece of paper laid in front of a judge. The details can be as vague or exaggerated as the writer pleases them to be, and it is not until a hearing is scheduled can anything be disputed.
HCBM and her lawyer claimed that SD had ‘overdosed’ on stimulant drugs and conveniently failed to mention that they were a legal prescription. More than that, ‘overdose’ was a completely sensationalized description of what had occurred, and not a term used at all by any of the medical professionals nor was it included anywhere in her chart of the incident. SD never lost consciousness. There was never a point where doctors were in fear for her life. But the judge sees what is put before them and signs off with the limited information they are given.
When HD filed an ex parte motion against HCBM, the hearing was scheduled for nine days later. When HCBM filed an ex parte motion against DH, the hearing was scheduled over two months later.
This was the worst time period in DH’s life. He attempted suicide. He lost an insane amount of weight. He sold beloved possessions to pay his lawyer. He did not have custody of his daughter and HCBM allowed him rare visits in public places once or twice a week.
But ah, how the tables turn.
A month before the hearing on the ex parte motion, HCBM got a DUI with SD in the car. Her driving was so ballistic, someone had called in her car. She was arrested. I could go into detail about the bullshit-ery of her and her family I read in the police report from that, but there is still so much ground to cover.
CPS notified DH of the DUI. HCBM and her lawyer told DH’s lawyer they wanted to settle custody outside of court before the ex parte hearing.
DH was exhausted. He was broke. He just wanted his daughter back. He settled with HCBM on 50/50 custody. This is perhaps the greatest regret of his life. The GAL at the meeting even told DH he didn’t have to do this, that he could fight her and probably get more custody. But DH was a shell of a person at this point. He was in debt. He was exhausted.
Mere days after they settled he checked himself into an inpatient mental health facility for treatment. He and I were in touch every once in a while throughout that entire time, but had ended our romantic relations after the ex parte was filed. I was more of a confidant and friend, but he had drifted apart from everyone in his life and I was focused on school.
The day that DH left inpatient, PF messaged him to tell him that HCBM had slipped up and drank again. Saying, “she just has such a big heart, this is so difficult for her.” DH suspects that she had gotten herself into another nearly lethal situation or gone missing and PF was hoping to do damage control by contacting him rather than him finding out another way.
So 50/50 custody it was. Nine months later, HCBM gave birth to her and PF’s son. I’m not sure of any exact dates but judging by the date of that message and the birth of the baby there is a high change HCBM was drinking while unknowingly pregnant.
For the DUI, HCBM was sentenced to 40 days in jail while pregnant with her son. It was a work release program. Since she worked for her mom, she worked as many hours as she possibly could. Her mom would pick her up from prison with her phone and her makeup so she could hide what was going on from her coworkers and the community. DH would bring SD to the gymnastics center to visit her. She had an IED put into her car when she was released, meaning she had to blow into a breathalyzer to get her car to start.
DH and I would check in every once in a while over the course of the next year. We both dated other people. HCBM of course had issues with DH’s girlfriend he was with for a few months. But things had relatively settled save for the tension and resentment between HCBM and DH.
More than a year had passed since everything transpired and since DH and I were last romantically involved. We began talking more frequently during COVID lockdown and DH admitted he was hopelessly in love with me and wanted to be together. We had a major problem though.
When HCBM and DH were settling on their custody agreement, HCBM insisted I was not to be around SD. If you recall, HD was broke, exhausted, and severely struggling with his mental health. He and I hadn’t seen each other in person in several months, we talked but very infrequently and never of rekindling our relationship in any capacity. So he gave in. As long as he could be done with the nightmare and have his daughter back.
A single sentence in a five-page custody agreement meant that I couldn’t be around SD. I want to specify, this was not a restraining order. I was never served any papers, I would not be punished in any capacity were I to see SD, there was no court record of any kind indicating that I was restricted from seeing a child or was a dangerous individual. DH wouldn’t even lose custody or face any legal ramifications were he to violate that single sentence, it would just mean an official would have to intervene to investigate and ensure the stipulation be adhered to. Still, it would’ve prevented us from having any sort of real relationship. So we filed a motion to have the line removed. I had not seen SD in well over a year and we abided by the order which was exceedingly painful.
The first hearing was before a court commissioner. We came armed with letters of recommendation from friends and family, from the families I had nannied for during college. DH’s family had finally seen the light and turned against HCBM and attended the court hearing, filing the seats.
The court commissioner spent about ten minutes reviewing our plea, and decided this was not a matter of my character or whether I was a threat to SD, but that this was a communication issue between DH and HCBM, and since DH had agreed to this, they needed to work it out between the two of them.
Ha. Like that would ever happen. DH and HCBM began communicating through a court monitored app and attending co parenting counseling while our lawyer filed a motion to bring the issue before a judge and have a GAL and Family Court Worker appointed. As we all know with family court, things move slowly and this we had to wait months to make progress on our case.
Co parenting counseling was fruitless. HCBM is not capable of accountability. She insisted DH was a narcissist because she’d read about narcissism on the internet and she believed she deserved full custody of SD.
A judge appointed a GAL and Family Court Worker to our case. I’ll never forget the relief that day as the judge told HCBM that me being in SD’s life was inevitable at this point. There was no evidence that I was a dangerous person. At one point, our lawyer brought up the language used in HCBM’s ex parte motion all that time ago, pointing out the sensational language used, specifically the term “overdose”. I was shaking when HCBM’s lawyer admitted to the judge that “there was no overdose.” I’ll never forget the sheepish look on that lawyer’s face, or how HCBM’s jaw tightened as she refused to look even a millimeter in my direction.
Everyone met with the GAL and Family Court Worker. Of course HCBM got the earliest appointment possible so she could try to sell her story. When I sat down with the GAL he said “I don’t know why you’re here, to be honest.” But that’s the ridiculous thing about family court, people can just spew this insane shit and it has to be looked into.
Both the GAL and Family Court Worker recommended the line be removed entirely. We still had to wait another month for our hearing for these recommendations to be made to the judge. Over the course of these proceedings, DH and his lawyer (with my consent) had been urging HCBM to attend a co parenting counseling session with me to address her concerns. HCBM of course vehemently refused, actually speaking to me would destroy the picture she had painted and deluded herself into believing about me.
We continued to press the issue though. After the GAL and Family Court Worker’s recommendations were passed on to everyone’s lawyers, it was clear this was not going to go in HCBM’s favor. It could’ve easily been settled outside of court, saved everyone time and money. But that was never going to happen, HCBM was going to go down swinging. Less than two weeks from our final hearing before the judge, HCBM agreed to attend co parenting counseling with me. Both parties signed NDA’s before going into these sessions, they were meant to be mediation for parents to work out their issues and not dig up fodder to toss around in court. A safe place, if you will. DH and I suspected she’d want to attend a session with me so she could fabricate some story about me being awful, or make it seem like she was being reasonable since she’d refused any and all attempts to mediate this issue civilly.
We were correct, but her feeble attempts at control were fruitless and the line was removed. I could see my girl again. Since then, DH and I got married and have been in absolute bliss as a family of three. But of course, the mess with HCBM does not stop there.
DH and I have no idea it HCBM has been drinking or not. We have no proof. She claims she got sober, but she never received any professional help or rehab so that seems doubtful to me. There are a few red flags. She now shares a car with her mother, claiming her car has “been in the shop” for well over a year now. DH explained that when she would go on drinking binges, her parents would take her car away so they could control where she went and monitor her.
We’ve also had the issue of SD not wanting to go to her mom’s house. I have ring video footage of HCBM coming to pick up SD. SD was in hysterics, she ran back in our house several times while HCBM stands annoyed in the driveway. DH sits with her and consoles her, encouraging her and telling her she will have so much fun with her mom and brother. On this particular occasion, it took 45 minutes to get SD to go with her mom. This happened numerous times. DH eventually brought this up to HCBM, expressing his concerns and saying that he wished she would participate in co-parenting their daughter in these situations rather than hiding behind her car. HCBM dismissed him, saying she was a great parent and he was obviously making SD act this way. Give SD an oscar at this point. I can’t even fathom what DH would say to make a five year old act that way.
Eventually, HCBM stopped picking SD up and instead sent her mom to get her. SD has no issue going with her grandmother. A bit suspicious to me that it was specifically her mom that caused such an upset for her.
HCBM is very obsessed with image. She dresses SD in expensive outfits with intricate hairstyles. I should add, expensive outfits that are purchased for her by HCBM’s mother. She has told DH that she is not pleased with how he sends SD to school and has concerns about his ability to parent. He sends her… a 5 year old… to school in leggings and t-shirts like the rest of the 5 year olds in her class. Don’t get me wrong, I love to dress SD up when she’ll let me and I have indulged in Rylee and Cru outfits and what not, but the majority of the time SD wears normal kid clothes. She runs and jumps and plays and likes pink and sparkles and tops with her favorite characters on them. We let her pick her crazy mismatched outfits and throw her hair up in a quick bun or braid so it is out of her face. She bathes almost excessively because she loves the bath and is a very well looked after child.
Now, HCBM lost a significant amount of weight after she got together with PF. Her mother is also extremely thin. DH has told me about how they were always doing fad diets, they’d call themselves fat and critique their appearances constantly and clearly did not have a healthy relationship to their bodies or food.
At our home, SD is fed a balanced diet but I try to encourage a positive relationship to her body and food. No food is “good” or “bad,” they simply serve different purposes. For example, carbs give us energy, protein helps us grow, sugar makes us happy, etc. Creating guilt around eating certain types of food can lead to eating disorders, body image issues, I know because I had a poor relationship to food and my body for so long. SD loves fruits and veggies. She also loves chips and candy. She is allowed to indulge in sugar within reason and without guilt. I don’t think it's rocket science, and for us it has had fantastic results. We'll be at a gas station and ask SD if she wants a snack and the kid will want celery. I follow the instagram page “kids eat in color” very closely and when we prepare SD’s meals, the “treat” component is served together with the rest and not withheld until later. This is so SD doesn’t view certain foods as special or more desirable than others, and won’t associate treat foods with this rush of excitement and overwhelming positivity moreso than say chicken nuggets or carrots. When DH sets down her plate to eat, SD rarely if ever reaches for her treat food first. She eats everything on her plate until her body tells her she’s full.
HCBM constantly berates DH about SD eating “healthy.” She criticizes him for getting candy at the movies. Goes off about her having a cup of sugar-free pudding at 11 a.m. On Halloween, SD is allowed two pieces of candy from her trick or treat pile at her mom’s house.
Last Halloween at our house, we dumped all of our candy out in a huge pile and watched a movie. SD ate, I kid you not, four pieces of candy. She didn’t feel the need to binge on all this candy because she knew it wouldn’t be withheld if she asked for more in our home. There is still halloween candy in a bucket in our pantry and we weren’t even out trick or treating for an hour.
HCBM accuses us of “competing” with her. This. Is. Rich. SD loves visiting my parent’s and sometime last fall took a liking to playing my dad’s drumset. Later that week, HCBM bought her a kid-sized drumset. We adopted a kitten, HCBM adopted a kitten. We started playing barbies as a family, HCBM buys a barbie dreamhouse. We planned a weekend trip to a big city a few hours away, HCBM and PF take SD and their son to that city the week before we’re supposed to go. My husband is a Dungeons and Dragons fanatic, and recently he has been making kid friendly campaigns for the three of us to play as a family. SD loves playing dungeons and dragons with her daddy. It has become our family’s thing. The dungeons and dragons movie came out recently and DH and I got tickets for an early screening on a day we didn’t have SD. Who do you think we saw there while we were waiting in line to get popcorn? Their family does not play dungeons and dragons. You’ll be pleased to know that SD came down to sit with us for the last half hour of the movie, PF who had taken her had to give in because they were seated a row behind us and she kept leaning forward to excitedly whisper to DH about the movie.
I have suffered extreme emotional issues due to the abuse from HCBM. I’ve attended therapy specifically to address it. I developed severe social anxiety because HCBM will tell anyone who listens these fictions about me and DH. We live in a small community, one that HCBM and her family have been a part of for a long time and I am constantly afraid people I meet will know them and have these crazy ideas about who I am as a person. The flipside of this is that their family’s reputation is not as positive as they like to think it is, particularly to police in the area. In addition to HCBM’s drunk escapades involving police, her father has a court record pages long for tax fraud.
Thankfully, I work in the city 30 minutes from where we live and that has allowed me to build my own village and have a life untainted by HCBM and her crap. Through lots of work I have been able to establish firm boundaries. I’ve had to restrict HCBM and her friends from my social media accounts after being watched obsessively. HCBM’s mother even went as far as messaging my mother on Facebook to try and say DH is a narcissist and she should be concerned for me. DH and my mom are very close, and my mom was mainly worried about how far these people were going to go to untether my life.
HCBM doesn’t seem to understand the concept of equal guardianship. She views herself as the primary parent and believes she should have access to everything in our lives. This is legally not the case so luckily we’re just able to ignore those demands but it gets taxing.
HCBM’s parents pay for SD’s health insurance so HCBM makes all of her doctor and dentist appointments and acts as though that’s because DH is an uninvolved parent, despite the fact that he has asked to make appointments on his custody days so he could go. I have excellent benefits at my job and could take SD on as a dependent since she resides with us 50% of the time. We haven’t even proposed this idea to HCBM because god knows she would never agree despite the fact that this would probably save her parents a ton of money.
HCBM has SD involved in several activities on her custody days. A bit too many for a five year old in my opinion. Multiple gymnastics and dance classes and soccer. Since HCBM’s parents are always funneling her money and paying her bills they are constantly going out to do expensive activities, weekend trips, shows, you name it. HCBM thinks these things make her a good parent, but I personally don’t think that SD feels as emotionally attached to HCBM as she does DH. DH and I spend a ton of one on one time with SD. We play with her with her toys, we do crafts, we watch movies together. HCBM thinks dropping her off at some expensive activity makes her this stellar mom, but she doesn’t engage in the same level of connection with SD that DH does. HCBM’s parents of course bought them a trip to Disney World last year, and the day they came to pick up SD to leave for the airport she did not want to go. She began crying and insisting she wanted her dad to take her, and that she would miss him too much. What five year old objects to effing Disney World??
We have issues on the horizon with SD attending kindergarten next year. I know a battle will ensue about where she attends. The custody schedule does not give us any weekend time because when it was written, SD was one and DH was working weekends and the days they agreed on coincided with his schedule. This means that when SD attends school in the fall five days a week, we will not get a full day together as a family. DH and I are very nervous about addressing this. We don’t have any desire to change the 50/50 custody, just to adjust the days so that we can have some weekend time with SD. It is likely this issue will end up in court and cost us thousands.
I have had to come to the hard acceptance that this is just how our relationship with HCBM will be, likely forever. I hold on to selfish hope that she may screw up drinking again, but at the end of the day I want what is best for SD which is a healthy and stable mother and I will do whatever I can to encourage a positive relationship for them. At this point we have no proof of her drinking for the past few years. Either she miraculously stopped or her family’s response is just so calculated to protect her from getting into any shit and jeopardizing her custody. If that is the case, that can only go on for so long before SD is old enough to tell us what is happening.
I think that HCBM is deeply insecure and ashamed. I think she needs to make DH and I the villains so she feels better about herself. I think her upbringing has allowed her to shirk any and all accountability, she is surrounded by people who tell her she’s never wrong and she’s this great person and great parent.
I don’t know what the resolution is here. If you have read this far, thank you sincerely. Though I confide in my mom and friends about the situation with HCBM, I keep my venting to a minimum so as not to let her live rent free in my life. I am not going to spend all this energy being pissed at her and her immaturity. I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of getting on my nerves, being the subject of my conversations. I’m not even going to let her think I care enough to trash her to people. But it feels extremely therapeutic to get this all out to a group of people who understand.

I have always been a fan of Jack Monroe (Nomad). And I despise how he was killed off by Winter Soldier. So a few months out of boredom I wrote this... I posted it here (with images) too - http://comicreliefpodcast.com/archives/2627
​
Today…
Tradition.
It’s something we do all the time; force of habit, superstitions, memorial – whatever the reason, we all have our traditions.
My name is Bucky Barnes. I was once known, throughout history, as Captain America’s side kick, “Bucky” fighting those Nazi soldiers, such as Red Skull, who sought to destroy the world. In that war, it was believed that both Captain America – Steve Rogers – and I had perished. Steve was found, frozen alive – in suspended animation, years after the war. I had also survived, but at the cost of my arm.
I wasn’t found by American soldiers, or friendlies. I was actually found by Russians, who took me – broken as I was – and gave me a robotic arm, and made me a part of their organization. You see, surviving the explosion had also destroyed my memories. I had no idea who I was – only the muscle memory of fighting, as I’d learned to do from Captain America.
As this “Winter Soldier” – I did a lot of things. A lot of things I wasn’t proud of. For example, I blew up a part of downtown Philadelphia and then tried to frame Jack Monroe, Captain America’s other “sidekick” for it. But it wasn’t enough that I was going to frame Jack Monroe, I also shot him, in cold blood, when he was defenseless and threw him in my trunk.
It would turn out that Captain America would get a hold of the Cosmic Cube and force me to remember everything. All of my sins. All of the things I’d done.
​
They forgave me. Said I wasn’t in control of who I was.
That made things worse, really. I wanted to feel like I should be punished. But Steve… he was shocked… maybe happy to see me alive. But when I told him what I’d done to Jack, I saw that pain in his face. The hurt. He wasn’t close to Jack – they’d have their difference, but I know Steve had always felt like Jack was the one that Steve could never help.
I ended up taking Jack’s body and burying it at Green-Wood in Brooklyn. I’ve made it a tradition to come out here – and say I am sorry. Because in the end, Jack didn’t have anyone. He’d lost touch with Steve Rogers, lost touch with the kid he’d adopted – she now goes by Julie Winters. I’ve found her. Send them money to take care of them every month as a mysterious benefactor. I don’t want the credit. I don’t want to be known. I just want to try and make some of the things I’ve done wrong, right now.
​
Imagine my surprise, when I arrived today – just like I did every year, and his grave is dug up. But there’s something weird – it’s not that someone dug up this grave. It’s like whoever was inside, clawed their way out. But how can that be? I know it’s Jack that was in this grave. And I shot him point blank. He was dead when I put him in the trunk. He was dead when I buried him here. I’m certain of it.
​
Three Months Ago…
Darkness!
Where am I?
I can barely move my arms? Am I in a coffin?
Memories… like a shattered mirror. Fragments. Broken. So many reflections. So many faces. Bucky. Nomad. Scourge.
Bucky.
Wait. What’s the last thing I remember?
Pull yourself together.
Pick up the pieces of the mirror.
My name is Jack. Jack Monroe.
Last thing I remember – there was someone – a drug lord in town – I was drinking at the bar. Went outside. Someone said my name.
Gunned me down.
Dear Lord, I am inside a coffin.
I take a deep breath – pull my arms close to my chest and push up on the roof of the coffin. It barely moves.
Then I remember Doctor Jane Foster. She said I was dying. My body was falling apart, killing itself.
How am I alive? If being gunned down didn’t kill me, then time should have finished me in.
And yet – as I push on this coffin lid, I can feel it giving way. It’s creaking. My strength had been giving out, just before I was gunned down – how is it back?
​
The lid finally cracks, breaks, and dirt begins pouring into the grave. It’s like swimming in concrete, digging my way out. When I finally breach, I take a deep breath of fresh air – and see I have just dug myself out of my own grave. A concrete marker reads:
Here Lies Jack Monroe;
A Hero The World Needed
Taken Too Soon.
​
That’s… nice.
As I pull myself out and sit on my own grave mound, I can see someone’s come by visiting my grave. Who? Cap, maybe?
Who gunned me down?
Was it one of those drug lords?
Was I getting too close?
I brush myself off – head over to a second hand clothing store, and manage to convince the store clerk to give me some clothes. I head back to the bar – see if they have some video footage.
The bartender tells me it’s been almost two years since he’s seen me.
Have I been gone for two years?
I ask about the video footage – he says he’s not sure if he has it that far back. He comes back and gives me a drive – said it’s been recorded over, but if I am techy enough I might be able to pull something off the drive.
I just happen to have a fair share of tech, if my storage space is still good. Should be. I prepaid it for ten years – told them I needed privacy. When I got free of the “Scourge” nanites, I ended up working with the Thunderbolts – even checked up on them a little later. But I kept the equipment I’d gathered when I worked as Scourge.
Going back – I am easily able to recover the old data on this drive. It takes a few sweeps of the program – but even when it’s done – I make it do a few more scans. Because it can’t be right.
The person who shot me – he looks a lot like Bucky Barnes, Steve’s side kick who died in World War II.
But every scan tells me this is the cleanest image – I’ll be damned, Bucky Barnes tried to kill me.
Well, he did kill me.
​
Today… Green-Wood Cemetery…
“What the Hell is going on?”
“When you came at me, you shot me in cold blood, in the dark, no chance to even fight,” a voice calls out from the dark. “I think the bullet proof Kevlar vest may have protected me, or something else… but I am going to give you a chance to explain yourself.”
Bucky Barnes turned around, “Who?”
“You don’t recognize the man you murdered?” the voice called back.
“I’ve murdered a few people in my time,” Bucky growled, hands going to his weapon he always carried. “Care to elaborate?”
“We had something in common, you and I,” the voice calls out. “We both fought side by side next to a Captain America. You fought next to Steve Rogers, I fought along side a slightly deranged man by the name of William Burnside.”
“Jack? Jack is that you?” Bucky called out, still unable to determine where Jack’s voice had been coming from.
“Winner, winner,” Jack Monroe’s voice replied. “So why did you do it?”
“Shoot you?” Bucky called out after a moment. “Would you believe mind control?”
“Another thing we have in common,” Jack responded. “I was mind controlled, as well, once. It’s amazing what they forgive when you tell someone that you were mind controlled, right? I shot a killed a young girl named Helen Takahama – better known as Jolt, from the Thunderbolts. Turns out, she’s got something in common with you and I – looks like she came back from the dead too. Just can’t keep a good fighter down, can you?”
“So why are you here? Why are you hiding? Why all the questions?” Bucky called out, his gun drawn. “Is this revenge?”
“Revenge?” Jack’s voice called out, almost laughing. “I don’t need revenge. But the thing is, I want to test myself. I’ve been out of the game. And I’ve done some reading on you – you took over Cap’s thing after he got ‘killed’ too. You’ve done a lot – even left a new version of the Thunderbolts… see how the thread of our lives keep weaving together? So pardon me if I give you the same treatment you gave me…”
At that moment, Jack, who’d used the Pym particles he’d used with the Scourge outfit, grew to incredible size, striking Bucky with an uppercut that sent him flying. “All of my life,” Jack continued, as he slammed his fist down into the ground, barely missing Bucky, “I’ve lived in someone else’s shadow. Whether it was William’s or Steve’s. If I wasn’t living in someone’s shadow, I was being manipulated.”
Bucky fired a number of rounds from his gun; but the bullets in his gun were not the kind that would kill a target – rather the electrical pulse would trigger upon impact. One bullet was enough to down an elephant easily – six shots into the enlarged Jack Monroe, and he wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down.
“When I was struggling with myself, when I was with Steve, he’d tell me about some of the things that Pym had gone through – his own crisis of life – even how Hawkeye, for awhile lost himself – going from archer to giant man! We all are weak. It wasn’t just me.”
As Bucky got to his feet and scrambled up a tree to get a clean shot Jack, out of nowhere – a glider nearly missed him – but he was able to duck, grab the bottom and swing himself on top of it, gaining control of the glider. This, he’d recognized as the same glider that Jack had used as Scourge. Bucky leapt at Jack from the glider, but at that moment Jack reduced himself to normal size; and the two tumbled on the ground before both standing on their feet.
Bucky had his gun at Jack’s temple, but Jack had drawn a short that had been shrunk to full size and had it under Bucky’s chin.
“Don’t make me pull this trigger, Jack.”
“Don’t make me pick your brain clean with my sword, then.”
Jack withdrew the blade first just as Bucky holstered his gun.
“What was this really about?” Bucky asked.
“It really was about proving I could still fight. When I dug myself up from that grave,” he gestured to the grave that he’d dug up again, “I was still trying to piece myself together. When I got out – I found out it’d been you who shot me. I didn’t know why. But as I did my research, I knew what happened. I started following you. Learned your pattern. Knew you made it a tradition to visit the grave, when I tapped into the cemetery’s surveillance footage. I even found the footage of myself – the time I thought I was beating up drug dealers, and in my confused state of mind, turns out it was every day people. But I don’t know why or how my strength came back. How my mind feels clear again. How I became me again.”
“Let me help you,” Bucky extended his hand. “I want to help. I want to make this,” he gestured between them. “Whatever this is – I want to make it right.”
​
Avengers Mansion
Hank Pym folded his arms across his chest as he stared at the computer read outs.
“What do you got for me, doc?” Jack asked, sitting in a chair nearby.
“As far as I can tell, Doctor Jane Foster was right,” Pym explained, pointing out some scans. “I can see here where you body seemed to be killing itself. Your immune system turned on itself. But, by the looks of it – when Bucky shot you – your body ‘died’ – but it didn’t really die. It simply shut down. As far as I can tell, between the super soldier serum that was destroying your body and the nanites – something created a very unique reaction. It literally appears as if your entire body went into a state of hibernation. The best way to describe this read out, Jack is that – your body underwent something similar to a caterpillar’s life – when they enter the cocoon stage – and during the pupa stage, the old body literally dies and a new body forms inside the protective shell known as a chrysalis. Your old body died, to make way to a new body that has adapted to all that’s been done to it, creating this new body. Your new body shows no signs of the serum at all – but you have super natural strength and agility, as we saw with the tests we’ve run.”
“So I am all cured?” Jack asked with a smirk.
“Cured, I guess, would be a way of explaining this,” Pym agreed. “I’d like to run some more tests – and test the limits of your strength and agility. It seems pretty close to Steve’s.”
“That’s all right, doc,” Jack stood up and put on his jacket. “I really don’t want to be compared to Steve anymore. I’m my own person now.”
To Be Continued?

Respect The Chief

You're home now. We could finally make an officer of you. You'd have Admiral without much of an argument from anyone.
No offense, sir, but "The Admiral" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is the most important figure of the human race in the mid-26th century. Abducted at the age of six by the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), he was conscripted into the SPARTAN-II program. The initiative was originally designed to crush human rebellion against the Unified Earth Government as the human Insurrection movement neared its tipping point. John endured harsh physical and mental training, survived the physical augmentations required by the program, and was later matched with state-of-the-art Mjolnir battle armor.
Throughout his training and early career, John emerged as a clear leader among the Spartans and was set to lead a successful UNSC campaign to stop a brewing human civil war. Though through circumstance, he became the sole savior of the human race several times over. First, in the face of an alien hegemony called the Covenant--an advanced alien empire bent on the complete destruction of humanity. Later, against an eldritch parasite known as the Flood which toppled both the Ancient Human and Forerunner empires of the past. Most recently, John defended humanity against the efforts of an ancient Forerunner general called the Didact, who returned to take his revenge against humanity for wars fought a hundred millennia in the past.
Notes

• Feats are shown in chronological order in-universe
• Feats showing relevant scaling or context will be indented
• Hover over a feat to see the source.

Height: 6'10" // 7'2" (In armor)
Weight: 130 kg // 451.3 kg (In armor)

General Info (Augmentations / Mjolnir Armor)

Pre-Augmentation / Training
Spartans were heavily trained almost daily since they were kidnapped at the age of 6, leading them to become physically and mentally prime by the young age of 14 even before receiving their augmentations.

Dr. Halsey marveled at what a spectacular physical specimen he had grown into. Fourteen years old and he had the body of an eighteen-year-old Olympic athlete, and a mind the equal of any Naval Academy honors graduate.

Description of an unaugmented 14 year old John; The Fall of Reach Ch 6

Augmentations
Codenamed Project: ASTER, the Spartan candidates were augmented to drastically increase their physiology and physical capabilities. Their bones were laced with powerful material to make them 'virtually unbreakable', their muscle tissue density was increased and lactase recovery time was decreased, they were given hormones to boost skeletal and muscle growth, increased eyesight, and had their nerves altered to drastically increase reaction time.

• At the age of 14, Spartans could sprint at bursts of 55 kph (~34 mph) and had estimated reaction times of 20 milliseconds, though they would likely be significantly higher in combat due to adrenaline. They could lift three times their body weight and they have night vision.

MJOLNIR Armor / Stat boosts

The feats in this RT will sorted by which armor John is wearing, as each iteration of Mjolnir armor increases his abilities further.
Unarmored - These feats occur after John receives his augmentation, but without any Mjolnir armor. They also all happen to occur when he is 14 years old and still recovering from his augmentations.
MJOLNIR Mark IV - The Mk IV was the first iteration of armor given to John and the rest of Spartan II's at the age of 15.

• General description, it doubles it's wearers strength and increases reaction times by a factor of five.
  • Their reaction times were previously given to be a low end of 20 milliseconds, meaning with Mk IV it is at a low end of 5 milliseconds.
• The suit is so reactive and powerful that normal humans would be torn apart trying to use it.
• The suit can operate in vacuum by recycling air for 90 minutes. It is also shielded against radiation and EMP.
• The armor possesses motion sensors and thermal imaging to detect enemy troops.
• The armor is almost immediately given additional prototype upgrades, such as thrusters, surveillance drones, wrist-blades and active camouflage.
  • The active camo allows Spartans to walk right in the middle of a group of soldiers without them noticing.

Neural interface / Onboard Computer
Mjolnir armor is linked to Spartans with a neural interface, which means they simply have to think and the armor would perform an action. Combined with the onboard computer, it allows Spartans to do things such as place Waypoint markers, or targets on their HUDs with a thought.

• An example of its use during a fight, John can move his limbs with a thought to overwhelm attackers.
• The suit 'knows what John is thinking before he does', it's able to control the suit functions and John can control the suits thrusters with his thoughts.
• The onboard computer can predict where artillery shots would land during an artillery barrage, and guide them to safer locations.
• Spartans can share targeting data.
• Mjolnir's onboard computer can place HUD markers at designated targets.
• The onboard computer can calculate probable landing zones for enemy dropships.
• Mjolnir predicting the optimal time to dodge plasma cannon fire from Banshees.

MJOLNIR Mark V - Deployed almost two and a half decades after the previous iteration of MJOLNIR, the Mk V now possessed recharging energy shields but retained the same double strength multiplier as the Mk IV.

• General description, it includes two major improvements being the addition of rechargeable energy shields and the ability to house an AI (See previous Cortana section).
• The suit has sound receivers that can hear a whisper a hundred meters away.
• Energy shields begin regenerating 5 seconds after last being hit and take 4 seconds to fully recharge from a total drain (Gameplay).

Cortana - Cortana is the AI that was paired with Master Chief for Operation: REDFLAG, she is present for the feats that occur while John is wearing MJOLNIR Mk V and most while wearing Mk VI.

• Cortana provides tactical and strategic information to John in the field, is able to infiltrate computer and communication systems and greatly improves John's reaction time.

Hacking

• Cortana was loaded with ONI's best insurgency/hacking software in preparation for Operation: RED FLAG.
• While put to work checking the ssytems of a UNSC warship, Cortana runs through ONIs computesecurity systems on the planet Reach for fun, easily overwhelming other ONI AIs.
• She hacks a Covenant carrier, first from the outside disabling it's weapons and communications systems for a short while, allowing her squad to board it. Then when aboard the ship she develops a path for her ground team, gives false tracking info to the Covenant hunter-killer teams and ultimately vents the ships atmosphere killing most of the thousands of Covenant aboard.
  • Outside of Cortana, the Covenant were generally far above the UNSC in terms of network security, with Dr. Halsey comparing the Covenants understanding of human systems within a few weeks of first contact to the UNSCs understanding of the Covenants after several decades.

MJOLNIR Mark VI - Due to the UNSCs rapid advances in technology, the Mk VI was deployed less than two months after the Mk V rendering it obsolete, containing major improvements in both shielding and stat multipliers.

• The Mk VI increases the wearers strength by a factor of 5, making them 2.5x stronger than in previous Suits. The Suit also has self contained biofoam injectors, pumping Spartans full of the UNSCs miracle drug in case they are ever injured.
  • Biofoam stabilizes most wounds and allows limited combat ability even in the event of limb loss.
  • A Spartan suffering from a gruesome headshot has his wound filled with biofoam and is back in combat within a relatively short time.
• The Mk VI's energy shields are much more powerful and recharge a lot faster.
• Energy shields begin regenerating 4.25 seconds after last being hit, and take 1.75 seconds to fully recharge from a total drain (Gameplay).

MJOLNIR GEN 2 - The second generation of MJOLNIR armor developed after the Human-Covenant war ended. Every aspect of the armor has been improved upon and thrusters are now built into each set of armor, drastically increasing maneuverability.

• Every suit now comes with built in thrusters.
  • Spartans can use their thrusters to effectively fly.
• The armor expects when combat is coming and optimizes it's systems automatically.
• GEN 2 armor has 360 degree vision that sees far into the EM spectrum.
• Magnet Boots - Allows Spartans to fight while walking vertically down the side of a skyscraper sized ship.
• The armor has self repair systems in case the shielding and suit is ever pierced.

Skill

Unarmored

• At the age of 14, John kills/cripples four ODSTs easily. - literature version
• John alongside three other Spartans capture a bunker from guards wearing the Mjolnir Mark I armor, which would have taken 2 to 3 platoons of Marines to capture. - Mjolnir Mark I info/picture.
• Spartans have been trained to fight in zero gravity.
• Spartan IV candidates are trained in several martial arts such as Aikido, Jiu-Jitsu and Krav Maga. Presumably the Spartan IIs are heavily trained with them.

Mk IV

• At the age of 15, John alongside Kelly, Fred and Linda wiped an army of well over 100 Covenant, including several Elite Ultras, Zealots and a Field Marshall.
• John and his Spartans are trained to identify high value targets based off subtle visual cues, making it easy to snipe enemy commanders.
• While defending a planet over the course of a few days, John alongside the rest of Blue team destroyed over 100 Wraith tanks.
• Speedruns through a Covenant carrier alongside Fred and Kelly.
• Both Dr. Halsey and Cortana conclude John is overall the best Spartan.
• He has been awarded every major service medal except the Prisoner of War Medallion.

Mk V

• During Johns testing for the Mk V armor, he faces off against a fighter jet that is so fast it regularly travels in and out of visible range. John tanks it's 50mm autocannons, then deflects and tanks an anti tank missile, afterwards sprinting away at 66 mph though he tears his Achilles tendon doing so.
• While fighting a particularly massive (10 ft+ tall) Sangheilli in low gravity, John uses his skill to beat the Elite even though they were evenly matched in strength.

Mk VI

• John escapes deadly situations so often that he almost believes that death is optional for him.
• He's confident he can wipe out an entire Covenant unit of 50 infantry and 4 Wraith tanks without any heavy weapons, but he chooses to save a group of soldiers instead.
• Merks 40+ Brutes by himself.
• Each Spartan II has 'the equivalent combat power of an entire Sector Fleet'.
• John is proficient in all aspects of infantry tactics, as well as low gravity combat. He is able to effectively lead detachments the size of battalions, and UNSC personnel of all ranks generally defer to his leadership.
  • John was offered to be made an Admiral by the UNSCs Fleet Admiral and head of their Security Council, but he refused.

GEN 2

• Alongside Blue team, John fights through a massive army of Prometheans.
• Spartans are able to punch out the Warden Eternal while evading his sword swings.

Strength

Unarmored

• During John's first time working out while recovering from receiving his augmentations, he notes that 1 G of gravity feels too light and 2 G's feels more normal.
• 14 year old John breaks the bones of ODST's and disfigures them with his strikes.
• At 14 years old, Spartans could not train against normal humans anymore due to repeatedly killing them by accident, so their trainers had to be placed in Mjolnir Mark I armor.
• At the age of 14, John kicks a man wearing a MJOLNIR Mark I exoskeleton eight meters away.
  • Another child Spartan could dent the heavy metal plates of the armor with his punches, the armor is impervious to light weapons.
• At the age of 14, John wrenches and rips a 30 millimeter minigun off a MJOLNIR Mark I exoskeleton with his bare hands.
• Shortly after receiving their augmentations, Spartans could lift three times their body weight.

Mk IV

• The Mk IV doubles it's wearers strength.
• During Johns first test of MJOLNIR he could shatter concrete targets with a punch
• John lifts a Spec Ops Elite overhead and folds him on his own energy sword.
• 15 year old John lifts and throws a cargo sled that was large enough to haul an entire platoon alongside a couple of pieces of artillery, and long enough to hold two Spartans lying end-to-end.
• John buckles the leg of a Special-Forces/Bloodstar Elite sideways with a stomp.
• John beats the arm of a Silent Shadow Elite until it's wrist is snapped sideways.
• Effortlessly punches through a weapons locker that was undamaged by a man bashing it with a large gas canister.
• John can effectively wield 110 kg Gauss cannons and use them for hit and run attacks against a column of 50 Covenant tanks.
• At the age of 16, John is able to withstand 12 metric tons of force on his legs.
• While 16 years old, John gets pinned down by an alien spider-like vehicle that was larger than a Warthog but it doesn't crush him, he is able to partially lift it. He also implies he has pushed Warthogs off of him before.
• Rips a steel and bullet-proof glass security door off of its steel reinforcing on a wall.
• An Insurrectionist general believes John can rip him in half.
• Crushes a Jackal's skull with a kick.
• John, alongside three other Spartans (one of whom was injured and missing an arm) push a 3x3x6 meter quartz monolith, an object that would weigh over 125 metric tons.
• John travels while carrying a half-ton Spartan over his shoulder.
• The Franchise Development Director of Halo, Frank O'Connor, states that Spartans can flip and bench press tanks, which correlates with their in game ability to flip tanks.
  • Halo CE's manual states that flipping vehicles is accomplished by his strength.
  • While flipping tanks is a high end / outlier for Spartans wearing earlier armor, GEN 2 wearing Spartans have been shown flipping tanks with only the shock wave of their strikes.

Mk V

• The Mk V possesses the same 2x strength multiplier as the Mk IV, so he should be able to replicate these feats in the previous Mk IV section.
• Runs through a field of razor wire, snapping them effortlessly.
• While specifically holding back to not kill them, John cripples many ODST's who are trying to kill him. Notably John breaks alot of bones, pulls a gun that is being held by an ODST so hard his shoulder dislocates, and bends the barrel of an assault rifle rendering it useless.
• A trio of Grunts landing on him and attempting to take off his armor is laughable to him.
• Caves in the skull of a Grunt with a pistol-whip.
• A melee attack breaks a Jackals energy shield gauntlet and launches him off of a cliff.
• Flips a Warthog.
• Flips a Warthog again but this time from grabbing it by the bumpers.
• Cracks the spines of a pair of elites with his strikes.
• Punches through a human skull inside a Flood Proto-Gravemind
• Crushes the skull of an elite with a punch and again reiterates he is strong enough to flip Warthogs.
• Crushes the skull of a Grunt with the butt of his assault rifle.
• Spartans are able to punch though tank armor.
  • Wraith armor is completely impervious to .50 caliber AA rounds.
  • Wraiths are durable enough to tank shots from their own mortars, which vaporize titanium battle plate, concrete and flesh within a twenty meter radius.
  • Spartans wearing Mk IV are shown in official artwork to be able to rip open tanks and toss armored Brutes (>1 metric ton) away with one arm.
  • A random Spartan wearing Mk V is able to destroy Covenant tanks in H2H, and several Spartans hold off a Covenant army of 30000.

Mk VI

• The Mk VI increases the wearers strength by a factor of 5, making them 2.5x stronger than in the previous Mk IV and Mk V Suits.
• Punches through the head of a Jackal.
• Tosses a Brute behind him.
  • Armored Brutes weigh over a metric ton.
• John can punch through UNSC ship metal.
• Tanks a melee attack from a Promethean Knight, then punches it off of him.
• John can rip off the arms of Promethean Knights and impale them with it.
  • Promethean Knights are strong enough to toss around Warthogs which weigh 3 metric tons.
• John stabs into the hull of a Lich (Covenant ultra heavy siege platform) while free falling with no leverage.
• John can overcome an Elites energy shielding with a single punch.
• Pushes and kicks a missile hammer several meters. (A 2x3x1.5m block of Titanium which is roughly the dimensions of the missile hammer would weigh over 40 metric tons.)

GEN 2

• Lifting Warthogs (3 metric tons), bending steel and shattering concrete is a baseline feat for all Spartans, not indicative of their limits.
• John shatters a Battle Rifle by hitting Spartan Locke with it.
• Overpowers Spartan Locke.
  • Locke is strong enough to flip over a 42.3 tonne tank with the shock-wave of his attack, effortlessly fly and run through walls as well as tackle aircraft out of the air, and boost through the bulk of a massive stone statue.
• Spartans can snap the necks of Elites.
• Spartans can instantly kill an Elite with a two-handed strike.
• Spartans can rip through Forerunner Armigers.
  • Forerunner Armigers are strong enough to throw humans dozens of meters away.
• Spartans can kill a Forerunner Armiger with a stomp.
• Spartans can punch out the legs of the Warden Eternal.

Durability

Mk IV

• The Mk IV doesn't possess energy shields, it relies entirely on the armor plating for protection.
• The armor has a refractive coating to help disperse incoming energy attacks.
• During Johns first test of MJOLNIR, bullets were harmlessly deflecting off his armor.
• The Mk IV can tank numerous Covenant Carbine shots, though they come close to penetrating the armor. Covenant Carbines fire 8x60mm projectiles at hypersonic (mach 5+) velocities making them far more powerful than almost any modern small arms.
• A .50 caliber depleted uranium round fired from an AA gun glances off John's armor.
  • [Limit] A young Kelly states that sustained fire from that weapon would penetrate the Mk IV.
• Tanks fire from hundreds of skilled marksmen with their rounds only 'dinging' his armor.
• Tanks plasma fire from a Covenant Ghost.
  • Ghost plasma is stated to be 5000 degrees.
• Tanks the nearby detonation of 1 MT nuke (John was at ground zero and had only 30 seconds to sprint away before it detonated).
  • Nukemap stats - Because the event was on a moon with minimal atmosphere and gravity, the heat and radiation figures are much more important.
• Tanks Covenant Needle and Spike rounds that can separate an ODST into pieces.
  • In the same novel it's stated that ODST's wear bullet proof armor that is effective at tanking armor piercing rounds, and someone wearing that armor harmlessly tanks small arms fire from several shooters.
• Tanks several Needle Rifle shots, with the needles shattering off his armor.
• Shrugs off being directly hit by a Hunters 2 ton shield.
• Spartans can tank anything short of a direct hit by a Wraiths plasma mortar, which vaporize everything within a 20 meter radius.
• Tanks Plasma Rifle fire from a hundred Drones who were chasing after him.
• Harmlessly tanks a nearby grenade detonation that spatters his faceplate with shrapnel.
• Spartans in Mark IV have similar durability's to light tanks.
• Covenant Needler shots bounce off his armor.

Mk V

• The Mk V is the first armor to possess energy shields, with each further iteration of armor gaining much more durable energy shields.
• A three round burst from an MA5B assault rifle drops his energy shields a 'hairbreadth'.
• Tanks shots from 30mm chainguns without even noticing he was being hit and without his energy shields breaking.
• Tanks 50mm autocannon fire from a jet without his energy shields breaking.
• Tanks the detonation of a nearby Scorpion missile designed to take out tanks. He was launched six meters and the missile itself created a two meter deep crater, though his energy shields did break.
• Covenant Needler shots bounce off his energy shields.
• Tanks a lifeboat crash that ripped open the craft and mangled everyone else aboard.
• Tanks a shot from a Hunters fuel rod cannon without his energy shields breaking and can tank direct hits even when his shields are low on charge.
• Tanks a melee hit from a Hunter while his shields are already low from tanking a fuel rod shot.
• Tanks an explosion from crashing a Banshee into a wall without any injuries.

Mk VI

• Tanks crashing into the Titanium hull of a warship at an extremely high velocity.
• Unharmed by a nearby Wraith's plasma shot which killed three other soldiers who were further away from it than him.
• Unfazed by a massive explosion.
• Tanks plasma fire from 6 Hunters.
• Tanks the detonation of a point blank plasma grenade that vaporizes a Brute Chieftain and scorches close to a dozen nearby Grunts.
• [Tanks a fall from orbit onto the Earth, and while his armor locks up automatically due to the impact, John himself is uninjured.]( "Halo 3")
  • Official artwork shows John falling from orbit.
• John tanks the laser blasts of 343 Guilty Spark, a Forerunner Monitor.
  • Another Spartan wearing slightly worse armor tanks more Forerunner monitor attacks, which are powerful enough to vaporize Hunters who weigh 5 metric tons and are covered in starship armor.
• Tanks being hit by a Warthog at very high speeds.
• Tanks a fall from orbit onto the planet Requiem completely unharmed, crashing into a lot of debris along the way.
• Tanks a melee attack from a Promethean Knight and punches it off of him afterwards.
  • Promethean Knights are strong enough to knock around Warthogs which weigh 3 metric tons.
• Unharmed after being thrown into a wall extremely hard by the Didact.
• Tanks a slipspace rupture crash that creates a massive crater from his impact (Ghost for scale).
• John had his evolution accelerated by the Forerunner known as the Librarian, giving him an immunity to the Composer which digitizes living creatures.

GEN 2

• Survives getting his head crushed by the Didact, then being thrown into Fred extremely hard.
• Tanks an extremely deep fall without any problem.

Speed

Unarmored

• John notes how objects appear to move in slow motion to him shortly after receiving his augmentations
• Special Forces appear similarly slow to John.
• John could move in blurs and was able to dodge point blank stun rounds from a 30mm cannon.
  • Another child Spartan dodges the stun rounds in mid air.
  • 14 year old Kelly dodges fire from several shooters and is too fast for the self-targeting system to track.
• At the age of 14, Spartans could sprint at bursts of 55 kph (~34 mph) and had estimated reaction times of 20 milliseconds, though they would likely be significantly higher in combat due to adrenaline. This is shortly after they received their augmentations and is expected to increase as their bodies adjust to the changes, and likely as they age as well.
  • Spartans experiencing the world in slow motion due to adrenaline is something they refer to as 'Spartan time'.
• [Limit] John is unable to completely dodge close range fire from three shooters, getting hit by three bullets.

Mk IV

• The Mk IV increases it's wearers reaction times by a factor of five. Their reaction times were previously given to be a low end of 20 milliseconds, meaning with Mk IV it is at a low end of 5 milliseconds.
• The first thing John does in MJOLNIR is move his arm almost FTE to his already augmented self.
• During Johns first test of MJOLNIR at the age of 14 he was fast enough to dodge bullets.
• Evades fire from hundreds of skilled marksmen while he was in a low gravity environment that limited his maneuverability.
• Moves to block a Needle Rifle shot after it was fired.
• Moves out of sight of several people faster than they could see.
• Jogs at 25mph for 10 kilometers alongside other Spartans.

Mk V

• ODST's move in slow motion to John.
• Dodges bullets after they are fired by an ODST, and again but after they are fired by three ODST's and again.
• With the help of Cortana, John deflects a Scorpion anti-tank missile that was tracking him.
• Immediately after tanking an anti-tank missile, John sprints ~66 mph across a half-kilometer distance though he tears his Achilles tendon doing so.
• He's able to dodge the laser weapons of Forerunner Aggressor sentinels.

Mk VI

• Immediately sprints at a speed of ~45 mph from rest.
• Intercepts and blocks a Covenant Beam Rifle shot after it's fired from roughly 30 meters away, which is a weapon that fires at ~Mach 10.7.
  • Another Spartan wearing the same armor dodges beam rifle shots twice including once from point blank. It's also being fired by a specialized Spartan Sniper if there are any doubts on it's accuracy.
• Maneuvers in mid-air to dodge gunfire from numerous Brutes.

GEN 2

• Spartans can avoid a sword swing from the Warden Eternal without even looking.

Marksmanship

• While running, John scores several headshots on Jackal snipers with his pistol.
• While Sprinting at around 45 mph, Chief is able to land multiple head and neck shots on several Jackal snipers who are around 30 meters away from him, shooting fast enough that his Magnum shots bleed together.
• Spartans can routinely land accurate sniper shots over a kilometer away while they are on the move.

Mobility

• John could balance atop and leap across ten meter tall wooden poles 10 centimeters in diameter even though he weighs half a ton in his armor.
• Spartans can jump ~25+ meters vertically onto a moving vehicle using his thrusters. (Mammoths are 27.1 meters tall.)
• Without using thrusters, Spartans can leap into the air 'like crickets' and engage aircraft.
• Spartans can easily scale cliffs.
• Spartans in GEN 2 armor can use their thrusters to effectively fly.

Endurance

• At 15 years old John is capable of sprinting 7 kilometers while expecting to do combat immediately after.
• 16 year old Blue Team covers 19 kilometers in 33 minutes, stopping twice to do weapon checks, running on rough terrain with support equipment, and running with their weapons in their hands. Roughly 24 mph sustained over 19km, with no intended rest before initiating combat.

Other Spartan Feats / Additional Scaling

Weapons / Equipment

Enemies / Additional Scaling

The four Spartans that composed Blue Team covered his back, standing absolutely silent and immobile in their MJOLNIR combat armor. Someone had once commented that they looked like Greek war gods in the armor … but his Spartans were far more effective and ruthless than Homer’s gods had ever been.

Curious what you guys think the value is here. I'm debating selling everything before we move, rather than moving it, but still undecided.

• Lortone 2 wheel Beaver arbor with 1 expando drum & one brand new 100 grit silicon carbide wheel (have motor but condition untested).
• Lortone 14" slab drop saw - Blade @ ~60%
• PolyWheel 2 wheel arbor w/ 1 1/4HP motor. Arbor & saw haven't been run in a few years, but were working great when put into storage.
• Covington 14" covered saw with brand new Baldor 1 1/4 HP motor. Blades probably 30% life left in them.
• 6" Beaconstar trim saw frame - No motor or blade.
• 2x Lortone LS-16 vibrating flat lap. One set of trays like new, one set very good condition. Trays are flat, no dishing. New cushioning balls on both, one excellent condition polishing pad. Have not run any slabs through them yet (see: no time).
• Diamond Pacific Genie - Slightly used 180 grit DP wheel, 220 Galaxy wheel, 600/1200/3000 Nova wheels (1200/3000 are nearly new condition). Also brand new in box sintered diamond Kingsley 180 & 220 wheels. Jeweler's buff kit, 2 cotton buff wheels, 2 polishing heads (used with 10K and 50K diamond paste), 2 lamps, magnifier. Trim saw attachment with brand new MK303 blade. I've done roughly 25 cabs on the machine as it sits, but replaced the 180 wheel with brand new. Trays & hoods are there as well as the wrist/tool rest. Machine has been run fairly regularly for the last year.
• Probably 2-300 pounds of rough Montana & Brazilian agates of all sizes; everything up to coconut size.
• Another 30 pounds of slabs of various sizes and types - Mostly agates and jaspers, these were part of a rock collection I purchased from another rockhound. Most are 4-6" in size.
• Another couple hundred pounds of various rough. Honestly, I don't even have time to go through it all. Nothing exotic (no larimar or charoite here!) but some of the material is from the 70's and 80's. I know there was some Biggs jasper in there as well as some picture jasper, tons of petrified wood, tiger iron, tiger's eye, aventurine.

I live in Saskatchewan, and there's nothing here for lapidary shops so it makes it tough to say what to value things at. We also have a terrible selection of local rocks.

hello everyone!
so i didn't have any intention to do any specific self work with this trip, but it did end up being extremely insightful and eye opening in terms of what i discovered and how i feel now coming down from the trip. i just knew i really wanted to be outside and experience nature doing a 1g dose for the first time to set myself up for success.
i took the capsules at around 10AM this morning, ate a piece of avocado toast afterwards, and then went out to my backyard to sip my morning coffee with my dog. i had set a timer on my phone for 30 minutes to see when it would start to kick in, and it started to in roughly 15 minutes. i wanted to do them as early as possible to take advantage of the day.
the first thing i notice is a heaviness in my body, almost like a weed body high where it feels like there's sand in your limbs weighing you down. but at the same time i feel light, and everything i carry feels like it weighs nothing. everything seems enhanced. i explained it to my boyfriend as "like if someone turned up the gamma, video quality, and surround sound settings in a video game". i'm holding my sketchbook at this time - intending to sketch while i'm outside - and i slowly lose the ability to hold my pencil.
i'm sitting on a beach chair outside and i find it much more comfortable to lean back, almost laying down. closing my eyes i can faintly see some visuals but nothing crazy, looks like typical phosphenes. i'm texting my boyfriend about how i'm feeling, and it's becoming really hard to hold my phone and text.
my 30 minute timer goes off, so it is now 10:30AM. i'm feeling a lot more light now instead of heavy, but it almost feels like i have no bones. i start to experience open-eye visuals a little more now. everything seems sharp and vivid, i look down at the grass and focus on every little ant, moth, fly and bee that is around me. closing my eyes i start seeing a grid pattern and some spiraling. i describe the grid to my boyfriend as "like those close up pictures of a fly's eye". as time goes on this starts to intensify a lot. i look at the grass and it starts to swirl, the trees are bending and waving almost like they're reaching down towards me, and this effect is amplified by the fact that it was a very windy day today. a quote that sticks out to me is "the trees are reaching down to hug me".
i have to assume it is now 11AM. i decide to get up and walk around my yard. i have a large hedge separating my back neighbor and i go up to it and focus on the leaves. the veins of the leaf almost seem to be pulsing. i break the leaf and focus on how it feels between my fingers. i have my phone with me and decide to text my bf to call me because i can barely type anymore. i'm here talking to him about what i see, how i feel, and anything that comes to mind. i go up to a large palm tree in my yard and get close up to the trunk. my nose is touching it with how close i am, and i'm focusing on the patterns of the bark. there's lichen growing on it and the patterns are almost fractalizing with how they're swirling in on each other. it almost reminds me of those ai generated images that make everything look like dog faces. it keeps my attention for a bit and i'm just touching the tree and scraping little pieces of the bark to see how it feels.
i decide to go sit back down on the beach chair because my legs feel weak and i'm stumbling around. i close my eyes and i see an image of like two wings overlapping and flapping slowly over each other. i'm looking at the sun with my eyes closed and it looks like an angel, and it's beautiful. i open my eyes and i see the "fly eye" grid overlayed on what i'm seeing. i repeatedly open and close my eyes because the effect looks cool and i'm having a good time with it. i remember my dog is outside with me just running around in the yard and i call her over. she's a poodle with curly hair so her fur really messes with my eyes. i run my hands through her hair and it looks like the hairs are curling around my fingers. i carry her and dig my face into her fur. i'm in awe with how soft she is and tell her how much i love her.
i don't remember the time, but i'll say ~11:20AM. time is passing really slowly and it shocks me sometimes how 5 minutes feels like 30. i still have my bf on the phone and i'm telling him all of this as it happens. i look up and everything starts looking like it has a 3d overlay on it. think the red and blue of like a traditional 3d book that used to come with the glasses. he offers to come pick me up to watch over me and i tell him i want to go to the park with my dog. we hang up and i decide to go inside and get ready, because i'm still in my pajamas. going inside started to change my mood. i have 3 other dogs (technically my family's dogs. my poodle named mochi is my dog) and they start to bark when i come in and it starts to stress me out. i let them all outside to run around and get some exercise in. as i walk to my room the swirls of my wood floors really mess with my eyes and i struggle to walk to my room. everything in my room is swirling and feels like it's slightly pulsing. i have a parrot as well and her eyes look like they're slightly bulging.
brushing my teeth, washing my face, and getting dressed feels like i'm fighting the weight of the world. all i want to do is go lay in the grass outside and feel the sun. i look at my face in the mirror of the bathroom and i have to look down because my face freaks me out because it doesn't look like my face. my room and the house feel dark and cold, and the open window looks like literal heaven. i let the dogs back in and they come back inside. one of them is a yorkie and for some reason her face is terrifying me, she looks like the scariest little crusty white dog. i know it's just my brain playing tricks on me, so i pick her up and hug her and tell her i love her even though her face is freaking me out right now.
i get on my laptop while i wait for my bf and it looks like i can stick my hand in my screen. the screen starts bothering me though so i turn on a bird sounds video for my parrot on the tv and look out the window while i wait. he gets there and we head out with mochi to the park. the drive over there feels incredibly weird. the outside looks like a screen moving past the car's windows. i have driving anxiety and this drive freaks me out a bit, but i hold my dog and it helps me feel better until we get there.
i'm pretty sure we get to the park around 11:40AM and we stay there until we leave at 2:30. we get down and we walk to a small gazebo and sit. i'm hyper-aware of how uncomfortable the metal bench is and get up to sit under a tree looking out on the lake. as mentioned, it's a really windy day and the trees are blowing, there's waves on the lake, and there's lots of ducks, geese, and other birds around. i sit with mochi on the grass and touch the grass, the leaves around me, and look at the water. my bf comes to sit next to me and i lean against him and enjoy how soft he is and how good he smells. all of my senses feel like they've been turned up to 100. he has his airpods on and he says "spotify is playing some bangers right now" and i say "nature is playing some bangers right now".
some people were standing at the little dock that looks over the lake, so i wait for them to leave before i get up and walk over there. ducks come up to the dock because people come and feed them, so they're expecting some food. three of them look up at me, and i turn to my bf and say "i think they have something to tell me". a mother duck with 6 baby ducklings swims up and i'm freaking out about how cute they are. there are turtles in the water that occasionally peak their head out of the water and me and my bf randomly say "turtle" every once in awhile.
i decide i want to walk, so we start walking the path of the park. the concrete and grass are swirling under me and the trees are wavy. i'm holding my bf's hand as we walk and mochi is leading the way. i'm talking nonsense to him about how this little park is a secluded safe space from the chaos that's outside, referencing the large road next to it with cars flying past which make me nervous to look at because they're zipping past so fast. at one point we're walking and my boyfriend stops to get a rock out of his shoe. i keep walking and i don't even realize he stayed behind. i stop when i realize and he's about 10 paces behind me. i freak out because it almost feels like he teleported behind me, and i could have sworn he was still holding my hand.
i hold his hand tighter as we keep walking to the visitor center of the park to get my dog some water. the lake has a large fountain and the wind is blowing water into our faces from a distance, and i say "wind is nature's greatest messenger". i focus on this quote for a bit in my mind, and realize it's true for so many things. we used to use birds as messengers, the wind carries smells, sounds, items. it was the original messenger of information. we get to the visitor center and i realize that my bf had told me it was 12:22 when we got up and started walking, and it was 12:32 when we got to the visitor center. i'm in shock because it literally felt like we were walking for at least 30 minutes.
we get my dog some water and continue to walk. i lead my boyfriend to a large tree i've come to before and told him i want to rest here. i lay down in the grass and just.... breathe. the grass is so cool and lush, the wind is blowing water droplets from the fountain all the way over to where we are, and the leaves on the tree are rustling in the wind. i feel at peace. i say "it feels like nature is holding me and telling me it's going to take care of me". i look to the side and i see all of the blades of grass waving in the wind. mochi lays down on top of me and licks my cheeks and nose and i feel so loved by everything around me.
i begin to talk to my bf about how i'm feeling, and i tell him how i really haven't had the urge or want to use my phone or even check the time, and that all screens bother my eyes when i'm on shrooms. i think about this and then say i have a theory. i explain that shrooms take your mind and body back to a more primal physical existence, where you're more in tune with nature. phones and technology have only existed for less than a blink of an eye in the entire history that is mankind on earth. since we did not evolve with electronic technology, we don't have an obligation to them, and in this primal state of being on shrooms, we forget about them because they're not really necessary. that need to scroll, to open apps... it's gone. because what is it, really? i can't touch it, i can't feel it in my hands. so what is it for? the entire time i've been tripping i feel such a connection with nature and i feel it deep in my soul. this brings me closer to my spirituality and what i've been debating for the past couple of months and reassures me that i'm on the right track and that this is what i need to be doing.
as i'm laying there, i realize how loose my body feels. i become aware that i carry so much tension in my body when i'm sober. what for? i really need to loosen up. i attribute this to my anxiety and masking that when interacting with the outside world. i also realize that i control my movements and appearance way too closely. my hair whipping in the wind, stumbling around and taking up space feels good! why should i confine myself to a little bubble of space and carefully choose my every move? who cares if my hair is in my face!
i sit up and tell my bf to give me his sketchbook so i can write these things down so i don't forget. i write in essentially chicken scratch, but i can read it perfectly. it's coherent enough that he can read it, but just barely. i realize that this is another thing i doctor carefully, my handwriting. it feels good to write in large, loose cursive. who cares if it takes up just a bit more space on the paper!
i also felt humbled, as this dose was 1g and almost my upper limit of what i could handle. i was originally doing .5g and thought it was quite mild and that 1g would still be a low - but manageable - dose for me. granted these capsules may have been stronger than what i was doing before (dried shroom) so that may account for the jump in intensity, but it definitely humbled me and reminded me to keep taking it slow, especially with my low tolerance to practically everything.
i sit up and there's a large ant walking on my shoe. i put my finger out and it crawls onto it, walking around on my hand. i bring it up to my face and stare at it as it walks. i let it walk around some more before putting it back in the grass. as i'm setting it down, i see 2 police cars drive around the park. this almost sends me into a panic. i tell my bf that i'm scared someone saw me and called the cops on me and that they're gonna come take me and kill me. i hold my dog close and scoot closer to my bf. he tries to calm me down and says that they're probably just making a loop around the park before leaving. i try and calm myself down by reassuring myself that i'm not doing anything wrong. i'm not being foolish or making a scene, i'm literally just laying in the grass. so there's no reason for anyone to call the cops on me.
we sit there for a little bit, me just touching the grass, petting my dog, looking up at the trees. i tell my bf that nature is so beautiful right now, and he says "yeah! it made it a beautiful day today to show you how much it loves you" and that almost made me cry.
we eventually get up and walk to another area of the park and sit in the grass again. at this point i'm starting to feel it come down. the visuals aren't as intense, everything just feels like it has energy under it and it's slightly pulsing. i'm a bit more lucid, maybe just a bit loopy. my bf lays his head in my lap and my dog lays down next to me and i feel so much appreciation for those who love me.
i have a slight fear that this peace is not going to last, because reality is going to snap back after the weekend is over. i'll have to go back to work and worry about money and bills and school. it worries me and scares me. but i reassure myself that everything in life has a solution, and that i need to have more faith in myself and my ability to keep myself safe.
we leave the park at ~2:30 because my bf is hungry and wants to go get lunch somewhere. all i had eaten all day was that avocado toast and i did not feel hungry at all. if anything, i had felt a bit nauseous all day. we leave mochi at home and then head to a tgi fridays (which ended up sucking really bad and giving me an upset stomach anyway). i was super talkative and felt uplifted and confident, maybe just a bit tired. it is now 9:30PM and i'm feeling around 90% sober, just a bit lightheaded and nauseous from the sucky food.
overall, this trip was very insightful and fun! it really reaffirmed my journey of self discovery and spirituality, and that this is exactly what i need to be doing. i'm glad to have had my boyfriend and dog with me taking care of me throughout, especially through the scary moments.

hello everyone!
so i didn't have any intention to do any specific self work with this trip, but it did end up being extremely insightful and eye opening in terms of what i discovered and how i feel now coming down from the trip. i just knew i really wanted to be outside and experience nature doing a 1g dose for the first time to set myself up for success.
i took the capsules at around 10AM this morning, ate a piece of avocado toast afterwards, and then went out to my backyard to sip my morning coffee with my dog. i had set a timer on my phone for 30 minutes to see when it would start to kick in, and it started to in roughly 15 minutes. i wanted to do them as early as possible
the first thing i notice is a heaviness in my body, almost like a weed body high where it feels like there's sand in your limbs weighing you down. but at the same time i feel light, and everything i carry feels like it weighs nothing. everything seems enhanced. i explained it to my boyfriend as "like if someone turned up the gamma, video quality, and surround sound settings in a video game". i'm holding my sketchbook at this time - intending to sketch while i'm outside - and i slowly lose the ability to hold my pencil.
i'm sitting on a beach chair outside and i find it much more comfortable to lean back, almost laying down. closing my eyes i can faintly see some visuals but nothing crazy, looks like typical phosphenes. i'm texting my boyfriend about how i'm feeling, and it's becoming really hard to hold my phone and text.
my 30 minute timer goes off, so it is now 10:30AM. i'm feeling a lot more light now instead of heavy, but it almost feels like i have no bones. i start to experience open-eye visuals a little more now. everything seems sharp and vivid, i look down at the grass and focus on every little ant, moth, fly and bee that is around me. closing my eye i start seeing a grid pattern and some spiraling. i describe the grid to my boyfriend as "like those close up pictures of a fly's eye". as time goes on this starts to intensify a lot. i look at the grass and it starts to swirl, the trees are bending and waving almost like they're reaching down towards me, and this effect is amplified by the fact that it was a very windy day today. a quote that sticks out to me is "the trees are reaching down to hug me".
i have to assume it is now 11AM. i decide to get up and walk around my yard. i have a large hedge separating my back neighbor and i go up to it and focus on the leaves. the veins of the leaf almost seem to be pulsing. i break the leaf and focus on how it feels between my fingers. i have my phone with me and decide to text my bf to call me because i can barely type anymore. i'm here talking to him about what i see, how i feel, and anything that comes to mind. i go up to a large palm tree in my yard and get close up to the trunk. my nose is touching it with how close i am, and i'm focusing on the patterns of the bark. there's lichen growing on it and the patterns are almost fractalizing with how they're swirling in on each other. it almost reminds me of those ai generated images that make everything look like dog faces. it keeps my attention for a bit and i'm just touching the tree and scraping little pieces of the bark to see how it feels.
i decide to go sit back down on the beach chair because my legs feel weak and i'm stumbling around. i close my eyes and i see an image of like two wings overlapping and flapping slowly over each other. i'm looking at the sun with my eyes closed and it looks like an angel, and it's beautiful. i open my eyes and i see the "fly eye" grid overlayed on what i'm seeing. i repeatedly open and close my eyes because the effect looks cool and i'm having a good time with it. i remember my dog is outside with me just running around in the yard and i call her over. she's a poodle with curly hair so her fur really messes with my eyes. i run my hands through her hair and it looks like the hairs are curling around my fingers. i carry her and dig my face into her fur. i'm in awe with how soft she is and tell her how much i love her.
i don't remember the time, but i'll say ~11:20AM. time is passing really slowly and it shocks me sometimes how 5 minutes feels like 30. i still have my bf on the phone and i'm telling him all of this as it happens. i look up and everything starts looking like it has a 3d overlay on it. think the red and blue of like a traditional 3d book that used to come with the glasses. he offers to come pick me up to watch over me and i tell him i want to go to the park with my dog. we hang up and i decide to go inside and get ready, because i'm still in my pajamas. going inside started to change my mood. i have 3 other dogs (technically my family's dogs. my poodle named mochi is my dog) and they start to bark when i come in and it starts to stress me out. i let them all outside to run around and get some exercise in. as i walk to my room the swirls of my wood floors really mess with my eyes and i struggle to walk to my room. everything in my room is swirling and feels like it's slightly pulsing. i have a parrot as well and her eyes look like they're slightly bulging.
brushing my teeth, washing my face, and getting dressed feels like i'm fighting the weight of the world. all i want to do is go lay in the grass outside and feel the sun. i look at my face in the mirror of the bathroom and i have to look down because my face freaks me out because it doesn't look like my face. my room and the house feel dark and cold, and the open window looks like literal heaven. i let the dogs back in and they come back inside. one of them is a yorkie and for some reason her face is terrifying me, she looks like the scariest little crusty white dog. i know it's just my brain playing tricks on me, so i pick her up and hug her and tell her i love her even though her face is freaking me out right now.
i get on my laptop while i wait for my bf and it looks like i can stick my hand in my screen. the screen starts bothering me though so i turn on a bird sounds video for my parrot on the tv and look out the window while i wait. he gets there and we head out with mochi to the park. the drive over there feels incredibly weird. the outside looks like a screen moving past the car's windows. i have driving anxiety and this drive freaks me out a bit, but i hold my dog and it helps me feel better until we get there.
i'm pretty sure we get to the park around 11:40AM and we stay there until we leave at 2:30. we get down and we walk to a small gazebo and sit. i'm hyper aware of how uncomfortable the metal bench is and get up to sit under a tree looking out on the lake. as mentioned, it's a really windy day and the trees are blowing, there's waves on the lake, and there's lots of ducks, geese, and other birds around. i sit with mochi on the grass and touch the grass, the leaves around me, and look at the water. my bf comes to sit next to me and i lean against him and enjoy how soft he is and how good he smells. all of my senses feel like they've been turned up to 100. he has his airpods on and he says "spotify playing some bangers right now" and i say "nature is playing some bangers right now".
some people were standing at the little dock that looks over the lake, so i wait for them to leave before i get up and walk over there. ducks come up to the dock because people come and feed them, so they're expecting some food. three of them look up at me, and i turn to my bf and say "i think they have something to tell me". a mother duck with 6 baby ducklings swims up and i'm freaking out about how cute they are. there are turtles in the water that occasionally peak their head out of the water and me and my bf randomly say "turtle" every once in awhile.
i decide i want to walk, so we start walking the path of the park. the concrete and grass are swirling under me and the trees are wavy. i'm holding my bf's hand as we walk and mochi is leading the way. i'm talking nonsense to him about how this little park is a secluded safe space from the chaos that's outside, referencing the large road next to it with cars flying past which make me nervous to look at because they're zipping past so fast. at one point we're walking and my boyfriend stops to get a rock out of his shoe. i keep walking and i don't even realize he stayed behind. i stop when i realize and he's about 10 paces behind me. i freak out because it almost feels like he teleported behind me, and i could have sworn he was still holding my hand.
i hold his hand tighter as we keep walking to the visitor center of the park to get my dog some water. the lake has a large fountain and the wind is blowing it into our faces from a distance, and i say "wind is nature's greatest messenger". i focus on this quote for a bit in my mind, and realize it's true for so many things. we used to use birds as messengers, the wind carries smells, sounds, items. it was the original messenger of information. we get to the visitor center and i realize that my bf had told me it was 12:22 when we got up and started walking, and it was 12:32 when we got to the visitor center. i'm in shock because it literally felt like we were walking for at least 30 minutes.
we get my dog some water and continue to walk. i lead my boyfriend to a large tree i've come to before and told him i want to rest here. i lay down in the grass and just.... breathe. the grass is so cool and lush, the wind is blowing water droplets from the fountain all the way over to where we are, and the leaves on the tree are rustling in the wind. i feel at peace. i say "it feels like nature is holding me and telling me it's going to take care of me". i look to the side and i see all of the blades of grass waving in the wind. mochi lays down on top of me and licks my cheeks and nose and i feel so loved by everything around me.
i begin to talk to my bf about how i'm feeling, and i tell him how i really haven't had the urge or want to use my phone or even check the time, and that all screens bother my eyes when i'm on shrooms. i think about this and then say i have a theory. i explain that shrooms take your mind and body back to a more primal physical existence, where you're more in tune with nature. phones and technology have only existed for less than a blink of an eye in the entire history that is mankind on earth. since we did not evolve with electronic technology, we don't have an obligation to them, and in this primal state of being on shrooms, we forget about them because they're not really necessary. that need to scroll, to open apps... it's gone. because what is it, really? i can't touch it, i can't feel it in my hands. so what is it for? the entire time i've been tripping i feel such a connection with nature and i feel it deep in my soul. this brings me closer to my spirituality and what i've been debating for the past couple of months and reassures me that i'm on the right track and that this is what i need to be doing.
as i'm laying there, i realize how loose my body feels. i become aware that i carry so much tension in my body when i'm sober. what for? i really need to loosen up. i attribute this to my anxiety and masking that when interacting with the outside world. i also realize that i control my movements and appearance way too closely. my hair whipping in the wind, stumbling around and taking up space feels good! why should i confine myself to a little bubble of space and carefully choose my every move? who cares if my hair is in my face!
i sit up and tell my bf to give me his sketchbook so i can write these things down so i don't forget. i write in essentially chicken scratch, but i can read it perfectly. it's coherent enough that he can read it, but just barely. i realize that this is another thing i doctor carefully, my handwriting. it feels good to write in large, loose cursive. who cares if it takes up just a bit more space on the paper!
i also felt humbled, as this dose was 1g and almost my upper limit of what i could handle. i was originally doing .5g and thought it was quite mild and that 1g would still be a low - but manageable - dose for me. granted these capsules may have been stronger than what i was doing before (dried shroom) so that may account for the jump in intensity, but it definitely humbled me and reminded me to keep taking it slow, especially with my low tolerance to practically everything.
i sit up and there's a large ant walking on my shoe. i put my finger out and it crawls onto it, walking around on my hand. i bring it up to my face and stare at it as it walks. i let it walk around some more before putting it back in the grass. as i'm setting it down, i see 2 police cars drive around the park. this almost sends me into a panic. i tell my bf that i'm scared someone saw me and called the cops on me and that they're gonna come take me and kill me. i hold my dog close and scoot closer to my bf. he tries to calm me down and says that they're probably just making a loop around the park before leaving. i try and calm myself down by reassuring myself that i'm not doing anything wrong. i'm not being foolish or making a scene, i'm literally just laying in the grass. so there's no reason for anyone to call the cops on me.
we sit there for a little bit, me just touching the grass, petting my dog, looking up at the trees. i tell my bf that nature is so beautiful right now, and he says "yeah! it made it a beautiful day today to show you how much it loves you" and that almost made me cry.
we eventually get up and walk to another area of the park and sit in the grass again. at this point i'm starting to feel it come down. the visuals aren't as intense, everything just feels like it has energy under it and it's slightly pulsing. i'm a bit more lucid, maybe just a bit loopy. my bf lays his head in my lap and my dog lays down next to me and i feel so much appreciation for those who love me.
i have a slight fear that this peace is not going to last, because reality is going to snap back after the weekend is over. i'll have to go back to work and worry about money and bills and school. it worries me and scares me. but i reassure myself that everything in life has a solution, and that i need to have more faith in myself and my ability to keep myself safe.
we leave the park at ~2:30 because my bf is hungry and wants to go get lunch somewhere. all i had eaten all day was that avocado toast and i did not feel hungry at all. if anything, i had felt a bit nauseous all day. we leave mochi at home and then head to a tgi fridays (which ended up sucking really bad and giving me an upset stomach anyway). i was super talkative and felt uplifted and confident, maybe just a bit tired. it is now 9:30PM and i'm feeling around 90% sober, just a bit lightheaded and nauseous from the sucky food.
overall, this trip was very insightful and fun! it really reaffirmed my journey of self discovery and spirituality, and that this is exactly what i need to be doing. i'm glad to have had my boyfriend and dog with me taking care of me throughout, especially through the scary moments.

^Timestamp

Benchmade Proper S90V Carbon fiber $120

Carried and made a great companion knife for my full size adamas. I did have this knife on me most days but it wasn’t used much. I did sharpen it but it was to get a semi mirror polish edge not because it was dull. Comes with knife, box and Benchmade bag. Only selling because I got a gold class Tengu as my new companion knife.

Benchamde Adamas Full-Sized Folder $190

Cruwear Blade steel, Black G-10 handles stock Deep carry pocket clip
Got this new on the swap, was meant to be my EDC and was for 3 weeks but the Chef from Taiwan stole my heart. Wasn’t impressed with factory edge so I sharpened on my KME.
Comes with everything from factory, knife, sheath, MOLLE strap, box and papers. Link to manufactures website for more info

NIB FDE Fixed blade Adamas Cruwear $200

Sealed box, never opened. I EDC black Adamas would trade for a black fixed Cru adamas to match.

Winkler x Case Skinner $300

Got it from the swap price is what I paid. This was my first Winkler I should have done more research, I didn’t know the blade was this big. Would trade for a drop point belt knife. Link to the original owners post and more details.

RGT V2 clip $50

Had this on my large sebenza sold the knife now selling the clip. Light snail trails no damage.
Not sure on color it’s darker. Will trade for small seb sized RGT.

Maxpidetion Fatboy sling bag $45

Got this for my drone bag but didn’t end up using it. Removed the branding on the front of the pack because I thought it was ugly.

16 Inch MacBook Pro $1,600

M1 Pro porcessor, 16GB Ram, 512GB SSD, 27 cycles on battery. Has been reset in preparation of sale Comes with laptop, original charger and laptop case. No box, sorry.

Puma Python: $60

2nd owner as been sharpened once. Overall is is good condition. The stitching on the bottom of the sheath was wearing so I super glued it down no stitches ripped more of a preventive thing.
​

ADD ONS (purchase knife to qualify)

Case Caliber Lockback $15
Was part of a bundle, seller would not split. wanted one knife of the bundle. Made in usa, doesn’t look very used appears to be factory edge I personally haven’t used, carried or cut with this knife.
Swiza BL-03 $20
Locking blade, comes with tweezers Swiss made. Doest show much wear. Handles are very grippy. Was part of the same bundle. I personally haven’t used, carried or cut with this knife. Link to Blade HQ with more info
NVG mount from Advanced Combat Helmet $10
Took this off a helmet I got. Have no need for it.
Microtech clone $30
I was told it was a UTX-85 clone but it’s pretty small, under 4 inches so could be a 70 clone Not sure, I’ve only owned full size Ultratechs. Got this off the swap, I needed a tanto to practice sharpening. Easily slices receipt paper. Fires hard, has some blade play. Handles don’t show much wear. I never carried this only sharpened.
Streamlight Pro-Tac HL $35
Had this lying around, don’t use it anymore takes CR123A batteries not included
Snaggletooth $12
Got it off the swap on a Benchmade have since then traded the knife.
Small Right hand comes with the tooth, 3 screws, thumb stud, washer and Allen wrench
​
Apple Pay or PayPal Friends and Family, no notes!
Traders shoot your shot, nothing Chinese Plz.
Would consider international shipping but you’re paying full price for the knife, shipping cost and I accept no responsibility after I ship it out.
​
​
^{Sold stuff
Free Lansky stones Course, fine, ultra fine. Sold a kit last week, forgot to include these. Refunded the buyer now free to you if you buy a knife.
Modded 3DS LL $125 Has a bunch of games on it comes with 128GB Sd card. has some wear on the side from being in my backpack. comes with DS and original charger.
Magnacut Small Sebenza drop point $425 January 24, 2023 DOB Factory edge, slight wear on thumb stud anodization from fidgeting with it at my desk. Disassembled to apply grease. Have all the stuff that comes with it including the sticker Tried to get the snails in the pictures but honestly they are too small to show up in pictures. Happy to send more pictures to a concerned buyer. Have a brown CRK slip I will include for $25 but will not sell separately until the knife sells.
Maxamet PM2 $180 Got this on trade, was told it was a safe queen never cut never carried and I have no reason to believe otherwise. I have not touched this knife besides pictures. Link to Blade HQ with more info
Para3 $140 S45VN blade steel Black G-10 handles, Lynch Deep carry titanium deep carry pocket clip. This was from the same guy that traded me the 940 this para 3 also appears to be factory edge scales are a little dirty. Has been used but still slices paper. I have not disassembled but did add some KPL to the pivot. Again no box or papers just the knife, sorry. Link to BladeHQ with more info
Tactile Knife Co. Bexar Slip Joint Knife Titanium $165 Magnacut Blade steel, Titanium handles. Made in Texas (God Bless Texas Got this from the original owner of the swap on trade. Have the box and Info card. Handles have a few light scratches but no damage. This thin blade stock makes in an awesome slicer. Would be more than ok if this doesn’t sell. Received with the factory edge, upon receiving I put a mirror polish on the edge didn’t use any stones just 3 and 6 micron lapping films at factory angle . Magnacut takes a great polish. Link to manufactures website with more info:}) ^{bexar
Esse CR2.5 $75 1095 57 HRC, Black Oxide Stone Washed Finish, Micarta Handles Got this off the swap this week, had it set up as a neck knife just too small for me. Previous owners sharpened, dyed scales and polished the spine of the knife. If you don’t like these mods just break the knife in half and ESSE will send you another. Comes with poo colored kydex sheath, looks like Armatus sheath offered on their website unsure as I’m not the original owner. Link to manufactures website with more info
KAMPKING: $5 Has been used sharpened and shows plenty of wear. All tools function. Plastic fell off the back show side plastic cover overall still in good condition.
Benchmade 940 $170 S30v blade steel, green aluminum handles, mini deep carry clip. Took this in on trade locally, appears to have factory edge. I have not had a chance to carry or cut with this knife but it has been lightly used. Handles have faint scratches, tried my best to capture these in the pictures and video. Didn’t come with box or original clip will just be shipping the knife. Link to BladeHQ with more info
Blue bolt action pen Free with purchase}

Diablo 4 Feedback:
Going over the „must do changes“
I already posted this in the D4 reddit, but since this is the more official Diablo place I wanted to post it here aswell.
First of all, everything that is mentioned here is my own, personal view on the matter and my intention of writing this is to give feedback so that I have a higher chance of some day being able to play the game I want to play. I also only played the Druid and the Barbarian to lvl 25 since these Archetypes interested me the most. Thus, I will only give feedback on these two classes.
Another small thing: English is not my first language, so if there are errors, typos or whatever, please refrain from focusing on that. Since all this is out of the way now, lets get to the most important part.
TLDR:
Gameplay great, art great, classes great (except druid), itemization terrible, skill trees doubling in size would be a good start, putting many legendary powers on the skill tree as skill runes would be infinitely better to create choice (you shouldn’t be able to have all active), dungeon design good at a base but needs more variety and less walking, overworld is amazing and makes me feel isolated most of the time, the map needs to be a little more clear in cities and give us options to be put in the middle of the screen with less opacity, interface needs a major rework.
Now, that the part for casuals who don’t want to deep dive is over lets get to the real feedback.
Don’t change:
The gameplay mechanics at a base level. The game is smoother than anything I ever played.
Open world and stuff.
The Must Do Changes:
Itemization, Interface, Skilltree
Itemization:
Items are, apart from gameplay, the most important part to create a great game that involves looting items. That does not mean, that items should give your character the most power though, but rather that creating items that are interesting to find and use, while not making any other gameplay aspect irrelevant, which is what is currently the case in Diablo 4. At this point I am not even talking about the individual affixes or legendary powers. If you have a low damage weapon, you have a low damage build, regardless of any other factor that may influence the power of your character. This is a grave design flaw since when 100% of your damage is determined by what weapon you wield, putting in more skill point into your skill tree only increases your damage based on the weapon that you wear. A level up feels way less significant for a damage increase than finding a weapon with 20 more damage. If you have a great weapon for your current level, you are going to deal great damage. If you have a bad weapon for your current level, you are going to deal bad damage. Although defence works in a similar way, there are more options to gain flat damage reduction and survivability that don’t solely rely on your defence stat as a base for the survivability they are providing for you. An example would be the barbarian generator flay* which provides a flat damage reduction stack that has nothing to do with how much defence you have. That is good, because it shouldn’t have anything to do with my defence stat. Now lets look at what happens with increasing my damage by using skill points. If I invest a point into violent whirlwind, I deal 30% more damage if I channel whirlwind for more than 3 seconds. This damage increase is tied to what weapon I use. This 30% more damage, is only ever as good as the weapon that I use. There is no static increase in power no matter how many skill points I invest. If I don’t find a good weapon, I wont deal good damage. This design is bad because if I find a low level weapon, that has the perfect affixes on it (non of which currently exist in the game btw.) I want to keep using that weapon, but because my entire damage relies on what weapon I use, I am bound to selling or salvaging the low level GG item I found. That is not fun. I wish they had learned their lesson from Diablo 3. This issue could be solved by giving skills both flat damage and %damage that scales off your weapon.
Now that this basic issue has been addressed, I want to talk about legendary affixes. Any legendary affix that increases the damage of a specific skill or provides a utility aspect (like resource cost reduction or automatic targeting for untargeted skills) that makes it possible to deal more damage with that specific skill are a must use and not a choice. If there were 30 legendary affixes for each skill, this would be a different story, but since we only have a limited amount of them, its bad design. With the current state of legendary affixes, any that works the way I mentioned earlier should be put on the skill tree as a rune you have to chose from. Later I will go into more detail when talking about the skill tree.
A lot of the normal affixes on items were incredibly boring. Especially the rolls on weapons were underwhelming. Finding a weapon that increased you attackspeed by 1.5% felt like finding a weapon with nothing on it at all. Only because a weapon is low level, doesn’t mean that the affix rolls on it should be low as well. Providing meaningful affixes at low level is crucial to create a fun and exciting looting experience even during lower levels and non endgame content. Lets say it takes 20 hours to reach endgame when playing through the game the first time (as a casual who doesn’t skip cutscenes, listens to people talking and is not min maxing the gameplay at every step). Those 20 hours should feel good. You should be happy about finding great items. In its current iteration, the items all feel exactly the same and the major difference is what level mob dropped them for their base damage to be either better or worse than what you currently use. Weapons need to have the possibility to roll +to weapon damage as element X/Y/Z, attack speed, chance to do X/Y/Z, +to skills, converting a % of all damage dealt to an element, bleeding or poison. All of these are more interesting than just doing % more damage when a condition is met. Also, I feel like the different base weapons are not different enough from each other. I didn’t really care what type of item the weapon was. That must change. Make the differences between each base weapon more distinct.
For other gear, I also think that some stats roll at too low numbers to be significant. I like regen when not being damaged by an enemy, but I think it should rather be regen when not damaging an enemy. Some classes can avoid taking damage much more easily than others and this way it would work as a small heal in between fights without having to go to town. I also like that boots and pants can have an inherent roll that is evade or potion related. (We need more of this as part of actual item bases, so different items become interesting) The bad part is, that these inherent affixes overshine any other roll the item could have. 40% movement speed after dashing, vs 2% move speed overall. The 2% feel completely meaningless. The base stat rolls are interesting, but only if the base stats would work in a different way. I will talk about that more later on. Anyways, I am not an expert when it comes to itemization, but I think even a few small changes could go a long way.
Interface:
I do not like anything about the interface, except the way the skill icons look. Personally, I think its neat. Now lets get to the other parts of the interface. First I am going to talk about the map. While the map worked great for me strolling around in the wild, I found it to be quite mess in Kyovashad. I couldn’t always clearly see if there was a path, a doorway or a wall. I think slightly changing the colours of pathways, doorways and exits in cities by making them a little bit brighter could work very well. I especially felt that ways when going to the “Kadala” trader on the right side of Kyovashad. In addition to that, I would like if we could have many more customization options for both the map and the skill bar with the health and resource globe. Let us move them please, putting them as individual parts so we can move the health pot sign anywhere we want, scale the health globe very big and the resource globe very small at the same time. For the map I wish we could have options like putting the map in the middle of our screen only when we enter a dungeon, all the time or not at all. Let us change colour, opacity and all these things.
Moving on to the “renown” screen, I wish it would just be a little box hidden somewhere small on my screen. I click a small button to collect the rewards but don’t have to enter an entire screen just to collect my stuff. You can add the screen hidden away in an option somewhere, where people who care about it can look at it. For me it didn’t feel Diablo like at all. Pressing a button in a menu somewhere in my map feels very wrong. The only menu where I gain power from should be the skill tree or a system that works similar to what a skill tree is. It would be so much cooler if we collected the money and whatever we get from the renown bonus from a chest in the main city of each region. It would be as if the people living there were actually thankful and saved up to give us the rewards because “they like us so much”. Doing it in a menu is in my opinion not the way to go.
Going over to the skill tree, I think the design is okay, although I will go into more detail about that later in the skill tree part. When it opens I feel like it is way too zoomed in. If it opens zoomed out all the way I could decide at what part of the tree I want to zoom in.
Coming to items and the inventory, I have to say, that this is the worst looking inventory I have ever seen. I am not talking about the character, but the space where I collect my loot. Why would there ever be a case where a truly giant double bladed axe takes up the exact same space as a ring or an amulet? The big problem is, just like in Diablo 3, we will pick up every single item that drop to salvage it for materials or selling it for gold. This must change. Always filling up the inventory with junk, not knowing if any of them even have potential to be good, this feels bad. I also miss identifying legendary items. One might think its just taking up unnecessary time, but the anticipation building while your character channels to identify or you are hovering over it with a scroll if identification is deeply missed (by me at least). I would also love if we could get the option to look at gear that is on the ground, just like in Diablo 3.
Coming to the upper part of the inventory, it is just a lot of empty space. I like seeing the character there, but I don’t like the way the gear slots are organized. There must be a better, more interesting way, that is not just 2 rows + weapon slots at the bottom. The stats with life defence and power are okay I guess, but I want to be able to take a look at the details of my character very quickly and not click through 2 menu’s. Here, customization would be cool. Let us decide which stats we want to see at the left side of the inventory.
Skill Tree:
It too small, too restrictive, not interesting enough, giving us 500 ways to apply vulnerable while only 3 to actually significantly change the way a skill works or plays.
Skill trees doubling in size would seem like a reasonable size where the game beings to provide actual opportunities to create self made builds. At its current state, I feel like every 5 characters I will encounter the exact build I am playing, with the only difference being which skill they use to apply vulnerable or provide survivability.
Choice is currently written in very tiny letters in Diablo 4. Every single skill currently in Diablo 4 that is not an ultimate skill needs at least 3 more runes that significantly change the way they work. Lets imagine we call those mastery runes. Lets imagine we unlock them after putting 5 points into the base skill. Now lets imagine that they alter skill in a ways that matter for gameplay. An example could be, that instead of 6 strikes, lightning storm (the druid skill) is now one very powerful ‘Lighting Strike’, damaging only the targeted mob but no longer providing group clear. Another example could be double swing marking enemies that are hit by both weapons to take 110% of the next damaging skill that is not double swing as damage over time, instead of dealing it as initial damage. That way that single rune could create an entire array of bleeding builds that revolve around double swing without limiting any bleeding build that exists outside of this way of playing a bleed build. There are almost infinite ways of making the skills and passives in the tree more interesting. Please use them, even if its not possible until launch.
What might be possible until launch is to deliver the promised feature of earning 5 stat points per level that we can then spend ourselves. The game did that automatically. I get why it did that. Focusing on the “main” stat of your class was the best thing to do.
I suggest changing the stats for each class, providing them with very unique ways to spec, while not being limited to pumping every point into the “main stat”
I felt unhappy with the stats the most as I played the druid. Why would my werewolf scale with willpower, which focuses on overpower damage. Why would my werebear be “useless” if I invested everything into strength even though playing a strong bulky bear is what its all about?
I suggest that a basic damage increase is removed completely from stats. For the druid increasing earth, lightning, werewolf or werebear damage. This would create actual choice of going for a specific way to deal damage. I addition to that, each stat should provide a form of utility that is only active if the stat is the highest out of all four. For dex that could be an additional dash, for intelligence a potion charge or something along those lines. You can go in so many direction. For other classes the stats would have to work in different ways again, since not all classes have four damage types, but for the sorc it could be that they also provide the same defensive options, but are renamed to elemental masteries, so the sorc has only 3 stats that can increase the potency of elemental damage and a fourth one that makes them a glass cannon, increasing all damage but by less and reducing defence gained from items and not providing any defensive option as an addition when it is the highest stat.
All of these are just quick ideas thrown into the room. They are not thought out, not for every class and might have other issues I didn’t think about, but for me, that would be many times better than the current system in the game, which is simply very boring.
Dudu feedback:
The druids as a class felt especially clunky to me. Many of the skills did not work the way I wanted them to work. Storm Strike was the most underwhelming generator, for me. The lightnings chain range was very, very small. Increasing the range of it wouldn’t hurt anybody and also wouldn’t make it unbalanced. I just felt disappointed that when I attacked, very often I was only hitting one mob because the other mobs where just out of range for it to connect. Also I feel like it should either be a rune or introduced to the base skill, that Storm Strike can bounce at least 2 times on the same target. That would make it much more fun to look at, and play with it.
Claw also disappointed me, not as a base skill, but when taking the rune for it to “strike” twice. In its current form it dealt double the damage and the wolf would attack with two hands at the same time. When I read the rune I imagined it would feel more like actually attacking twice. Hitting with both hands at the same time didn’t feel close to being as cool as if the werewolf actually attacked two different times in a short window, generating spirit twice aswell. That would make it much cooler for me.
Maul felt okay while windshear felt very slow, just like the druid overall. Earth spike is a cool concept, but I am currently not seeing myself ever using it since I don’t like the thematic of earth skills. If it was reworked to be a tree stump poking out of the ground I would think about using it, just because it would be funny stump things to death.
I am not going to comment on every skill now, but I want to say that every single base skill cost too much spirit, while any basic skill didn’t generate enough to feel like a smooth gameplay loop. I don’t know why every single class got regenerating resources, except the druid and barbarian. It should already tell a lot about what players like, since these two classes are also the ones that received the most amount of criticism.
Tornado is the only base skill that needs a major rework. It is not predictable where it will go, very bad when used in small spaces and so big many times it just got stuck somewhere and disappeared. Make is smaller and more predicable or let us spawn them where our mouse is, building up, growing in power standing still for 1-2 seconds until is searches for nearby enemies. Remove the legendary power that makes it search enemies. Otherwise, this skill will ever only be fun when using it.
Make cyclone armour’s active a dash instead of a knockback please. You almost never want to randomly knock away all enemies around you as the druid, since with many builds its you who is running after the monsters. Having another dash for that, or escaping when playing a more ranged build, would go a long way to make cyclone armour way better.
Coming to companions, The active of both the ravens and the vine creeper are very very nice. It is a shame that their passive counterpart is not noticeable at all. I was using the vine creeper for hours and in all that time I only noticed it attacking a single time. I am not exaggerating here. It bad and not noticeable at all, with so much going on on your screen. The same goes for the raven. Their passive impact is close to zero. Contrary to that, the passive part of the wolves felt very helpful as they tanked damage and had thus noticeable impact in combat. Its just too bad that their active counterpart feels like it has no impact at all, just like the passive of the other two. I think tweaking them in some way could make a zoo druid very fun.
For the ultimates, I hate grizzly rage. I never, ever create a build, just to activate an ability, that gives me other abilities that I could have chosen myself. Please make Grizzly Rage summon a giant Bear, so summon builds have another summon to rely on. This bear could also give buffs to the player so it can be used in more ways than the summon build, but the design of grizzly rage is not interesting at all. If it gave us skills that were not accessible through the skill tree, just like the archon wizard in Diablo 3, one could justify having this ultimate in the game, but in its current form it serves not purpose.
Barbarian Feedback:
I love the way the barbarian plays. I loved the skills and everything about how you played it. It is very unfortunate that the other classes from the early access beta were so much stronger at early levels since I had a great time playing through the game. Every skill worked the ways I was expecting it to work. It was the right difficulty, and I even died a few times. That should be the goal of difficulty for the game. The other classes seemingly had it too easy. A big factor might be, that often times I felt like I had no way of recovery or rage generation without getting close to mobs, which was impossible since my hp was so low. Since this is a problem of the early levels I think barb can stay pretty much all the same, provided they add the rune choices I mentioned earlier and increase the size of the skill tree.

A homeless teenager reaches out to the Shil’vati on first day of the invasion of Earth.
This is a rewrite of my original story ‘Loyalist’.
Credit to u/bluefishcake for writing the original SSB story.
Pizzaulostin who has been beta reading since the beginning.
and u/BruhMomentGEE
Credit to u/HollowShel for getting me started with this!
This story is based in the SSB universe.
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as always, comments are welcome.

Chapter 17:

Thanks to the author of Alien-Nation for editing this chapter!

Ruhal:

“We are sorry about the restraints. Your dossier has a security lock from the Office of Interior that I can’t even read, and all our supervisor could tell us was ‘interview with caution’,” one of the two agents explained.
I regarded my handcuffs with professional disapproval. They had a longer than regular chain for ambulatory movement and inmate processing, by the deep, I could even use them as garrote if needed. They had revealed the limits of their rank with that apology.
“No need to worry. I am sure this will be a formality in less than an hour,” I told them, if there was one thing that was in abundance on the planet Sky it was Interior and undercover commando trainees. I hoped this would probably be their most interesting case all month.
“So, would you care to explain how you are raising a human, that is also considered a military asset?” The agent inquired as she pulled out her slate.
“Of course, Klein surrendered himself and requested medical aid and refugee status. He was willing to answer essential questions regarding human culture that aided in liberating humanity into the Shil’vati Empire. He wouldn’t be safe on Earth anymore, and I mentioned that he was still important in writing my reports. If I had my slate, I could give you the relevant documentation,” I said in a conversational tone, without any of the emotions that weighed the story, and glossing over the specifics.
“No need. I have everything you submitted to the Interior, including his asset designation, the interrogation transcripts, and even his doctor’s contact info. To be honest with you it’s the only reason we haven’t interviewed you yet, even after a dozen calls about a ‘possible trafficked human’ since he arrived. Your information is corroborated with several other departments. The issue now is what the medivac scans found.” The agent pushed a slate towards me with medical notes bolded for emphasis ‘probable severe abuse’.
“The report shows a recent history of blunt force trauma, abrasions, and even muscle tearing, in short. It looks like the human has been systematically tortured for months. You also have recently requested restricted training armor in the human’s size.” The agent explained.
Ah, that was my mistake. I had been treating Klein as another child, just with some unique needs. It looks like there were other considerations, ones that I failed to see.
“I really do need my omni-slate to illustrate this, it’s on my desk right now if one of your assistants could get it?” I asked, hoping they got the suggestion to not leave me with only one interrogator in the room so they wouldn’t be graded too harshly.
They thankfully acquiesced without comment, and with my omni-slate in hand I pulled up the latest video of Klein practicing with me, the speed and brutality was difficult for me to sit through. Then, Klein pulled off his helmet seconds later, laughing in the rain. Unconcerned that, without armor, we could have just killed each other- I was grateful he had, else it might’ve been interpreted quite differently. “The bruising mostly from everyday participation at a Rakiri gym, and some remnants from before I got proper gear for baton practice. He heals extremely fast, and more so, he isn’t happy unless he exercises for at least an hour or two a day.”
I pulled up another video. Klein was sitting at the table bouncing his leg at an ever-increasing pace while trying to focus on a decently complex equation. He finally stood up and started pacing mouthing words as he skipped in time to an unheard rhythm.
“W-what’s he doing?” The agent asked, looking just a tad disturbed by the display of what seemed erratic behavior.
“A sort of dance while playing the song ‘a fine mesh net’ on his headphones. There was a monsoon that Shel weekend, and even I’m not crazy enough to fight in a thunderstorm like that. He does that around the house for an hour, and then finally settles in on a video game,” I explained to the agents, who were looking at me dubiously.
“So, you oversee an adolescent who is an intelligence asset, but also seems poorly fitted for Shil’vati life. Why the baton practice? Wouldn’t that make him even more dangerous, more of an outsider? Are you trying to sabotage his integration? Why not take him shopping, instead, or teach him beauty and self-care routines?” They were antagonizing. Countering every argument to see how I reacted. It seemed they could at least interrogate decently well.
“I hardly call a few quirks ‘poor fitting’. The baton practice is for obvious self-defense. Its intention is to make him dangerous,” I explained, letting the interviewers lead the conversation.
The back and forth went on for a while, but I presented a highlight reel of the last few months. Including a Rakiri gym video when Klein tried to flourish a wall climb and smashed his shoulder on the ledge while face planting into the mud.
The agents would not be arresting me today. They would need medical reports, and would require Klein, Hario, and Compassion Through Deeds to attest while truth scanned that these were sports injuries, and not some conspiracy to commit torture. We were also going to need to see an ICAD agent every two weeks for counseling. I had no idea what ICAD was, but I would investigate them later.
Finally, the agents appeared they were closing up the interview. I tried not to brace myself as they asked the complicated question. “One thing we need to know is, what is Klein to you? If he is just a crucial asset, then why haven’t you contacted a local volunteer family foster? Or was the military asset just a cover to find a male heir?”
I sighed, the truth wasn’t incriminating, but if I didn’t word it right, I would look like the worst sort of military tourist. “I had, originally, taken care of Klein as a key intelligence asset. Within that first week though, I had found that despite the decades of preparation, there wasn’t a process for someone to claim asylum as a child during first contact. He would be in military bureaucratic limbo without an advocate. We both know where he would end up.”
The room cooled by several degrees, which was a pity, I almost got the talkative agent to laugh at Klein’s antics. “Out of duty I investigated ways I could bring him home until I could find resources to place him in a stable situation with all the resources to help a xeno without a community. I found someone who was willing to help in exchange for reports on Klein’s adaptation to Shil’vati lifestyle. That’s Klein’s purpose as a military asset in my home.”
I continued. I was saying more on than I needed to, but if they did a follow up investigation later for some other incident, which was a when, not if, then I wanted this on record. “Klein has become part of this household though, despite, or maybe because, of his oddities. He may not be Shil’vati, but he seems to have integrated well. It’s why, while it was never my intention, when he is an adult, I will offer him full adoption, and title of home guardian.”
I watched the agents exchange looks, then the agent made a few taps on her slate. ‘Upper left, middle center, probably a message app’. I then listened for the telltale taps of a yes as a micro expression of a self-satisfied smile crossed the agent’s face. I decided to stop playing interviewee.
“So, you won the bet on if I would claim the human as my son, how long has that pool been building?” I asked folding my hands together.
The agent answered before she could think. “Two months… Wait!? How did you-”
The agent was cut off by the squawk of the slate’s speaker. “Agents you did well enough with the interview portion, however; you absolutely failed to secure the subject. Could you please illustrate to them why I stressed caution {petal of death’s veil}?”
The code name wasn’t one I had heard in decades, but I wasn’t going to snub an old handler. I kicked on my fast reaction mods to max speed and lunged over the table past the still sitting agents. I pirouetted and twisted the restraints into a loop as I brought them down over the left agent’s head and pulled back carefully, lightly touching the chain of my restraints around the neck of the agent before she could even react.
I kicked off my mods and caught my breath as time returned to normal. Both agents’ eyes went wide with shock as the one not about to be strangled tried to get away to pull out her weapon. “W-who are you!?”
“I’m going to slowly release you and put my hands up, is that everything you needed {hated old friend}?” I directed my question to the slate, using the code High Shil word to show I was playing along.
“More than enough. Agent! Holster your weapon and come back to the safe room. We need to go over security procedures,” the slate responded, and the very brief confrontation was over.
The agents walked out, and Siltan stomped in looking like she could bring about a thunderstorm by pure force of will. “We weren’t the only ones to get visits from the ‘majesty’s’ Interior today. Cee let me know that the Interior is also interrogated Reqellia as well.”
I now understood why these two rookies were here. It was a distraction for me. I grumbled as I picked up my slate and called Reqellia. Her face appeared a second later.
“By the Deep, it’s been a long day,” Reqellia breathed out as I heard a door slam, then she cursed some more.
“Tell me everything. Is Klein ok?” I asked.
“Cee says he’s fine and is waking him up. Klein might be getting a mod himself before she closes him up though because, oh- looks like it’s my day is going to get longer still. ICAD is here, and it’s a Hydrean in a Gearschilde clinic.” Reqellia hung up, and I stared at the phone in confusion.
It was time to find out what ICAD was.

Klein:

I blearily came to, as high powered, piercing white light flooded my half open eyes. I tried to move my arm to shield my face and found I couldn’t. Actually, I couldn't move or even feel anything from the neck down.
I started to panic as I turned my head, focusing on lettering on a terminal, tried to sigh, and felt what few muscles I could control turn to lead as I sank back on the medical bed. Thank the goddess, it was Shil and Gearschilde lettering on the slate and medical supplies.
“Good afternoon Klein, are you okay? Your heart rate spiked.” I heard Cee, or full name Compassion Through Deeds, speak and turned my head to see her. She wore a dark red lab coat and regarded me with unblinking cybernetic eyes. Most of her orange skin had been replaced with dark steel etched with stylized waves and swirls of silver. Her face still emoted in a pleasant smile, but had that uncanny valley look of unblemished synth skin. I looked down to see a dozen micro surgical tools still inside me.
I should have been screaming at the sight, but all I felt was relief and joy. “Yeah, I just worried for a half second that I had hallucinated the last few months and was actually on a back on Earth on some black-market operating table getting my kidney stolen.”
Cee was aghast. “Does that happen on Earth?”
I would shrug, but again, I couldn’t move, instead I responded. “Rumors of it happening, but I never knew anyone personally.”
Cee reassured me. “Well, good news Klein, you are on Sky, you are in a Gearschilde clinic where stealing vital organs is a legal, moral and religious crime of unrepentant severity. What I have done is remove your appendix, and let the sedatives wear off so we can discuss what you want in its place.”
“In place of my appendix? Why?” I asked, it wasn’t like I really needed the vestigial organ turn internal hand grenade.
“Customary in Gearschilde for surgery is to be about giving a better life than just taking from the body. So, any ideas of what would make your life better?”
I thought about the bruising, the constant having to put healing patches on, and the annoyance of doing so. I thought about the near fatality of almost blowing my appendix, and if something could have fixed the issue before it got out of hand. “What about a healing dispenser? I keep having to put on patches and gel at the end of the day, and if I miss a spot, I will pay for it later.”
Cee gave me a grateful expression. “That’s a perfect first implant. I was worried you were going to ask for something more aggressive. When I was your age, I got my first defensive mod, a retractable forearm knife. Of course, my next surgery was being stitched back together after accidently stabbing myself with it.”
I tried to chuckle, but I didn’t have control of my diaphragm for it. “So, what’s next?”
Cee explained. “Well, the fabricator in the other room is right now creating your implant. It shouldn’t take long; are you ok being immobilized for the next hour or so?”
I thought about it, and honestly, I was still surprised I wasn’t panicking. “No, but I’m going to get really bored just laying here, do the Gearschilde have any good myths or stories?”
I knew I was fishing in an untapped pool that was guaranteed to have something. I wasn’t expecting my doctor to be gleeful at the thought though. “Oh blessed be you child, I am a surgeon priest, half the reason I am in this vocation is to tell stories. I take it you know nothing about Gearschilde mythology, or even our history?”
It was on my list of rabbit holes to get into, but instead I binged the rest of Prince Of The Stars and cried, it was nice. “No, but I would love to hear them.”
“Well if you want to, every Shel we have open services and brunch. But since you are new to Gearschilde mythology we should start with one of my favorites. The story of the Hopestrider.”
The ceiling lights dimmed, and the sterile operating room felt surprisingly cozy as I leaned my head back. Listening to Cee starting up the tale. “Our sect requires us to lead what can best be called ‘child technician classes’. Learning to take care of machines, which includes us by the start of adolescence, if not before. It’s a critical life skill, and teaching it is considered an important part of our religious studies.”
‘Cyberpunk VeggieTales’ Squirrel brain chittered.
No one wants your opinion squirrel brain. I thought back.

Cee’s story: Hope Strider

“Long ago our world was full of harsh life. The valleys were often filled with poisonous mists and deadly predators that could rip apart even the strongest of our people. The mountain kingdoms were brutal fiefdoms that sent many to their deaths mining precious metals from the dangerous wastes of the valleys. Drilling into the heart of the mountains provided the power necessary to purify water, and later, steam engines turned those fiefdoms into empires. Expanding into the wastes using the lowest class of people as its foundation.”
Cee paused for dramatic effect. “Then, everything changed.”
“The ground shook, and the mountain kingdoms erupted in fire and molten rock. Radioactive dust from these now volcanoes made the centers of civilization barren and deadly. Only the wasteland colonies in the poisonous mists provided any refuge, and so king and commoner alike huddled in the once disposable outposts of a ruined world. Our story starts a generation after the calamity with an unlucky child.”
I heard a ding, Cee stopped as the ceiling lights came up. “Oh dear, let me stop for a second to get the implant.”
I leaned back and thought about her nightmare world. When Cee returned, I didn’t even bother to open my eyes, too engrossed in the imagery of the story. “What happened to the child?”
I could hear the whirring as she started to work. Her voice I realized had taken a more scripted cadence. She must have automated her voice so she could focus. “In a metalworker’s home, a child was born with broken legs and brittle bones. It was common in those days for such a child to die that way. It was their first born and the parents did everything they could to save them. A surgeon was called. The child lost their legs, but kept their life.”
“The child lived in the workshop. Kept warm by the hearth’s fire, even unable to walk, they were curious. Day in and out, they watched their parents construct machines that helped the community make food, filter the air, and defend the homes from the starving, mutated, monsters that circled the fortress walls. The child felt helpless though. Only able to crawl within the confines of the home or be carried around like cargo about the maze-like town of winding stairs and narrow passageways.
“They spent much of their time learning, sitting near the hearth to keep warm, they did the careful work of filing gears and wheels needed to control what could be automated as each hand replaced was another that could be spent doing something else critical to keep the community alive. Still, the child wanted to do more. They could not deliver what they made, and had to rely on others to help them at every turn in life.”
“Little did the child know that in the hearth a machine spirit lived, getting by eating scrap metal that fell in and sleeping at night on the bed of embers. The machine spirit saw the child’s wish, an invention without form, and turned it into a dream for the child, since new machines would mean new machine spirits to play with.”
That night the child saw themselves flying over the cold gray landscape on a pair of machine legs. Traveling the dangerous paths to other towns, and giving the isolated towns hope and community. The child awoke with joy and crawled over to his workbench littered with scrap metal, now children….”
Cee stopped talking and her voice went back to an unscripted rhythm. “I just realized we can’t do the practical part of this story. In class each kid gets a hope strider stuffy with snaps to attach legs they make. We give them bits of copper. Show them how to bend and hammer it, and how to bond it by wrapping the joint in solder and then applying heat with a soldering iron heated in their own toy ‘hearth’ with a safety cover. Still we get a daily small burn or cut, but that in itself is a valuable lesson in tool safety.”
It sounded adorable in a weird, steampunk way. “Sounds fun, so, new legs?”
Cee got the que, as much as I loved the story, and the talk about kindergarten metal shop, I was still immobilized on the operating table. I heard surgical whirring, and the scripted voice came back. “Yes, the child works all night until they fit the new legs on, and for the first time stand up on their own! The parents are overjoyed as they watch them move about the house and that afternoon, with the help of an iron bar as a cane, they walk around their community by themselves.”
“However, it isn’t long before the legs start to see wear and tear, but the child persists, not wanting to stop and fix the creaking joints, until one day the legs stop working altogether and they fall down in a twisting staircase. Carried back to the workshop, they rest for days to heal before they are able to work again. Constructing a new set from the remains of the old. Now…”

Klein:

Cee stopped again, but this time she had moved away from me and was putting the now bloody surgical tools into a sanitizing system. “We're done! I am going to start removing the nerve blocks, so you’re going to be sore, but if things get too painful, let me know. Please, try not to move anything but your hands right now, even then I would advise against it.”
My whole body had that pins and needles feel and I tried to move my fingers, but it was sporadic and jerky. Cee distracted me by explaining my new implant. “So, this implant is very basic. It can only be requested to send diagnostic data. The implant only administers more healing serum at a safe, steady rate if, and only if, it doesn’t detect any in your bloodstream. There is an injection site with a color change circle around it. It uses standard go, caution, stop colors to let you know if it’s functioning. I want to wave your omni-pad over the site and check the diagnostics at least once a day. It should hopefully catch if something like this is happening again.”
I tried to not move as I felt my body twitch. My gut felt like I had been run over, repeatedly. I asked, “why didn’t my medical monitoring implant catch this?”
Cee explained. “That’s only good for basic vitals. Near universal indicators of life and activity such as heart rate and blood pressure. The new implant will be able to scan for elevated protein counts. So, if one of your other internal organs starts to malfunction you can get a more unambiguous message that I hope you won’t ignore before getting medivac’d through the city.”
I chuckled a little at that, and it hurt. “Ow, ok, no movement. I thought it was just a pulled muscle or something.”
Cee looked down at me sternly, and her voice took on a deeper, more authoritative tone. “Child, more than enough Gearschilde have died thinking they can just, push themselves past their organic parts failing, if you have a torn muscle that hurts after you’ve used healing gel, then it’s serious enough you need to come see me, or another xeno-doctor, immediately. That’s why I hope your new implant can fix things before it gets to that point.”
Cee brightened after that and went back to the explanation of my implant. “Now that I scolded you, there is a color changing circle over your implant’s location. It will change color when the healing serum runs low, or and will start to flash in color, and try to ping your omni-pad if it detects a malfunction. The implant uses a standard Shil’ implant autoinjector, and it will reject anything not meant for red blood standard biology, but still be careful, it’s not a perfect filtering system. Today I’m giving you a set of autoinjectors I want you to use throughout the week. It's fortunate that your implant’s primary function will speed up your recovery time.”
Ok, that’s cool to know, but.
‘What happened to Hopestrider?!’ Squirrel brain demanded.
“So, the story, what happens next?” I asked as Cee helped me sit up. My stomach still hurt, but the feeling was in the overworked muscle category rather than a gut punch.
Cee started to explain as I put on what was essentially gym clothes. Soft, baggy pants and shirt with easy pull away tabs if they needed to remove the clothes quickly for checkups and surgical intervention. “Well, we don’t have time to go over the Hope Strider as a story, or even a summary, but if you want to, my husband teaches the child technician class during open services on Shel, you could sit in and listen.
Right now, I will give you a family crafted picture book that tells the core story of Hope Strider growing up, and making their first delivery. After that it’s a loose selection of legends that are attributed to Hope Strider as they grow older and more accomplished, but while I get that book, I need you to speak to someone.”
Cee led me out of the operating room, and into a comfortable looking lounge where a… Hydrean was sitting in an Imperial business uniform reading an omni-pad. My brain pulled everything I knew of Hydreans out. A rabbit hole I had dug into one rainy Shel on the public information repositories.
She, they, single gendered I reminded myself, looked up and smiled at me calmly, mouth closed for politeness. Their skin was grass green with artful patches of bark on her face and neck, the result of cosmetic scarification. They looked human, or Shil’oid, but that was purposefully done. Even the somewhat standard looking ‘desert walker’ Hydreans normally had more, or less, limbs than standard. Biological modification was at the root of all Hydrean technology, ancient as the stone ax to other species.
I thought about how contentious Hydrean/Shil relationships were said to be. Their arid home planet was off limits to all but certified personnel who had been trained how to handle the dangerous mix of flora/fauna that instead of being different groups, was just a single taxonomy that had no distinction between predator and prey. With their complex biology, a Hydrean needed to undergo extensive body modification just to exist off their home world.
Cee left the room with a friendly goodbye and offered assistance “Hello Klein, I am Ka’tel. It’s wonderful to meet you. I am with the Imperial Child Assistance Division, or ICAD. My job is to help interspecies fosters and adoptions. How are you feeling today?”
I caught a glimpse of her teeth as they spoke. Triangular, and made of burnished metal meant to tear off chunks of animal, plant, or even rock, whole and let their stomachs’ mix of acids dissolve it into something the rest their body could use.
‘The agent in charge of your welfare is a plant/animal hybrid with a diet of ‘yes’, your doctor is a wholesome orange 40K mechanicus, and your crush is a were-lion, you are not ok .’ Squirrel brain remarked.
“I’m actually pretty good, despite the surgery, it’s actually a common issue for humans.” I said to Ka’tel, because my life was weird before the aliens, squirrel brain was just being a pessimistic asshole.
“Really? Do you know what caused it?” Ka’tel asked.
“It just, happens? Gets irritated or infected and then you need to get it removed.” I said nonchalantly. Ka’tel made a mark on her omni-pad.
“How did you know? It seems dangerous if it can happen suddenly, and you mentioned it before you passed out.” Ka’tel asked tone friendly and conversational.
“Oh, the side of your stomach hurts. I was hoping it was just a pulled muscle bec- Dammit!” I just remembered what happened before I woke up here.
“The raid game! Ko’tasa would have had to substitute for me and she’s not well balanced for our team mix.” I said with a exasperated sigh.
Ka’tel cocked their head to one side, but the tone in her voice was humorous. “You were willing to ignore a possible life-threatening condition for a game?”
I explained, though I felt idiotic now. “I couldn’t tell. I get sore muscles all the time from gym, and sparing, and even from the auxiliary work, honestly my commandant doesn’t really know where to put me sometimes. Last week I helped with road clearing for the new town to go up a few [miles] away, and the girls could barely keep up with me.”
Ka’tel seemed to be enjoying my rambling. “Sounds like you really get put to work.”
“Not really? The auxiliary is the only work I do, and if I wanted to stop I just, can. It’s not like I need to worry about buying food.” I knew what I was saying seemed strange while living in the Imperium.
It was the first hint that Ka’tel was controlling her expressions when she seemed more attentive and… relieved? “That’s delightful news to hear! Is there anything about your living situation that bothers you?”
I paused and thought about it, and really couldn’t see anything. “Not really?”
“Anything, or anyone, you miss from Earth?” Ka’tel asked, stressing that last bit, dropping a mental bomb on my head and I froze, mouth partly open with a half formed response. When was the last time I even thought about Earth as more than an abstract concept? It hadn’t been [six months] since I left but…
I didn’t feel anything.
The last year I lived on Earth, it was like being a ghost. I saw people, I even talked to people, but it was like a thick plate of glass all around me. Today I felt color, and life, and things, but that last year on Earth?
Like radio static.
I looked at Ka’tel, and their expression was one of controlled neutrality. Why was I not freaking out?
I had a sensation of the room spinning. I asked, “No, I don’t really feel anything about Earth, is that normal?”
“I don’t know Klein, by most sentient standards what you went through was unusual, and from what little I know about humans that isn’t propaganda, it’s unusual for humans as well. What I do know is right now you seem happy and healthy, and that’s my top priority.” Ka’tel said as they stood and offered me a stiff plastic card with their contact details on it.
“We will be chatting every other week to see how you are adjusting. I might ask to visit you at the youth auxiliary depot, the gym or at home. I really am glad to see you are doing just fine, but if you ever need a way out, that card has an emergency signal function, just pull the plastic tab.” Ka’tel told me, and was about to open the door before I spoke up.
“How should I refer to you?” I asked, and once they realized, Ka’tel gave me a genuine, toothed, smile that was both menacing and goofy at the same time.
“Most people don’t learn enough Hydrean biology to ask. Her, that’s how everyone in the office sees me, and it’s more convenient socially.” She said, opening the door to an anxious looking Itaro standing next to a serious Ruhal and Reqellia.
“I need to speak to you Ruhal, and Reqellia, you should join us for this conversation as well.” Ka’tel said as she ushered me out.
Cee led us into a gaming room with a long table on one side, and a set of couches facing the wall to wall display on the other. She handed me an overloaded plate of cookies with bottle of water, and stepped out, closing the door behind us. “Eat those, your stomach has healed, but it’s going to need calories to fuel the recovery.”
Only then did I realize I was salivating at the smell of warm sugar, and flour made of Kasan grain, if I was identifying the green color correctly. I put the plate of cookies on the table, and snarfed them as I sat down.
After swallowing the fourth cookie semi-whole, I looked up to see Itaro’s face fighting a war between impatient, apprehensive, and hopeful. I stopped, realizing what I was doing, and sipped some water to stall for time.
I was about to pull my omni-pad out from my pockets when Itaro suddenly put her hand out to stop me. “Wait! Klein, I need to tell you something…”
She was silent for a long moment, what was she worried about?
“I… Like you, as, I find you…. Attractive, and I may have gotten a little…. overprotective when you got hurt.” Itaro said, her voice stuttering.
‘Oh, that makes things easy.’ Squirrel brain was for once, right.
“I like you too.” I said as I leaned over and kissed her.

///// Author’s Commentary

Wow! I couldn’t find a good stopping point so I just kept writing and writing and… It turned into something over 5 thousand words. I spent the last day trying to figure out clear up a few parts. This week I have some time off! So there will probably be another chapter sooner rather than later.

A homeless teenager reaches out to the Shil’vati on first day of the invasion of Earth.
This is a rewrite of my original story ‘Loyalist’.
Credit to u/bluefishcake for writing the original SSB story.
Pizzaulostin who has been beta reading since the beginning.
and u/BruhMomentGEE
Credit to u/HollowShel for getting me started with this!
This story is based in the SSB universe.
Previous
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as always, comments are welcome.

Chapter 17:

Thanks to the author of Alien-Nation for editing this chapter!

Ruhal:

“We are sorry about the restraints. Your dossier has a security lock from the Office of Interior that I can’t even read, and all our supervisor could tell us was ‘interview with caution’,” one of the two agents explained.
I regarded my handcuffs with professional disapproval. They had a longer than regular chain for ambulatory movement and inmate processing, by the deep, I could even use them as garrote if needed. They had revealed the limits of their rank with that apology.
“No need to worry. I am sure this will be a formality in less than an hour,” I told them, if there was one thing that was in abundance on the planet Sky it was Interior and undercover commando trainees. I hoped this would probably be their most interesting case all month.
“So, would you care to explain how you are raising a human, that is also considered a military asset?” The agent inquired as she pulled out her slate.
“Of course, Klein surrendered himself and requested medical aid and refugee status. He was willing to answer essential questions regarding human culture that aided in liberating humanity into the Shil’vati Empire. He wouldn’t be safe on Earth anymore, and I mentioned that he was still important in writing my reports. If I had my slate, I could give you the relevant documentation,” I said in a conversational tone, without any of the emotions that weighed the story, and glossing over the specifics.
“No need. I have everything you submitted to the Interior, including his asset designation, the interrogation transcripts, and even his doctor’s contact info. To be honest with you it’s the only reason we haven’t interviewed you yet, even after a dozen calls about a ‘possible trafficked human’ since he arrived. Your information is corroborated with several other departments. The issue now is what the medivac scans found.” The agent pushed a slate towards me with medical notes bolded for emphasis ‘probable severe abuse’.
“The report shows a recent history of blunt force trauma, abrasions, and even muscle tearing, in short. It looks like the human has been systematically tortured for months. You also have recently requested restricted training armor in the human’s size.” The agent explained.
Ah, that was my mistake. I had been treating Klein as another child, just with some unique needs. It looks like there were other considerations, ones that I failed to see.
“I really do need my omni-slate to illustrate this, it’s on my desk right now if one of your assistants could get it?” I asked, hoping they got the suggestion to not leave me with only one interrogator in the room so they wouldn’t be graded too harshly.
They thankfully acquiesced without comment, and with my omni-slate in hand I pulled up the latest video of Klein practicing with me, the speed and brutality was difficult for me to sit through. Then, Klein pulled off his helmet seconds later, laughing in the rain. Unconcerned that, without armor, we could have just killed each other- I was grateful he had, else it might’ve been interpreted quite differently. “The bruising mostly from everyday participation at a Rakiri gym, and some remnants from before I got proper gear for baton practice. He heals extremely fast, and more so, he isn’t happy unless he exercises for at least an hour or two a day.”
I pulled up another video. Klein was sitting at the table bouncing his leg at an ever-increasing pace while trying to focus on a decently complex equation. He finally stood up and started pacing mouthing words as he skipped in time to an unheard rhythm.
“W-what’s he doing?” The agent asked, looking just a tad disturbed by the display of what seemed erratic behavior.
“A sort of dance while playing the song ‘a fine mesh net’ on his headphones. There was a monsoon that Shel weekend, and even I’m not crazy enough to fight in a thunderstorm like that. He does that around the house for an hour, and then finally settles in on a video game,” I explained to the agents, who were looking at me dubiously.
“So, you oversee an adolescent who is an intelligence asset, but also seems poorly fitted for Shil’vati life. Why the baton practice? Wouldn’t that make him even more dangerous, more of an outsider? Are you trying to sabotage his integration? Why not take him shopping, instead, or teach him beauty and self-care routines?” They were antagonizing. Countering every argument to see how I reacted. It seemed they could at least interrogate decently well.
“I hardly call a few quirks ‘poor fitting’. The baton practice is for obvious self-defense. Its intention is to make him dangerous,” I explained, letting the interviewers lead the conversation.
The back and forth went on for a while, but I presented a highlight reel of the last few months. Including a Rakiri gym video when Klein tried to flourish a wall climb and smashed his shoulder on the ledge while face planting into the mud.
The agents would not be arresting me today. They would need medical reports, and would require Klein, Hario, and Compassion Through Deeds to attest while truth scanned that these were sports injuries, and not some conspiracy to commit torture. We were also going to need to see an ICAD agent every two weeks for counseling. I had no idea what ICAD was, but I would investigate them later.
Finally, the agents appeared they were closing up the interview. I tried not to brace myself as they asked the complicated question. “One thing we need to know is, what is Klein to you? If he is just a crucial asset, then why haven’t you contacted a local volunteer family foster? Or was the military asset just a cover to find a male heir?”
I sighed, the truth wasn’t incriminating, but if I didn’t word it right, I would look like the worst sort of military tourist. “I had, originally, taken care of Klein as a key intelligence asset. Within that first week though, I had found that despite the decades of preparation, there wasn’t a process for someone to claim asylum as a child during first contact. He would be in military bureaucratic limbo without an advocate. We both know where he would end up.”
The room cooled by several degrees, which was a pity, I almost got the talkative agent to laugh at Klein’s antics. “Out of duty I investigated ways I could bring him home until I could find resources to place him in a stable situation with all the resources to help a xeno without a community. I found someone who was willing to help in exchange for reports on Klein’s adaptation to Shil’vati lifestyle. That’s Klein’s purpose as a military asset in my home.”
I continued. I was saying more on than I needed to, but if they did a follow up investigation later for some other incident, which was a when, not if, then I wanted this on record. “Klein has become part of this household though, despite, or maybe because, of his oddities. He may not be Shil’vati, but he seems to have integrated well. It’s why, while it was never my intention, when he is an adult, I will offer him full adoption, and title of home guardian.”
I watched the agents exchange looks, then the agent made a few taps on her slate. ‘Upper left, middle center, probably a message app’. I then listened for the telltale taps of a yes as a micro expression of a self-satisfied smile crossed the agent’s face. I decided to stop playing interviewee.
“So, you won the bet on if I would claim the human as my son, how long has that pool been building?” I asked folding my hands together.
The agent answered before she could think. “Two months… Wait!? How did you-”
The agent was cut off by the squawk of the slate’s speaker. “Agents you did well enough with the interview portion, however; you absolutely failed to secure the subject. Could you please illustrate to them why I stressed caution {petal of death’s veil}?”
The code name wasn’t one I had heard in decades, but I wasn’t going to snub an old handler. I kicked on my fast reaction mods to max speed and lunged over the table past the still sitting agents. I pirouetted and twisted the restraints into a loop as I brought them down over the left agent’s head and pulled back carefully, lightly touching the chain of my restraints around the neck of the agent before she could even react.
I kicked off my mods and caught my breath as time returned to normal. Both agents’ eyes went wide with shock as the one not about to be strangled tried to get away to pull out her weapon. “W-who are you!?”
“I’m going to slowly release you and put my hands up, is that everything you needed {hated old friend}?” I directed my question to the slate, using the code High Shil word to show I was playing along.
“More than enough. Agent! Holster your weapon and come back to the safe room. We need to go over security procedures,” the slate responded, and the very brief confrontation was over.
The agents walked out, and Siltan stomped in looking like she could bring about a thunderstorm by pure force of will. “We weren’t the only ones to get visits from the ‘majesty’s’ Interior today. Cee let me know that the Interior is also interrogated Reqellia as well.”
I now understood why these two rookies were here. It was a distraction for me. I grumbled as I picked up my slate and called Reqellia. Her face appeared a second later.
“By the Deep, it’s been a long day,” Reqellia breathed out as I heard a door slam, then she cursed some more.
“Tell me everything. Is Klein ok?” I asked.
“Cee says he’s fine and is waking him up. Klein might be getting a mod himself before she closes him up though because, oh- looks like it’s my day is going to get longer still. ICAD is here, and it’s a Hydrean in a Gearschilde clinic.” Reqellia hung up, and I stared at the phone in confusion.
It was time to find out what ICAD was.

Klein:

I blearily came to, as high powered, piercing white light flooded my half open eyes. I tried to move my arm to shield my face and found I couldn’t. Actually, I couldn't move or even feel anything from the neck down.
I started to panic as I turned my head, focusing on lettering on a terminal, tried to sigh, and felt what few muscles I could control turn to lead as I sank back on the medical bed. Thank the goddess, it was Shil and Gearschilde lettering on the slate and medical supplies.
“Good afternoon Klein, are you okay? Your heart rate spiked.” I heard Cee, or full name Compassion Through Deeds, speak and turned my head to see her. She wore a dark red lab coat and regarded me with unblinking cybernetic eyes. Most of her orange skin had been replaced with dark steel etched with stylized waves and swirls of silver. Her face still emoted in a pleasant smile, but had that uncanny valley look of unblemished synth skin. I looked down to see a dozen micro surgical tools still inside me.
I should have been screaming at the sight, but all I felt was relief and joy. “Yeah, I just worried for a half second that I had hallucinated the last few months and was actually on a back on Earth on some black-market operating table getting my kidney stolen.”
Cee was aghast. “Does that happen on Earth?”
I would shrug, but again, I couldn’t move, instead I responded. “Rumors of it happening, but I never knew anyone personally.”
Cee reassured me. “Well, good news Klein, you are on Sky, you are in a Gearschilde clinic where stealing vital organs is a legal, moral and religious crime of unrepentant severity. What I have done is remove your appendix, and let the sedatives wear off so we can discuss what you want in its place.”
“In place of my appendix? Why?” I asked, it wasn’t like I really needed the vestigial organ turn internal hand grenade.
“Customary in Gearschilde for surgery is to be about giving a better life than just taking from the body. So, any ideas of what would make your life better?”
I thought about the bruising, the constant having to put healing patches on, and the annoyance of doing so. I thought about the near fatality of almost blowing my appendix, and if something could have fixed the issue before it got out of hand. “What about a healing dispenser? I keep having to put on patches and gel at the end of the day, and if I miss a spot, I will pay for it later.”
Cee gave me a grateful expression. “That’s a perfect first implant. I was worried you were going to ask for something more aggressive. When I was your age, I got my first defensive mod, a retractable forearm knife. Of course, my next surgery was being stitched back together after accidently stabbing myself with it.”
I tried to chuckle, but I didn’t have control of my diaphragm for it. “So, what’s next?”
Cee explained. “Well, the fabricator in the other room is right now creating your implant. It shouldn’t take long; are you ok being immobilized for the next hour or so?”
I thought about it, and honestly, I was still surprised I wasn’t panicking. “No, but I’m going to get really bored just laying here, do the Gearschilde have any good myths or stories?”
I knew I was fishing in an untapped pool that was guaranteed to have something. I wasn’t expecting my doctor to be gleeful at the thought though. “Oh blessed be you child, I am a surgeon priest, half the reason I am in this vocation is to tell stories. I take it you know nothing about Gearschilde mythology, or even our history?”
It was on my list of rabbit holes to get into, but instead I binged the rest of Prince Of The Stars and cried, it was nice. “No, but I would love to hear them.”
“Well if you want to, every Shel we have open services and brunch. But since you are new to Gearschilde mythology we should start with one of my favorites. The story of the Hopestrider.”
The ceiling lights dimmed, and the sterile operating room felt surprisingly cozy as I leaned my head back. Listening to Cee starting up the tale. “Our sect requires us to lead what can best be called ‘child technician classes’. Learning to take care of machines, which includes us by the start of adolescence, if not before. It’s a critical life skill, and teaching it is considered an important part of our religious studies.”
‘Cyberpunk VeggieTales’ Squirrel brain chittered.
No one wants your opinion squirrel brain. I thought back.

Cee’s story: Hope Strider

“Long ago our world was full of harsh life. The valleys were often filled with poisonous mists and deadly predators that could rip apart even the strongest of our people. The mountain kingdoms were brutal fiefdoms that sent many to their deaths mining precious metals from the dangerous wastes of the valleys. Drilling into the heart of the mountains provided the power necessary to purify water, and later, steam engines turned those fiefdoms into empires. Expanding into the wastes using the lowest class of people as its foundation.”
Cee paused for dramatic effect. “Then, everything changed.”
“The ground shook, and the mountain kingdoms erupted in fire and molten rock. Radioactive dust from these now volcanoes made the centers of civilization barren and deadly. Only the wasteland colonies in the poisonous mists provided any refuge, and so king and commoner alike huddled in the once disposable outposts of a ruined world. Our story starts a generation after the calamity with an unlucky child.”
I heard a ding, Cee stopped as the ceiling lights came up. “Oh dear, let me stop for a second to get the implant.”
I leaned back and thought about her nightmare world. When Cee returned, I didn’t even bother to open my eyes, too engrossed in the imagery of the story. “What happened to the child?”
I could hear the whirring as she started to work. Her voice I realized had taken a more scripted cadence. She must have automated her voice so she could focus. “In a metalworker’s home, a child was born with broken legs and brittle bones. It was common in those days for such a child to die that way. It was their first born and the parents did everything they could to save them. A surgeon was called. The child lost their legs, but kept their life.”
“The child lived in the workshop. Kept warm by the hearth’s fire, even unable to walk, they were curious. Day in and out, they watched their parents construct machines that helped the community make food, filter the air, and defend the homes from the starving, mutated, monsters that circled the fortress walls. The child felt helpless though. Only able to crawl within the confines of the home or be carried around like cargo about the maze-like town of winding stairs and narrow passageways.
“They spent much of their time learning, sitting near the hearth to keep warm, they did the careful work of filing gears and wheels needed to control what could be automated as each hand replaced was another that could be spent doing something else critical to keep the community alive. Still, the child wanted to do more. They could not deliver what they made, and had to rely on others to help them at every turn in life.”
“Little did the child know that in the hearth a machine spirit lived, getting by eating scrap metal that fell in and sleeping at night on the bed of embers. The machine spirit saw the child’s wish, an invention without form, and turned it into a dream for the child, since new machines would mean new machine spirits to play with.”
That night the child saw themselves flying over the cold gray landscape on a pair of machine legs. Traveling the dangerous paths to other towns, and giving the isolated towns hope and community. The child awoke with joy and crawled over to his workbench littered with scrap metal, now children….”
Cee stopped talking and her voice went back to an unscripted rhythm. “I just realized we can’t do the practical part of this story. In class each kid gets a hope strider stuffy with snaps to attach legs they make. We give them bits of copper. Show them how to bend and hammer it, and how to bond it by wrapping the joint in solder and then applying heat with a soldering iron heated in their own toy ‘hearth’ with a safety cover. Still we get a daily small burn or cut, but that in itself is a valuable lesson in tool safety.”
It sounded adorable in a weird, steampunk way. “Sounds fun, so, new legs?”
Cee got the que, as much as I loved the story, and the talk about kindergarten metal shop, I was still immobilized on the operating table. I heard surgical whirring, and the scripted voice came back. “Yes, the child works all night until they fit the new legs on, and for the first time stand up on their own! The parents are overjoyed as they watch them move about the house and that afternoon, with the help of an iron bar as a cane, they walk around their community by themselves.”
“However, it isn’t long before the legs start to see wear and tear, but the child persists, not wanting to stop and fix the creaking joints, until one day the legs stop working altogether and they fall down in a twisting staircase. Carried back to the workshop, they rest for days to heal before they are able to work again. Constructing a new set from the remains of the old. Now…”

Klein:

Cee stopped again, but this time she had moved away from me and was putting the now bloody surgical tools into a sanitizing system. “We're done! I am going to start removing the nerve blocks, so you’re going to be sore, but if things get too painful, let me know. Please, try not to move anything but your hands right now, even then I would advise against it.”
My whole body had that pins and needles feel and I tried to move my fingers, but it was sporadic and jerky. Cee distracted me by explaining my new implant. “So, this implant is very basic. It can only be requested to send diagnostic data. The implant only administers more healing serum at a safe, steady rate if, and only if, it doesn’t detect any in your bloodstream. There is an injection site with a color change circle around it. It uses standard go, caution, stop colors to let you know if it’s functioning. I want to wave your omni-pad over the site and check the diagnostics at least once a day. It should hopefully catch if something like this is happening again.”
I tried to not move as I felt my body twitch. My gut felt like I had been run over, repeatedly. I asked, “why didn’t my medical monitoring implant catch this?”
Cee explained. “That’s only good for basic vitals. Near universal indicators of life and activity such as heart rate and blood pressure. The new implant will be able to scan for elevated protein counts. So, if one of your other internal organs starts to malfunction you can get a more unambiguous message that I hope you won’t ignore before getting medivac’d through the city.”
I chuckled a little at that, and it hurt. “Ow, ok, no movement. I thought it was just a pulled muscle or something.”
Cee looked down at me sternly, and her voice took on a deeper, more authoritative tone. “Child, more than enough Gearschilde have died thinking they can just, push themselves past their organic parts failing, if you have a torn muscle that hurts after you’ve used healing gel, then it’s serious enough you need to come see me, or another xeno-doctor, immediately. That’s why I hope your new implant can fix things before it gets to that point.”
Cee brightened after that and went back to the explanation of my implant. “Now that I scolded you, there is a color changing circle over your implant’s location. It will change color when the healing serum runs low, or and will start to flash in color, and try to ping your omni-pad if it detects a malfunction. The implant uses a standard Shil’ implant autoinjector, and it will reject anything not meant for red blood standard biology, but still be careful, it’s not a perfect filtering system. Today I’m giving you a set of autoinjectors I want you to use throughout the week. It's fortunate that your implant’s primary function will speed up your recovery time.”
Ok, that’s cool to know, but.
‘What happened to Hopestrider?!’ Squirrel brain demanded.
“So, the story, what happens next?” I asked as Cee helped me sit up. My stomach still hurt, but the feeling was in the overworked muscle category rather than a gut punch.
Cee started to explain as I put on what was essentially gym clothes. Soft, baggy pants and shirt with easy pull away tabs if they needed to remove the clothes quickly for checkups and surgical intervention. “Well, we don’t have time to go over the Hope Strider as a story, or even a summary, but if you want to, my husband teaches the child technician class during open services on Shel, you could sit in and listen.
Right now, I will give you a family crafted picture book that tells the core story of Hope Strider growing up, and making their first delivery. After that it’s a loose selection of legends that are attributed to Hope Strider as they grow older and more accomplished, but while I get that book, I need you to speak to someone.”
Cee led me out of the operating room, and into a comfortable looking lounge where a… Hydrean was sitting in an Imperial business uniform reading an omni-pad. My brain pulled everything I knew of Hydreans out. A rabbit hole I had dug into one rainy Shel on the public information repositories.
She, they, single gendered I reminded myself, looked up and smiled at me calmly, mouth closed for politeness. Their skin was grass green with artful patches of bark on her face and neck, the result of cosmetic scarification. They looked human, or Shil’oid, but that was purposefully done. Even the somewhat standard looking ‘desert walker’ Hydreans normally had more, or less, limbs than standard. Biological modification was at the root of all Hydrean technology, ancient as the stone ax to other species.
I thought about how contentious Hydrean/Shil relationships were said to be. Their arid home planet was off limits to all but certified personnel who had been trained how to handle the dangerous mix of flora/fauna that instead of being different groups, was just a single taxonomy that had no distinction between predator and prey. With their complex biology, a Hydrean needed to undergo extensive body modification just to exist off their home world.
Cee left the room with a friendly goodbye and offered assistance “Hello Klein, I am Ka’tel. It’s wonderful to meet you. I am with the Imperial Child Assistance Division, or ICAD. My job is to help interspecies fosters and adoptions. How are you feeling today?”
I caught a glimpse of her teeth as they spoke. Triangular, and made of burnished metal meant to tear off chunks of animal, plant, or even rock, whole and let their stomachs’ mix of acids dissolve it into something the rest their body could use.
‘The agent in charge of your welfare is a plant/animal hybrid with a diet of ‘yes’, your doctor is a wholesome orange 40K mechanicus, and your crush is a were-lion, you are not ok .’ Squirrel brain remarked.
“I’m actually pretty good, despite the surgery, it’s actually a common issue for humans.” I said to Ka’tel, because my life was weird before the aliens, squirrel brain was just being a pessimistic asshole.
“Really? Do you know what caused it?” Ka’tel asked.
“It just, happens? Gets irritated or infected and then you need to get it removed.” I said nonchalantly. Ka’tel made a mark on her omni-pad.
“How did you know? It seems dangerous if it can happen suddenly, and you mentioned it before you passed out.” Ka’tel asked tone friendly and conversational.
“Oh, the side of your stomach hurts. I was hoping it was just a pulled muscle bec- Dammit!” I just remembered what happened before I woke up here.
“The raid game! Ko’tasa would have had to substitute for me and she’s not well balanced for our team mix.” I said with a exasperated sigh.
Ka’tel cocked their head to one side, but the tone in her voice was humorous. “You were willing to ignore a possible life-threatening condition for a game?”
I explained, though I felt idiotic now. “I couldn’t tell. I get sore muscles all the time from gym, and sparing, and even from the auxiliary work, honestly my commandant doesn’t really know where to put me sometimes. Last week I helped with road clearing for the new town to go up a few [miles] away, and the girls could barely keep up with me.”
Ka’tel seemed to be enjoying my rambling. “Sounds like you really get put to work.”
“Not really? The auxiliary is the only work I do, and if I wanted to stop I just, can. It’s not like I need to worry about buying food.” I knew what I was saying seemed strange while living in the Imperium.
It was the first hint that Ka’tel was controlling her expressions when she seemed more attentive and… relieved? “That’s delightful news to hear! Is there anything about your living situation that bothers you?”
I paused and thought about it, and really couldn’t see anything. “Not really?”
“Anything, or anyone, you miss from Earth?” Ka’tel asked, stressing that last bit, dropping a mental bomb on my head and I froze, mouth partly open with a half formed response. When was the last time I even thought about Earth as more than an abstract concept? It hadn’t been [six months] since I left but…
I didn’t feel anything.
The last year I lived on Earth, it was like being a ghost. I saw people, I even talked to people, but it was like a thick plate of glass all around me. Today I felt color, and life, and things, but that last year on Earth?
Like radio static.
I looked at Ka’tel, and their expression was one of controlled neutrality. Why was I not freaking out?
I had a sensation of the room spinning. I asked, “No, I don’t really feel anything about Earth, is that normal?”
“I don’t know Klein, by most sentient standards what you went through was unusual, and from what little I know about humans that isn’t propaganda, it’s unusual for humans as well. What I do know is right now you seem happy and healthy, and that’s my top priority.” Ka’tel said as they stood and offered me a stiff plastic card with their contact details on it.
“We will be chatting every other week to see how you are adjusting. I might ask to visit you at the youth auxiliary depot, the gym or at home. I really am glad to see you are doing just fine, but if you ever need a way out, that card has an emergency signal function, just pull the plastic tab.” Ka’tel told me, and was about to open the door before I spoke up.
“How should I refer to you?” I asked, and once they realized, Ka’tel gave me a genuine, toothed, smile that was both menacing and goofy at the same time.
“Most people don’t learn enough Hydrean biology to ask. Her, that’s how everyone in the office sees me, and it’s more convenient socially.” She said, opening the door to an anxious looking Itaro standing next to a serious Ruhal and Reqellia.
“I need to speak to you Ruhal, and Reqellia, you should join us for this conversation as well.” Ka’tel said as she ushered me out.
Cee led us into a gaming room with a long table on one side, and a set of couches facing the wall to wall display on the other. She handed me an overloaded plate of cookies with bottle of water, and stepped out, closing the door behind us. “Eat those, your stomach has healed, but it’s going to need calories to fuel the recovery.”
Only then did I realize I was salivating at the smell of warm sugar, and flour made of Kasan grain, if I was identifying the green color correctly. I put the plate of cookies on the table, and snarfed them as I sat down.
After swallowing the fourth cookie semi-whole, I looked up to see Itaro’s face fighting a war between impatient, apprehensive, and hopeful. I stopped, realizing what I was doing, and sipped some water to stall for time.
I was about to pull my omni-pad out from my pockets when Itaro suddenly put her hand out to stop me. “Wait! Klein, I need to tell you something…”
She was silent for a long moment, what was she worried about?
“I… Like you, as, I find you…. Attractive, and I may have gotten a little…. overprotective when you got hurt.” Itaro said, her voice stuttering.
‘Oh, that makes things easy.’ Squirrel brain was for once, right.
“I like you too.” I said as I leaned over and kissed her.

///// Author’s Commentary

Wow! I couldn’t find a good stopping point so I just kept writing and writing and… It turned into something over 5 thousand words. I spent the last day trying to figure out clear up a few parts. This week I have some time off! So there will probably be another chapter sooner rather than later.

Kjell and Crispus glittered in the hard light of early spring as they waited on the dock to board a trading ship. Kjell had bought a full knee-length coat of fine chain mail and a spear to go with his new sword. Crispus had decided on a lighter coat that came only to his elbows and mid-thighs. Both men had also procured round wooden shields, with an iron boss in the center. Kjell had decorated his with a red wolf’s head on a black background. Crispus had his Clef symbol painted in white over blue.
Vasil had her new swords and daggers, only Oniga was armed more or less as she had been when they arrived. Her one change was that after some discussion with Master Gnatic, she had allowed a ring of lead to be fitted around her applewood cudgel and screwed into place, converting the long club into a de-facto mace.
Vasil was a bit leery of traveling on a merchant vessel again. She had much more to lose this time, and there was no guarantee that a second pirate crew would welcome her little company. She thought that the group of them might do more to keep another pirate vessel from closing, if they were spotted. Vasil had brought thirty arrows this time, and Kjell had a spear, but mostly they hoped their vessel wouldn’t be attacked by pirates.
If nothing else, they could be confident that the Storsjuduret would not threaten them. Jarvik had tried to convince the group to remain with him for another summer of raiding and piracy. He had told Vasil that women were supposed to be bad luck at sea, but he had never experienced such good luck as the summer when he took her and Oniga aboard.
Vasil had declined on behalf of the whole group, and Jarvik had accepted their departure without hard feelings. After his success the previous year he had no difficulty in filling his rowing benches again. As a mark of the Sverij captain’s favor, he had given Vasil and each of her companions a heavy open-ended bracelet made of twisted silver bar stock and marked with the name of the Storsjuduret in runes.
Kjell had proudly put the jewelry on his left wrist, and Oniga and Crispus had copied him. Kjell had later confided to Vasil that a gifted arm ring was a mark of favor in the Sverij warrior culture. While Kjell still considered himself a merchant, he enjoyed being accepted by the fighters his people revered.
Vasil had found the bracelet too big to fit comfortably on her wrist, but had noted that Jarvik, who wore several arm rings, had two stacked on each wrist and one more above each elbow. Those arm bracelets had been joined by new rings made of gold since the last summer. Vasil found that her new jewelry fit fairly well on her left arm over her armor. Added to the silver chain around her neck, and the gold ring on her left middle finger, Vasil could display enough wealth to look quite formidable when she chose.
Vasil regarded her companions. Crispus and Kjell were well-armed and armored in metal, Vasil and Oniga were each wearing armor of leather and iron. Additionally, Vasil was carrying a bow and covered in blades, while Oniga’s club and red hair marked her as one of the feared Onepiede, a barbarian tribe of such savagery it had been repulsed by the world’s most powerful empire only with great difficulty.
The arm rings declared the group to be warriors amongst the Sverij, and the staggering value of their blades would not be apparent with the weapons in their sheaths. They looked like successful warriors, and not like wealthy merchants, though that was what the quartet aspired to be. The point was too look like the group would be too much trouble to attack for the risk to be worth the potential reward.
Vasil hoped it would work, they had a lot of ground to cover.
The group had plowed most of their profits from the sale of their furs into buying weapons and some jewels, all purchased from the Ossetian dwarves. They had then spent the winter in Svastjar.
Crispus had defrayed their costs by singing in several inns, which had been happy to offer him room and board, and discounted rates for the others. Crispus had been enormously popular as he used his growing command of Sverij to translate his favorite Samnatian ballads and sing them for new audiences. Translating the songs had seemed an intimidating task to Vasil, but Crispus had clearly enjoyed the challenge, and had frequently asked her to offer him synonyms as he constructed rhymes in Sverij.
Vasil and Oniga had agreed that learning the songs along with Crispus had enormously increased their proficiency in Sverij. The three of them all still spoke with an accent, but had acquired a good command of the language before spring arrived.
The ability to communicate fluently had helped with the task of selling their dwarf-wrought goods, including the two extra swords they had commissioned specifically as merchandise. Vasil and Oniga had provided the steel for those two blades and had also paid to have them completed in Svastjar. The two wootz blades had been finished with fancy hilts of brass and silver, then placed in similarly showy scabbards, after which Kjell had helped to close a transaction with two separate princes in Svastjar. Vasil and Oniga had each received a bit more than one hundred gold coins in mixed currency. Vasil had chortled over a pile of glittering coins that included Samnatian nomismas, Ghazna dinars, and dwarven fathus, which were square, but had the same weight as both nomisma and dinars. It seemed the Sverij did not bother to mint their own coins.
The other swords and axes had brought more modest profits, but by mid-winter the group had added a nice margin to the fantastic pile of money they had made in their trip to the dwarfhame. By early spring they had turned those profits into yet more furs, which they had taken to the dwarf mine and sold. As Kjell had warned, their percentage of profit was significantly lower in the spring that it had been with winter closing in to end trade for the year, but they did still profit.
They had originally planned to keep their earnings in cash. Kjell wanted to be able to travel swiftly to the city of the spice merchants, and he had been warned that those men would accept nothing but silver and gold for their wares. Vasil and the others had been shocked to tally up their total profits and realize that the amount of gold they had to transport would be better measured by the pound than by the coin. It was too much to carry safely, they couldn’t reasonably secrete about their persons, and if placed in a strong box, it would draw unwanted attention.
Instead Kjell had engaged in another bout of negotiation.
When he returned to the inn that the companions were sharing Kjell placed a small bronze and iron box on the table of the private room they had reserved for their supper. The container was small enough to fit on Vasil’s two palms upturned, but was quite heavy, indicating that its walls were thick. Vasil examined the cask and found that it had no keyhole, and the hinges were recessed, which would make them difficult to attack with a chisel and impossible to cut with a file.
The piecework on the top of the lid could be moved, so Vasil looked at Kjell and said, “It’s a puzzle box.”
Kjell nodded, “A nested puzzle box.”
Vasil glanced at Oniga who raised her eyebrows to indicate that she didn’t know the term either.
“More boxes fit inside this one?”
Kjell grinned, “After a manner of speaking.” The trader then shifted the pieces on the top of the box through a complicated set of movements, and was rewarded with a distinct click, after which the top of the box popped open.
Kjell lifted the lid and showed a small space inside the coffer. It was only about three inches high by four inches wide and another three inches deep. The walls of the miniature chest were nearly an inch thick.
Vasil blinked, “It’ll protect what we put in there I guess, but it won’t hold much.”
Kjell nodded, “That is where the nesting comes in.”
Vasil peered closely at the walls, she didn’t see any lines to indicate that inner trays could be lifted out. “It only has one lid as far as I can see.”
Kjell’s grin looked like it would split his face as he pressed the lid shut again, while holding a portion of the lid to one side. The lid made a distinctly different click as it closed, then Kjell moved the puzzle pieces through a different sequence and was rewarded with a double click. He opened the lid again. This time, as the lid rose, it pulled up four semi-circular rings which stood up above the sides of the coffer, in the center of each side of the box. Kjell pulled the rings, which allowed him to extend the inner walls of the little chest up six inches, at which time the next layer of the walls was pulled up the same distance, then the next set and then a fourth, fifth, and sixth set, so that the little box extended up a rather odd looking three feet, creating a rectangular bronze and iron column that tapered toward the top.
Kjell then pulled the small half-rings directly to the sides. There was another set of clicks and the sides of the box slid over the lower portions and locked into place creating smooth walls. Vasil squinted at the box, what Kjell had just done couldn’t be physically possible, but she couldn’t see any flaw in the sides of the now regular column of metal.
Kjell then carefully tugged the rings outward again, and the box appeared to stretch. The front and back appeared to unroll somehow, allowing the box to get wider. Kjell then performed a similar pull on the front and back rings, stretching the box again, so that it was now about the size of one of the sea-chests that served as rowing benches on the Storsjuduret.
Still grinning as broadly as Crispus at an ovation, Kjell reached down into the rather large box and pulled out a sack, which he handed to Oniga with apparent effort. Oniga took the offered burden, and looked a question at Kjell.
“Is this a sandbag?”
Kjell’s grin looked ridiculous, “A fifty-pound sandbag.”
Oniga frowned, “There is no way this was in that box.”
“Exactly.” Kjell agreed, then gestured to indicate that Oniga should hand the sandbag to Vasil, who received the heavy sack and agreed that it must weigh about fifty pounds.
Vasil considered the sandbag. “So where was it?”
Kjell shrugged, “I didn’t understand the explanation. Somewhere else, a void exactly the size of that chest.” He indicated the expanded puzzle box on the table. “It doesn’t add to the weight of the box, because it isn’t in the box, so we should be able to move a significant amount of money in it on our way to the spice port, and a significant value in spices in it on the way back.”
Kjell considered the box for a moment. “I wish we could afford to buy one for each of us, but the nested puzzle boxes are quite rare specimens of dwarf-work, and if we were able to find and purchase a second example I fear we wouldn’t have the funds needed to buy spices when we reach our destination.”
Kjell clapped his hands together, “Now, let me show you the trick to opening it, and then to opening it again.”
Once Vasil learned the procedure she appreciated the box as a fantastic smuggler’s tool. The sequence to open the box the first time was fairly complex, and would reveal the contents of the mundane container. The group agreed that they would keep a valuable jewel in that space, since any tax assessor would be certain that such an elaborate box must contain some treasure. The majority of their money would go in the alternate space.
No one could facet stones more finely than a dwarven gem cutter, so the group resolved to turn an impressive pile of their coins into glittering jewels. That money had purchased two small pouches of brilliant rubies and sapphires, which had been placed into the box. The remaining several pounds of their gold was placed into the box’s larger hidden compartment, and then it was folded back up again.
Vasil and her friends also held on to a significant handful of coins in both gold and silver, but in a quantity that could reasonably be kept on their person at all times. Now they stood on the dock and waited for permission to board the merchant vessel that would carry them south toward Kobuleti, the port that would be their entry into the Ghazna Empire. Vasil thought that the group of them looked quite imposing, she hoped that any bandits or pirates who saw them would agree.
The trip to Kobuleti was pleasantly uneventful. Vasil and her companions had been watched the whole time by the crew. The downside of looking imposing turned out to be that it provoked suspicion that the four of them might try to overpower the crew and seize the ship, or that they might possibly be working with pirates who would swoop down on the vessel during its transit. As a result the captain made them agree not to wear swords or armor on deck except when they were in port. Vasil thought that he might relax that prohibition if they were attacked by sea-raiders, but given that he obviously suspected them of being in league with pirates, he might not want them armed even then.
Vasil had to admit that neither was an unreasonable suspicion, Jarvik and his fellows had been very hard on merchant shipping of late. Vasil’s time as part of Jarvik’s crew had also given her the knowledge and abilities to determine that she probably could seize the merchant vessel if her companions helped her. She was certain that the four of them could easily arm themselves at night and take control of the vessel. After their summer at sea the quartet would know enough about ships now to be able to direct a couple of the merchant sailors to take the ship to Svastjar, where they could sell it, and the surviving crew.
The idea was mildly amusing, and made Vasil feel powerful in a way she hadn’t really experienced since she left Adrianople and lost Niko’s backing, but Vasil had other plans. Even if she had wanted to seize the round-bellied ship, Vasil was sure that neither Crispus nor Oniga would agree to help with such a scheme. She wasn’t as sure about Kjell, but thought he probably wouldn’t be enthusiastic either. It didn’t matter, as the vessel was not threatened by pirates at any point during the short five-day voyage and Vasil didn’t even raise the possibility of trying to hijack the ship with her companions.
Kobuleti seemed to be a fairly standard port. The main fortifications were of stone, rather than the wood that walled Svastjar. The walls were obviously quite old, and were not in particularly good repair. Vasil supposed that the city hadn’t been threatened recently. The harbor looked like a harbor, functionally it did not differ much from the one that served Svastjar or the three that performed the same functions for Adrianople. The people were generally dressed differently than Vasil would have expected either in her home city or the Sverij capital, though she had seen a few people in the colorful and heavily embroidered robes that seemed to mark the wealthy of Kobuleti in each of those cities.
The strangest thing about Kobuleti was how Vasil left it. On its face there was nothing odd about her transportation, Vasil rode a horse. What made it exotic to her was that she had never ridden a horse before, and had never really thought about what it would take to do so. She had ridden in a carriage a couple of times in Adrianople, but mostly she had walked anywhere she needed to go in the city. During her last couple of years there that hadn’t generally been very far from the Squint’s dozen to sixteen blocks of territory.
Since leaving Adrianople Vasil had spent a lot of time on ships. In a way that was much more exotic than riding a horse, especially once she had become responsible to help direct the ship, instead of merely being a passenger.
Vasil had seen people on horses before. There were horse races as well as chariot races in Adrianople’s hippodrome, though she hadn’t been a regular spectator at either sort of event. Vasil knew that rich people got around outside the city by riding horses, and some of them even rode the animals inside the city, though the crowding supposedly made it at least somewhat difficult to do so.
Vasil had never really considered that their plan would require her to learn to ride a horse, but now found herself having to add another new skill to her repertoire. She didn’t like it much.
Crispus was not a skilled horseman, but he had at least sat on one of the animals a few times before. Kjell said he wasn’t much of a rider either, but claimed that it wasn’t really difficult. Oniga was frankly thrilled to be introduced to the horses. She liked animals of all types, and wasn’t apparently dissuaded a bit by the size of the beasts. Oniga had made friends with her horse within a few minutes, petting the animal and talking to it. Oniga’s enthusiasm appeared to be rewarded as the beast seemed to reciprocate her affection.
Vasil was not as quick to trust her horse, which appeared equally dubious about her. Vasil wasn’t afraid of the creature, just aware that her horse was much larger and stronger than she was. Vasil was skeptical that a piece of iron in the animal’s mouth would stop the thing from doing what it wanted to if there was a disagreement.
Still, Vasil grimily buckled down to learn the details of how to get the horse saddled, and bridled, and how to put the bit into its mouth. The saddling was a chore, since Vasil had a difficult time even seeing over the back of the smallest of the horses. She got it done though, and the horse didn’t seem to go to any effort to make it difficult, which was reassuring. After that Vasil climbed into the saddle and got some very basic instruction from Crispus to kick the horse in the ribs with her heels to make it start walking, and to do that some more to get it to speed up.
If she pulled the reins on one side or the other the horse did actually turn as directed, and it stopped when she pulled evenly on both reins, as she had been promised. Overall the experience of riding turned out all right for the first day, though she was amazed at the amount of physical effort it took for her to ride the horse. Vasil wondered if there was really any energy savings from riding as opposed to walking, or any speed advantage, since they walked the horses nearly all day.
Kjell and Crispus briefly had the whole group try a trot a couple of times, which Vasil found incredibly bouncy and unpleasant, and then rein up to a canter, which was smoother, but alarmingly fast. Kjell looked at Vasil’s face during the canter and announced that they wouldn’t try a gallop until the next day, or possibly the day after.
Vasil tried not to show how relieved that made her feel.
They rode most of the day and stopped for the night at an inn. Vasil found that she had a wide band of sore muscles in her torso, and her thighs had a jelly-like feeling that indicated she’d worked her legs hard too. Vasil suspected that if she hadn’t spent much of the previous summer rowing, and then spent the winter training rigorously with her swords, that she would have been too sore to sleep that night. Instead she was tired enough to drop off minutes after she reached her rented pallet.
The next couple of days were spent in the town of Tiflis while Kjell sought an audience with the noble who administered the settlement. The title for the ruler of the town was Bey, and Vasil did not have any real desire to pay court on the man.
Instead Vasil and Oniga got out every day to practice riding for at least an hour or two, with Crispus as their only slightly more experienced instructor. On the third evening Kjell brought back the welcome news that the Bey had provided them with a letter of introduction that they could present to the Khan of Absheron.
This was critical, because foreigners could not legally travel within the Ghazna Empire unless they had a written passport. The Khan could provide a passport as far as Karaj if he cared to, and Kjell believed that a letter from the Bey would assist in that effort.
The bad news was that Kjell had learned from other merchants in Tiflis that no travelers had arrived from Absheron so far this spring. It was still early, but the lack of travelers was making the local tradesmen nervous. It concerned Vasil too.
“What do you think the problem is?” she asked Kjell.
He spread his hands, “We have no way of knowing. The road could be out, but in this region bandits are a more likely explanation.”
Oniga pursed her lips, then asked, “Wouldn’t bandits be better for us? We could probably detour around a washed out road, since we’re not going to have any wagons, but if it was buried under a rockslide we’d be stuck. Bandits might look at us and decide we aren’t worth it. That’s what we were trying for, isn’t it?”
Kjell nodded, “That is what we are hoping for, with our obvious weapons and armor, and lack of anything expensive-looking to guard. Of course a large enough band of thieves might decide to overwhelm us just to steal our chain mail, but the only defense against that would be to travel with an army, which isn’t really an option.”
Vasil chewed on her lower lip for a second, then said, “Well you’re the professional. What do you think we should do?”
Kjell rubbed his hands together. “As I see it we have two basic choices. Attempt the pass, or go back to Kobuleti, take a ship to Trebizond, and cross into the Ghazna Empire from there. Going to Trebizond will take extra time and money, and we don’t know for sure that there is any real problem with the pass.” He paused, “I suppose we could spend a few more days in town and see if any more information comes down to us from the mountains. I hate to waste time and money sitting in one place, but it might be our best option. We cannot make an informed decision until we know what is going on.”
Vasil looked at Oniga and Crispus and saw the same indecision on their faces that she felt. She sighed, “What are the possible outcomes? It we try the pass and it’s blocked we’ll have to come back and go to Trebizond, which will cost at least as much time as waiting for more information. If we try the pass and there are bandits, then they’ll either ignore us or attack us. If they ignore us we get through like we wanted to. If they attack us they’ll probably kill or enslave us, since they won’t attack unless they’re pretty sure they can win. If we sit here, maybe we can get more information about whether we should go up the mountain or go back to Kobuleti. Does that sound right to everyone?”
Kjell, Oniga, and Crispus all nodded.
“Okay, then I vote we head up the mountain. As I see it, the closer we get to the pass the better chance we’ll have of talking to someone who can tell us if there is a problem up there. That’ll probably be just as quick as waiting here, and it probably won’t cost us any more. If there’s a problem we come back, if there isn’t a problem then we’re closer to our goal. What do you think?”
Oniga nodded, “I think it’s a good plan.”
Crispus agreed with Oniga, which wasn’t much of a surprise, and with the other three in favor of heading up the pass Kjell quickly agreed as well. Vasil got the impression that he was happy to have someone willing to choose one course of action over the others, just so that they could move on.

Previous
Writer's note: In Army basic training it's very common to be referred to as fuzzy fuzzy tennis balls by the training cadre because of the shaven heads.
Well. Smeplies look like orange colored kiwis before they're skinned and doused in salt. So... yeah.
Anyways.... DUN DUN DUN
Enjoy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Is that it down there?" James asked as they finally managed to crest the hill they'd been riding up the past thirty minutes or so. "Is that Draidia?"
"Close." Amina said as she peered over his head. "That's the outer burbs- as you call them at the capital- to Draidia." She pointed at the massive vertical spire that rose up nearly a mile to the left of the large, sprawling, town. "That is actually Draidia."
"I thought you said the massive spire was the Griffin's tooth?" He asked.
Amina rummaged in James's bag for a moment before removing the high tech sun glasses that had once belonged to Vickers. She also pulled out his tablet and turned both on before handing them to him.
Gorna galloped ahead a bit. "By the gods it's massive." She said in surprise. "I'd heard tales. But it still boggles the mind."
James shrugged. He didn't wanna be a killjoy and mention that some skyscrapers back home, those still standing after the war anyways, were taller by a decent amount. Still, it was the tallest thing he'd seen in this world.
Instead he put the glasses on and used the controls to zoom in on the thing.
"Look down near the base of it." Amina instructed him as she watched the feed on the tablet. James did as he was told. "That's Draidia. Specifically the castle and base that Alixan uses to defend it in case of attack. See how it's built INTO the Griffin's tooth?
"Yeah. Kinda like some of the Buddhist temples and old Native American desert villages in my world. But like... castle-y."
"You can see all that from here?" Gorna asked as she slowed to join them, looking at the round sunglasses curiously. Amina gestured her over and angled the tablet so she could see. Her eyes widened at the sight of the display.
"Now zoom out a bit." Amina said to James. "Pan out and to the right."
James did, and saw the sparse buildings outside of its wall. Most of them appeared to be tents similar to the ones that James had seen the Petravian army use. Though a lot of them were bordered in black, similar to Alixan's personal army uniforms.
"That's Draidia proper." Amina said. "It's mostly a military camp for Alixan's army, the central Petravian troops we dispatch to bolster them, and sometimes mercenary companies. Though Xan doesn't like relying on them. And I don't see any either."
"Why's it all Military?" James asked curiously. "And why is the civilian population kept separated?"
"The Meridians." Amina said simply. "They have a tendency to send infiltrators and priests to try to get into the civilian population. Xan keeps the city swept clean with constant sweeps of both ground and air troops. But they still get in. They look and talk just like Petravians do. But they don't have the resources to infiltrate Xan's army. He changes the standard uniform every three months. Anyone not matching is captured and interrogated."
And suddenly all of James's uniform inspections throughout the years seemed downright easy.
"Sucks for the grunts." He said.
"Now, pan up and to the left a bit." She said. "See that depression? Can you zoom in on the structure next to it."
James turned the dial on the glasses. The image zoomed, but also got a touch grainier.
"That is the entrance to the Orcragg." She said. "That's the massive canyon that you see behind it."
James zoomed out a bit. The canyon was easy to see from where they were at. But the size and width of it, interrupted only occasionally by spires or small mountains, put the Grand Canyon to shame. This thing had to be at least three or four times it's size.
And it looked like it was full of green tea.
"That green stuff inside is the miasma." She educated him. "Comes from underground. And it's another reason to keep the civilian city far back away from it."
"Lethal?" James asked.
"Oh yeah." She replied. "Few breaths of the stuff won't kill you. But it will probably knock you out. And if it does, odds are you'll get stuck breathing more and more. That's what does the trick?"
"And Orcs don't have that problem?" He asked. He knew from previous conversations that there was some kind of massive Orc based Chiefdom down there in that canyon somewhere. One that was allied with the Petravian kingdom.
"Completely immune." Amina said. "Dwarves can stomach it too. Though they only RESIST the stuff. More than an hour or two in it and they drop too." Then she patted Steve's flank, causing the drake to look back just a bit. "Steve's immune too." Then she tapped a finger on James's temple. "But... DO NOT... EVEN CONSIDER... TESTING. YOUR. IMMUNITY." She said, slowly emphasizing each word.
"Huh. And the Meridians are on the other side?" He wondered, ignoring the jab. "How do they sneak into the civilian populace?"
"Figure that out and Alixan will probably give you every ounce of gold and silver he has at his disposal. And your choice of any griffin in the tooth." She replied. "He's been trying to figure it out ever since he came down here. Hell, before then even."
James panned up while zooming out a bit, when he found the massive earthen spire he kept slowly angling his neck back until he came across some kind of writhing cloud near its peak.
"And there's the griffins." Amina said.
"What?" James asked. Then he quickly began scrolling the zoom in.
Sure enough, the moving cloud was a massive, constantly moving, chaotic, mass of griffins of all sizes and patterns, flying through the sky around the top quarter of the formation.
"By the gods." Gorna said, causing James's jaw to clench a bit as he ground his teeth. But he ignored it.
"There's a reason our army has such a large supply of griffins." Amina said. "And why we set a defensive position here."
"That's a lot of fuckin skykitties." James said. Then he kicked Steve into a faster trot. "Let's get down there."
-----------------------------
Just before dusk a small group of travelers arrived by the eastern road into the Petravian capital.
The leader of the group was a tall, somewhat sickly looking, man of about forty. He rode the seat of his wagon next to a large orc who was armed as the convoy guard. Several men and women marched with them, behind a tall elf who wore a royal soldier's uniform. The ones following her had the shaved heads and simple leather armor and red tunics that marked them as fresh trainees for the guard. The second wagon had several more people and a few large, padlocked, chests.
They stopped at the first checkpoint into the city as the soldiers there moved up to inspect them.
The man in the lead wagon calmed his thoughts and tightened the control on his other bodies, ensuring that only HIS body spoke.
The Soldier among them strode up confidently, pulling a set of papers from a pouch on her belt.
"Evening." The Sergeant of the checkpoint greeted them. "Sergeant." He said with a nod to the elf.
"Sergeant." She replied back as she handed him the papers. "New recruits from the coast."
The checkpoint sergeant looked over the papers, then at the recruits. He nodded with a shrug as he handed the papers back. "Log it." He said to the other guards. One of them was walking down the side of the two wagons, the other wrote the report in the logs. "What're you lot here for?" He asked the man in the wagon.
"We've got some supplies for the Estland Trading Company." Patril said as he focused on being the only body speaking. "Second wagon has some of the straggling refugees from Jadesport. The ones that couldn't find work. Company's bringing em here as favors to their kin."
The Checkpoint Sergeant craned his head back and looked at the second wagon, it was mainly full of what looked like married couples and supplies.
"Medas?" He queried.
"Nothin' impressive Sarge." The younger soldier said as he came walking around the back of the wagons back to the check point. "Just travellin' folks."
"Fair enough." The Sergeant said. "Can't say you'll find home here. We're still dealing with recovery too. But there's always work somewhere." He turned back to the third guard still sitting with the log book. "Refugees and Estland Co. Log it." He said as he stepped aside. "Welcome to the capital. And get some rest. Not to be rude, but you're looking mighty bedraggled my friend."
"That's the plan." Patril said with a smile as he snapped the wagon back into motion.
"Sergeant. You know where to take those lot." The Checkpoint Sergeant said to his Elven counterpart. "Welcome to the royal army smeplie heads." He said as he clapped one on the shoulder. "Serve well."
And just like that, The Agency was back in the capital in force.

Previous / First
Writer's note: In Army basic training it's very common to be referred to as fuzzy fuzzy tennis balls by the training cadre because of the shaven heads.
Well. Smeplies look like orange colored kiwis before they're skinned and doused in salt. So... yeah.
Anyways.... DUN DUN DUN
Enjoy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Is that it down there?" James asked as they finally managed to crest the hill they'd been riding up the past thirty minutes or so. "Is that Draidia?"
"Close." Amina said as she peered over his head. "That's the outer burbs- as you call them at the capital- to Draidia." She pointed at the massive vertical spire that rose up nearly a mile to the left of the large, sprawling, town. "That is actually Draidia."
"I thought you said the massive spire was the Griffin's tooth?" He asked.
Amina rummaged in James's bag for a moment before removing the high tech sun glasses that had once belonged to Vickers. She also pulled out his tablet and turned both on before handing them to him.
Gorna galloped ahead a bit. "By the gods it's massive." She said in surprise. "I'd heard tales. But it still boggles the mind."
James shrugged. He didn't wanna be a killjoy and mention that some skyscrapers back home, those still standing after the war anyways, were taller by a decent amount. Still, it was the tallest thing he'd seen in this world.
Instead he put the glasses on and used the controls to zoom in on the thing.
"Look down near the base of it." Amina instructed him as she watched the feed on the tablet. James did as he was told. "That's Draidia. Specifically the castle and base that Alixan uses to defend it in case of attack. See how it's built INTO the Griffin's tooth?
"Yeah. Kinda like some of the Buddhist temples and old Native American desert villages in my world. But like... castle-y."
"You can see all that from here?" Gorna asked as she slowed to join them, looking at the round sunglasses curiously. Amina gestured her over and angled the tablet so she could see. Her eyes widened at the sight of the display.
"Now zoom out a bit." Amina said to James. "Pan out and to the right."
James did, and saw the sparse buildings outside of its wall. Most of them appeared to be tents similar to the ones that James had seen the Petravian army use. Though a lot of them were bordered in black, similar to Alixan's personal army uniforms.
"That's Draidia proper." Amina said. "It's mostly a military camp for Alixan's army, the central Petravian troops we dispatch to bolster them, and sometimes mercenary companies. Though Xan doesn't like relying on them. And I don't see any either."
"Why's it all Military?" James asked curiously. "And why is the civilian population kept separated?"
"The Meridians." Amina said simply. "They have a tendency to send infiltrators and priests to try to get into the civilian population. Xan keeps the city swept clean with constant sweeps of both ground and air troops. But they still get in. They look and talk just like Petravians do. But they don't have the resources to infiltrate Xan's army. He changes the standard uniform every three months. Anyone not matching is captured and interrogated."
And suddenly all of James's uniform inspections throughout the years seemed downright easy.
"Sucks for the grunts." He said.
"Now, pan up and to the left a bit." She said. "See that depression? Can you zoom in on the structure next to it."
James turned the dial on the glasses. The image zoomed, but also got a touch grainier.
"That is the entrance to the Orcragg." She said. "That's the massive canyon that you see behind it."
James zoomed out a bit. The canyon was easy to see from where they were at. But the size and width of it, interrupted only occasionally by spires or small mountains, put the Grand Canyon to shame. This thing had to be at least three or four times it's size.
And it looked like it was full of green tea.
"That green stuff inside is the miasma." She educated him. "Comes from underground. And it's another reason to keep the civilian city far back away from it."
"Lethal?" James asked.
"Oh yeah." She replied. "Few breaths of the stuff won't kill you. But it will probably knock you out. And if it does, odds are you'll get stuck breathing more and more. That's what does the trick?"
"And Orcs don't have that problem?" He asked. He knew from previous conversations that there was some kind of massive Orc based Chiefdom down there in that canyon somewhere. One that was allied with the Petravian kingdom.
"Completely immune." Amina said. "Dwarves can stomach it too. Though they only RESIST the stuff. More than an hour or two in it and they drop too." Then she patted Steve's flank, causing the drake to look back just a bit. "Steve's immune too." Then she tapped a finger on James's temple. "But... DO NOT... EVEN CONSIDER... TESTING. YOUR. IMMUNITY." She said, slowly emphasizing each word.
"Huh. And the Meridians are on the other side?" He wondered, ignoring the jab. "How do they sneak into the civilian populace?"
"Figure that out and Alixan will probably give you every ounce of gold and silver he has at his disposal. And your choice of any griffin in the tooth." She replied. "He's been trying to figure it out ever since he came down here. Hell, before then even."
James panned up while zooming out a bit, when he found the massive earthen spire he kept slowly angling his neck back until he came across some kind of writhing cloud near its peak.
"And there's the griffins." Amina said.
"What?" James asked. Then he quickly began scrolling the zoom in.
Sure enough, the moving cloud was a massive, constantly moving, chaotic, mass of griffins of all sizes and patterns, flying through the sky around the top quarter of the formation.
"By the gods." Gorna said, causing James's jaw to clench a bit as he ground his teeth. But he ignored it.
"There's a reason our army has such a large supply of griffins." Amina said. "And why we set a defensive position here."
"That's a lot of fuckin skykitties." James said. Then he kicked Steve into a faster trot. "Let's get down there."
-----------------------------
Just before dusk a small group of travelers arrived by the eastern road into the Petravian capital.
The leader of the group was a tall, somewhat sickly looking, man of about forty. He rode the seat of his wagon next to a large orc who was armed as the convoy guard. Several men and women marched with them, behind a tall elf who wore a royal soldier's uniform. The ones following her had the shaved heads and simple leather armor and red tunics that marked them as fresh trainees for the guard. The second wagon had several more people and a few large, padlocked, chests.
They stopped at the first checkpoint into the city as the soldiers there moved up to inspect them.
The man in the lead wagon calmed his thoughts and tightened the control on his other bodies, ensuring that only HIS body spoke.
The Soldier among them strode up confidently, pulling a set of papers from a pouch on her belt.
"Evening." The Sergeant of the checkpoint greeted them. "Sergeant." He said with a nod to the elf.
"Sergeant." She replied back as she handed him the papers. "New recruits from the coast."
The checkpoint sergeant looked over the papers, then at the recruits. He nodded with a shrug as he handed the papers back. "Log it." He said to the other guards. One of them was walking down the side of the two wagons, the other wrote the report in the logs. "What're you lot here for?" He asked the man in the wagon.
"We've got some supplies for the Estland Trading Company." Patril said as he focused on being the only body speaking. "Second wagon has some of the straggling refugees from Jadesport. The ones that couldn't find work. Company's bringing em here as favors to their kin."
The Checkpoint Sergeant craned his head back and looked at the second wagon, it was mainly full of what looked like married couples and supplies.
"Medas?" He queried.
"Nothin' impressive Sarge." The younger soldier said as he came walking around the back of the wagons back to the check point. "Just travellin' folks."
"Fair enough." The Sergeant said. "Can't say you'll find home here. We're still dealing with recovery too. But there's always work somewhere." He turned back to the third guard still sitting with the log book. "Refugees and Estland Co. Log it." He said as he stepped aside. "Welcome to the capital. And get some rest. Not to be rude, but you're looking mighty bedraggled my friend."
"That's the plan." Patril said with a smile as he snapped the wagon back into motion.
"Sergeant. You know where to take those lot." The Checkpoint Sergeant said to his Elven counterpart. "Welcome to the royal army smeplie heads." He said as he clapped one on the shoulder. "Serve well."
And just like that, The Agency was back in the capital in force.

​
"yes sir. yes sir. but sir... uhh yeah... I mean... understood sir."
It was always a pleasure seeing Ezekiel interact with the founders, Ezekiel has both respect and disdain for them. There are times when he praises their assistance and times when he expresses his hate for them. overall I'm sure he's aware that the bottom line is they are in charge. I don't really think about the power dynamic much, I'm a grunt soldier that's just my trade. Unlike Ezekiel, I met a founder and he seemed like a normal down-to-earth young man I don't have reason to disrespect them. Besides myself only Agony and Lose have met a founder, they try to stay mysterious with the position they're holding. I'm assuming Ezekiel isn't the only agent who talks badly about them.
"Well, there's no getting out of this one, if they were right here id throw them into that cursed prison, 900,000 units? what are we? bottom tier chumps ."
"That's fine with me, did they activate my gear ?" I said stretching my limbs
"Yeah, they sent it." Ezekiel said putting his mechanical wristbands on and taking out his long-range "hybrid" brand rifle.
We made our way to the door. "hey stop right where you are" a voice from behind us announced. a guard with brass-rimmed goggles ran over. 'you can't enter the prison without a brief." she said lifting her goggles and squinting at us.
"uh sorry to play this card but we're AKA 2 and 4 I'm pretty sure that's below our security clearance chief. so just go back to the break room we have orders to go in" said Ezekiel glaring at her
"Well don't mean to play this card but the prison doesn't officially recognize your clearance at the top-secret-chasm level"
"We don't have time for this," said Ezekiel reaching for her uniform. she grasped his arm with insane speed and pushed him up against the wall holding his arm back. Ezekiel clocks her with his free arm with an elbow to the jaw and wrestles out of the hold and placing his rifle on her head.
"Everyone just relax, just give us the summary I'm sure that will work fine right ?" I said trying to defuse the situation.
"fine," she says the main three rules you should follow are:

1. don't get in a warden's way
2. prioritize the structural integrity of the prison and the cells
3. don't trust the prisoners

"That's it?" said Ezekiel annoyed.
"That's not all, I don't trust you so... Quincy!" another guard rushing by stopped to meet her gaze. "Quincy you're in charge of these two don't let me down kid, i can't have them slowing me down so just keep an eye on them. Quincy is in my unit he'll answer your questions and keep you from fucking shit up."
"dude I hate her," said Ezekiel as Quincy kept his eyes down and nervously put in the code
The lights flashed on and off as the door opened. My adrenaline pumped furiously. I placed a patch on my wrist with the label "focus". My body reacted to the patch intensely I could feel my dilating pupils and everything slowed down very slightly but I noticed. Ezekiel walks through the gate behind me pulling his mask onto his face.
"come to help me keep the peace? fine just try and keep up" said Jesus in a serious voice. he reached for his halo and split it. the halo shards formed into glowing golden twin daggers with runic etchings. He smirked at us both before taking off so fast the wind made me stagger. right behind him, the female guard from before took off in a different direction stopping only to stick her tongue out mockingly and sped up furiously.
"what a couple of assholes," said Ezekiel. We made our way down to level three, Quincy leading the way. we boarded the trans on level 1 and it floated down to level 2 and straight through the hall leading into level 3. Along the way, a few levels 2 APEs tried to reach out and grab us but they were quickly knocked out. it was pretty pathetic. For some reason, my eyes kept drifting to Quincy up ahead. I had never seen anything like it. A small almost toddler size human with a big wizard hat with runes etched on the sides. He had noticeably big soulless eyes and He was levitating up and down brandishing a small arm canon for a weapon that looked like if he shot it would send his little form flying. "we're here, don't let your guard down" he said in a soft but booming voice and it's like 3 people were talking at the same time.
Right as the trans came to a landing a body came flying at us shaking the pod*SHOOOO BOOM* slamming into the window and making it land sideways skidding to a screeching halt. Ezekiel blasted at the doors with his right wristband. It didn't break. I jumped up wedging my short sword in the crack and tried to pry it open and still it wouldn't budge. I noticed Quincy staring at me unimpressed as he pushed the open button and I fell off the top and back down onto the ground. Ezekiel laughed jumping onto the outside and pulling me up. "alright what's going on here." I said.
suddenly the ship was swept from underneath us. "Is that a golden bull?" I said staring at the creature who rammed into our ride as if it were made of foam. Ezekiel fired a shot at its chest. The bull began to blast steam out of its nose. unfazed by the shot. The bullet fell off him flattened into a disk and shot off small spikes that again did not faze the bull either but bounced off and back at Ezekiel. Who swatted them away stumbling back.
"It's brazen," said the little guard aiming his shaking canon at the bull. He was now carrying his fellow guard who was in bad shape after colliding with pod. "brazen the bull. he usually remains docile until he senses a male presence in the area when he will pursue them till he tramples them." he said in a fearful voice. "so he's a machine or something?" asked Ezekiel "presumably" responded the guard.
The steam had completely surrounded him. I squinted my eyes and my pupils searched frantically Suddenly loud thunderous clops sounded off from my left, the beast barreling towards us. Quincy fired off three blasts. The first exploded blue electricity missing the Brazen. the second hit, lighting him up red and clearing some steam, and the last one missed hitting the ground and burning green. Brazen didn't even falter blowing out more steam. "Ezekiel slow him down," I said taking off toward him. Ezekiel fired off a shot at his back right leg and another at his left. Cement-like foam gushed out of the right solidifying almost instantly and the left grew out thick black vines rooting into the ground. Brazen broke the cement almost instantly and fell over seemingly surprised at the strength of the vines. I approached touching my armband activating its kinetic energy absorber. I looked up at bull trying to find the right spot to attach the AI Scrambler. Brazen then did something that made me slow down to a stop. Its jaw unhinged mechanically and a white light glowed. He aimed at the vines and blasted pure light at the roots. His beady gold mechanical eyes noticed me and he swept his head across with the beam "fuck" I muttered as I dove to my right and sprinted narrowly avoiding the beam of destruction. The light flickered and suddenly cut off. "I did not expect that but seems you're all tuckered out," I said catching my breath. Suddenly brazen stood up, on two legs. He was a hulking mass, around 11 feet in height. his front hooves turned into three-finger hands and his head shifted into a proper position, he was now more like a brazen minotaur. How do you fight something twice your size twice your strength? There's always a way I thought to myself. still in awe but reacting he kicked me up surprisingly quickly breaking the impact absorber in my chest plate and overloading the kinetic energy reflector in my arm and blasting me up further. He swung a fist in my direction, I braced myself for impact until I noticed Ezekiel firing off another round. A shot flew into the cracks of that arm and out sprouted branches. I reacted quickly ducking the hit and reaching for the branches holding on tightly. Brazen shook furiously to get me off but I just climbed up further up for a better grip. More shots landed in his arm joints they grew fast, faster than he could rip them off. He charged at Ezekiel booming down the area. I struggled to hold on and activated the AI scrambler inside the cracks of his head which I guessed was where his brain was. He was fighting to stay conscious of tanking blasts from Quincy to the face still missing but ultimately brazen fell defeated. I fished around in his head for my AI scrambler and pocketed it. "handy as always" I muttered. “So this is level 3” I said observing the rubble of doors being blown off their hinges and locks. A corridor leading further down colored the signature blue.
We continued down the hall running into corpses here and there. Quincy was quiet. I could tell he was thinking about the deaths. His fellow guard passed away shortly after the encounter with brazen yet he clung on to her lying to himself that she was still ok. It was clear this was his first battle. I probably should have comforted him but I don't like to get attached to anyone at work, they all die so fast. "Hey, Quincy what's up with the body you're dragging around," asked Ezekiel. "come on man" I muttered to him. "I'm just asking, no big deal, no big deal right quince," he said smiling at me and Quincy. "This is my friend if I can get her to the warden I can heal her. he brought me back once after I got cut up real bad bled out even," said Quincy. "Your girlfriend?" said Ezekiel kicking the head off a PE. "no way, just a friend. I've abandoned finding a partner in this life. My true purpose is my service. I was born alone and a monster and ill die a lonely monster. At least if I can save her ill have a friend along the way" said Quincy. "jeez man that's kind of sad. You just have to start a cult or infiltrate a cult and kill its leader. I've seen a couple of people find happiness that way" responded Ezekiel. "not really my thing, I was raised in the prison. I've lived in level 1 my whole life. the only thing I ever did that I'm proud of is making a couple of friends and joining the guard, this is my life" said Quincy. "What is your deal? Monster or experiment?" asked Ezekiel. "I'm not sure, it's actually classified. my own birth is classified to me. I know that my body is about as frail as a child and my mind emits waves. I use magic so I guess I'm a mage. " said Quincy "damn that sucks maaaan... holy shiii-" Ezekiel was interrupted by the roof and floor around him and Quincy collapsing.
I turned around reaching for his hand and missing. Two others fell from the roof down right after them, not guards or prisoners. I took out my radio and radioed down to Ezekiel. "Zeke you ok man?" I waited for a few minutes. "yeah we're good. The roof sealed above us." he said and I heard him fire a few shots at the roof.*ping* *crash* "AKA Judas head to the end of the hall. You can meet up with us if you can phone the warden to open the gate to level 4 for you. Or if you can find the leader of the level 3 unit." said that soft booming voice of Quincy. "Roger that," I said collecting myself and continuing down the hall.
I heard voices up ahead. I hid behind some rubble and looked over. A thin-looking person about 5'4" ish clad in black scarves and holding a smoking black dagger stood across from a funny-looking man with a plain white shirt, black shorts, and a top knot around 5'10" with a bastard sword. "have at the foolish ninja. you've crossed paths with Adrian master of swords and weapons drop your weapons and avoid execution" the one in the black jumped into the shadows. "spineless coward, not to say I blame him" he said lowering his sword. Then suddenly swiping unbelievably fast stopping the person in black midair. Failed to block the second knife cutting his arm. " I only take orders from the blazing empire, the 1st special ops company does not acknowledge your authority," said the person before being launched back into the shadows by the swordsman's sword. The bandit jumped from shadow to shadow clashing with the swordsman over and over. *cling, clang*, the metal clashed over and over messing with the swordsman's footing. "ENOUGH," said the swordsman slamming his sword into the ground while the bandit was sent back into the shadows by the blast of air given off by the blade. He pulled out his sword in the shape of a katana now. "I have prayed to the blade for the weapon to defeat you. This is the form it chose." he cut the air which the bandit narrowly dodged. Something fell to the ground. A bloody ear. A flurry of swipes ensued cutting the walls into rubble. The bandit did their best to land attacks on the swordsman. Despite the average look of the man he was surprisingly elusive and athletic. The bandit, however, was not looking good covered in bloody cuts all over, and even their scarves began to fall off. They darted in my direction and I readied myself. Right as I saw the black figure pass over my head I grabbed its leg and pulled them down. As they looked back in surprise their head came clean off. I let go in surprise. Briefly, I studied my surroundings, my figure was highly visible against the blue walls of the halls of the prison, and the swordsman landed in front of me. I quickly hid in another room, without my gear I wouldn't stand a chance against a PE like that.
The swordsman stared in shock at the bandit. "no, a woman? You're so beautiful had I known I would not have judged you so harshly. your all exposed I mustn't look. "what a freakin weirdo man" I thought letting out a chuckle." who goes there" he said forgetting about the bandit for a moment. he took off his shirt and laid it over the woman and walked in my direction.
I was preparing my handgun when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I didn't move and saw a bird fly off my shoulder into the corridor. A blue macaw I think. I stopped moving for a moment. I know this one, the macaw was a nearly extinct species of bird, and from what I remember this was the last of its kind. The story claimed a witch has cursed this bird and from then on anyone it perceived as a threat would die a painful death at its hands, or should I say talons. I remember when I caught it. I just walked up and picked it up gently but on the ride here it freaked out in the lobby and it took hundreds of tranquilizers to take him down. The swordsman stared at the bird. "oh, just a crow." he said dumbly. I Palmed my face. The swordsman somehow picked up the sound and unsheathe his katana. The bird began its transformation. The swordsman jumped back but not expecting the arm that grabbed him and threw him into the metal wall. An ear-piercing screech fest erupted as the macaw transformed fully into the beast-like form. The macaw's serrated beak latched onto his arm and flailed him around bursting through the wall. The swordsman screamed in agony hitting his beak unsuccessfully with his blade *dink dink*. Then the swordsman got an idea and plunged his blade into the macaw's shoulder "one. two THREE" he said stabbing at his attacker. The beast screeched opening his maw and smacking the swordsman away. the swordsman crashed into the ground letting out some tears of pain as he tried to stop the bleeding on his arm. he plunged his sword into the ground and suddenly his muscles tightened around the wound and the bleeding stopped. "I will slay you," he said taking out a giant breaker blade from the ground. He stopped. the macaw screeched louder and louder and then he didn't. The swordsman stared at the sight of a woman with a scalpel removing the macaw's organs "fascinating just fascinating" the bird beast was splayed and pinned to the ground with a giant syringe inserted into his head. standing atop the beast was the guard from the lobby.
I stepped out keeping my gun trained on the swordsman and backing toward the guard. "oh hey it's you again, the AKA from the lobby." she said pulling her goggles up off her eyes. "what's your name again". "AKA Judas I’m trying to find my group, I need to get to level 4 but the floor reinforced itself after two unknown individuals broke into level 4." I said "that complicates things," she said stomping the ground "AKA Judas, I’m platoon leader of the level 3 guard Dr. Meredith Insano Ph.D. nice to meet you. don't worry about him, he's with me. we're actually on our way to level 4 you can tag along.". "wait you said don't trust the prisoners, how can we trust him," I said confused "hey dummy was I talking to me or was I talking to you? besides Adrian is harmless, to me anyway," she said nonchalantly. Adrian waved at me smiling and said "sup dude". I stared at them in disbelief tucking away my gun and shrugging following suit.
The Dr. input the code and scanned her hand into the pad then the doors opened slowly. "finally, we've been waiting on our ticket out of here." a towheaded blue and red lizardman wearing a crown stepped out from behind a pillar." we need that one." he said pointing at the Doctor. "not happening" I said firing at his head he parried the bullet with a large sword made of crudely melted down blades he must have found. He crawled up the wall flinging sharp objects like needles and knives. He threw himself in the elevator as the door closed on his tail and legs. I fired at him but he became invisible. “Camouflage,” I said annoyed. The space in the elevator was pretty big about 15 feet in height and 50 feet of space. Adrian traced the room dragging his sword along every space of the wall. I didn't have my gear so I was at a loss. The Dr. was completely unbothered by our straggler pulling needles out of her face. “It doesn't matter, he dropped his sword and is regrowing his legs he's not a threat right now. I painted a line around me and a line on the roof above me. If he crossed that circle in either direction he would give himself up. Not full proof but just for my peace of mind.
I sat down and wondered what we might meet in level 4.

Hey, crew. I've been thinking about Ziaire and his disappointing sophomore season. I'm curious to hear how other fans are feeling about him right now. In this post, I'll provide some background on why the Grizzlies drafted him, highlight his stats and player profile, and share some potential player comparisons for his future.
Draft Night: We Were Targeting You, We Swear!
The Grizzlies' 2021 draft was interesting. We traded Jonas Valanciunas, our 17th pick, and other accessories for Steven Adams, the 10th pick, and Eric Bledsoe (source). Reports at the time suggested our front office was focused on Franz Wagner and Josh Giddey, and some even said we considered vying for an even higher draft pick to nab Jonathan Kuminga (source).
Our front office has shared publicly that they look for players who have delivered consistent quantifiable output at a high level. Wagner, Giddey, and Kuminga all fit that mold, but Ziaire - not so much. Other GMs saw what we saw in those players, so perhaps Ziaire was the last name on our draft board, and we pulled the trigger. Maybe they wrote off his poor play at Stanford due to the odd COVID year, which isn't unreasonable. Regardless, we strayed from our formula, and I doubt we'll do that again soon given Ziaire's performance with the Grizzlies to date.
Ironically, the Pelicans arguably had the best draft of 2021, stealing Trey Murphy at 17 and Herb Jones in the second round at 35. Can you imagine our spacing if we had picked up Trey Murphy instead? A Bane/Murphy/Kennard rotation - my lord. Enough space to park an Airbus.
Ziaire - You Are Something, Maybe?
For this analysis, I'm focusing primarily on Ziaire's shot making ability. My thinking is that if he can finish open shots, his defense is sufficient enough right now that he'd receive ample playing time. We don't need the playmaking or rebounding, although we'd take them, but if Ziaire can make shots, he gets playing time. The other stuff is ancillary.
Do you all remember that moment last year when Ziaire was kinda good? There were a few weeks when it felt like he had put it all together, his shot was falling, and his mid-range jumpers seemed automatic.
Here are his stats from that period (sourced via Cleaning the Glass):

• Dates: 2.1.22 to 4.15.22
• Games played 29, games started 19. This is just over a 1/3 season sample size.
  • 40% three-pointers (68th percentile)
  • 85% at the rim (99th percentile! Vertical spacing baby!)
  • 40% on mid-range jumpers (53rd percentile)
  • eFG% of 60.5%

This player is exciting! Three-point making, mid-range taking, vertical spacing kind of exciting! And what if that player had a point guard who loved dishing lobs and finding open players for threes? They are bound to thrive, right? Right?
Moving on, Summer League even looked promising - we put the ball in his hands a ton, and his playmaking and ball handling were sketchy but improving, similar to Bane in the summer of 2021.
So what happened? Did the Monstars swoop in? Did Ziaire transfer his talent to Slim Spain in a Spanish deal with El Diablo? Is this just a sophomore slump? Who knows, but his stats this year are not compelling.
Here are his stats from this season:

• Games played 33, games started 3
  • 25% three pointers (8th percentile)
  • 76% at the rim (95th percentile)
  • 50% on mid-range jumpers (90th percentile)

Ziaire's shooting has been inconsistent, with his finishing at the rim and mid-range game being his strongest points. However, beyond shooting, his advanced stats are concerning, with an on/off of -10.3 on 464 minutes played and a high turnover rate (TOV% of 16 percent). Perhaps the most worrying stat is his 26% shooting from the corner three, a shot that consumes 25% of all his attempts.
Ziaire, where do you see us 5 years from now?
Looking ahead, it's unclear where Ziaire's development will take him. Last year, he seemed to fit the "Mikal Bridges” mold, but while Bridges has since become a near All-Star, Ziaire has regressed. Their rookie year stats were strikingly similar, with both wing players averaging 8 points per game and similar shooting percentages in similar roles. Unfortunately for this particular comp, Mikal improved his sophomore year. So, let’s toss that dream out the window for now.
To help frame future expectations for Ziaire in my own head, I've identified three potential scenarios for Ziaire's future development.
Pie in the Sky - Smarter Kelly Oubre:
The first is a "pie in the sky" scenario, where Ziaire follows the trajectory of Kelly Oubre Jr. Oubre also struggled in his second year, shooting just 28% from three on increased volume, but he bounced back in his third year, shooting 34% from three and averaging 12 points per game. If Ziaire can deliver a similar third season, it would be a great success. He's a more engaged defender than Oubre already and a smarter player, so there's potential for him to become a solid fourth option starting wing on a playoff team.
Middle of The Road - Bouncier Martell Webster:
The second scenario is a middle-of-the-road projection, where Ziaire develops into a player like Martell Webster, a lottery pick from 2005. Webster had a decade-plus career, usually playing around 24 minutes per game and averaging 9 points per game as a sometimes inconsistent 3-and-D wing. While this might not be ideal for the 10th overall pick, depth on the margins and depth in your wing rotation is always valuable.
Not Great, Bob - Kevin Knox Route:
The third scenario is a breakup projection, where Ziaire develops like Kevin Knox, a player with unrealized potential who after a promising rookie year has bounced around the league. Given our track record on development, I’d bet on this worst case outcome not occurring.
As often in life, the truth is likely somewhere undefined in the middle - somewhere between Martell Webster, Kelly Oubre, and the backboard will be Ziaire at age 26.
Closing Thoughts:
Hey, that was a lot of words! Learn to write better, man! Well, it is Reddit - and I’m just a guy, my guy.
What are we thinking? Was the Winter of 2022 a mirage? Will Ziaire break his way into the rotation, and our hearts, next year?