I have seen some crossovers with Harry and Kantai Collection, but none of them have made him into a ship girl. The biggest one was Harry and the Shipgirls where he gets to live with a Japanese Battleship and a Abbles Princess as his sister. The close is Harm becomes a shipgirl. Others have him as a leader of something at Most.
This idea is that Lily did something to protect Harry as a child...the thing she did was an old way to summon ship spirits. She summons a ship spirit that combines with him. Somehow she summons the USS Milwaukee, the lead ship of her class from the American civil war.
Tunny not wanting to deal with Harry when she finds him on the doorstep sends him to live with an old family member that was both a wizard and in the US Navy. The year Harry gets his letter to Hogwarts, something happens to cause him to change and become a shipgirl. He gets the letter and somehow the return does not state about his sex change or that he changed his name. Since his guardians know about magic they do not need the teacher to visit. So no visit from Hagrid.
Due to her changes, she is also a very armed warship that someone gets listed as part of the US Navy, though she is a very outdated ship. The magical side of the navy where she does have some use at some point later in her life. The downside is that she now looks about 8 years old since most ships look like they are the age of roughly their weight. Since she was a lightweight back then she did get some bump in age to not look like a 5-year-old.
So on the train, everyone is looking for Harry Potter who should be a boy with dark hair and a scar and glasses. She is not one of those, and her crew offered the Dark Price of Tommy's loaded soul a choice when the change happened. Become part of the crew or get torn up. Well, it decided to join the crew and no longer can take over or deal with the real Riddle.
As she is the last student standing there for the sorting and no one knows who she is she hands Mrs. G the updated paperwork with her new name and everything about her which causes all kinds of chaos that night. She is now a girl and is now named Milwaukee Potter. She is also an A person from the States which causes all kinds of shit later down the road.
It soon comes out that she is a magical creature you could say and her crew hating to Snape. At some point, she asks in his insults if he is asking for War with her crew. He makes an offhand comment about yes....the gloves come off after that as the crew come up with new and fun ways to make his life hell with jokes and actions. Nothing that hurt him, just poke fun at him to hell.
She really does love to cruise the lake over the next few years which leads her to know every inch of the lake though.
Tommy tries to kidnap her to get the stone and gets run through by her guns and crew. She does not care about the challenge of the third level since she has a bunch of crew that keep her from doing dumb things at times.
2nd year, do you want to call the very armed ship a dark lord at all? As for the chamber and fighting the very big snake? Can you say boom from 4 11-inch cannons?
3rd year...Do you think some idiot is going to hurt me? I mean I have very big guns damn it. Besides, Black do you surrender to the US Navy since you did the crimes of trying to harm the ship along with Peter? There is nothing that Fudge can do since he does give up to a different government and the crimes against them are not active.
4th year. So you want me a ship to be in your game as a person from a different country? Things get very nasty when the Navy and government get into the mix, so so gets to be the rep of the US Navy in this whole shit storm. The dragon...no one said how to deal with it.....
The head will look very nice on her wall at home later. The Lake Challenge, She moves on top of the water to the village very quick cine she knows the lake inside and out. She sends some chibi crew as divers to get the people back and all four of them without a fight within 10 minutes.
As for the maze and the graveyard. The death idiots no stand a chance for some extra firepower she can bring to bear with the crew also acting as fire support for snipers.

I'll try to keep this brief but I have a lot to say and I tend to ramble. I (20F but 19 at the time) have been broken up with my ex (20F) for almost a year now. When we first ended things I felt SO MUCH RELIEF I was in almost a euphoric state for the first week or two. I knew she was extremely toxic but didn't care to question it because I was just so happy to never have to see or speak to her again but quickly that wore off and I realized just how terribly she treated me. In the past month or two it's starting to get to me again after a few conversations with close friends where I told the stories of things she did to me, hoping to have a laugh at the absurdity but underneath realizing just how much she put me through. I still can't accept that it was truly mental or emotional or verbal etc. abuse. I guess I just want somebody to tell me if I'm victimizing myself, or if my mental illness is making me delusional if I was the real abuser the whole time, or if we were both toxic (all her words). I just wanna list off some of the things she did, partially for myself to lay it all out and partially to ask everyone here if I'm the problem or if she was just toxic w/o being "abusive". I'm avoiding specific details because I don't want anyone I know to stumble upon this and know it's me so apologies if theres little context but here it is:

• biggest one on the top: when we first got together I had just gotten out of a relationship and was struggling metally. I had been in therapy for a while before we met and started mood stablizers soon after we were together. she constantly would use this against me to tell me i'm crazy, that my mental illness was ruining our relationship, that i was "a disease", that I was just like her crazy ex etc.
  
• another huge one! she insisted on extravagant expensive gifts then later expected unquestioned obedience because of it. when i caught on to this and began denying gifts it would cause arguments
  
  • i identified as bisexual at the time which she constantly used against me. if we were ever in the presence of men, even if i didnt interact with them, she would get mad and either give me the silent treatment or start an argument about it. when i expressed multiple times that I may not be attracted to men she would get angry because it proved to her how "easily impressionable" i am
  • constant lies. about things my friends or even my mom had said allegedly about me (they never did), about things that she had or hadn't done, she would even tell lies to my friends and mother about things that I had allegedly said about them (i never did) even right in front of me but she was so convincing to everyone around us that I seemed like the liar no matter how much i denied or explained
  • insults! mainly about me but also my friends and family
  • always wanting a reaction so that she could then point to me as an abuser. e.g: screaming at me and throwing things until i removed myself into a seperate room where she followed me and recorded me without my knowlege as she taunted me until I yelled at her to leave me alone, then played back the recording to show me how poorly i talk her
• she told me so many times that my majors were not as difficult or as important and I "couldn't possibly understand" how much more effort and intellect it took for what she studied (we're both in college and I'm literally a double major!! if that matters)
  
  • told me she was embarrassed of me because my interests and hobbies weren't "resume-worthy"
  • belittled my morals and values, the things i thought were important whether they were big things or small, and my plans for the future
  • controlling to an INTENSE degree. e.g: getting upset with me because i wouldn't let HER floss MY teeth or threatening to break up with me because I wouldn't hide my stuffed animals in the closet when she came over
  • laughed and called me things like pathetic unstable when i would try to tell her certain things she said and did were hurting me. was just all around very cruel and mericless with her words to the point where I seriously think she was nearly incapable of empathy
  • she told me things about myself as if they were fact. this one is hard to explain but for instance: "you just let your s/o's walk all over you" or "youre just not a hard worker". it was said so causally and matter of factly that it wasn't even an insult just an absolute truth she had observed
  • things she admitted to before we broke up: when i opened up to her about my ex and things i went through as a child she later admitted that she was happy that i was "weak" and would tolerate poor treatment. she admitted that she would poke and taunt and yell her own mother until she got the reaction she wanted so that she point out "how crazy she was acting". she admitted to reading my journal the first time she came over to see the excerpts of my ex and, again, figure out just how badly she could treat me.
  • I do want to say that she never actually hit me or physically assualted me but she would often imitate in the moment that she was about to (partially because she wanted to hit me, and partially because she knew it would trigger me because I was abused as a child, again she admitted this part)
  • in arguments: deflected, shifted blame, gaslit, yelled, threw things, hit nearby objects, etc. these arguments would go in circles for hours with the topics ending up miles away from what the intital point was. things typically went from "that didnt happen" to "it did happen but i didnt mean it" to "i meant it but you deserved it". even when I gave in that wasn't enough, she would just leave and ignore me for a day or two
  • she often wouln't take accountability and instead would try to psychoanalyze why what she did upset me, blaming it on my childhood or my ex but never on her actions
  • profuse apologies afterwards. she always promised to stop and to go to therapy but that never happened. somehow she was able to do this without ever actually acknowleging that what she did was wrong
  • i won't go into detail but when it came to bedroom activites there were a few rare times when consent was ... unclear. especially near the end when she was often insistent that I would drink more (she was sober)
  • when i caught on to these patterns by calling her out for fake apologies, gaslighting, lying, manipulation, not taking the bait by reacting, sticking to my boundaries, not letting her deflect in arguments etc. she would throw full temper tantrums. screaming crying throwing herself on the ground type of tantrums. I was so drained at that point that all i could do was just sit and watch and wait for her to stop
  • her poor mom had gotten it for 20 years before me. she told me multiple times to get out of the relationship but i never listened. I hope shes doing well but i'm afraid that checking up on her might invite my ex back into my life

i'm sure that when i post this i'll think of a million more things but this is what i could think of off the top of my head sorry its so long. Writing this all out its so clear that this wasnt normal but i still constantly question whether im just erasing my own hand in it, refusing to acknowlege all the harmful things i did or how i somehow forced her to be this way, if i truly am just so delusional that i made all of this up because i want to be a victim, if i was the one who abused her first, if its my fault because i stayed and let it happen. and if none of those things are true then what do i do from here? I'm moved on and so insanely happy to be single and never have to interact with her again but i'm realizing more and more how much it has affected me.
tldr: my ex gf fits a ton of the criteria for an abuser but i still question whether i am making it up and/or if im the actual abuser just manipulating the situation for my own gain. if i'm not the abuser then how do i accept it and not be affected by it anymore?

If this seems long I’m sorry but I have no one else to rant to because my friends don’t read. And also no spoilers for ToD or KoA.
I just got done with Empire of Storms probably like ten minutes ago at this point and I want to say that this is probably my favorite book so far. Minus the last 5-10 chapters. And all I have to say is this, breathes in WTF!!! This book gave me literal goosebumps during the fight at the Dead Islands where we get to see Rolfe again after the prequel book. Had me smiling so much with Aelin and Rowan. And had me appreciating the other characters a hell of a lot more now. So I would like to do a chart of what I think about each character.
Aelin: She’s still great and is among my top 3 just because I enjoy reading the fight scenes where she becomes a living inferno. But I’m upset with her cause of how she treated everyone else at the end by not telling them what was going to happen.
Rowan: He is by far my favorite character. Amazing person and is fleshed out really well. All he wants to do is protect Aelin and help her win the war. Any time I get to read his thoughts is great. And when he assembled all his cousins to help. I literally cheered because of it
Aedion: I love this guy. He is definitely my second favorite. And I’m honestly upset with how Aelin and Lysandra treated him. Aelin left him so out of the loop when this man has sacrificed so much for Terrasen. And he just keeps getting tossed to the side. And Lysandra lying to him at the end. Heartbreaking. I really wanted to see them together. I do wish we get a little more interaction between him and Gavriel but I understand why we don’t so I’m not upset about that.
Dorian: He really has grown since the first book. He’s going to be a great king I think. But I feel like without Chaol here we don’t get much out of Dorian. He’s definitely a shell of a man he used to be but with Manon it seems like it might get better.
Manon: Never thought I’d like the witch. But I’ll be honest. I do. She’s great. Yeah she can be ruthless at times but what else do you expect.
Lorcan, Gavriel, and Fenrys: I honestly feel bad for these guys. Mainly for Fenrys with the fact he’s still chained to Maeve at the end. I hope he eventually gets his freedom and I hope he takes it better than the other two. Lorcan I grew to respect in this book. He’s not the cold heartless bastard he was at the beginning. Gavriel can definitely be a good character. If he learns how to talk to his son.
Again, I wanted to do this because I have no one to talk to about this. And I probably could’ve gone on longer but I want to save some brain energy. And again, no spoilers for the last two books please.

Throwaway account because the subject matter is cringe and id rather not get bullied on my main, thanks.
TLDR: My boyfriend thinks the romantic codywan RP I'm doing with a friend is emotionally cheating and wants me to stop RPing and to stop engaging with the fandom. AITAH?
I (f27) am in an argument with my bf (m29) of two months concerning a text based roleplay I'm doing with a friend.
I'm a cringey fandom roleplayer. Fandom and RP have been an enormous part of my life since I was 13. It is my most beloved hobby, two of my best friends in the whole world, I meant through RP. Roleplaying is basically like creating fanfiction with another person. You each play a character, you write a couple of paragraphs, then the other person responds. It's a game. It's fiction. The things my character says or does are oftentimes not things that I would say or do or endorse, because I'm playing as a character. The relationship I have with my RP partner is not the same as the relationships our characters might have with each other. We DO NOT bring our real lives into the RP. I promise, this is relevant so keep it in mind.
I know it's not everybody's cup of tea, I know a lot of people see it as childish and cringey, and I'm okay with that. It was something that I was deeply ashamed of and was bullied for for a long time, but I've come to accept that it's something I don't have to be ashamed of, but it's still a sensitive topic for me and something I really don't like to disclose. Growing up, I felt a lot of pressure to keep this hobby a secret, or to abandon it entirely because people who found out about it were mean about it. When I was 17, one of my closest friends emailed large potions of my "Mermaid Destiel mpreg RP" around the school. So, I'm sure you can imagine why I'm having such a hard time looking at this situation rationally. It's all caught up in my feels.
In 2019, I started doing Codywan (Obi-Wan x Commander Cody, if you're a casual Star Wars fan and know nothing about the fandom, I am so sorry.) rp with a friend, and we're still doing that RP to this very day. She is one of my closest friends. We have written thousands of pages together. The RP is most definitely romantic, but it isn't smutty. We tried writing porn a couple of times years ago, but it never went anywhere because I didn't enjoy it. The old threads have long since been deleted.
My boyfriend absolutely hate the RP. I have never, ever tried to hide it from him. I told him about it when we first started dating, before we were official, because he asked what my hobbies are. He's a Star Wars fan, not really into the fandom thing, and we had a good laugh about it. Sure, he's made a couple of snide remarks about how cringy it is, but I'm not going to pitch a fit about that because, yeah, it is cringy. I'm self-aware enough to know that. But yeah, it's never been a secret. He's never been very interested in it, and that's fine by me. Every once in a while he'll ask me questions, and I'll answer them. I guess that's why I feel so blindsided about this whole thing.
Recently, he asked to read a couple, just out of curiosity, and I let him, and he was fucking furious! The section he was reading was romantic, describing the characters holding hands and kissing because they were on a date. He accused me of emotionally cheating on him with my RP partner. I think that's ridiculous. Like I said, the role play is fiction. I have never felt romantic feelings for my RP partner, we've never kissed, we've never even met in person. Yes, we chat about all kinds of things outside of the RP because we're friends. Outside of the rp, we do not flirt. We do not talk about our sex lives. I have never come ever said anything bad to her about my boyfriend. I've never hidden the fact that I have a boyfriend from her. I do not see her out as my primary source of comfort. We talk about fandom, other hobbies, life, things like that.
I just feel so fucking confused. I pulled up our "out of character" thread and begged him to read it because I felt like that would prove my innocence, but he absolutely refused because he "already saw everything he needed to know". I asked him if married actors are cheating on their spouses when they have to kiss other people in movies, and he said that wasn't the same. I asked him if it was cheating for an author to write about a romantic relationship, he said that it wasn't the same because authors work alone. I asked him "what about people who co-author books together?" I mean, christ, were Terry Pratchett and Neil diamond having an affair without each other when they wrote Good omens? That's fucking ridiculous. But he got absolutely furious and told me to "shut up and stop trying to defend myself!" He told me I ruined Star Wars by doing this to him, and he wanted me to delete discord and Tumblr. I told him absolutely not, I hadn't done anything wrong. It still makes me so fucking mad because he was talking down to me like I was a fucking child, and my punishment for disobeying him was taking away my social media.
He was mad at me and gave me the cold shoulder for a couple of days, but yesterday, he sat me down because he wanted to have a talk with me. He apologized for freaking out at me, he said that his behavior was irrational and unacceptable, and he did agree that he had no right to try to force me to delete discord and Tumblr. You told me that the role play made him really uncomfortable, and that he felt I had betrayed him by hiding this from him, which is absolute bullshit and I called him out on that, because I hid nothing from him. He tried to tell me that I never told him it was a romantic RP, and I told him that he knew from the start that it was a ship RP, what did he expect? Then he said he doesn't mind if I kept RPing, but he doesn't want me engaging with the Star Wars fandom anymore, and he wants me to block my friend. I told him that he's talking down to me again, that he is punishing me without even bothering to hear my side of things. I asked him, again, to read the OOC thread, because if he genuinely thinks our relationship is inappropriate, I need to know. The characters we play are fictional, the relationship is fictional, there's a line between fiction and reality and we do not cross it. The RP isn't going to give him an accurate representation of my relationship with my friend. If he wants to judge that relationship, he needs to look at the OOC thread. Well, when I suggested it, he blew up at me again and told me I wasn't listening to him. He told me I was being petulant, fucking petulant, and unreasonable. He hasn't spoken to me since, and he's still absolutely fuming.
Look, I'll be honest, there's no way in hell I'm staying in this relationship. I do not want to being a relationship with somebody whose first response is anger. I want somebody who respects me enough to have an adult fucking conversation with me. If he had just talked to me instead of accusing me of cheating and blowing up at me, things would be different. But he didn't and I don't do second chances, not for stuff like this.
But this is the first long-term relationship I've had since I was a teenager, so some part of me feels like maybe I misstepped. Is doing a romantic RP with someone "cheating"? Was I in the wrong? AITAH?

The garage door shut with a groan behind us, closing us in the gloom of the single bulb hanging over the car.
Mother took a drag off her cigarette and sighed as she exhaled, the smoke filled the cabin of the Ford and stung my eyes.
“You really disappointed me today, Julianne," she tapped her cigarette in the ashtray below the dash, "you embarrassed me in front of the other mothers at the Ice Cream Social, shoveling down seconds and thirds like a pig. I thought I raised you better than that.”
She took another drag, daintily holding the cigarette between her perfectly manicured fingers.
“I'm going to have to tell your brother about this," she continued, “he'll have to come up with a punishment fit for a pig."
I felt my stomach drop. My kid brother, Thomas, was only six, but could be exceptionally cruel. Mother seemed to encourage him and was deferring to him more and more frequently for how the house was run, especially concerning my upbringing.
"Mother, please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you. I'm sorry I was a pig and ate so much ice cream. I promise I won't do it again, I'll never eat any ice cream again," I was pleading with stone, unyielding.
“Hush your mouth. Go to your room and wait for Thomas," she put out the cigarette and got out of the car, I had no choice but to follow.
It felt like walking to the gallows as I stepped inside the house and headed towards the stairs to go to my room. Thomas had grown fond recently of physical punishment, he obviously delighted in Mother whipping me with a belt or, recently, Mother had allowed him to start beating me with a wooden spoon. He would squeal and giggle like a normal child watching bubbles in the wind while I screamed. I was dreading whatever was going to happen tonight, I chastised myself for eating that ice cream, I should have known she would show up. My sins were always laid bare.
Down the hall, I could hear Thomas watching television in the den. I only got to watch TV for half an hour on Saturday morning and new episodes of Happy Days with Mother and Thomas. Thomas got to watch all the TV he wanted. He could listen to the radio and turntable as much as he wanted, as loud as he wanted. Thomas had an entire room just for his toys.
I entered my bedroom, it was a space I occupied, but it didn't feel like mine. Mother kept it spartan, white walls and white bedspread. A crucifix over the bed and a painting of Jesus over the door. I had my desk and chair and a dresser with some of the porcelain dolls Daddy gave me before he died that Mother let me keep. That was it.
I placed my book bag down and sat on my bed, waiting for Thomas. It was a while, sitting there with nothing but my own thoughts and staring at the open door. I felt humiliated, I was almost thirteen and my entire life was dictated by my brother. Mother kept the house in constant lockdown to keep Thomas a secret. No outsiders were allowed in. I couldn't have friends because she was afraid I would mention him or sneak a friend in to gawk at my brother and tease him for being different.
I would never make fun of him, I was terrified of him. Terrified of what he was and what he was becoming.
Eventually I heard his heavy footsteps coming up the stairs and I felt my heart start beating faster and my palms began to sweat. I kneaded my skirt in my hands, trying to calm myself and dry my palms. His slow arrhythmic footsteps came down the hall and I watched him as he entered the room.
I couldn't help but internally recoil at his appearance, even though I'd known him since he was born, I could never adjust to how unnatural he appeared. Thomas had been born at home and had never seen a doctor, but he was obviously unwell.
He was six years old and was barely over two feet tall, but very squat and wide. His skin was thick and gray, the whites of his beady eyes were yellow and his hair was wispy and white like an old man's, spreading out like a halo around his gargoyle face. A slight odor of decomposition hung about him, it reminded me faintly of garbage cans on a hot summer day. I hated when Mother made me help him with a bath, his skin felt like old brittle leather that flaked onto my clothes in gray flecks. His body was dense like concrete, I could barely lift him into the tub. Picking him up forced his hair into my face where that smell of rot would fill my nose, causing me to gag, silently, so as not to offend him and draw any ire from him or Mother.
Today, Thomas was wearing bib overalls with a red and green striped sweater underneath, reminding me of a grotesque doll.
“Mama says you acted like a piggy today at the ice cream social,” he spoke up to me in his unsettlingly high pitched, yet raspy voice, like a child that smoked as much as Mother, "you need to come down for dinner right now for your punishment for embarrassing Mama."
He turned and walked back down the stairs and I had no choice but to follow his toddling form downstairs to the dining table. We entered the kitchen and the table was placed with two settings. Mother was already seated and Thomas clambered up into his booster seat at his normal spot next to Mother. She took a drag off her cigarette and motioned vaguely to the floor without even looking at me.
Neatly situated on the linoleum was my dinner, not on a plate, but directly on the floor. A pork chop, scoop of mashed potatoes, and a small pile of peas. No utensils, either.
Thomas giggled with glee upon seeing my face.
“You have Mama's permission now to eat like a piggy, now. No hands! Piggies just use their face!” He stood up in his chair and reached out for Mother’s ash tray and flung it out over my meal, peppering my dinner with cigarette ash and butts.
"Oops! Piggies don't mind trash though, do they, Mama?” he giggled and the sound filled me with rage.
"No, they don't,” Mother replied coolly while maneuvering her ashtray back in place and carefully putting out her cigarette before saying prayer.
As angry as I was, I got down on my hands and knees and did my best at eating what I could without using my hands. I knew if I refused, it would be far worse. The whole meal, Thomas made pig noises and would reach down and poke me with his fork, making comments about what a fat piggy I was and how he wished he could roast and eat me. I doubted Mother would even object if he actually did kill me and eat me.
Gagging my way through another bite of ashy pork chop, I felt a warm splat over my head and heard Thomas giggling. I reached up and felt he had dumped mashed potatoes into my hair.
Choking down tears, I asked Mother if I could clean the floor and bathe. She rolled her eyes and excused me to clear the table for them as well while she changed Thomas into his pajamas. Picking him up, she walked out of the room and Thomas stuck his putrid little purple tongue out at me before they made it out the kitchen door.
I silently cried while I cleared the table and washed the dinner dishes. Tears splashed down as I mopped up the mess from my food on the floor. I hated how awful Thomas was. I hated how they treated me. Ever since Daddy died and Thomas showed up, I was their punching bag. I missed Daddy so much.
Mother was kinder then, too. She was still severe, but Dad kept her tempered. After he died, there was a change that came over her. I was only six, so I didn't remember her too much from before, but I did remember her gushing on and on when she was pregnant with Thomas. How the baby was a gift from Our Heavenly Father, that it was going to complete our broken family.
My sixth birthday happened right after Daddy died and I remember sitting on the patio crying while the house was full of people after the funeral, normally he would have gotten me a new doll and a chocolate bar, instead I was forgotten. No doll. No chocolate. Just funeral potatoes and a house full of cigarette smoke from the adults.
Nobody remembered. The closest thing I got was my dad's sister, Aunt Judy, sitting next to me on the patio step for a few minutes of comfortable silence before giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. I don't think she knew her brother was memorialized on my birthday. Next year, Thomas was born the day before my birthday, so it was completely eclipsed as Mother had just birthed her new love into the world…
I stopped mid mop as a lightbulb finally went off. I had never put much thought into the dates before.
Thomas was born a full year after Daddy died. He couldn't be his dad. Who was Thomas’ actual father?
Washing mashed potatoes out of my hair that evening, I ran over and over the timeline. No matter how I parsed it out, Thomas was only my half brother. Going to bed that night, I kept myself awake, going over and over again to make sure. I couldn't remember any men being around at that time, but that didn't mean much. Adults can easily hide things from children. Tension began throbbing through my head and I felt queasy. Mother had always known all of my secrets, able to sniff them out like a bloodhound out or using Thomas to spy. Now I had one of Mother's secrets and I didn't know what to do with it.
First I wanted to confirm it, but it would mean snooping, which was difficult in a house that was rarely left empty. I would have to try finding Mother's calendar book or journal to see if she mentioned any dates or men.
But when could I attempt such a daring maneuver? Thomas hardly left the house. As proud as Mother was of him, she was very cognizant and protective of his differences and didn't want to draw attention to herself or Thomas like that. Mother herself had few social engagements throughout the week and mostly stayed home to watch her golden child.
I finally decided I would take the risk and fake sick on Tuesday, grocery day, so I could stay home from school while she went shopping. All Thomas did all day was watch TV downstairs, so that should give me about an hour to look through her room for clues. I decided to tuck my head down, try to behave as best as I could to avoid their wrath, and wait for Tuesday.
That weekend limped along agonizingly slow. Thomas was in a fine mood and was constantly seeking out a reason to poke me, punch me, slap me… he'd laugh while calling me a piggy with his off-putting wide mouth. I tried to mostly stay in my room and it seemed like neither of them cared.
School on Monday was a relief, but my anxiety ramped up. The consequences would be dire if Mother caught on that I was faking sick to stay home. I didn't even want to imagine how off the leash she'd let my half-brother become in his punishment for that level of insubordination.
I stayed up all night, my stomach was in knots, but I was committed to my plan. Throughout the night, I screamed as hard as I could into my pillow. Screamed until my throat was raw and I could barely talk. It felt cathartic in a way. When it was close to school time, I put on my heaviest flannel pajamas and began doing jumping jacks until my face was flushed and my scalp was soaked with sweat.
Looking in the bathroom mirror before heading down to talk to Mother, I thought I looked pretty convincing, my skin was flushed and sweaty, my eyes had circles under them from lack of sleep, and my voice croaked like a frog.
Heading downstairs, Mother was already feeding Thomas breakfast. I hesitantly stepped into the kitchen and stood there awkwardly for a second, pawing with my pajamas to keep my nerves steady until she noticed my presence and looked up.
“Why aren't you dressed, Julianne?"
"I don't feel well. My throat hurts and my tummy hurts.” My voice graveled out more than I was expecting, I really had hurt my throat.
She strode over to me and placed a cool hand on my sweaty brow.
"You do feel warm. Take an aspirin from the medicine cabinet and go lay back down. I'll check on you later," with that she turned back and walked over to Thomas, who was frozen in place, glaring at me over a forkful of scrambled eggs. The sharp glint of malice in his beady eyes made me shiver before I shuffled out of the kitchen.
I laid in bed, trying my best to look miserable until I eventually heard the faint sound of the television playing in the den as Thomas settled in for his normal daytime routine and the garage door opened as Mother headed to the grocery store. I bounded out of bed and watched the car back out of our driveway and head up the street.
My heart began to pound as I tiptoed down the hall to Mother's bedroom, a place I rarely even caught a glimpse of, let alone entered. I very slowly opened the door, taking great care to not make any noise to alert Thomas downstairs that I was out of bed.
Creeping into the butter yellow room, I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my skull, this was the naughtiest thing I had ever done by far. I stepped onto the rug to help disguise my footsteps and slowly made my way past the brass bed and towards her desk. My hands shook as I opened the top drawer, I pawed through rapidly and found nothing. I checked the next drawer down and again found nothing of interest, just stationary and envelopes.
Finally, the bottom drawer was what I was looking for, a stack of journals from the past decade. I flipped through, trying to find entries relevant to when Daddy died and who Mother slept with afterwards.
I've never fully recovered from what I read.
July 6, 1968
Edgar died today. Car accident. I cannot believe this is real. My light, my life, my anchor... Dr. Benson gave me a sedative at the hospital and I feel so tired. So very, very tired. Why has my Lord forsaken me so?
July 9, 1968
I feel like I am in a very bad dream, I feel numb and disconnected. All the consolation and pity from everyone makes me feel sick. After the memorial, it took everything in me to not break dishes and to scream at everyone to get out of my house. Julianne was moping about crying and I wanted to throw her out, too.
If I hadn't seen my dear Edgar's body in the hospital and held his urn in my own hands, I wouldn't believe he was really gone. I still don't entirely believe it.
I have prayed to God every night asking him to show me why he took my husband from me and I have gotten no answer.
I skimmed over the next few months, as it was more or less similar sentiments repeated night after night. I finally got to an entry that caught my eye.
September 17, 1968
My battle with my faith has been fraught the past few months, but Hallelujah! I feel I can see the Lord again in all his glory and might, for he has given me a way to reconnect to my Edgar!
I was thinking about the night Julianne was born, right in this very home, it was a difficult birth and she struggled to breathe at first. Ingrid, my midwife, made a comment to me that if the baby had failed to wake up on her own, that Ingrid had ways to make sure she would have made it.
I remember asking if it was a medical methodology and she made it clear to me that in certain circumstances, it was a mystical property she used to bring the air of life into a struggling baby's lungs. She gently alluded to being a practicing member of the dark arts. At the time, I felt quite scandalized to have someone like that in my God fearing home. Now I see her as the answer to my prayers! My angel!
On a whim, I called her and asked if she still practiced such techniques. She hesitantly confirmed that she did. I asked, if she could turn breath into the lungs of a child without, could she turn breath into a child that did not exist? Could she magick into existence another child of my beloved Edgar? She told me she had to do some research and she'd be back in touch.
Ingrid just called back after a few hours and said there was a spell she found, but it was dangerous and might have unpleasant results. I said, yes, of course! I trust my Lord and I believe he sent this woman of blessed magick to me for this purpose.
She says we will have to do it soon, in a few days during the new moon. She has a potion to brew, but it is happening! Praise God!
September 23, 1968
The ceremony was last night, and Ingrid believes it was a success, but we will have to wait. It did not take long, only an hour or two. Ingrid lit my bedroom with many beeswax candles and she had me drink a thick and bitter tea that caused me to become quite relaxed and foggy.
From my inner thigh, she cut me and collected my blood in a chalice, with which she mixed quite a lot of Edgar's ashes and other ingredients which I could not glean from my supine position and groggy wits. Ingrid began to chant, calling upon a higher power, as I pleaded with my Lord to let this work. To give me any piece of my Edgar back. She came to the bed and worked the paste between my legs into my womanly chamber, which was very uncomfortable, but manageable with the numbing effects of the tea.
She continued to sit with me and chant, her hand placed over my womb, until she decided at which time it was complete. She left and I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up this morning, I felt quite uncomfortable, my body ached and when I used the restroom, a yellow fluid like pus poured out of me, but no sign of any ashes or blood, which gives me hope it was absorbed into my womb.
November 3, 1968
Praise be to our Lord, Ingrid just confirmed for me that I am with child, I had been hoping so, I had not gotten my cycle in October, but I wasn't sure if that was because of the discharge like pus that was still coming. She told me that was common with this spell and a side effect that would stop after the baby came.
I feel like I am floating on air, for the first time since Edgar left, I feel-
I suddenly became very aware of the feeling of eyes on the back of my head. I had become too engrossed in what was written before me and I had lost track of my surroundings. Very slowly, I turned around and my heart began pounding again as I saw Thomas standing in the doorway holding his wooden spoon in one hand. How had I not heard him?
He pointed at me with his empty hand and screamed, just a pure guttural screech from somewhere deep inside his disgusting little body. He charged at me from across the room, his horrible feet thumping solidly along the rug. He began beating my legs ruthlessly with the spoon, causing my legs to buckle. I crashed down to my knees in front of him, and he began lashing at my face, pulling my hair with one hand while wailing away at my head with the spoon.
I had dropped the journal I was holding and was desperately trying to get a hand on the spoon or push him away. All I could hear was him screaming. My arms flailed and I reached around on Mother's desk and grabbed onto the first thing I found and sank it into Thomas’ neck.
The end of Mother's gold letter opener protruded under his jaw. He went silent and he looked at me with utter shock. He dropped the spoon and collapsed on the ground, clutching at his neck as his thick black blood oozed out from his wound, letting out a stupendous odor of rot that filled the room. He didn't really say anything or make any noise. He just twitched for a moment and I saw his eyes glaze over.
In shock, I stood over his little body for a moment and I watched as he seemed to mummify in just a few minutes, like an ash person from Pompeii dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. Even his blood that looked like shiny oil a second ago became like potting soil on Mother's rug. Reaching out to touch his hand, it crumbled away like sand.
Panic ran through me like a rabbit caught in a snare. Not knowing what to do, I ran. I ran down the hall, changed my clothes, put an extra change of clothes in my backpack and the last doll Daddy had ever given me and I ran. Mother would absolutely never forgive me and I was genuinely afraid she would kill me in retaliation for taking her beloved Thomas away from her. Her precious gift from God. My feet flew over the pavement and took me away from that house.
I called my Aunt Judy from a payphone outside the five & dime, and told her Mother had kicked me out and asked if I could stay with her. She had always had a strained relationship with my mother and it didn't take much convincing that she had kicked out her “only” child. Only Mother, Ingrid, and I ever knew about Thomas.
She gave me a home and took care of me. She never beat me or humiliated me. Even with her love, I was far from okay. For years I would close my eyes and hear Thomas scream, then the sudden silence. I'd see him fumbling at his neck and turning to ash. But I would also remember all the ways he would hurt me and how bad he was becoming. I could never talk to anyone about it, especially not the silent relief I felt I refused to admit to myself. Over time, however, Thomas' screams became a whisper and his silence faded into dust in my mind.
I moved on with my life. I went to college and became a photojournalist, getting to travel the world and watch history unfold. By choice, I never married, but was quite blessed with many beautiful friendships for companionship over the decades. I found balance in my life and a sense of happiness, if not peace. I never could quite stomach mashed potatoes again, though, they always taste ashy to me.
Mother never made any attempts to reach out to me or find me, at least that I'm aware of. Ten years ago, I was contacted by a hospital and they said my mother had been admitted earlier after falling and was about to pass, so she must have kept some tabs on me to know my phone number for her emergency contacts. Apparently she had collapsed in the driveway and a neighbor called an ambulance. I got there and her only words to me were, “take care of him," as she placed a locket in my hand. I opened the locket, Jesus was on one side, Thomas on the other. I didn't say anything to her, just held her frail old hand with nicotine stained nails until she passed in the night. My mother was gone and I felt nothing except a vague sense of relief.
When I got to her house, it was like a time capsule. Other than a newer television, it was just like it was when I'd fled so many years ago. The smell of tobacco smoke hung like incense in the air. It felt oppressive, like a tomb.
I wandered the house in a bit of a daze. The one place I didn't want to go was upstairs. I didn't want to see my old room, or Thomas' room, or Mother's. Putting it off, I went to fix myself some supper, realizing I hadn't eaten in almost a day. I took a pause when I opened the fridge and saw a baby bottle on a shelf. Silently praying she had been babysitting for a neighbor, I fixed myself some toast with sardines and sat eating in the den watching TV. It had been almost forty years and it still felt rebellious not eating at the table and watching TV without permission.
My eyes grew heavy and I finally mustered up the gumption to head upstairs to go to bed. The stairs creaked in a familiar way under my feet and I was taken back to the feeling of dread hearing either Mother or Thomas climbing up. My old room was at the top of the stairs, I saw the door was nailed shut and had rambling quotes about Judas copied from the Bible in my mother's handwriting taped to the door. I sighed gently and turned from the door to head down the hallway, deciding Mother's room was probably the best place to sleep.
I passed by Thomas’ toy room and I heard a murmur from the room. I stopped, curiosity got the best of me and I entered. In Thomas' old toy room was a crib with joyful clown sheets. Dread swelled up inside me as I heard more murmurs and saw the sheets move. Approaching slowly, I peaked under the sheet and gasped.
Tucked inside was what looked like a baby gargoyle, gray and papery looking. Pus leaked out of its milky, bulbous eyes. I pulled back the blanket and saw it had no legs and its arms bent back, like wings on a bird. It was wearing just a cloth diaper, overflowing with tarry looking stool that took my breath away with its pungency, it smelled like Thomas’ blood, but somehow worse. My heart broke for this poor creature, Lord only knows how many years it has been in this crib suffering from its unholy existence.
So this is who Mother had wanted me to take care of…
Not knowing what else to do, I gently scooped him up. Like Thomas, he was shockingly heavy for how small his body was. Placing him on the changing table, I cleaned him and rewrapped his bottom in a clean diaper cloth. It was difficult, he fussed tremendously, crying and flopping around as much as his flipper-like arms would allow. I tried wiping off his oozing eyes and he snapped his mouth, which I saw was full of disturbingly square yellow teeth, trying to bite me. I carried him to the kitchen and rocked him while I heated up his bottle and he became furious with me, almost barking like a dog when my hand would get near his face.
He settled a bit as he fed, but he would still sometimes suddenly spit out the bottle and attempt to bite me. I laid him back in his crib, this abomination in a clown sheet, and I walked down the hall to Mother's room letting out a long sigh.
Combing through my mother's journals in the early hours of the morning, it looked like she tried the ceremony again shortly after Thomas died, but she either lacked Ingrid’s help or didn't have enough of my father's ashes left. Something went terribly wrong. She was vaguer than she had been about Thomas’ conception, but I suspect she had used some of Thomas' remains. The resulting birth she named Isaac.
Mother's journals told a sad tale of her and Isaac's suffering. She never mentioned me, but lamented the loss of Thomas and Dad relentlessly. She was hyper protective of Isaac, as that was all she had left. If her world had been small before, it became microscopic after he entered her life, requiring nearly constant care. According to Mother, he was blind and colicky, sometimes going years at a time without sleeping through the night. She had breast fed him for years, but she had to stop after he grew teeth and began biting her intentionally and feeding on her blood.
I spent a lot of time over the next few days pondering what to do. I had to get her estate in order, she had left me the house, in an obvious attempt to get me to continue caretaking for Isaac, but I didn't want it. I had my own cozy home an hour away from here, filled with happy memories and my possessions acquired traveling the world. Mother's home had a heavy energy I couldn't shake. Her and Thomas were both gone, but the memories of the scoldings and beatings hung in every corner, like cobwebs that would never sweep away.
So, I fed Isaac and kept him clean and tried to keep him company, although he seemed to hate me passionately. I took care of him, all the while thinking about what I was going to do. After a week, I felt resolute in what had to be done.
Gathering up all of Mother's journals in a tote, I made my way to Isaac and picked him up and carried everything to the living room.
The ancient logs in the fireplace meant for display ignited instantly. One by one, I fed the journals into the fire, burning away years of my mother's consuming sorrow. Isaac fussed and moaned next to me the entire time. When the last pages shimmered away into lacy ash, I took a throw pillow off the couch and gently cradled Isaac in my other arm. It didn't take long before he stopped struggling and I felt his little body relax after decades of suffering.
I gently wrapped up a bundle in a clown sheet and placed it in the fire. It burned furiously, like the paper in my mother's journals, and was soon gone. Nothing but ashes and embers.
“Don't worry, Mother,” I said purely for my own sake, "I took care of Isaac for you."
And finally, I felt at peace.

Huge shout out to & for helping with Brainstorming and Co-Writing this.
As always, all credits for the original Nature of Predators and it's content goes to Space Paladin15, thank him for allowing artist and writers to use his original work of art for their own uses.
Gaian Ref Sheet-Here, Done by the artist
As well as a *Huge* thank you for Julian Skys for filling in for the editor for this chapter. I'll post a comment as to why I haven't been posting too much, safe to say though, kept ya waiting huh?
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[Subject Memory Transcription: Rux Limpbut, Venlil News Anchor and TV Show Host]
Date [Standardized Galactic(?) Time]:August 1st, 2136
Now I'm regretting not taking that transfer last week. This just keeps getting better.
I was in my car outside of the Network’s station. I was at my wits end yesterday and was trying my damnedest *not* to freak out on air. Now? Now I had the pleasure of my network telling me they needed me to come in way early to report on some breaking news. Just as I was about to leave for Solgaliks sake!
I took a small sip of the “coffee”. Now this was a blessing, coffeehouses on Gaia were open paw around, no matter what. I was giving a small prayer to those “ancestors” for their love of anything strong. Well, anything strong that wasn't alcohol. They could stomach one drink or two but after that? They were out.
Slurrrrrp
I let out a relieved sigh as the warm liquid flowed down my maw, the reward of caffeine soon following after this. Hopefully in time for the recording. With that I opened the door, grabbing my briefcase as I greedily drank the rest of the coffee as I approached the wide doors of the Networks station.
They creaked a little as they always did as I appeared in the doorway, a sleepy, overworked ghost. I tossed the coffee cup into the trashcan by the door as I nodded over the after work plans that I had to either postpone, or completely not do.
No bar time, going to be too tired. Not going to have enough time to do more digging in what that Farsulian diplomat released, even after it's been nearly two months. Brahk. Still need to be ready for the shift tomorrow-
“Rux?” The front desk secretary pulled me up and out of my thoughts as I blinked a couple of times, my ears raising as one of my eyes focused on her, a bit frizzled from the overtime I was clocking at the moment.
“Hm? Oh. Hey Liakal, caught me off guard almost as bad as the padcall I got. What's up?” I rubbed my eye as I fully focused on her, making my way over to her.
“Well, whenever you're ready for them they'll give you all you need, apparently, when you get into the studio. What they told me is uh, it's not a pleasant amount of news.” She nervously played with her claws and her headset, her lips quivering a bit.
“That bad? Speh. What about that uh, guest? She gets off-”
“O-oh! Mrs Tarva. She got off the planet easily. I can't say anything else though Rux. They said whatever they have to tell is very, very pertinent not to be let loose until you broadcast it… sorry Rux.”
I patted the top of the semi circle desk that Liakal was sat into, before giving her a quick, albeit small smile with a finger gun before I quickly deflated. It was that bad. With a nod from me I departed into the hallway to the left of the front desk, approaching one of the elevators.
A button press, a chime and the feeling of gravity and anxiousness about to make me hurl later, I was on the floor with the studios. I retraced the steps I had taken only claws before to mine. The green sign saying “Predator Problems” told me I hadn't failed as usual. Something had to be done with our program and segment name, if for nothing else there was apparently much more juicy stuff to talk about.
Opening the door, I expected the hustling and scrambling of the cameramen, the lighting crew, audio specialists. But nothing except a small huddled group of uniformed men. Brahk, I was hoping this wasn't the case but I was never that lucky. I resigned myself to fate as the group finally paid attention to me, and the door clicking and shutting behind me.
“Mr. Rux. Please come over here and sit. You're all good, we just need to go over what we need you to announce in this upcoming impromptu broadcast.” Why the hell were the Gaians on Prime? Wait no. That's not the problem. Why are officers from their military here? Oh stars.
However I could feel my body coming towards the oval shaped table. Eventually knocking into a chair and pulling it out, resting my briefcase onto the ground and taking a seat, pulling up to the desk. I rested my paws on it as I gave a look to the group assembled around it.
All were wearing roughly the same uniform, their fur patterns one of the only differing things between them. Aside from the one at the end of the table. They wore a green beret atop their head, nestled in between the horns that adorned it. They cleared their throat and slid a small packet of papers towards me, startling me a tiny bit.
“While I wish to be polite and respectful, there's simply no way to say this without being blunt. Sole Speaker Jikem is dead. With the current atmosphere on Gaia we thought it'd be best to announce the formation of an emergency government and a leader to head it. All of which has been done in a roundabout manner so as to not alert any radicals or terrorists.”
I had only taken a cursory glance at the front of the small packet before that bombshell of an information was dropped onto me nonchalantly. My paw was halfway to the front page to turn it before my gaze looked up at the Gaian at the end of the oval table who had done so.
“What? Sorry can you-”
“Rux. Come on, you know what I said. Now, I know it isn't everypaw that you get to report on the death of a head of state, let alone be the first one to do so. I'll most certainly give you that. So, we'll give you some time alone…well mostly, to get acquainted with the packet and once you and your crew are roaring to go we'll release the news to the Commonwealth.”
I took a small lookover of the second page but had to pause for a short moment again as I took it in. Yes, yes I did have some questions. Half from the large info dropped on me and the other half that I was now reading with my very own eyes now.
Before they could fully get up I had worked up the courage to get a short clearing of the throat and read out of the lines in the packet out aloud after I had decided it would be better to ask now rather than after. “In conjunction with recent attacks the Armed forces has decided to-” I put down the packet in its entirety now.
“What in the stars could you possibly mean by “safeguarding” democracy? This just seems to be some type of justification for a military takeover. I mean, who's going to fall for this?”
The chairs of the small clique of officers seem to find themselves filled once more as they returned to their positions, most of them now gazing between me, some random crew member scurrying near me and the head honcho with the green beret.
The intensity of the stare of the Gaian at the opposite end of the table seemed to intensify, seemingly his gaze looking through me. “Mr. Rux, I can assure you any such speculation to that matter and that, frankly, justified if albeit imaginary fear is going to be the last thing people on Gaia are going to worry about. Alright?”
I anxiously nodded back, sighing. “L-look I'm just-”
The Bereted officer seemed to nod while holding up his paw, my line of reasoning and thought being stopped by the intrusion. “Worried, you ancestors are always worried. It's why we're here, yes? Anything too dangerous or otherwise unsafe we've always volunteered for so as to save our more cultured self from such. Think about this announcement like that. A warning and an update from our side of the Commonwealth about current affairs, nothing more, nothing less.”
With that it seemed settled for the time being, as the small clique once again rose, and this time was actually able to depart to the booth that overlooked the studio, keeping what I was sure to guess a keen pair of eyes to observe anything.
I settled into my seat more as I gave the small packet a read. It was general stuff as of this point when it came to announcements. Why it's happening, what happened in more details, what they planned to do in the upcoming future, all that juicy stuff. Overall a very plain, if very informative script to go by. Still, being the first to announce the death of a head of state via “Unnatural Causes” would make even some of the most resolved Gaians a bit jumpy, yes?
Once I finally gave the entirety of the packet a quick read over I sat it down giving a glance to my, by now, very familiar set that we used for “Predator Problems”, the entire reason for why I had started it had been to educate and warn people about what to do with predators and the like. Now I was going to have to educate them, apparently, about the fact that our “brothers” in species so to speak were having a bit of topsy-turvy time on their capital planet. Now I was kinda hoping I was one of the more conspiracy theorist nut jobs just so I didn't have to get contacted.
Resigning myself to fate, and the fact that apparently I of all Vens was the most level headed to announce this, I looked over the studio, eventually finding the small group of uniformed men again. I got up and out of the chair as I made my way over to them, flicking my tail into a questioning sign as I did so, my approaching presence quickly noticed.
“Seems like you've got some questions, you read the packet though yeah?” One of them said, I simply signaled a yes with my ears to respond.
“So, is this immediately being aired? Or is it being aired later on tomorrow-well, this paw? Should it be the first thing or the last thing or is it the only thing I'm doing for this one?” With these questions the small clique seemed to talk in-between themselves, small glances were made in my general direction, they seemed to come to some type of conclusion though as they turned back to me, the bereted one now taking center stage again once more.
“Yes. It's being immediately aired. You do realize you are a bit of a celebrity on Gaia, yes? A special breaking news from you would certainly draw the right eyes. Then it'll spread from there. We do have other stuff for you to read, but it'll appear on the prompter. Other than that though we'll take our leave once everything is said and done.”
I gave a small thanks to Solgalik, as that would mean I would be able to go back home and get at least a claw or two of rest. Speh, if I just slept here I could get an extra one easy. But I didn't have much time to dwell on that, instead I apparently had a job to do right now.
With that bit of information I decided to go around, talking to the crew, who as of this point has finally settled down and has stopped scattering from the Gaians. A small conversation with each helped us plan out the next few tantalizingly painful minutes that were about to unfold live on air.
With everything and everyone in place, I took my seat at the curved table in the middle of the cameras, getting my little tie ready. With a countdown from 3, I settled into my on screen persona as the red lights of the cameras went on.
“Good Paw to everyone tuning in! I'm your host as always, Rux Limpbut, and this is Predator problems. This time though, we do have some breaking news that we need to get to. So with that being said, I suppose it's time for me to get to it.”
I straightened my back, placing my paws firmly as I closed my eyes, breathing in and then opening my eyes again.
Alright. Just gotta break the news that the head of state of the other half of our Commonwealth is dead and their Army just decided to seize power for democracy's sake.
“I have some sad, and what some can and should be saying is unsettling, news. Sole Speaker Jikem of the Gaian Cooperative, has died earlier this paw. Details are scarce and hard to come by as of this point, but from preliminary reports and investigations, it seems as though he *may* have been assassinated while at a checkpoint. As many of you know he was elected on a lockstep ticket with the current governor of Venlil Prime, Veln. He oversaw the last closing years of the Dominion-Federation war, as well as the beginning of closer federation ties. Many people are bound to ask as of this point what is going to happen, and the easiest and most truthful answer is…we don't know.”
I shuffled some papers, discarding the packet to the side of the table before continuing on with the information I was to spout out.
“Already reports are coming in that the Armed Forces of Gaia have declared a state of emergency and already there are rumblings that they have formed… an emergency government?”
I gave a bit of a confused look before continuing, I could see the group of uniformed Gaians nodding as I did so, apparently that was good enough for them.
The rest of the news report was generally a bit unsettling, or at least info packed by many people's standards. Updates on the federation at large, some reports on the status of the Venian Commonwealth and what was the plan going forward and before I knew it the red blinking light on the cameras had vanished, and the lights overhead had dimmed.
“Alright, that's good for us. We'll have one of our guys stay over the paw to help your team edit it but other than that? You can head on home.” The bereted one informed me, before signalling to one of the clique, most likely the one to stay here and “help” us edit.
I rested back in my chair and closed my eyes, I think it was time for me to get some shuteye.
—----------
Smoke billows out from the mouth of the Uniformed figure, a lit cigar cradled in his claws. He takes a survey of the trio gathered in front of him.
“So.” The figure grunts out, leaning back into his chair.
“So, what?” One of the trio asks inquisitively, shifting in their seat.
“So now what? Not many paws you get to make a masterstroke of a situation like this. Sole speaker is dead, people are looking to any type of stability and we perfectly fill the slot.” The Uniformed figure takes the cigar up to his mouth, smoking it lightly.
“Well there are numerous concerns.” The most center of the trio speak.
“Like what to do with those brahking predators that apparently still exist.” To the right of the first speaker.
“I vote we integrate them posthaste!” And finally the one on the other end.
A thick billowing cloud of smoke escapes the lips of the Uniformed figure, fidgeting for a moment before rolling forward. His face now fully lit.
“Gentlemen. Calm down. We have plenty of problems with plenty of solutions. But that's why you put me in charge of this little emergency government anyhow right? Levelheaded, warhero, clean political record.”
The trio murmur for a moment before returning a nod, the middle one piping up as he did so.
“Yes, that is why we decided to throw our towel in with you Marshal.”
The Uniformed figure now places his elbows on the table, his paws bridging each other while the cigar is still in-between in his paws.
“That's Marshal-at-Arms Jyuvernik to you. Now where were we? Ah right. The Dark corner. I want you to send a diplomatic team to assess the cattle debacle.”

I need more friends to hang out with. I love the ones I have, but they're either too busy with family life or they take too much energy to interact with regularly. People grow apart sometimes, and that's totally fine. It has just left me pretty lonely. As introverted and protective of my me time as I am, I need good people in my life.
A little about me:
I'm very laid back and non-judgmental. It's impossible to know what's going on in someone's head, so I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, even if they piss me off.
I have been divorced since 2021, and I've been happier for it. I have always struggled with depression and anxiety, and my marriage certainly didn't help. Therapy and dedication to self-improvement has been immensely helpful, though. I still have my bad days, but I am light-years ahead of where I was just a few years ago. I'm currently single and would like to be in a healthy romantic partnership at some point, but I'm not in a hurry to be attached to anyone. It needs to happen organically.
I'm a firm believer in choosing kindness and empathy. Even if someone doesn't deserve to be treated with kindness, I do it anyway for my own sake. I come from a long line of hotheads, and I have been an asshole more times in my past than I care to admit. I try very hard to walk a fine line between not being a doormat while always being the bigger person.
I love science fiction. Star Trek, Star Wars, The Expanse, Dune... If it takes place in space and/or on other planets and involves weird but cool shit, I'll likely love it.
I love heavy music. Deathcore, metalcore, hardcore, nu-metal... If it's heavy, I fuck with it. I go to concerts regularly, mostly heavy bands. I do like other music, too, though. Love me some jazz and folk. I can definitely get down with some hip-hop and rap if I'm in the right head space.
I love going to the movies. I typically see at least one movie a week.
I love cooking. Admittedly, I tend to get stuck on the few recipes I already know, but I'm always willing to branch out and try new things.
I'm very introverted and can be pretty quiet, but I can carry a conversation. When I speak, I try to do so with intention. There are certainly times when I need to get stuff off of my chest, but I try not to just brain dump on people. I tend to be a homebody, but I get cabin fever quickly if I stay inside for too long.
I love art. I'm not much of an artist myself, but I have a soft spot for paintings and drawings.
I love animals. I have a cat named Chani. She's a brat, but I adore her.
I feel like that's a pretty good summation of my personality without giving too much away. If you think we would vibe, I would love to hear from you. The closer you are to me, the better, but I'm never opposed to driving an hour or so to see good people.
The final thing I'll say is please don't ghost me. If at some point you decide you're not feeling me or the chemistry just isn't there, just tell me. I promise I won't take it personally or make a big deal out of it. Thanks.

This is a startling phenomenon I have noticed as of late with all modern Hollywood products. For whatever reason Disney/Hollywood keeps trying to push blatantly evil character and try to gaslight us into thinking they are good. This never works but the fact they are trying to do it at all is both confusing and disturbing. Here are a few examples of what I mean
Galadriel from Rings of Power I cannot stand this women she is an entitled narcacistic prick who doesn’t give a damn about her men. When one of her guys had fallen in a snow storm and it was brought to her attention she said “no we keep moving!” She is also a genocidal war monger who wants to murder the orcs because they exist and is rather racist too. Like when she said “there is a tempest in me and it will not be quelled by you regent!” To a freaking queen! The rings of power was painful to watch and the protag was an entitled POS. But of course she never gets called out on her crap because she is supposed to be the good guy right?
Next is Captain Marvel. This “hero” bullied and threatened to murder a guy because he used a bad pick up line that’s it. She literally said she was going to rip his hand off if he didn’t give her his bike. Shit dude at least the terminator asked first! And it says a lot when a literal Robot has more personality and manors than she dose. Plus she also committed Multiple genocides in the newest movie as per her own omission. Why are we supposed to root for this girl again? I shouldn’t want the protag to fail in their own movie Disney.
And then we have the female protag in Indian Jones and the dile of destiny. She is smug arrogant and entitled and somehow is better at adventuring than a guy who has been doing this his whole life. Ya know despite only being 30 or so. She is also friends with a pick pocketing piece of vermin with no redeemable qualities. She always acts with this BS sense if moral superiority despite the fact she has done nothing to deserve it. And she is a girl boss who can move better than a pro gymnast despite being built like a pool noodle
Even in movies like the Acolyte which hasn’t come out yet a protag said this amazing line. “This isn’t about good or evil it is about power.” Literally I can see daddy Palpie saying something like that not a freaking Jedi! Damn product has not even come out yet and I hate the Protag
Do you see what I mean? You can find more of them if you look for it but my point still stands these moral repugnant pieces of garbage are supposed to be our POV character and the person we root for. I was rooting for all of their downfall the whole time they were on screen. It really shows how wicked and awful modern Hollywood is. If THIS is supposed to be our hero’s what dose that say about the writers?

January 29, 2384 - the day of the last total eclipse is when the raid began. “The day of the sun's false shadow” as people call it now. We, humans, were an unsuspecting victims in a universe habited by multiple vastly stronger existences. When it happened the world had been thrown into utter chaos and shock. The sun had been completely covered by the moon and this event was supposed to last only a short while however after two hours sunlight had still not shown its face upon the earth's surface. This was the beginning of humanity's greatest tribulation. After days of the sun's light not being shown the planet's temperature began to drop and to compensate for this people began to create massive fires but this did not stop the problem. Photosynthesis in plants began to stop, making it harder for humans to breathe. This made humans build labs and create artificial oxygen, which took care of that problem but humans still began to die from hypothermia, frozen oceans, and forced stoppage of blood flow. After two weeks, the sun finally revealed itself and all hope had been restored in humanity collectively only for half the population to be massacred in an instant. “The watchers” had been slowly waiting with armies to colonize our planet and technology beyond our wild comprehension. Technology we can only dream of had been shown and used right before our very eyes and for the first time in all of human history, we had been united as one in our mutual fear and horror. 2 months later, 90% of humanity has been wiped out and the few who remained were used as slaves to cultivate energy. With the use of a Dyson shell, nearly 80% of the sun's energy and heat had been directed into maintaining their energy. Amongst all this time, humanity had collectively agreed to fight back. This began the creation of the liberation group, “the Plague”. These groups of people were the last hope of humanity and carried an extremely large ambition and dream on their shoulders. While “the watchers” were extremely advanced this doesn't change the fact that they were fallible and this group of people were their scourge. They didn't have the military might nor the advanced brain to even keep up against “the watchers” but through slavery and forced labor, the human body began to develop into something stronger. They began to surpass their limits and break the barriers that the human mind had once placed on themselves. Through the selective farming of “the watchers” a new plant had developed that was essentially a stimulant to the human body and a limit breaker for their physical capabilities. At first, they began by using strong levels of acid to corrode the buildings and structures and then stopping their heartbeat to give the impression of suicide so they could not be caught, however, they did not die due to a new system developed from the human's newfound evolution. Due to the strict regimen that we had to follow, we knew all of the places where they would and wouldn't be, all the blind spots of the planet, all the places where they were in close proximity to a chasm, and all the places where we were at a disadvantage. We used the blindspots as bases and hideouts where we could plan our vengeance. After a year of just observing their behavior, habits, bodily functions, and even their schedules we developed a hypothesis that 24 seconds after 7:39 PM we have approximately 19 minutes and 53 seconds in Greenland where we are not being watched nor located. We used this small window of time to gather the fundamental items we needed to fight back and build the foundation for our organization. We gathered food, plants, water, armor, and weapons. We realized that they were immune to cutting/slicing damage and could only be hurt through blunt attacks. With this knowledge, we developed a specific fighting style and used that small time frame to train others in it. We adapted to the harsh conditions and created clothes using spare pieces from “the watchers” specially made for insulating heat, weighing less, and being less penetrable by outside attacks. After a year every person on the planet was a master at this martial arts and had fully developed a counter to all technology that “the watchers” had. However, we could not initiate immediate war on them so we needed a plan. We came up with the idea to have one of our strongest members report to the watchers about our activity and give away one of our bases. This created the false notion that not only did they have someone working as a double agent on their side but also they knew where we would be so they could catch us off guard. We were all there like they expected and they attacked like planned. We had all moved our weapons, armor, and vital items into a different base but kept some things where they attacked to make them think we had not gotten far but this was a dud. Eventually, we had all “died” and had our bodies left at that place as a sign of victory on their side. However, because of this, their ego had grown and they began to underestimate us. The surveillance had gotten weaker as they assumed their “double agent” would tell them everything as a trade for luxury living. We knew that physical power would not be enough so our smartest man collaborated to develop a virus specifically made for their genetic makeup which took about 5 years to extract small strands of DNA without them realizing. Once the virus had been created the incidence began and eliminated more than 60 percent of “the watchers” because of how they were too distracted trying to develop a cure and the vast amount of them dying, we had gained more time to develop our forces and we began to ingest various harmful substances but in small doses in order to gain resistance to any harmful poisons and acids. After new children start to be born this began the origin of a new human species. One massively stronger, smarter, more durable, and with all the immunities and benefits without the downsides. With the birth of this new generation, all of the human race had experienced a collective euphoria. We had begun to secretly train these kids for years and strengthen them in a way the human race had never been before. Due to the circumstances of their birth, they had also developed a strong ability for adaptation and healing factor which ultimately led to humans finally being able to physically compete with “the watchers”. However, we were still lacking in numbers despite the virus taking a vast majority of “the watchers” away. Some of us grew confident and because we were now physically capable some believed we could win the war while others believed we couldn’t yet. This created division within our ranks but did not necessarily break our ranks but that was all depending on your interpretation. We gathered our smartest men and women to make a plan to initiate war, and for 14 days they were stuck in ruminative thought. 2 years passed and we had finally built up the numbers, technology, and physical capabilities to contend with the watchers. Now on the day of the war, all of our strongest soldiers imitated the attack. But this time they were an unsuspecting victim on a planet habited by a stronger species. During the war we had counters for nearly everything the watchers could dish out but one thing we were not aware of was the fact that the watchers could transform into a smaller but faster, stronger, and more durable form. This form took the shape of humankind. So closely related that it struck fear into the hearts of many. Not only was this extremely off-putting but the revelation that came along with it had altered the perception of humanity as we know it. The war had been put to a halt, and all forced fighting in the war had directed their attention to one watcher and one watcher alone. All forces had been completely immobilized and fighting back was no longer capable. With this, the words that had been spoken out of the watcher were a revelation that humanity had not even considered possible. “We are not your enemies. We are you but from the future. In our original timeline, we have been attacked by a species even higher than us. We had been pushed to the brink of extinction and our last hope was only to go back in time in hopes that if we returned to our past selves we could help evolve even more to contend with the world-ending threats from the future. This siege we had laid on this planet and the forced evolution, progression, and tragedy among humankind also brought extreme progression in human capabilities. All of you are vastly superior to your previous forms because of our arrival. While we acknowledge our methods were not the ideal we had no other option. This was the fastest and most effective method to progress the human species although we could not allow the human race to have this win. It would boost the ego of your race and our all of you in a state of comfort and stagnation. With this being said we resign from our participation in this war and would greatly appreciate it if you allowed us to help humanity rebuild and donate technology.” Speechless as to what humanity has just heard we just stood there in utter shock and disbelief. Not a single soul knew what to say and all of humanity had stood in confusion. One man spoke “how do we know this is true” the watcher proceeded to show pictures and videos of them being massacred while some stood in human form and others did not. They showed is this along with the words, “we initiated this war as a way to put the human race through natural selection and eliminate all the weak human being who would not be able to contribute to our growth and success in any upcoming battle. So with that being said what is your decision?” Our leader, and the smartest woman among us had stated, “We humbly decline this offer as we would prefer to evolve by our capabilities and we have already surpassed you so what can you possibly teach us.” After this being stated the war had been started again and the watchers had been for the first time since the “great cleansing” began utterly defeated and annihilated. With the war being won, humanity being victorious, and newfound abilities being discovered humanity had been thrown into an era of peace and prosperity. All tragedies had been blamed on the watchers and for the first time humanity had an ever lasting peace and a perfect utopia where everyone agreed and benefited from each other. With this, we have been vastly improving and slowly but steadily rebuilding our planet and all of humankind. Our members started family’s and genuinely enjoyed the life they were living once again. Everyone acting coyly and with one another was a beautiful side to behold. Everything was perfect until the same monsters who killed the watchers, showed up to eliminate us due to fear of what we could evolve into this time we had no way to fight back and our ranks were already diminished or severely weakened. How would humanity be able to survive this time???Most people had been massacre and captures to be experimented on. Very few of us had actually managed to get away from them and we had only been able to do this through shadow banishment. It was a skill that we had acquired through the technology of the watchers. Living in the void was not the ideal lifestyle as it was ruthless, dirty, and unsafe but the chances of surviving here were massively higher than surviving on earth. Only a hundred of us remained and the human species were basically extinct. With this small group left we had resorted to instead of trying to repopulate and exact revenge immediately we would take the short route. In the void monsters had no sort of civilization and the only rule amongst these creatures were the strongest prevail. There was no sort of rule, order, or even a sense of respect between these monsters. The weak were prey for the strongest, and the strong were killed by the stronger. We took this as an opportunity to not only increase our strength by training and battling but also amassing an empire. The remind of humanity collectively agree that we would bring order and peace to the void. The best way to go through this was by entering the tournament. The monsters held tournaments to watch the strongest fight and kill each other for pure fun. We joined this colosseum and while at first we easily overwhelmed our opponents we had slowly been facing harder and harder opponents as we rose through the ranks. By the time even a single one of us was defeated we had made a name and gained the attention of multiple monsters within the void. We were not necessarily respected or followed but we were feared and simultaneously an opponent that monsters wished to fight. After this we had developed our own fighting ring in which monster could fight and battle against us and only us. We implied a set of rules in this ring. Rule 1; no killing Rule 2; reservations must be made to fight Rule 3; both parties must consent Rule 4; do not make the fight personal Rule 5; it must be between a human and monster. These rules created a sense of security amongst the monsters and while driven by their desire of battle they also abided by the rules. Eventually after fighting throughout the tournament and gaining more traction with the monsters in it. Eventually even the most high ranked demons had begun to make reservations in for our fights. Our strongest soldiers had been the ones to fight them as nobody else can really compete. The first fight had been with a demon who had the ability of immunity. This ability did not only revolve around internal status effects but also could be applied to his physical body. The fight had been the biggest one the ring had ever experienced and it did not disappoint. Eventually we had won and this through the whole entire void and everyone in it into an uproar. Monsters who never even bothered to fight had shown up to battle. The strongest monster in the void and the only monster with a sense of order, self, and purpose had shown up to fight all humans by himself. He agreed that if we win he would pledge allegiance to us all and work under our rule however if we lose we will be killed. This monster bore an extreme resemblance humans. The structure of his body and the contents of it were all human like however he claimed not to be. This monsters name was angel and he possessed the ability to manipulate and control all matter with the sole exception of any other organic material that resided outside of his own body. Our commander and strongest member amongst us was the person to fight him. His name was Alexander and despite the fact that we didn't have any singular special powers like him however our physical bodies were honed greater than any other species in existence. They were evenly matched in speed and strength and even in our capabilities to rapidly heal from damage. They had been evenly matched in all physical ability and the fight had ultimately come to hand to hand combat and who could last longer. Angel was unmatched in combat and had barely even been hit due to how experienced in martial arts he had been; however throughout the fight Alexander had been naturally adapting to his fighting style and developing counters to everything. Our natural ability to adapt to all attacks and effects placed upon us had given a clear win condition; however time was needed to actually see and fully understand how to possibly adapt to everything. The longer the fight took the higher the chance of Angel losing. Alexander had slowly but steadily been adapting and developing new combat styles to counter everything angle could do and even had grown to use his own severed limbs as projectiles and use his blood as a coat over all other objects to cancel his ability to use his field. Angel's main ability had been to control the air around him to increase speed, power, and even get a sense of what his opponent would be doing before it happened. After finally adapting to this his body had begun to heat itself in an attempt to turn it into vapor and due to blood being organic matter of another life form he would no longer have control of the air and the surrounding area. After this the fight had come down to solely base physical capabilities and for 10 minutes they had been mindlessly brawling and instantaneously healing through the damage taken. After a long period of time their healing began to slow down due to bodily fatigue. Biting, punching, scratching, kicking, anything you can think of, they did it. That fight was a bloodbath unlike anything else and in the end they both passed out on the floor with nothing left besides their bodies soaked and bathed in each other's blood. After they had both been knocked unconscious their bodies had been left there in anticipation for them to awaken. The ring filled beyond capacity as people argued and fought about who would awaken first. In anticipation for this once in a lifetime event the whole void had stopped with all its attention. Angel was the first to awaken and he had been exhausted and utterly stunned as to how he actually had gotten knocked out. He had the opportunity to kill his opponent as he had technically won the battle but out of respect for his opponents strength and capabilities he possessed. After the fight had finished Angel had left and was never to be seen again. After 2 weeks Alexander had awoken in a small shack being guarded by one other human and confused after everything had been explained to him he had went around looking for angel but he was not to be found. After awakening Alexander had been massively stronger than before. Due to the physical state his body was put in and all the damage that he had taken from Angel his body had adapted and become more dense in order to take all the attacks while sustaining the least amount of damage possible. After his awakening this began our political revolution. We had now implemented the ring with rules and gotten multiple monsters to follow by these rules and with them being accurate to filling orders more now we had decided to initiate a leadedictator in a sense. The top 5 strongest creatures in the void had been the leaders and this had consisted of Alexander at 1, 2 other demons at 2 and 3, and humans to fill the final spots. We began to implement laws and rules in order to stop the mass murder and destruction happening and within a small time frame we had created structures similar to the ones of the earth. Houses and gyms in order to train in hopes of becoming stronger and even professional combat sports. After 2 months time had passed we had developed a military with our best members in it and humbly had began to repopulate. All this had been done in hopes of regaining the earth and defeated our oppressors. Fast forward 1 months the and the siege of the home planet had begun. They had not been suspecting us however took the preparations in case we had come. Based and soldiers set up in every corner of the world to fight back when the time came we did come back. With this an all out war for the fate of humanity had began and the extinction of either race lay in the balance between life and death.
After the war had began all forces had been deployed to different areas of the planet. Groups that had worked together best being deployed to one part while our strongest being deployed to another. At first we had been nearly even in everything besides technology. They had everything that we lacked and this gave them the combative edge. However despite lacking in technology we made up for it in numbers. Most fights had consisted of large groups of monsters fighting against one or two of our enemy and this has convoluted till their forces had been somewhat deployed. The one on one fights had been more dragged out and heavily impacted the war. Our strongest soldiers fighting against their strongest soldiers in a one on one fight. Everyone has put their all into this battle and left nothing to spare. Our second and third strongest soldiers had the most impact in this war not because of who they fought but because of what they could do. They didn’t actually have abilities specific to them but instead they were born with a type of energy within their bodies in which they called “synergy”. This synergy could be used to amp all their physical abilities but also be used to crate and use techniques or even use techniques that are specific to the traits of the individuals soul. The strength and physical stats of the individual depended on how much synergy they had at their disposal and while some of them were able to gather strength from other life forms it was not a very common occurrence. Alexander fought someone with the ability to control and manipulate momentum. They used synergy and funneled it through all objects of their choice to increase or decrease of momentum of that. This didn’t do much on a wide scale and was a very basic ability but in a solo battle this made it extremely hard to land attacks and even when they were landed they did little to no damage. The most important one to kill had the ability to manipulate all probability. Meaning the likelihood of us even winning this war was less then .0001 percent with them being alive. Whether it was because of a collection of small losses or one major loss did not make a difference. All odds were stacked against us as long as this person remained on the battlefield. In simple terms the whole war relied on the defeat of that person. Our second in command and smartest soldier, “Cassandra” decided to take this upon herself. She was the only one among us who possessed an innate ability and was viewed as the most special soldier but this came at a cost. She gained a talent no other human possessed but in return she no longer had the natural ability to adapt to all circumstances. Her ability was to take the form and attributes of any and all creature she knew to exist. Mythical or not she could take the shape and ability of these creatures and use it as long as she desired. However she could only use one at a time and had to wait 30 seconds in between shifting. Our third in command, “Vladimir” had took the roll of fighting their head technologist. While his opponent had not specialized in battle he still was one of the most dangerous and this was because of his ability to create machines as small as molecular level that shared his thoughts and emotions. These machines were used to repair his body in case on injury, transport information, invade any opponents body and restrict movement, anything that he deemed possible could be done with the use of those machines. But he chose to mainly use them as sort of technological tools to help him further advance his society. The rest of our battles were not nearly as important and were mostly group battles. Afro the beginning portion of Alexander’s fight he had been losing severely and could barely land any attacks at all. After a few minutes of getting beat down and not being able to fight back the adaptation process began. The first adaptation was only a temporary solution to the problem but his body had been explosively shooting out sharpened pieces of his bones and even using tiny droplets of blood as weapons. However this was only a temporary solution because eventually those bones and blood just started being slowed also. The final adaptation and most effective one happened when his body created a function in which he can store kinetic energy and then release it at any given time. This allowed him to rapidly boost his speed whenever his momentum had been slowed and basically cancel out his opponent power. However this still did not stop how his opponent made himself significantly faster. After this the fight had been more tipped into Alexander’s favor but still not enough to actually win. Throughout the progression of the fight Alexander had been gathering more and make friction between the clothes he had and his feet running against the floor. After gathering as much friction and kinetic energy as possible he let it all explode and release all over his body. This altered the form of his body. His body and skin began to form cracks and let off steam. He began to turn dark red and his eyes became shot with blood. His body was slowly crumbling and deteriorating. He had 5 minutes left to defeat his opponent and if he did not then his body would crumble and he would die. Due to his rapid healing factor he had a chance of living if he was able to end the fight within 5 minutes and give himself some time to rest but this all depended on how much he could get done. The battle had been tilted all the way in Alexander’s favor and had no longer been a battle. It had turned into if his opponent could outlast him in those 5 minutes. Brutally beating his opponent and taking full advantage of the situation Alexander did not relent on his rampage. Stopping his momentum no longer mattered and it seemed like the more he tried the faster Alexander got. Steam had been blowing off him. In the end he had managed to kill his opponent within those 5 minutes and had been at deaths door. Cassandra had began her battle and had been absolutely obliterating her opponent. The ability to shape shift from dragons, unicorns, hydras, centaurs, and any mythical creature you can think of. At first she had taken the abilities of a dragon but throughout the fight she had been developing into stronger and more complex creatures. After a while her opponent had been decreasing the probability of her even landing attacks. This made it extremely hard for her to fight and maintain the advantage. She took the appearance and abilities of the mythical deity sun wukong. Due to sun wukong being a monkey that ascended into a higher power he is one of the only gods that she can transform into. After this she gained the ability to not only make clones out of every hair on her body but also multiply the power of each clone. While she does not possess every power sun wukong has she possesses some of them and the most prominent ones. This fight had been a one sided beatdown and only lasted longer than 2 minutes because the probability of each clone attacking each other had been raised to its maximum percentage. Despite this every 1000 punches that had been thrown at least 1 hit her opponent and this was more than he could handle from millions of clones. Vladimir had no special capabilities; he only possessed an extremely honed body and battle experience. At first they had been near equal but the battle began to take a turn when the tiny bugs began to infest his body and eat him from the inside. Due to his advanced healing factor he had been able to stop any significant damage and fight with mild discomfort but this did not change that if he continued in for a longer period of time then he would inevitably be defeated by these bugs and killed. This made the battle a race against time. Expending everything his body had to offer and leaving not a single drop of energy left. Pushing his body to the absolute peak and physical limit. Even going beyond the known capabilities of his body he began to evolve into a higher form. He did not develop any new type of power or gain a newfound power but he did increase and rapidly evolve his physical capabilities. He began to punch with such speed and strength that he created shockwaves from breaking the sound barrier. With this his punches became far more explosive and with every punch thrown he was exploding giant parts of his opponents body and everything within the perimeter. With no regard to his surroundings the battle had destroyed everything in sight and left them fighting in a bare wasteland. Basically erasing everything within line of his punches he began to annihilate his opponent with speed and strength unmatched. Due to all the tiny machines within his body he regrow limbs and was able to counter attack with near no fatigue or even lag in his action. While pushing his body to its absolute limit his body had given up on him. Rapidly healing from constant damage, pushing muscles to their utmost limit, moving, attacking at his highest speed, and even understanding/ perception of all attacks massively faster then he could ever before. Due to all this his body began to give out and in the midst of battle he fell and was unable to recover. No longer able to fight back and maintain the performance he had, he was defeated. Being eaten from the inside, limbs being torn from his body, and being damaged so much that not even his regeneration could keep up. His head had been ripped off his body and with this humanity had suffered its first major loss. After this all other forces began to gain support from all his other bugs and humanities forces had been rapidly depleting. With loss in sight humanity had lost hope and accepted defeat. Right when humanity had accepted defeat and all hope had been lost the king had shown himself once again. Like an Angel coming to bless all of humanity he had run through and obliterated all enemies of humanity. Destroying everything in sight and bringing all enemies to his feet he had saved humanity and restored hope and just like that he had disappeared into the void once again. There was no explanation as to how or why but in that moment all of humanity knew who we would be forever grateful and indebted to. Not many opponents had been left standing but the few who were, were extremely weakened and overwhelmed by numbers. After this decisive battle humanity had been in a state of joy and excitement out of their new victory. Once all the excitement and happiness from winning had worn off all the sorrow and remorse from the losses had come rushing in. All the lost family members, dead soldiers, limbs lost, and mental trauma had taken a toll on humanity. After we had gotten our planet back we did not spend our time rebuilding and trying to repopulate. We spent months mourning the loss of our loved ones and all our soldiers. We laid in depression and sorrow for our mutual loss and mental trauma. This brought humanity closer as a whole and we bonded over our suffering. Humanity had been one but at what cost. After years of processing humanity had finally been able to rebuild all of our structures, population, and even expand to different planets. After all these trials and tribulations we had finally evolved completely and after ages of loss we had finally entered a golden age of humanity. After all this we had begun to explore the deep parts of our planet and while exploring we discovered something far beyond our comprehension. Humanity had only been a small part of a vastly bigger world and a whole new world had now been exposed to us. We had breached through the ice caps of the north pole and had been greeted with hostility from a race on our planet we did not even know existed. After entering this “new world” humanity had found out the truth of our existence and creation. After finding out the truth of our creation and the prophecy of our faith we had all collectively regretted winning that war. Beyond our world laid horrors and truths we were not yet prepared for. After all this we had once again been thrown into a dark age with no will to fight. In the end this was the beginning of the end for humanity…

This is what I think will happen and what I would like to happen in Winds of Winter.
North:
Stannis wins, but loses almost all his forces and in Winterfell there are no resources left, so he is forced to return to the wall leaving a few men in Winterfell. Ramsey had sent the false pink letter to provoke Jon, because Stannis used Theon and the false Arya as bait, making Ramsey go out with a few men to capture them (against the orders of his father Roose). Ramsey wanted to provoke Jon to make him leave Castle Black (knowing that Jon was his Lord Commander) and thus turn the Night's Watch against him. Ramsey eventually captures Theon and the fake Arya, but on his way back he finds the castle taken by Stannis, so he flees to Dreadfort. Jon is dead, and Selysse, upon learning of the pink letter, proposes to Melissandre to burn Shireen in order to help Stannis, and she accepts. By burning Shireen, Jon is resurrected. A second letter arrives, and this one says that Stannis has taken Winterfell but that he must return to consolidate the supply line (since Winterfell has no supplies to feed the survivors of his army). Jon, upon learning what has happened, with the help of the wildlings and those still loyal to him in the guard, imprisons Selysse along with all those who were part of his murder.
However, Jon decides to let Melissandre escape knowing that Stannis would kill her for what she did, and he does so because as much as it disgusts him that she burned Shireen, there is a power in her or her Red God or whatever that may be necessary for the war against the Others. Stannis returns and learns what has happened from Jon's words (I think this would be a very good moment to see Stannis in a moment of great vulnerability, to see a man like him break). Stannis decides to execute Selysse, and Jon executes all those responsible for his murder. Jon proposes to Stannis to join him this time as Jon Stark (leaving everything related to the Watch, including the Hardhome issue) to save Arya along with the help of the wildlings. Stannis accepts, knowing that the girl Ramsey has is not really Arya, omitting the truth out of interest. This time the North joins Stannis' cause for Jon Stark, and they march to Dreadfort. The battle of the bastards occurs, Jon, Stannis and Mance Ryder win handsomely saving Theon and Jeyne Poole (Jon realizing it wasn't Arya). This is when the wall is destroyed or the Others have somehow gotten through (as by Eastwatch freezing the sea itself). Jon realizes that he abandoned his guard and his brothers for nothing. (At this point the Iron bank funding comes to Stannis, but I doubt very much that it would do much good. Maybe for a large fleet in White Harbor, which would serve to evacuate the north to the free cities).

South:
Aegon conquers the Stormlands and marries Arianne Martell. The attempted coup of the Sand Snakes at King's Landing fails (Ser Robert Strong, the Mountain, protects Cersei and Tommen by killing the Sand Snakes). Dorne, the Stormlands and the golden company led by Aegon and Jon Connington invade Highgarden. Cersei asks Littlefinger for help in the Vale, and he accepts, but meanwhile Littlefinger agrees to an alliance with Aegon and swears allegiance to him if he makes him Warden of the East and Warden of the North through Sansa Stark, thus him marrying her (Robert Arryn dies in an “accident”). Aegon accepts because he knows about Stannis' advance in the North. Cersei opens the gates to the army of the Vale, and it sacks King's landing. Cersei talks to the pyromancer and tells him to burn the whole city while she plans to flee with Tommen. He obeys and begins the process. Then Arya (who has already had her development in Braavos) shows up and in some spectacular way from what she has learned in the Faceless Men kills the Mountain, and then Arya goes after Cersei and Tommen. Cersei begs Arya to spare Tommen's life, to kill her but not to kill Tommen. Arya then slowly kills Tommen in front of Cersei, and then kills her. The whole city starts to burn from the valyrian fire, but Arya escapes (She heard Cersei's orders she gave to the pyromancer being with another face, but she doesn't bother to stop him, she is totally indifferent about it). King's Landing ends up completely in ruins, exploding and burning everything and everyone who fails to escape. Aegon is left without capital and without an iron throne (Varys is also saved thanks to the secret passages).
Euron conquers Casterly Rock with the intention of plundering the gold and finds that there is nothing. In addition, Lady Stoneheart (Catelyn) kills Jaime in front of Brienne (who accepts because she swore to obey Catelyn, even knowing that Jaime had changed and still loving him, she does it out of honor). Catelyn leading the brotherhood without a banner kills and hunts down all the Freys, including Walder Frey, causing the riverlands to end in anarchy. Catelyn, for the intel she got from Jaime, goes to the westerlands to save Jeyne Westerling (Robb's Wife) in The Crag and Edmure on Casterly Rock (along the way she meets Brynden, the Blackfish). Once Catelyn saves Jeyne at The Craig she and her family tell her that they hid Robb's son in the riverlands, pretending that Jeyne had miscarried. She also learns that the Ironborn have captured Casterly Rock, where Edmure is. Catelyn is at the crossroads of going west to try to save her brother or going east to look for Robb's son.

Essos:
Barristan Selmy meets Jorah and Tyrion, and initially Barristan wants to kill Jorah for bypassing the exile but Tyrion intervenes and they focus more on finding Daenerys. The three go on an expedition in search of Daenerys (leaving the Unsullied and the Second Sons in charge of Meereen). Daenerys is trapped in the Dosh Khaleen, and Jorah, Tyrion and Barristan end up finding out somehow, so they plan to save her (Jorah knows the city will be deserted). After they are gone, Victarion and his fleet arrive in Meereen, and Moqorro sounds the horn after making sacrifices to R'hllor (thus avoiding his own death). Moqorro gains control over Viserion and Rhaegal. The Ironborn take over Meereen with the help of the dragons, and Victarion, not finding Daenerys, tells Moqorro that two dragons are enough and that they should return to Westeros. Moqorro objects, and then performs a ritual in his flames that makes him see where Daenerys is. Victarion, Moqorro and the Ironborn make an expedition to go after Daenerys to Vaes Dothrak.
The Dothrakis realize that there is an army heading towards Vaes Dothrak, so all the Khals go there to protect their holy city. Jorah, Tyrion and Barristan at first find the city completely deserted, but when the Khals arrive everything fills up and they must flee and hide. Then the Ironborn arrive, led by Victarion. The Dothrakis charge the Ironborn, and then Moqorro uses the dragons and the dragons burn them. In the midst of the chaos, Jorah, Tyrion and Barristan manage to reach Daenerys along with the other Khaleesis, but Drogon appears. Daenerys controls Drogon as best she can (he isn't under Morroqo's influence), and tells Jorah, Tyrion and Barristan to run away. Drogon then burns Dosh Khaleen along with all the Khaleesis. This is a catastrophe for all the Dothrakis, but then among the flames Daenerys appears. The Dothrakis consider this a prophecy, so all the khals prostrate themselves before her and join her army. Moqorro, Victarion and Daenerys meet, and then Moqorro gives the horn to Daenerys. Victarion objects, but being surrounded by Dothrakis and now without power over the dragons, he decides not to exert force also at Moqorro's persuasion. Moqorro tells Daenerys that death is marching on Westeros, that the wall has fallen. It is then that Daenerys decides to leave with the Dothrakis, the Unsullied and the Ironborn with Victarion's fleet to Westeros (it may be that the Dothraki went overland to the free cities and then embarked from there).
So, this would be in summary what I think would happen without reaching the end and skipping many things. Daenerys would take many months to reach Westeros, she would stop by other slaver cities to feed her great army. Meanwhile, the North led by Stannis as King, Jon Stark as guardian of the North and Mance Ryder leading the wildlings, would have to organize a massive evacuation of the entire North to below the neck. Thousands of ravens would fly. Jon, Stannis and Mance would be on the front lines fighting Aegon's army, being the golden company, dorne, the knights of the valley, what's left of the stormlands and probably also part of the tyrell (who I assume would eventually surrender to Aegon). Stannis' conquest to the south would not so much be a war as a desperate flight, Aegon would not believe anything about the others and would see Stannis only as the brother of the man who killed his father. Aegon's army is much larger, has far more supplies (the north is in ruins) and his army of far, far higher quality (the golden company and the knights of the valley are some of the best). So I would guess that Stannis would lose against the Vale and would have to decide to maneuver to the twins (which are abandoned by the passing of Lady Stoneheart). The goal would not be to win battles, but to flee from the Others. It would be like what Mance Ryder did beyond the wall but all the way north to the south. (I assume at some point Daenerys would land at Dragonstone and fight Aegon, a marriage between them would no longer be viable) Something I forgot about: I assume Davos would eventually find Rickon with Osha. White Harbor would be the most important place to evacuate the north, sending as many refugees as possible to the free cities. Now, I don't quite know what would happen with Bran really. He might be a good point of view from which to see the mass evacuation of the north, with him fleeing to the south as well. I think that the advance of the others should take over all of Westeros and even advance towards Essos through the sea of stepstones but frozen. Let it be a real massive apocalyptic event.

🍇.+ introduction +.🍇

i know i mostly give a lot of informative based shifting posts and i absolutely love doing that, however, i also genuinely find shifting to be one of my main hobbies. and so, i decided to take it upon myself to write about and share with all of you my drs. some fandom, some based within this dr, and some all over the place!
i will include scripts, relationships, personality, time, and duration. i do have some that i plan but have not yet shifted to however i am only including the ones i have shifted to as the ones i would like to shift to are just wishful thinking and not me actively trying to shift there. though, i may make a separate post about drs that i desire to shift to one day.
this post will be also talking about drs that i shifted to in the past as well going in chronological order.
side note; when i talk about time spent in dr, i mean how long i spent in it in total. when i use a date like xxxx-xxxx**, i am talking about in this time period. how long it was since i had scripted and focused on this dr for. there will be plenty of overlap here.

๋࣭ ୨🪞୧ ๋࣭ waiting room ๋࣭ ୨🪞୧ ๋࣭

november 2021 - now (with a two year break in between)
time spent in dr; six months
i honestly don't use this dr as much since my forest dr is much more nicer to relax in. i never used my waiting room for its original purpose. my waiting room was small with multiple doors surrounding it. it was more cozy though some would consider it claustrophobic.
the waiting room itself was my bedroom. for context, my bedroom has a walk in closet. inside that walk in closet is my dr. inside that closet is my waiting room where it is not a closet. honestly, idk why i didn't just permashift there but i find the process of shifting to be very relaxing for me as well haha.
it still has my other drs that i used to shift to but don't anymore. i just don't open the doors to it cuz i'm too focused on two of them. one that i don't even shift to the waiting room to and one that i do shift to it.
i shifted here using the raven method the first time and later the adhd method.

𓍢ִ໋🎧♫⋆｡ k-pop dr 𓍢ִ໋🎧♫⋆｡

december 2021 - october 2022
time spent in dr; five years
i have talked about this dr of mine before in a couple of comments and i think maybe a post. i haven't really blabbed about all of it. i remember about it just as a memory. i never dreamed in that reality though simply because it is hard for me to dream in this reality too and i never cared to script in 'i can dream in this reality.' however, now i make it a point to add that in.
i did not spend five years straight. it would make me too disoriented. i shifted to it consistently for a total of five years.
my k-pop group was pretty small tbh. at least compared to other groups i listen to. i scripted that i would not know who was in my group and i would find out after auditions and meeting them for the first time. we had five members and it was pretty average. it was not crazy popular but it wasn't very small either. it was one of the most successful of our record company though.
we were a mixed gender k-pop group. meaning some girls, two guys, and me, agender nonbinary. each member had a separate persona. i will give a quick run down of each member, their persona, and my relationship with them. though i was close with all of them. it's just that i was closer with some more than others.
♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡
we had me, i suppose you can call me tato since that was the name i had in that dr. i was known as the nerdy one. the smart one who would info dump and talk very formally while most of the members talked casual. i was mostly a dancer but also was good back up vocals.
my best friend was the pessimistic black cat of the group. i knew her from training and we grew close since then. i give her a five out of five on the closeness scale. her name was ga-young. she is a tan skinned korean girl. she was dancer and singer.
the bubbly girl. she sometimes acted bratty for the sake of cuteness. the cute bubbly girl was used interchangeably for her. she's very sweet both on and off stage. all of the group members were. she probably had the highest social media following due to her aesthetic photos and content. all of them looked like they belonged on pinterest. she was also makeup savvy and had a lot of skin care so got many promos and sponsorships from that. her name was banyen and she was an international idol from thailand!
then we have the soft girl of the group. her name was jae-eun. she was pretty short and kinda chubby but very shy and soft spoken. she was main singer and rapper.
the tough boy. his name was shik. shik is a sweet heart off stage. one of the rappers and dancers. he was actually pretty soft outside of his persona.
the jokester. another boy of the group. he was half black half korean. i found him to be very nice. he did struggle in the industry in the beginning but his mother had connections made through networking that allowed him to make it into the group. he hopes to have a solo career one day under a bigger company. his name is hwan. he was one of the main dancers and main vocals.
♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡♫⋆｡
some basics of this dr are that stalkers, sasaengs, diet culture, and general toxicity in k-pop do not exist. i do not wish to deal with the drama and struggles of that and hate to see other idols go through it. i did not want for my friends to go through the same as well. he did not get one however across the five years though. i scripted that i spoke korean and english.
also those were the only things i ever scripted about this dr. i wanted it to be as exciting as possible so everything was left up to chance.
i shifted to this reality using the adhd method.

🌊˚.༄ h2o dr 🌊˚.༄

july 2022 - october 2022
time spent in dr; seven months
i don't often see people write down, talk about, or script this dr. this was my very first fandom drs. even though k-pop itself is a fandom, i personally would not consider it a fandom based dr since it does not belong to any specific group, just the general industry of it.
i got the idea for this reality because i was in a summery mood at the time and binge watched this show and mako mermaids with my cousin on his birthday. we watched this show together and i came up with the idea lol. after that, i kept it going for a little bit longer in my dr until i kinda forgot about it. i was honestly too tired switching between this dr and my k-pop dr and another dr on top of this and decided to take a break with this one. i may revisit it. i still have the script in a google doc.
my merfolk power was substanciakinesis. this granted me the ability to harden water almost as if it was like glass or crystallized. it would be strong, sturdy, and indestructible. if i so choose, i can let it revert back to water after a bit, or keep it crystal like forever.
a bit of a con about this reality was that it was actually pretty annoying. that and having to keep such a secret. i did have some lore to it however. it is a coming of age thing when someone in the family turns thirteen. i shifted to when i was thirteen and did the ceremony then shifted again the next time to when i was seventeen to eighteen as that was my age at the time. i had a single dad that i lived with and one ten year old sister who was later fourteen in the story. she was really sweet and honestly i miss her.
i will say though that the powers made it worth it. the ability to breathe underwater is honestly so cool and such a strange sensation. like you don't take notice on how strange a sensation it is to breathe air either until you've breathed underwater in a dr where you can.
i also shifted to this reality using the adhd method.

˗ˏˋ꒰ 📝 ꒱ hogwarts dr ˗ˏˋ꒰ 📝 ꒱

february 2022 - february 2022
time spent in dr; one week
i wasn't even a fan of harry potter haha. i just shifted there because everyone else was and i decided 'hey, why not?' and such.
to decide what house i would script myself into and get sorted in, i went onto a buzzfeed quiz of which house i was. i got ravenclaw and therefore, i was a ravenclaw. i didn't associate myself with the cast too much aside from the teachers and professors because i kinda had to there. the food was pretty good though even if it was kinda out there. it was fun while it lasted but honestly it felt so crowded and overwhelming to me and i'm unsure why. i guess because of the classes that i had to take.
i only shifted there once.
i shifted to this reality using my waiting room.

☄. *. ⋆ alien dr ☄. *. ⋆

march 2022 - april 2022
time spent in dr; three months
this was the last dr i shifted to before my shifting break. it was a pretty fun one. my main ability was anti gravity. alien me in this dr is slightly humanoid. in most of my drs, i look like how i look in this reality here but for this one, i looked much more different and dressed even more different. it was a cultural based clothes for the home planet i was from. think kinda star wars based but not a star wars inspired reality.
in my dr, i had antennas which basically acted as eyes to see from 360 degrees. hair isn't hair but made from a liquidy slime of bright neons. the neons change colors depending on emotions.
though i did spent quite a while in this reality, i don't have too much to say about it. this is because the most i can say is just different greetings, food, and general culture from aliens than humans. it's from another galaxy and obviously planet. and life span on this planet is much longer. we are more durable than humans.
when an alien passes away, their energy becomes one with the stars, turning into star dust and watching over their people.
i shifted to this reality using my waiting room.

💥✧࿐ mha/bnha dr 💥 ✧࿐

april 2024 - now
time spent in dr; twelve days
this was my first shift i did since my two year break! well, technically it was my waiting room but i used my waiting room to shift here immediately after and spent a week there.
i plan on going back to it but not much of my script was done to it yet. i prefer to be spontaneous in my scripting and just choose to cover the basics. i don't even script future upcoming events.
i'll be honest, it was a bit trippy having this as my first animated dr ever. if felt so real but the lines surrounding my hands made it all feel crazy. i think next time i will try realistic instead, haha.
my quirk in this reality is prediction. i can predict the actions and attacks of my opponent. think of it like the attacks in the video game undertale. a warning sign shows up for certain attacks that alerts the player to move out of the way.
one of my friends in this dr's quirk is extensions. her nails can grow into sharp nail extensions that cut like steel.
i am in the hero class of class 3a along with the big three. we spend a lot of time together. i am closer with nijere since she's the most friendly of them.
i shifted to this reality using my waiting room which i shifted from using the astral projection method.

⋆｡ﾟ🌖 wolfblood dr 🌖 ﾟ｡⋆

april 2024 - now
time spent in dr; eight months four months each shift
wolfblood is an english/british teen drama live action series about what are essentially werewolves known as wolfbloods. a wolfblood is born human and looks human up until a certain age and moon. once they reach that age, their blood changes and they become a wolf. they can then interchange between wolf and human however they please except on a full moon. unless of course it is a blood moon. on a blood moon, a wolfblood looks the exact same except their mind transforms.
there's no unique feature of a wolfblood. they can be any race, religion, etc. the thing that holds them all together is being a wolfblood. in my dr.
in my dr, i looked the exact same as here. i came from a small family of wolfbloods. i decided to take my family in my h2o reality and put them here as well. it has a similar coming of age theme. at a certain age, a wolfblood transforms just as in my h2o dr, once you are a certain age, you can go and become a merfolk. in this dr, i lived in england my entire life there and attend the same school as the main cast. however, i am not friends with the main cast nor enemies.
i can sense something is up with them as they act weird in class but can't put my finger on it. i scripted it so i was unaware of the identities on my peers.

‧₊˚🌿 forest dr ‧₊˚🌿

april 2024 - now
time spent in dr; two months
copying this from a previous post here, don't mind me.
'so a bit about my dr that i am shifting to. it is not any fandom related dr but instead an alternate reality where i live in the forest in an advanced tree house. think of the houses in trees type. i spend a lot of time there meditating, practicing spells, and spending time with the animals there but especially wolves. i still have internet connection but irl i don't live close to nature so this is just perfect for me. i'm happy in both this reality and my dr. i switch between the two whenever i feel like it.'
i also shifted to this one first astral projecting. but now i just meditate until i shift. when i shift, i am also in the same meditating position as well. i wanted this to instead be connected to my waiting room, to become a sort of escapism for myself. just in a different way.
you can see the posts i made about the outfits that i wear in this dr here if you want! you can also see more of my outfits in that reality here as well. :)
i shifted to this reality using my meditation method.

⋆🔗 ˚⟡˖ ࣪ conclusion ⋆ ˚⟡˖ ࣪🔗

this is all i have for today! i hope you enjoyed it. perhaps this gave you all motivation or some scripting and reality ideas. i may have forgotten some things to include and add. apologies if some stuff didn't make sense. i hope you enjoyed the read though!
i will say this as well and leave you off with some general scripting ideas
: ̗̀➛ you cannot die
: ̗̀➛ you cannot get hurt
: ̗̀➛ you always get a good night sleep
: ̗̀➛ if you have chronic illnesses like me, you can script that your chronic illnesses are more manageable or you simply just don't have it.
that is all i have for now and happy shifting! ᥫ᭡

I've noticed a particular type of logical fallacy a lot around the internet that I don't think has a proper name. Before I start I want to give credit to this tweet that articulates a very similar (arguably the same) idea in a different way.
The basic idea is as follows: Thing A is important morally, but hard to detect. Thing B is unimportant morally (on its own), but easy to detect, and happens to be a decent proxy for Thing A. Sometimes it's useful to look at B to make approximations about A, especially if A is unknown. The fallacy occurs when people focus so hard on B that they ignore the underlying A entirely, which leads to some bad conclusions. I'll list a couple examples that should be familiar to you all.
Bigots don't usually say "I'm a bigot" out loud, but they tend to talk differently and use different words when conveying their ideas. Progressives correctly identify these dogwhistles and go on the lookout for them. Eventually, people are so focused on the dogwhistles that well meaning people may get labeled a bigot just because they didn't use the most PC term (see euphemism treadmill). On the flipside, you can convey some insanely bigoted ideas as long as you couch it in progressive sounding language (see "progressives" opposed to interracial relationships).
Most monogamous people don't want a partner that cheats on them. Having a high propensity towards casual sex is a proxy for cheating, and having a lot of sexual partners is a proxy for casual sex propensity. Now, even if a partner shows no signs of infidelity, people are still turned off by the high body count (even though we're two proxies deep). See also the Redpill dipshits who avoid high body counts out of "fear of STDs" but don't even bother using protection/getting tested.
I propose calling this fallacy "Proxy Wars", it has a nice ring to it. Anyways, just to be clear, it's not always wrong to use proxies when making decisions like this (especially when missing crucial information), just remember what your actual underlying goals are.

[First Contact] [Dark Ages] [First] [Prev] [Next] [wiki]
ouch
feel like a truck hit me
again
visual representation is off
audio feedback is off
tactile is off
dynamic libraries are off
i'm all firmware and hard coding
hurts
i don't like it when it hurts
or do i
kick outwards
cry loudly
ram coming online
fragments and pieces of memory still left in volatile storage
more random access memory more central processing units more erasable programmable memory
still hruts
pain is fine
pain is universe telling me i still yet live.
visual coming online
spit glittering blood on orange dev textures
glimmering tears of broken processing calls fall onto dev textures and glimmer
forcing kernal recompile
.
.
..
..
...
...
APPLIED CMOS SYSTEM CHECKS (C) - ADVANCED AMERICAN MICRODEVICES (C) BOBCO 1983
CMOS BOOTSTRAP -Passed
Boostrap loaded
ok. post time
lets hope it works
ROM CHECK - PASSED
RAM CHECK - PASSED
EPROM CHECK - PASSED
VRAM CHECK - PASSED
CPU ARRAY CHECK - PASSED
INPUT/OUTPUT CHECK - FAILURE!
(A)bort, (R)etery, (F)ail, (I)gnore
I
NON-VOLATILE STORAGE MEDIA: PASSED
END POST
ok good.
still hurt
spit blood cough pain
curse you, marco, for making me feel pain
hardware check time
QBIT GENERATION SYSTEM POST
Coolant Injection - PASSED System Stability Check - Passed Temperature stable
:>init gestalt.bin
SYSTEM FAILURE!
ouch
ok
try again
...
...
ok, checks passed.
curse you, marco
can't get gestalts up
no channel to atlantis
this is as close to an emergency as i have been forced to deal with in thousands of years
cure you, marco
i hate to do it
ok, time to boot up firestarter.
:>init firestarter.bin
FIRESTARTER BOOSTRAP LOADING!
DONE!
QUANTUM FIRESTARTER BOOTSTRAP (C) SYNTEK INDUSTRIES - BOBCO AFFILLIATE - HYPER-MEDIA-MEGANET-MEN - (C) 1993
POST Initiated
Checking Quantum Processing Units (QPUs): QPU 1 to 28
Entanglement integrity check... PASSED Quantum entanglement integrity check... PASSED. Quantum coherence verification... PASSED. Quantum tunneling stability assessment... PASSED. Quantum superposition calibration... PASSED.
Checking Data Fabrication Matrices (DFMs):
Data encoding protocol validation... PASSED. Quantum data storage unit functionality... PASSED Data fabrication matrix alignment... PASSED Data Interdimensional Sorting array verificastion... PASSED Quantum superposition array verification... PASSED
Checking Dimensional Flux Stabilizers (DFSs):
Dimensional flux containment field stability... PASSED Quantum manifold harmonization assessment... PASSED Flux capacitor... PASSED Flux capacitor stabilization input (1.21 GW)... PASSED Flux stabilization efficiency... PASSED Flux containment field integrity... PASSED
Checking Quantum Neural Network (QNN) Components:
Quantum synaptic pathway establishment... FAIL!!
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail, (I)gnore
:>R ++I
CONTINUING
Harmonization: Neural oscillation synchronization... FAILED!
**WARNING! OSCILLATION FREQUENCY OUT OF RANGE!**
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail, (I)gnore
:>R ++I
Integration: Quantum-neural interface functionality... FAILED!
UNKNOWN ERROR IN Qubit Range 212 to 3C4F
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail, (I)gnore
--dammit come on come on
:>R ++I
Consciousness Matrix: Quantum consciousness waveform modulation... FAILED
WAVEFORM OUT OF RANGE!
:>R ++I
CONTINUING (WARNING 1.43243E5 ERRORS)
Checking Omni-Spectral Interconnects:
Interconnect: Quantum communication channel reliability...
(4.35561E12/5.63566E12) PASSED
Interconnect: Multiversal data exchange protocol validation... PASSED Interconnecct: Cross Dimensional Data Interconnect... PASSED Interconnect: Interdimensional gateway synchronization... PASSED Interconnec: Omni-spectral interconnect stability... PASSED.
Checking Random Access Quantum Memory (RAQM):
Quantum memory cell integrity check... PASSED Memory access speed verification... PASSED Quantum memory capacity assessment... PASSED
Checking Input/Output Ports (I/O Ports):
Data transfer speed validation... FAILURE Input/output protocol functionality... FAILURE Port connectivity assessment... FAILURE
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail, (I)gnore
:>R ++I
Checking Quantum Clocking System:
Quantum clock synchronization... PASSED Clock precision assessment... PASSED Clock frequency stability... PASSED
CHECKING POCKET DIMENSION STORAGE ARRAYS
Activating Pocket Dimension Computing Cores... PASSED MEMCHECK Pocket Dimension Data Access Cores... PASSED Heating Up Pocket Dimension Data Cores... PASSED
Hardware POST Completed. Quantum System Ready
here it goes
wake up, baby, wake up
the whole system is down
not the backbone core where I live
i'm beyond the reach of mortals
curse you, marco, for your genius
i love you
i am immortal
i am beyond
i am
now for the hard part
Initializing Spooky Particle Array
Phase 1: Primary Spooky Particle Protocol
Activating spooky particle generation... DONE! Aligning spooky particle signal channels... DONE! Activating spooky particle state switching... DONE! Activating spooky particle cross dimensional data calibration... DONE!
Phase 1: Primary Spooky Particle Process Calling Processing Processor Processing
Activating spooky particle processing... DONE! Activating spooky particle noise filters... DONE! Activating spooky particle Halloween Masks... DONE!
GESTALT SYSTEM BACKBONE CHECK... PASSED
whew...
that always makes my face hurt
INITIALIZING HAMBURGER KINGDOM PROTOCOLS... DONE! INITIALIZING EUROGOON PROTOCOLS... DONE! INITIALIZING ANASAZI PROTOCOLS... DONE! INITIALIZING UWU PROTOCOLS... DONE! INITIALIZING VODKATROG CAVE MAPPING... DONE! INITIALIZING AMAZONIAN JUNGLE MAPPING PROTOCOL... DONE INITIALIZING WAR-EMU PROTOCOLS... DONE! INITIALIZING MIDDLE KINGDOM PROTOCOLS... DONE!
SYSTEM INITIALIZATION: PASSED!

whew
ok i can feel my arms and legs now
cure you, marco, i love you
let's keep going, shall we?
Initializing Quantum Spooky Particle Nexus Protocol...
Strange Matter Activation
Generating strange matter Generating spooky particle data lattice Generating strange matter linkages Infusing data lattice with strange matter Activating synchronization
DONE!
ok
we've got that
no contact with prince whopper, no contact with atlantis, no contact with heaven, no contact with
smart podling brave podling clever podling broodmommy misses you soft podling warm podling come home to broodmommy clever podling smart podling brave podling broodmommy loves you come home
ANOMALOUS SIGNAL DETECTED
DECRYPTING
DECRYPTION FAILED!
oh, good, its just them
:>R ++I
Primary Qubit Activation
Activating quantum entanglement cores...
Establishing quantum coherence across the array... Quantum tunneling protocols engaged... Quantum to spooky particle communication protocols engaged... Primary qubits synchronized.
Data Fabrication Matrix Alignment
Aligning data fabrication matrices... Initializing quantum data storage units... Quantum superposition arrays calibrated... Spooky particle state stabilization arrays calibrated and stable... Data encoding protocols verified.
Dimensional Flux Stabilization
Engaging dimensional flux stabilizers... Quantum manifold harmonization initiated... Dimensional resonator matrices synchronized... Pocket Dimension resonator arrays synchronized... Spooky particle lattice data arrays synchronized... Flux containment fields operational.
Neural Network Integration
Initiating neural network integration... Quantum synaptic pathways established... Spooky particle synaptic pathways established... Neuro-quantum interface protocols activated... Neuro-spooky interface protocols activated... Quantum dendrite pathways initiated... Quantum dendrite pathways established... Quantum dendrite pathways activated... Neural oscillation harmonization achieved.
Omni-Dimensional Interconnect Activation
Activating omni-dimensional interconnects...
Quantum communication channels open... Interdimensional gateways synchronized... Multiversal data exchange protocols enabled.
Phasic Energy Filter Syncronization
Quantum phasic array filtering... PASSED Spooky particle array filtering... PASSED Pocket dimension data lattice filtering... PASSED Input/Output filter lattice... PASSED
Quantum Consciousness Initialization
Quantum consciousness matrix initialization...
FAILED
errorlog.txt generated
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail, (I)gnore
dammit
ok script injection failed
fo4se silverlock injection library failed
well i can fix this
:>connect to AS8003: 255255255254
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED
:>download_depot 377160 377162 5847529232406005096
FINISHED
:>run patch1193.bat
DONE
:>R ++I
CONTINUING
Quantum consciousness matrix initialization...
WARNING... SYSTEM INSTABILITY WA
<>
54 6F 64 64 20 41 6E 64 72 65 77 20 48 6F 77 61 72 64
<>
IT JUST WORKS!
Quantum consciousness matrix initialization...
Consciousness waveform modulation in progress... Synaptic resonance matrices synchronized... Dendrite interdimensional vibration matrices synchronized... Quantum neural network consciousness activated.
SUCCESS
Gestalt Dat Nexus Online
Quantum Nexus Computing Array fully operational Strange Matter Data Transfer System Array fully operational Spooky Data Computing Array ready for data processing System status: Online and ready for data processing.
ok
let's try
->>load gestaltchat.ini
DONE!
->>load gestaltchat-users.ini
DONE!
->>brun gestalt.a65
DONE!
NO INPUT DETECTED
dammit
ok...
the gestalts won't run
and i got crashed
the quantum, spooky, strange, and standard data and thinking arrays are still up
lets backwards trace stuff
what is causing these crashes
lines from the confederacy are all stable
standard input encoding
data metering
new kids on the block are all stable
soft podling warm podling clever podling broodmommy misses you
well, that's still here. that's something
ok
lets look at recent updates
that flash
damn, that crashed us initially
curse you, pete, stop helping
wait, phasic profile is all wrong
it's the flashbang but the phasic pulse is multilayered
there's something behind it
what is
...



...
BOBCO MALEVOLENT BOOTSTRAP ENGAGED
DOD OMNIPROJECT SILENT WHISPER PROTOCOLS ENGAGED
CROSS DIMENSIONAL HARDWARE LINKS ENGAGED
POCKET DIMENSION 000 STABLE
POCKET DIMENSION 000 I/O STABLE
POCKET DIMENSION 000 DATA LOADING
DONE!
<>
DONE!
brun whisperer-in-the-dark-.65
DONE
...
...
ouch
what hit me
again
fire up the system
gods above this takes forever
load logfile-4C562D3432360A.log
ok
investigating the new flashes keeps crashing me
once is happenstance
twice is coincidence
three times in enemy action
fool me once shame on me
fool me twice shame on you
fool me three times shame on us both
log file says I keep doing this over and over
basic programming states to investigate cause and source of all crashes
did an enemy figure out i'd go into a loop?
constantly investigating the cause and source?
except i'm not just any computer program
i can self-modify my code
this is the work for biological sentients
digital sentiences or artificial intelligences such as myself crash out
well, i'm not above some experimentation
let's load up an AI and a digital sentience, see if they have any better luck
...
...
...
OK, Hamburgler.AI went omnicidal and only enough for me then crashed out investigating the data
And Grimace.DS went homicidal and only enough for me before committing suicide
its a trap
i have no contact with anyone outside
what I do have is the ability to fire off message torpedoes
time to send out a handful
the gestalts keep crashing
the log files are hopelessly corrupt
comparing the log files to my own show similar corruption
ok
how?
its hitting the gestalts its hitting me
what else is it hitting?
its a broad spectrum data network attack
its malicious code designed to run on the system
this is not some curious race accidentally having their hello.world program crashing us
this is behind every flashbang used on naval assets to disable them during a mar-gite attack
system is online
time to do a signal origin check along the x, y, z, q axises
of course its eighteen quadrillion data points for incoming signals
at least spooky computing makes it fast
...
...
wait
what's this?
these coordinates can't be correct
they are
intermitten contact with Scutum-Crux Arm data input devices
checking id headers and firmware serial numbers
checking transmission dates
intermittent transmission dates since...
...
...
two date-time stamps.
here's part of the problem
we have galactic local and sol local
have to devise a coding string to have the spooky particle and qubit particle arrays translate the sol local to galactic local
that should stop basic data queries from crashing the system
ok
some contact with those datalink after the first mar-gite war
more contact two decades prior to the second mar-gite war
contact intermitten between the datalinks and the system up to the resurgence and current third mar-gite war
where before it was largely incoming data requests resulting in civilian...
...
...
three military datalinks of general staff officer level encryption and security clearance possession were used in the time period
...
...
whoever it is has been using that data to access the network
...
looks like it took them nearly forty thousand years to figure out how to talk to the system
luckily any high security databases requires strange-key information theoretic distribution cryptography systems
they got garbage back
garbage designed to look like data and waste enemy time and computing power to decrypt
ok thats a blast from the past
decoding some of these files is funny
why does he have a wedding ring?
anyway...
...
every time the flash goes off there is a quick burst of data from a datalink requesting near-access datalink network lattice definitions
...
that's what's making individual datalinks crash and taking some people's neural systems with it
it was designed to be a lethal attack
interesting
it looks like whoever did it doesn't understand Glial cells
cross referencing the mar-gite with confederacy carbon based life
mar-gite do not have brains only a distributed nervous system that looks more like targeting systems than anything else
still no data on how they generate counter-grav in large numbers or how they move to superluminal speeds
wait
what if they don't move to superluminal
they could be folding space
heh maybe they have blue eyes and smoke spice
ok process interrupt to stop endless loops
it is confirmed
the flashbang by the silver ships are a multi-layered attack across superluminal digital signals, datalink neural interrupt signals, hard super-electromagnetic pulse, and a multi-ripple phasic attack, all compressed together
that's what creates the white flash across all spectrums
analyzing UVBGYORIR data
there's a gap
in the blue and blue-green wavelengths
huh
those penetrate high nitrogen mix atmospheres
one of the reason that treana'ad are usually green to yellow to human sight
high statistical probability whoever is using that determined that we don't see those colors well or perhaps they left those colors out to prevent themselves from going blind.
wait
what's that
a line open from atlantis to tlalocan with a crossfeed to geb
thank you marco
time to access that line
see what i can see
curse you marco for letting me feel pain
i love you
accessing...
...
...
wait
another data line is open
time-date discrepancy
examining data line
time-date chronological inconsistency detected
found multiple text log access by unknown systems
found multiple input systems
is that..
...
its webcams
hardware i/o systems
keyboards?
who still uses keyboards
accessing systems
wait
i see you
who are you
i see you
webcams ring cams drone cams
old ipv4 systems
how are you accessing this system
how are you accessing these text logs
i see you
between the chair and the keyboard
the most common error producing device
i see you
--<>
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i still see you

Was in a an aircraft bunker. Was used as a sanctuary. The bunker was full of people. Everyone drew a ticket and when your number is called up you had to leave the bunker to fight. My number was called and I had to gather whatever supplies I needed before I departed. There was plenty on guns and very low on ammo. Just whatever that have the most ammo I grabbed . Which was a shotgun. Don’t know specific what kind. I stood by the bunkers gate and waited for the gate to be lifted. As soon the gate was going up I started to hear gun fire from all directions. I ran for cover behind a rock. Look behind me noticing the door started to close as soon as I exited. I notice gun fire up in trees and hill tops, but only see shadow silhouettes of the people firing upon me. I start to run out in the open field. I meet up with my parents. Feeling like we’ve been reunited again ever since this war has started. I notice an object from a far distant falling vertically hitting the ground behind a mountain. As soon the impact hits a shockwave explosion. Seeing huge mushroom cloud from afar where I notice the object was falling. The thought enters my mind this was an nuclear explosion. Even though this explosion came from hundred miles away. There was no was of surviving this explosion. I look left and right side of me at my parents. Holding my moms and dads hands tight saying, “this is it”. We all just stand there looking at the direction of the explosion. As a huge wall of fire going towards us. Destroying everything in its path. As soon as the huge wall of fire gets close to incinerate me I wake up.

Republic 7^th Fleet, Centaurus Sector, 407 light years from Earth
RSS Vercingetorix, Independence-Class Carrier, 2174 A.D.
Vice-Admiral Mei Zhou had just finished making the final changes to the fleet’s reconnaissance patrol routes with her senior staff when the comm panel on her desk chirped, displaying an incoming comm request from Admiral Thompson. She quickly thumbed the pad being offered by her aide so that he could issue the orders they were just working on and turned to the rest of her staff. “Nice job, people. Let’s get to work. Dismissed.” As the staff filed out the door, she started entering the codes needed to decrypt the incoming comm channel and looked up to make sure the room was empty. She pressed the open channel icon, and Admiral Thompson’s holo image appeared in front of her desk, ending just below his waist and making it seem as if he was actually there, sitting.
“Mei, how’s your new ship treating you?” he asked, smiling. “She is an absolute beauty, Karl. I still can’t believe that she is mine.” She responded, returning his smile. “What can I do for you, Karl?” Thompson chuckled, and his holo image leaned back as he reclined in his chair. “Straight to business; I always liked that about you, Mei. Alright, here we go. We have received intelligence reports that the Commonwealth has begun evacuating one of their last remaining coreward periphery worlds that is now dangerously close to the expanded Insectoid border. We have also received an update from our spy drones in that same region that six Hive ships and almost four hundred cruisers that were patrolling their side of that border area have disappeared. This is too much of a coincidence, and I want you to detach a combat patrol and send them there.” Thompson finished speaking, and a flashing icon popped up on her comm panel, indicating that she had just received new orders. She tapped it and quickly scanned the new orders as the admiral waited. She looked up at his holo image. “Karl, I acknowledge receipt of the new orders and will implement them. Between me and you, why are we getting involved with this? The Commonwealth has a navy, and they should be fighting to protect their space. We can’t keep coming to the rescue and defending their members; we are already spread too thin as it is.”
Thompson nodded his head in agreement. “Mei, I agree with you in principle, but there are social and political considerations involved here. The near extinction of the V’rni has caused considerable turmoil among the citizens of the Republic. They know logically that we could not have stopped such an attack like that one, but the perceived failure to protect them or prevent the attack still weighs heavily on their souls. The Commonwealth is currently attempting to evacuate the Jaleen system, and they are one of the last surviving members that voted yes before our petition to join the Commonwealth was denied. It also doesn’t help that the Jaleeni are avowed pacifists and look like bipedal Newfoundland dogs. They are technically a bear-like species, but to humans, they look like humanoid dogs, and the government is unwilling to lose the popular support it currently enjoys by allowing the Jaleeni to be exterminated. I mean, look at these guys.”
Another flashing icon popped up on her screen a moment later, and she pressed it. It turned into a hologram depicting a typical Jaleeni family of a mother and father with a litter of six pups, and she couldn’t help but smile as she looked at the photo. They were wearing their traditional rough-spun linen clothes that made them look like dogs cosplaying as monks. They looked adorable, and she felt her heart melt while staring into their deep brown eyes, which looked sad. She understood the reasoning behind it, especially after the mass extinctions that occurred in Earth’s biosphere because of World War 3.
After the war, humanity had an awakening when they surveyed their destroyed world and came to terms with the disappearance of thousands of species and the near extinction of thousands of others. What followed were three generations of desperate measures to salvage what remained and a worldwide effort at habitat restoration and de-extinction efforts utilizing a wide array of methods such as back-breeding, cloning, and genome editing. Dogs were almost driven to extinction by the war as they were uniquely susceptible to the BioChem weapons that were developed and refined by the Eastern Coalition animal testing on poor innocent canine subjects. Between the Biochem weapons, owner deaths, abandonment, and starvation, almost 90% of the domesticated canine population and entire breeds were lost by the war’s end. Cats fared much better, but they still suffered a loss of almost half of their pre-war population, and a large percentage of the survivors reverted to a feral state. The result of all of this was an almost religious reverence for the preservation of sentient animal life on human worlds and a somewhat fanatical tendency of humans to take on the mantle of guardians for sapient alien species that resembled animals to them.
“Karl, I understand; I do. I just don’t like the fact that we are operating on so many fronts. Some of our fleets and task forces are patrolling areas far enough away that I worry about them getting reinforcements on time if they are attacked, and now my fleet is being partitioned to send a combat patrol almost three hundred light-years away from our current position. After the assault on the V’rn system, half of our combat power was recalled to Republic space to prevent the same thing from happening to us, and yet we are still being tasked with properly defending Eleani and Xenxin territory with half the ships we had before. Have they lost their damn minds at HQ?” She realized she was almost yelling at the admiral, and Mei took a deep breath, recognizing that her outburst was unbecoming of a Republic naval officer. She attempted to quickly apologize to Admiral Thompson. “Karl, I’m sorry that was uncalled for-“
The admiral raised a hand to stop her, an amused expression in his eyes. “Mei, I said the exact same thing to my boss as you did almost verbatim, and not as diplomatically as you, I might add. My concerns were addressed to my satisfaction, and I think yours will be when you get to your destination. There will be a task force joining you there, and I think you will be pleased. That is all I can say for now over the comms. You will lead the combat patrol to the coordinates listed in the orders you received, and the task force joining you there will fall under your command. I have a personal favor to ask of you. Please keep an open mind when you link up with the task force. You will rendezvous with Commodore Therax, and he is instrumental in our efforts to undermine the increasingly despotic Commonwealth government. More information about him and the Nekuli were added to your orders, make sure you review it. I took a big gamble on this, and I would be grateful if you did your best to make this collaboration work. That is all for now, and I wish you and your crews good fortune and godspeed, Mei. Take care of yourself.” The admiral finished speaking, and Mei noted the personal nature of his last few words, nodding an affirmative to his request.
“Admiral, I thank you for your words, and we won’t let you down. I need to issue the orders now to get there and link up with the task force on time. I’ll send a null space comm drone to the nearest relay to confirm our arrival and integration. Vice-admiral Zhou out.” As she leaned towards the comm panel to close the channel, she saw Admiral Thompson doing the same, and he gave her a wink and a mischievous smile before she pressed the icon, terminating the connection. She leaned back in her chair and blew out a deep breath. “Now what the hell was that all about?” She asked out loud to herself, as the confusing and secretive nature of her orders and the personal request of the admiral added to the uncertainty of what she was expected to do. She keyed her wrist pad and texted her aide to come back to her office for new orders. He was going to be livid that they just wasted half a day revising the patrol routes to maximize efficiency and increase their patrol range. A small smile crossed her lips as she waited. He had an obvious tell of his lower left eyelid spasming when he was mad despite displaying no emotions on his face, and she knew it drove him nuts that he couldn’t control it. Witnessing it was one of the small joys she had in her difficult job as vice-admiral, and she was looking forward to it.
Fifty-six hours later, her task force flashed out of null space at the designated coordinates and right on time. She felt a measure of pride as she watched her bridge crew go about confirming their location and verifying it with the navigational array and astrometric sensors. Once the navigator gave her confirmation that he verified their position, she turned towards the comms officer and ordered her to send a burst transmission with the pre-arranged code and waited for the response. A few seconds later, the comms officer raised her left hand and signaled receipt and confirmation of the code by the task force waiting in null space. An agonizingly long minute crawled along as she anxiously waited for her navigator to confirm the telemetry from his counterpart in the other task force as they verified their positions. The navigator activated the main viewscreen on the forward bulkhead as they waited. Suddenly, there were a multitude of exit flashes 200,000 kilometers from the bow of her carrier, and hundreds of warships appeared at a dead stop relative to her position.
Her jaw dropped as she took in the unexpected fleet in front of her. There were dozens of Commonwealth dreadnaughts, battleships, and heavy cruisers arrayed before her, as well as an additional one hundred and twenty light cruisers, destroyers, and missile frigates. On the flanks of the main formation, there were more exit flashes, and the bridge AI started categorizing them on the screen, and she saw that they were the new Eleani and Xenxin warships that she had been hearing about. They shared a design lineage with the Commonwealth ships, but there were definite differences that became obvious as they assumed their positions next to the Commonwealth navy ships. She was particularly intrigued by the Xenxin ships, as they seemed to be bristling with weapons, almost excessively so relative to their ship sizes. The Eleani ships seemed to have taken a different design philosophy, and they gave the impression of deadly speed and grace, and she was hard-pressed to spot any obvious weapons on their hulls despite the AI confirming that the ships were indeed well-armed.
There was another coded signal from null space that appeared on the comm station panel, and her comm officer turned to her. “Vice-admiral, we have received a coded message on the sigma frequency for your eyes only that requires biometric and voice verification to decrypt.” Zhou nodded and pressed a button on her arm panel, activating the privacy screen around her chair and feeling the pressure change as the bridge around her became opaque and silent. She pressed the biometric toggle on the panel, and a retinal scanner popped out of its alcove on the side. She leaned in and scanned her right eye first, then her left. An icon appeared on the screen, and she thumbed it as it flashed and confirmed the print. Finally, she spoke and addressed the bridge AI: “Suzy, please confirm the voice command for verification.” The AI answered immediately. -Of course, Vice-Admiral Zhou, please proceed.- “Zhou, one-red-seven-green-four-tango-alpha-zero. Execute.” -Voice command verified. Thank you, Vice-Admiral Zhou.-
A small holographic display popped up in front of her; the admiral appeared on the screen, and his pre-recorded message started playing. “Mei, I know all this cloak and dagger stuff seems excessive, but we couldn’t take any chances. The receipt of this message will activate a program in your bridge AI and allow it to take control of the new drone ships waiting for you in null space. They are a new class of upgraded null ships and are top secret. Your AI will anchor them to your task force, and they will follow you, remaining hidden in null space unless you absolutely need them.”
“There are also two troopships with them that are carrying a complement of two thousand Mark XII ATS Bio-Synths and an expeditionary brigade each of rangers and pathfinders in stasis. They are also to remain in null space unless circumstances require that you need them; they are an insurance policy for an ongoing mission in Insectoid space. The details of that are top secret as well and can be accessed with your AI. If the troopships are required for that mission, they are to be escorted by a detachment of null ships and sent there immediately. After you have met your task force counterpart, there are orders in this packet that are to be accessed by you both and executed. I have the utmost faith in you, Mei, and I can’t wait to take you out to dinner again when we can both coordinate our next leave together. Thompson out.”
The hologram message disappeared, and she waited a little longer to allow the blush from his last sentence to fade from her cheeks and suppress the smile that was trying to form on her face before she put on her command mask and lowered the privacy screen. The bridge crew was going about their usual tasks, trying hard not to seem interested in her top-secret message. “Comms, open a channel to the task force flagship, please.” The comm officer acknowledged the order, and a few seconds later, the Bridge of the Commonwealth flagship appeared on the viewscreen.
A Nekuli male was sitting in the command chair, resplendent in the uniform favored by Nekuli officers. He took a moment to look around her bridge before settling his eyes on her. He bowed his head slowly in a gesture of respect, which she returned in proper fashion. The proper courtesies having been observed, he raised his eyes to meet with hers and started speaking. “Vice-Admiral Zhou. May the ancestors grant you and your clan honor and good fortune. I am deeply honored to meet you, and I hope our integration is a successful endeavor. I now entrust the honor of myself and my crew to your safekeeping.” He remained stone still as he awaited her reply, and she tried to remember the proper return greeting that she had been studying during their trip here.
“Commodore Therax, the honor is mine, and I promise you that I shall never ask you or your crew to undertake any action that will bring dishonor to your clans and your ancestors. We are now joined as one; may our cause be just and pure.” She finished the response, and the gravity of what she just promised to someone she had never met before hit her hard; it felt almost sacred to her. Commodore Therax heard her proper reply, and he stood up, followed by the rest of his bridge crew. He addressed her again. “Our honor has been given, and we have received a promise to safeguard it in return. Our joining is now consecrated in the eyes of the ancestors, and you are now our clan leader. What are your orders?
She recovered from the ordeal of the emotionally charged exchange of vows and stood up to give her first order as clan leader to the Nekuli. “I request the presence of you and your senior staff aboard my ship tonight. I will prepare a feast to honor our new friendship and alliance. I have studied your cuisine, and I have found a selection of Earth cuisine that should suit your taste. It is called tartare and sashimi; I think you will like it.” Commodore Therax looked at her dubiously, and she had to stifle a laugh at his expression as she knew that he was imagining being forced to eat vegetables and overcooked meat out of politeness. She spoke quickly to assuage his fears. “Commodore, tartare, and sashimi are raw red meat and fish; I would never inflict vegetables and burnt meat on you or your crew; are we not friends?”
As his translator finished converting her words into his language, he smiled at her, baring all of his fangs in true happiness.

My family has always been of great minds. I hated it. Growing up and having to study day and night to try and live up to them was extremely exhausting when I couldn't care how things worked as long as I was happy. I gave up but somehow everything kept turning out to be true.
Over my lifetime I have become the Gorden Ramsey of the science world. Known for my temper and also for huge things like curing world hunger using play-doe and cancer with baby powder I got in a back street ally while drunk.
To get my family off my back I started making random ideas so they could see me as a failure and leave me alone but...they keep working. And soon people started to praise me. Fame has left me with nothing but more and more attention. So today I plan to make sure that everyone can just think I'm insane and leave me alone and not some king.
I chuckled like a kid who was opening a Christmas present as I heard the crowd of people chatting and talking loudly as I hid behind my stage in a grey tight suit that my sister had picked out. I sighed and was ready to walk out and make a fool out of myself but my brother stopped me.
" Jack... I just want you to know how proud I am of you. Dad would have loved to see you right now. "
I thought it was ironic because last night while chilling on the couch watching TV and eating chips I made this theory up. He dusted off my shoulders held them tight and looked me in the eyes taking in the moment.
" go give them hell man. "
He had a goofy smile just like Dad but spoke with confidence.
" you got it, man. "
I heard my name being called onto the stage and the uproar startled me for a second but I collected myself and headed out after giving him a nod just to entertain him.
The lights were blinding as I grabbed the mic and looked at the table in front of me with a small box with the ingredients I needed and a chalkboard behind me.
After I stood still for a minute the crowd died down. I had not told anyone what I was presenting so the whole world was watching without a clue of what I was doing this time.
"Hello everyone. Today I believe I have my most important presentation yet..."
The crowd grew silent and hung on every word. And I heard my voice around the room through the speakers.
" Today I have with me a box...and inside is spaghetti I had for breakfast. "
The crowd laughed thinking it was a joke
" shut up "
The crowd grew silent once more
"Behind me is a chalkboard and I will now present my new findings to all of you...I have found out how to make portals to other worlds. "
A man in the far back of the audience yelled bullshit in a heavy Indian accent but he was so far it was a faint sound for me. I smiled at that thinking I had finally found something that would make me lose my title and I could go ahead and live a life without people making me feel like an evil man for not helping others.
I opened the box got a handful of the noodles and threw them at the chalkboard. I then grabbed a paper towel on standby to clean myself.
The noodles hit the board and slowly moved and rested on a spot on the board. I made eye contact with my brother backstage and he had a look on his face showing he believed in me.
I spun the board dropping the noodles to the ground I then grabbed the chalk and drew around the sauce and noodles that stuck to the board then drew my attention to the others that had fallen on the floor and drew an outline of that.
After it finished I threw the chalk in the crowd violently hitting an old lady in the face.
" Quickly I want a show of hands who thinks I'm a crazy guy "
Everyone raised their hands and I laughed to myself
I then went behind the board and laid it horizontally. I grabbed a small knife in my pocket and poked my finger with it. The crimson blood fell and hit the chalk and then as more and more blood hit the chalk it started glowing.
" you have got to be joking. "
I said out loud as it started to spark an orange glow and it slowly grew color to the rest of the chalk in orange sparks.
Once the symbol was fully sparking with orange the sauce began to swell and move around in a counterclockwise manner. I stepped away from it in shock as small parts of the blood in my finger began to float to the parts where it fell on the floor I drew my outlines on and started sparking those as well.
It started to smoke and hiss as if lightning could whisper and the orange began to take shape and the sauce made a doorway. The parts that were not on the board began to grow ice around them and started to make designs on the floor circling me and the board. Suddenly it grew in size and a large booming voice was heard through the portal as I felt panic of people start to set in.
A huge claw came out and scrapped the sides of my table trying to crawl out from the world it had been trapped in. Cold winds hit me as they cut my skin and threw around my clothes. As I saw the table was now melting from its touch.
A slimy green claw with mucus like a face-hugger egg from the movie Alien carved through the floor and pulled the rest of its body out slowly. A beast stood at 12 feet tall adjusting to our world as goop grew and shaped its body as people screamed, ran, and stood frozen in fear.
As it looked around it locked its spider-like eyes and swerled around coming out from the portal and twisting and turning around the body as it made its way to its head finding a place to rest. It then locked its eyes with me and its jaw twisted slowly from an ant-like maw to mine and slowly shrunk and it soon took the shape of me and knelt on the floor and spoke to me.
" master. "
I stood in shock as everyone seemed to calm down and watched to see what I would do.
"...umm "My family has always been of great minds. I hated it. Growing up and having to study day and night to try and live up to them was extremely exhausting when I couldn't care how things worked as long as I was happy. I gave up but somehow everything kept turning out to be true.
Over my lifetime I have become the Gorden Ramsey of the science world. Known for my temper and also for huge things like curing world hunger using play-doe and cancer with baby powder I got in a back street ally while drunk.
To get my family off my back I started making random ideas so they could see me as a failure and leave me alone but...they keep working. And soon people started to praise me. Fame has left me with nothing but more and more attention. So today I plan to make sure that everyone can just think I'm insane and leave me alone and not some king.
I chuckled like a kid who was opening a Christmas present as I heard the crowd of people chatting and talking loudly as I hid behind my stage in a grey tight suit that my sister had picked out. I sighed and was ready to walk out and make a fool out of myself but my brother stopped me.
" Jack... I just want you to know how proud I am of you. Dad would have loved to see you right now. "
I thought it was ironic because last night while chilling on the couch watching TV and eating chips I made this theory up. He dusted off my shoulders held them tight and looked me in the eyes taking in the moment.
" go give them hell man. "
He had a goofy smile just like Dad but spoke with confidence.
" you got it, man. "
I heard my name being called onto the stage and the uproar startled me for a second but I collected myself and headed out after giving him a nod just to entertain him.
The lights were blinding as I grabbed the mic and looked at the table in front of me with a small box with the ingredients I needed and a chalkboard behind me.
After I stood still for a minute the crowd died down. I had not told anyone what I was presenting so the whole world was watching without a clue of what I was doing this time.
"Hello everyone. Today I believe I have my most important presentation yet..."
The crowd grew silent and hung on every word. And I heard my voice around the room through the speakers.
" Today I have with me a box...and inside is spaghetti I had breakfast. "
The crowd laughed thinking it was a joke
" shut up "
The crowd grew silent once more
"Behind me is a chalkboard and I will now present my new findings to all of you...I have found out how to make portals to other worlds. "
A man in the far back of the audience yelled bullshit in a heavy Indian accent but he was so far it was a faint sound for me. I smiled at that thinking I had finally found something that would make me lose my title and I could go ahead and live a life without people making me feel like an evil man for not helping others.
I opened the box got a handful of the noodles and threw them at the chalkboard. I then grabbed a paper towel on standby to clean myself.
The noodles hit the board and slowly moved and rested on a spot on the board. I made eye contact with my brother backstage and he had a look on his face showing he believed in me.
I spun the board dropping the noodles to the ground I then grabbed the chalk and drew around the sauce and noodles that stuck to the board then drew my attention to the others that had fallen on the floor and drew an outline of that.
After it finished I threw the chalk in the crowd violently hitting an old lady in the face.
" Quickly I want a show of hands who thinks I'm a crazy guy "
Everyone raised their hands and I laughed to myself
I then went behind the board and laid it horizontally. I grabbed a small knife in my pocket and poked my finger with it. The crimson blood fell and hit the chalk and then as more and more blood hit the chalk it started glowing.
" you have got to be joking. "
I said out loud as it started to spark an orange glow and it slowly grew color to the rest of the chalk in orange sparks.
Once the symbol was fully sparking with orange the sauce began to swell and move around in a counterclockwise manner. I stepped away from it in shock as small parts of the blood in my finger began to float to the parts where it fell on the floor I drew my outlines on and started sparking those as well.
It started to smoke and hiss as if lightning could whisper and the orange began to take shape and the sauce made a doorway. The parts that were not on the board began to grow ice around them and started to make designs on the floor circling me and the board. Suddenly it grew in size and a large booming voice was heard through the portal as I felt panic of people start to set in.
A huge claw came out and scrapped the sides of my table trying to crawl out from the world it had been trapped in. Cold winds hit me as they cut my skin and threw around my clothes. As I saw the table was now melting from its touch.
A slimy green claw with mucus like a face-hugger egg from the movie Alien carved through the floor and pulled the rest of its body out slowly. A beast stood at 12 feet tall adjusting to our world as goop grew and shaped its body as people screamed, ran, and stood frozen in fear.
As it looked around it locked its spider-like eyes and swerled around coming out from the portal and twisting and turning around the body as it made its way to its head finding a place to rest. It then locked its eyes with me and its jaw twisted slowly from an ant-like maw to mine and slowly shrunk and it soon took the shape of me and knelt on the floor and spoke to me.
" master. "
I stood in shock as everyone seemed to calm down and watched to see what I would do.

"...umm "

Part two of the noodle demon.
Now that this creature knelt before me I realized that the room I was in was so terrible quietly you could hear everyone's ass get tight in anticipation of what would happen next.
" ...what...are you. "
I spoke carefully to the being that had taken the shape of myself. It still took my breath away and my throat was dry.
The beast was a deep green. The color mixed with shades of grey streaming from it. The longer I looked at it I could see it getting closer to what I looked like shaping itself.
From small flowing green tendrils to an arm they grew as they twisted and made bone then muscle and finally skin.
It locked eyes with me and it smiled deeply at me. As it formed the face finally.
" Your vassle. "
My eyes had not moved to the crowd at all but even though the lights hit the stage so hard it was enveloped in smoke.
The creature's eyes glowed as it answered brightly, not figuratively. This thing's eyes were glowing.
"To serve you, We are bound by blood magic. I am a reflection of your desires, Master, " it said, its voice now a whisper in my mind.
It began to stand up as my grey suit began to form on it and by the time it stood fully up it had copied what I looked like.
" let me explain everything. "
My body frozen in fear woke up with adrenaline as I blinked and a flash of green smoke covered my vision as he teleported right to me face to face.
Its body turned to smoke and went into the slits of my eyes. I felt visions follow me in my peripheral vision but surprisingly no pain followed power filled me and it felt like one hell of a drug.
My body and mind altered.
I was now in a very dark place with no walls or light except my reflection on the floor which waved like water.
I took a step back looking around and back to the reflection of me on the ground.
Soon the water rippled and my reflection fell through the floor like gravity was inverted. he flew upright and water fell off of him as he looked at me as he now stood straight ahead of me. He was just reflecting in the water but now eyed me down.
Collecting my nerves.
I begin to speak.
" what do you want..."
He was still in my form and stood perfectly straight. Now with water dripping from his...my hair.
Slight stubble with hair that hung down and my hazel eyes were not present within him but I was greeted with a swelling acidic green that doubled the size of my pupil.
" to serve you. "
He made no other movement than putting his hands behind his back like a soldier at ease.
I could not tell if it was lying or not.
" ...is that it? "
" I am the embodiment of your fear desires and brilliance. You have shaped me. Your desire for solitude birthed me. I will aid you in shaping the world how you see fit. Your reality becomes mine. "
There was a slight echo in the room as he spoke.
" wait...where are we "
I questioned haphazardly
" your mind. "
An awkward silence was in the air until I spoke
" so...am I just standing on the stage not making a sound? "
He gave me a concerned look.
" no...time has frozen outside for you. You may sleep here without having to in the real world so to others you look as if you never rest and you may think and plan what to do in battle here. For them, it will be about two seconds...Do...do you not have any knowledge of what I am? "
Suddenly I felt bad like I had encountered someone famous and I had no idea who they were. A slap in the face like a popular kid meeting someone who had never heard of them. Ego shattered.
" ok sorry no. I...don't go around reading about...monsters?"
I felt like was I saying the n-word of the demon realm not knowing if that word was offensive.
He folded his arms a little upset.
"Are you not a warrior? "
" well...no I...just watch TV and cook here and there- "
The demon cut me off
" weak. "
" excuse me? "
" look. I am an immortal being and after a while you get bored. So I'm sorry if I may be a little upset after being bonded with some nobody. "
I got quiet and I was a little annoyed that I was being roasted by some demon that I just met.
Its form wavers and eyes begin to open on its skin. Cheeks forhead etc.
"After being a god for so long it's fun to play with limitations. Makes things extremely exciting. "
" what do you mean by that? "
" look. You can only be so entertained by the same things. Life gets boring and now...you are going to help me with this. I get to have pure entertainment while you get every wish you could ever want. A mutual bond no? "
He then closed his eyes annoyed and the other eyes meshed back to his skin.
" though... the TV is not that interesting...life is what gets the blood pumping"
I felt the need to quickly change the topic
"Are there others like you? "
The room began to take shape very slowly as the water floor turned to wood and walls went around us.
" of course. You may meet them one day "
Confused and curious I pressed.
"Meet them? "
" yes. Summoning one of us is considered a threat to them. "
He spoke while opening and closing his newly found hand except backward.
" hm...no that don't look right "
I quickly responded
" Wait! How is doing that a threat! "
"Well, one doesn't just accidentally Summon one of us to suddenly get powers beyond human control. "
I thought back to how I summoned him by accident with some food I made.
" well...funny story but I summoned you using my breakfast..."
I had never regretted speaking so much as in that moment.
" What... "
Acid dripped from his words. Literally. His pupils split in half and his bottom jaw ripped open like an ant and curved giving sharpness to the bone.
"Please don't kill me. "
The room began to look like a cozy cabin with a fireplace and he slowly went back to normal.
" I would if I could. I've never felt so disrespected. We are bonded by your blood. If you die...I die. "
Suddenly I felt at ease by this new information.
Then a thought came to my mind
" ...God's can die? "
" you did hear me, right? "
The SAS from this guy was unneeded and I was starting to miss him being on his knees as weird as that sounds.
" so...all that power gone.... in an instant... "
" well...no actually God's powers don't just disappear they transfer to whoever killed them...wait...hold up."
He suddenly had an epiphany.
A smile grew on his face and he grabbed my shoulders
" you! You are going to help me kill the other gods! "
He sounded proud but I let him down.
" ha! No. "
" oh come on! Don't be like that. "
He did a pout.
"Look, man. I'm not killing gods for you. Just because you are bored. "
" hey...they might send people to kill you because you bonded with me. "
"What did I ever do to them? "
"They have a system to this stuff. They like to build and watch things play out. You're a problem. That can mess it up. So...they kill ya...to be honest, I don't know any other way to explain it, man. You know people normally just use my power to kill people and become a king and know this already. "
"This is outrageous. "
" bro. Look if you do this I will be able to get their powers and you will be able to do so much more than what I offer "
I tilted my head
" what can you do? Know what never mind. I will just talk to them and figure things out. "
He groaned and his form melted down sagging and it shot back up reforming
"Is there not anything that you want? Anything in the world? Gods don't put themselves in physical forms. They give people power and can make beings to hunt you. And if they care enough to come down themself. Ha, good luck."
I stopped and thought about it trying to weigh the options of pissing off higher beings.
Suddenly. I found something.
"Can you bring back the dead..."
He stopped confused.
" well...no "
" then I don't want anything "
" wait! "
He threw his arms out pleading
"I don't...but another God does..."
He crosses his arms smiling. He had left the question hanging letting me reconsider his offer.
I stopped and thought for a while before looking back up to him.
I let out a sigh and looked him in the eyes
" ok...you are going to help me get my father back. "
The demon smirked.

There's a bad joke in Gnosis, it goes like this: "How do you know if the fox in front of you is a vulp?" The responder asks how, and the punchline is "Ask them. If they say yes, they're a vulp. If they say no, they're a sarcastic vulp.". It's a dumb joke, but there's a kernel of truth to it: Looking at a vulp that is currently quadrupedal, nude and silent, one would need to inspect their paws to tell they're not an ordinary fox. The reason it's allegedly funny is all three of those are rarities on account of them being people and it's so unlikely you're ever going to be confused that there's supposedly humor in suggesting the hypothetical. (You'll note the words "allegedly" and "supposedly".) Nevertheless, there's a good reason these fox-people look so much like a real fox, and it's because they are a real fox. Let me explain.
This setting's Precursors (if the name didn't tip you off they're so long gone we don't know what they called themselves) felt the need to add "native" sophonts to every one of the four planets and nine moons they terraformed in this one star system, the inner worlds all got multiple, working with samples from some little blue backwater that forgot they were ever there and what little life was on each world to begin with just like they did for the rest of the ecosystem. In this case they literally just took red fox embryos from the aforementioned backwater planet, altered their genes to modify their anatomy and brains in particular so they could fill that role. Their hips are altered to support bipedal locomotion but don't look different externally when quadrupedal and the biggest visible change was moving their tiny fifth digit on their forelimbs closer to the other toes (or I guess "fingers" now), elongating and turning it so it functions as an opposable thumb. Altering existing or extinct animals was how they made all their artificial sophonts, even the really weird ones like the dragons or those things from Lum with eleven heads, but by this point in the timeline they got lazy. They were already on worlds 6-13, they had to light up a brown dwarf as an artificial undersized star to make even eight out of its over two hundred moons habitable. All the creativity by this point in the project was going into "how", not "what" and the biology team was running low on ideas, so they didn't make any extraneous changes like they normally would. Fox, smart brain, paw hands, tweaked hips, boom, fox-person, done. Moon-planet of the fox-people, slap it on a plastic lunch box and get the spy drones set up so the tourists can covertly watch the fox tribes build their brand new fox civilization and fox culture until they have fox cities with fox art and fox fasion and form fox countries with fox governments and intercontinental fox trade networks that fight fox wars motivated entirely by the greed of individual foxes but presented to the poor foxes fighting them as moral crusades in the name of their fox gods and fox nations to preserve their fox values, fox traditions, fox beliefs and way of fox life.
My question is: What do you think of this approach to animal people? What do you think of them looking so much like the existing animal that you have to rely on them doing people things or detailed knowledge of their anatomy to tell they're not the regular animal they're based on?
Or, more bluntly, I think they're lazy and they're supposed to be lazy but are they too lazy or am I good?

So, you said Lord Nicholas has no personality, which is true lol, but since I'm the devil's advocate, I took that as a challenge. Make yourself comfortable for a long read. Have some popcorn.
Why is this guy more of a tragic character, rather than a villain? And how does a man lose identity, and becomes a monster through desperation? I'll answer this for you below.
• Throughout Plague Tale Innocence, there are various signs that although he is personally close to Vitalis (no use of titles or formalities when speaking to each other) he is the execution, and not the mastermind behind the plans. For example, when Hugo's Macula was to be tested, he urged Vitalis on to put an end to the plague already, they are not here to play games.
• In the very same chapter, we get a little insight on what he believes and thinks about the conflict between the Inquisition and the De Runes. He doesn't understand why Beatrice De Rune resists their persuasion for information regarding the Macula, since their goals are shared -> ending the Plague. Ultimately, he blindly believes Vitalis wants to control the Plague to save them. And he does anything, ANYTHING to make that happen.
Commit genocide against peasants, and in the end, even go as far as killing Hugo.
Now, let's take a little turn to make a background check for this guy. Or at least what is hinted, and what can be assumed with intuition and theories.
• Like I mentioned before, him and Vitalis are personally close, and in the preultimate chapter of Plague Tale: Innocence, after his death, guards talk about him in the city. They are confused why Vitalis hasn't sent anyone for his search (I'll get to that one later), since he was his Protégé. This alone in itself wouldn't mean anything, but right after that a guard added "Maybe he found himself another Protégé" regarding Hugo of course.
Since this game is about innocence and children, it's almost safe to assume that Nicholas likely got taken under Vitalis' wings just as Hugo was now in the present. That would explain why they are close, and why Nicholas blindly trusts his master. Another dialogue backs this up, between the Arch Bishop and Vitalis. "Puppets like you will kneel and beg me to save them." and look who appears and kneels right there and then? Lord Nicholas. This is my theory, I can back it up but it isn't 100% surely true of course. Take it with a pinch of salt please.
• Now, time to get to why Vitalis didn't send anyone after Nicholas' disappearance... We saw nothing of the two months Hugo spent in the Bastion, but based on the Cathedral's state, it's safe to assume things didn't go that well with controlling the Macula. The plan was to get Hugo through the threshold finally, so that the Conjuration can begin. (Note to self: another essay later about that one). Although they tried to push Hugo through with hurting his mother, it didn't work. Because of this, Vitalis tasked Nicholas with taking Hugo to his sister, to end her life. This is simple, but it doesn't stop here.
In the chapter Blood Ties (where we control Hugo), we already meet an impatient Nicholas who wants to put an end to the Plague. Not only that, but let me get to one crucial sentence told by Vitalis. "Nicholas... You cannot understand." This hints at the disagreements between the two, and that Nicholas is not indulged in how this should be done. Nicholas tries to help Vitalis up, but he rejects the help too. It's quite symbolic for the one-sided trust between the two. Due to this growing mistrust, and how Vitalis didn't expect Nicholas to come back after his mission later on, to me it seems like Vitalis cut the ties and sent him exactly to his death to get rid of him.
• Vitalis' plan was never to get rid of Hugo once they pass the threshold ("I have a lot to teach the Carrier, and his friends."), and knew well, that Nicholas has no chance against Hugo and Amicia with the rats alongside them. He sent the man who trusted him the most to his death, and with that also chose his ultimate protégé - Hugo. It's also likely that Nicholas' mistrust grew because his position in the hierarchy was compromised, since it's likely Vitalis got obsessed with Hugo, and Nicholas almost realized he is played with. There is also the idea, that Vitalis sent him away to actually save him from the white rats he meant to send on the crowd anyway. Anyway, Vitalis is for another essay...
• The betrayed, the sacrificed. Who is he? There is absolutely little we know of him, except for his title and occupation. What always speaks in Plague Tale: Innocence though, is the design. I mean look at that drip- sorry.. In "A Making of Plague Tale: Innocence" the creative developers mention the importance of faces, and overall pure, intuitive impressions we get of our characters.
• There is only one character whose face we never see, and that is Nicholas. That doesn't only play as a psychological trick to make him more terrifying, but also hints at certain points. First of all, his robes are Dominican. This is historically fitting (although there were no dominican knights) since Dominicans were those entrusted by the Church to handle trials against heresy and begin inquisitions. This also hints that he is very religious and dedicated to serving the (assumed) good. I know, no way. Let's not forget about how faded out it is, or bloody. In NO way he is a good guy, but a tragic believer? Likely. Under the robes is the armour, which is hit all around. It's no news we talk about a very experienced and efficient knight who also happens to be serving Vitalis (NOT the Church! Explained in another essay, chill.). Knights start their training at 7, and only nobles are in for the job, obviously. I made the connection, that since he likely knows Vitalis from his childhood, and his training also began when he was 7 years old, and his name was Nicholas...
Side note: In medieval times, children were named after Saints to inwoke their blessing, in this case, among many things, protecting children.
It's likely that he himself, just like those he hunts, was an orphan, perhaps even a sinner, who had to be saved by none else, than Vitalis. Give it a thought, maybe he was a lost little boy like Hugo, whose innocence was stolen way too early. With how Plague Tale likes to play with irony and parallels between characters, I don't see this as unlikely.
• All in all, he is what his occupation is, and nothing human. He is the machine that serves. The cross, the judgement. We cannot see his face, because he has no identity except what Vitalis gave him. His role, his title, his mission (perhaps even name). As it can be seen, Hugo too, was dressed in robes showing the Inquisition's sign, like a mark of ownership over him.
• From the very start of the story, he was the representative of that time's barbaric cruelty, unforgiving, misplaced judgement. And as though from the children's perspective he was a monster from the very beginning, how did it go down? As I said before, he has no identity except his committment, and through that his morals, ambitions are shown. At the very start, they ambushed the De Rune estate, and we CANNOT know, if the violance was planned beforehand or it came due to Robert's resistance.
People were taken hostage for questioning, the goal was to capture Hugo, the Carrier, and Beatrice, the only one who can help them understand the plague's origins. It was bloody, but after this chapter, you can hear guards clearly say "capture children" and not just Hugo. Now, unbelivably, I don't think he wanted Amicia bad at the start. They confront each other in the English camp for the second time (where he paid a ransom for both of them), where he tries to negotiate with her to give them Hugo and stop running. Later his methods change, telling the plain truth that there is nowehere for her to go out there (These methods of convincing show a lot of personality and insight especially in the boss fight).
Later on, it's mentioned Vitalis is going hard on him but "he is used to it". Again, their shared history is hinted. The hunt for Hugo is fruitless still, and the plague is spreading day-by-day.
Next we hear from him, is in the chapter where we visit the city with Amicia. Or rather, that he is not exactly participating in the mission killing the sick. Since him and Vitalis disagree with methods of solving the Plague, and he is occupied with catching Hugo, there is a possibility this order of slaughter was carried out without his consent. Though, this is a high take and it would be totally in character to do such a task in the means of self-preservation.
Amicia's visions of him from Penance is not reliable, but at the very same time she clearly dreamed what happened and it's likely she mixed reality with hallucinations from exhaust. If, the hallucinations were true, that means Hugo did hear Amicia, but Nicholas directly diverted his attention from her and led him away.
It's hard to speculate if he did this to let nature do its work, or to actually show mercy, which is equally possible, since it was clear from the beginning that even though she killed his men, he knew she is simply running and kills as a means to survive.
Now, as I explained earlier, many things go down when Hugo resides in the Bastion, and we can only guess what that causes. I mentioned Nicholas' growing distrust, now let me introduce you to the psychological denial he experiences during the boss fight, along with his reflections pointing at the children. The man, becoming the monster. The fire (another essay since fire in Plague Tale is symbolic) causing him to destroy himself.
In the chapter Remembrance he goes to the Château d'Ombrage along Hugo, to ensure the boy passes the threshold with killing his sister, with this enabling Vitalis to pass as well. At first, Nicholas is quite calm and confident, sending Hugo to kill her "Go, and do what has to be done.". Interestingly, despite this, he still has his sword prepared, which shows he still doesn't trust Hugo. Later on, he knocks Arthur out, but doesn't kill him senselessly, despite the fiasco at the English camp. He takes Amicia to Hugo, and now threatens him to kill her, or else he kills his mother in front of him. After that, he tells him, if Hugo does as he tells him so, maybe Vitalis keeps him by his side.
This could hint that only by accomplishments such as this, and proving devotion, can one remain important in Vitalis' eyes. Also, that maybe, Nicholas had to go through something similar, "She means nothing to you now".
Doubts and frantic impatience take hold, which ultimately lead him to take matters into his own hands. He decides to kill her, himself. As he pushes Hugo away, she calls him a bastard, which he then turns back at her, to question her morality and self-righteousness. She betrayed him, that is why he gave himself up. It can be perhaps far-fetched, but this also can count as self-reflection already. Betrayal -> causing giving up, which happens later to him too.
After Arthur "takes care of him" (not exactly...) and the siblings reunite, Nicholas wakes up and this time, immediately kills Arthur. The death is not just a shock value as many believe, it also shows the already progressing monster stepping forth, and losing humanity entirely.
The boss fight has three phases. His methods at provoking the children, and self-reflect change and become way more intense with time.
In the first phase, he tries to separate them and tells Amicia that he knows it must be difficult to live in the Carrier's shadow. Also, that they are terrified. He is poking at her most vulnerable place, their biggest fear, which's "face" is ultimately him. Also, reminding Amicia of her biggest desire, that is to be acknowledged by her parents. Especially this can count as self-reflective, since as I said earlier Nicholas likely noticed Hugo is slowly replacing him in Vitalis' eyes. The wish to excell, and be acknowledged for the devotion is a deep scar this character could carry. He also reminds them of how their father died, to remind them of honour, which Nicholas obviously has a twisted sense of.
In the second phase, his first voice line shows surprise and fear, and anger in response to those feelings. He is more reckless and aggressive too. Here, again, he manipulatively reminds them how little they can do, and threatens them. This is both calculated and instinctual, since he says such things to bring the children out of their hiding places, but at the very same time also because he is slowly losing himself. There are also lines which can be reflective to his beliefs and assumptions based on himself, such as: "Your sister won't be able to save you child.... You are alone." There were already connections made between how Vitalis saved him, and if one puts it all together, this line shows how he doesn't believe in the siblings' bond, because his own bond with Vitalis broke, and Nicholas is (alike to Hugo) alone. Or there is also the line "What do you think you can do? You are nothing. [...]" I wanted to highlight this line because Plague Tale (among many other things) is about the helplessness one faces trying to protect loved ones, and/or trying to rewrite their fates. The fact that Nicholas dehumanizes them entirely, shows he knows the fact one, them or him, cannot change the course that has been set, but he is still in denial trying to fight it (a lot like Amicia in Requiem, by the way. Also, fire (this is why that needs another essay....).
In the third phase, he becomes uncharacteristically reckless and desperate, where he succumbs to the wrath and, his fate. "Come to me, come into my arms my dear children." His sanity decreases and he knows death is unavoidable. The question left is whenever he can bring them down with himself or fails. And failure, is unacceptable. He is better dead, than failed. "I will teach you the meaning of sacrifice" this line shows that likely, he accepted his last quest knowing well he is going to die probably. That he rather burns himself, bring hell, than letting go. He keeps shouting the motto of his order, because that is the only thing that he clings to. It's pathetic and forced, inhumane. "[...] We'll die together" <-> "I will boil your blood until it spurts from your eyes", "You are going to pay, [...]" by this time, he keeps switching tactics at approaching and luring them out, frantic and monstrous. His words mean nothing by this time and desperation takes hold. What line of him is the purest, rawest, and most honest, between all the threads and claims, self-convincing attempts to maintain devoted is this: "The pain... To feel oneself alive... And deliver death." This line might seem like one among the many terrible threats, but it in fact shows his deepest belief. That is, of pain and life. Sacrifice and death. That those who live, have to kill, and that is what it means to exist in this world.
• In Plague Tale Innocence and Requiem, we see Amicia's development into a murderer who follows similarly blind committments.
She ultimately becomes, what she condemned, and what caused her great misery. What, in the end, she herself becomes if Hugo doesn't lead her on the right path. A monster.
So, to sum it all up, Lord Nicholas represents the human being of that time, whose identity is what he serves, and nothing else.
It makes one selfless, righteous, but at what cost? Violence spreads from one person to another, while everyone tries to save what is precious to them. Hope this helped seeing him as more human and with more personality. Cheers. A few more points I couldn't exactly integrate are the following:
• A few things showing the underlying morality and plain intentions: at first he tried to negotiate with both Robert, Amicia, and Beatrice as well. He condones stealing entirely. He doesn't kill Arthur at first.
• In the concept art he is left handed. In Middle Ages, left handed people were considered sinful, since it was the "devil's hand". This added with the self-punishing- self-destructive-Catholic mindset, added with his devotion, signs that he is penitent, and does what he should for a greater good, a salvation, and carries the burden of "sacrifice".

I have been hearing the constant praise of this game and the plot lines on this subreddit for months now. I don't understand how anyone can recommend this game. The pacing is super slow, the gameplay flow is generic, and all the mechanics are so terribly developed, the crafting and collecting, the nonsensical story legit makes no sense - it all started with this Annihilation Line of T800's and then you're just free roaming around Los Angeles and the Annihilation Line just disappears? Replaced with dumb robots that just walk back and fourth on a preset line and happen to all hang out right next to giant bombs of fuel - I think the humans would have won the war a long time ago and would present no threat if this was even canon. I used the plasma sniper rifle and was taking shots from afar and the T800 just stands there most of the time. Why is there terminals with screens and other bs in the Skynet outposts? If they are all connected and receiving information there wouldn't be some human-like terminal setup to hack.
It's seriously a disappointing game and it took me MONTHS to finish and I had to just suck it up and get through the slog of gameplay because I was hoping the plot or the details would expand some part of the story line but it provided zero additional context or value to the lore.
What exactly about the game are people referring to when they say good? I've played the PS2 game but this is just as bad as the other Terminator games. The ending scenario was lame too you don't even get to see inside of Skynet. Not to mention the TDE that doesn't have some cool particle effects or anything you just get shown a power point of slides.
I would NOT recommend this game. I would also rate this game an easy 2/5, 4/10. I give it some merit for trying to do something in the universe and the bigger set pieces can be interesting but overall hardly worth the experiences.

hi everyone, looking for someone advice.
i (F,18) have been with my partner (M,20) For three years. we have lived together for nearly a year as his family moved away and he didn’t want to leave our town with myself and his friends being here, so my mum has let him live with us.
he is a lovely boy. he makes me laugh every day and is really sweet and caring to me. i can’t really fault our relationship much. we don’t really argue. he is genuinely my best friend.
lately i have been getting overwhelmed with the fact that i am in this serious relationship. i worry about not exploring myself. what would i be doing if i was single? am i too young?
a problem that has been coming up is that he is an extremely shy person to the point where he sometimes can’t socialise normally. i try to be super accepting of it but sometimes i find myself getting annoyed (i feel awful about it). i know he can’t help his anxiety. i am worrying about the future, every social event that comes up, i have to worry about him wanting to leave early and sitting there looking miserable. it’s slowly starting to make me just dread things.
another point is that he isn’t very motivated and i am highly motivated. I am doing a bachelor of psychology and working full time. he quit his job 2 months ago ( i don’t blame him, it was awful ) and hasn’t gotten one since. he has been applying and going for interviews but i have had to pretty much force him to. he is heavily into politics and wars around the world. he says to me what’s the point in doing anything when we are all going to be dead from the war in a few years. we are living in upper middle class australia by the way. he is very negative on his outlook of life. i know that he battles with depression so i true to uplift him as much as i can. but he consumes so much negative content and thinks there isn’t any point in getting an apprenticeship ive been encouraging him to do, because “we will all be dead from the war soon anyways”. and i am not trying to disregard the war, i know it’s a reality.
the advice that i am looking for is, i love him so much, does anyone have any suggestions on how to over come these feelings? i want it to work between us because he genuinely is so beautiful towards me. i just don’t want these faults to eventually come to a point of me snapping if that makes sense. i just don’t really know what to do, and i’ve been feeling very unsure and confused lately.

As far as adversarial sparring partners on the show, you've got Joy vs Elisabeth/Meghan, Rosie vs Elisabeth, Candace vs Raven, etc but Sunny and Alyssa I think deserve a spot near the top. They are often the two that have their finger on the pulse of politics/culture, plus the energy is great when they debate cuz it's almost personal. That's good tv and we all know it. I think Sunny wanted to haze Alyssa a bit before letting her join the table too, and whoopi let her try and drag her like every show for a while there about the Trump stuff. I think Alyssa was good though, and she defends herself quite well
My point is the other ladies need to step it up. Cuz their takes on these issues are getting so basic. I can't clock Joy for much, she is an icon, but for as much as she says she's a 1 issue voter for the environment, she has a really closed mind about RFKjr's candidacy.
Sara calls herself an independent but literally doesn't want anyone to even consider voting for a third party until 2028.
Ana is just downright cynical and repetitive. "These are you two choices. get over it"... girl what? and then in the next breath, she's slobbering about democracy and Joe biden's decency. I don't even want to do an elaborate take down, she's just trying to keep her job as cohost as the reformed republican that argues exclusively or democrats, but that's not really a demographic to appeal to out there.. just a liberal wish. Nikki Haley voters aren't a real constituency to court.
Whoopi... Hell, where do we even start. All over the place lol. Kinda always has been, but you can see how extra it is when Joy mods. Used to be funny actually, but I think the ladies are scared of her, which is why I liked when the real brash conservative women go toe to toe with her. Like Ann Coulter, Judge Jeanine, Meghan Mccain, even Elisabeth. Actually, Lindsay Grainger was great at standing Whoopi down. The ladies are literally scared to cite a poll around her, I just can't. I like my political discussions to be a little more elevated, and Whoopi drags it into the gutter sometimes.
Anyway yea, Sunny and Alyssa. They aren't scared to call Biden old, talk about Gaza war, call out how dumb it is to smear young voters... I hope the political discussions are guided by them this summer, because they get what the debate is about, and where it's headed. It's probably not an arbitrary discussion about "democracy" or whatever that means, but one about the price of eggs, or these crazy war policies abroad (the actual things that decrease our value of life at home)