[Thumbnail🪞]
Hello, and welcome to the second installment of my Emilie Autumn write-up. (Per mod recommendation, new installments will be posted every two or three days – there are seven in total.)
Emilie Autumn is a singer-songwriter with an elaborate semi-fictional universe and a complicated relationship with her fanbase. I strongly recommend you check out Part 1 🔍 before reading.
In this installment, we dive into the drama surrounding the contents of The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls / TAFWVG – the half-autobiographical journal, half-historical fantasy that has defined EA's artistic output and fanbase lore for the past fifteen years. It's still more “Hobby History” than “Hobby Drama” proper, but trust me, it provides valuable context about the general vibes of the fandom.
Content Warning throughout this installment for themes of sexual and gender-based violence, including torture, sex trafficking and femicide, as well as attempted suicide, mental illness, hospitalization, and ableist discrimination; brief mention of Holocaust imagery. Oh, and obviously, spoiler alert for the whole book – but that's comprehensive investigative work for ya!
🪞 = picture / visual 🎵 = music / audio 📺 = video 📝 = primary source / receipt 🔍 = press article / write-up / further reading 🎤 = song lyrics 🐀 = anonymous fan confession 🦠 = reaction / meme

OVERVIEW: “A DOCUMENT IN MADNESS – THOUGHTS AND REMEMBRANCE FITTED” (LAERTES, ACT IV, SCENE 5)

...When the book was first released, I had only two aims - to explain myself to a growing audience that thought they knew me but didn't truly, and then to expose the corruption of the modern day mental health care system and educate in order to inspire at least a tiny bit of change. (EA answers a fan question on Goodreads, 2018 📝)

The Book begins with Emilie Autumn...
...Well, technically The Book begins with a malapropism. Wrong “foreword”, EA! 🪞 Which is our first clue that despite the myriad revised editions this book has gone through, it could probably have done with a little more initial editing, and perhaps a bit more room to reflect, between the events related and the publication of the first final draft.
Anyway, The Book begins with first-person narrator Emilie Autumn surviving a suicide attempt, stating this to her shrink over the phone soon after. Her shrink tells her that she is currently a danger to herself, and that he won't refill her prescriptions (the meds for her bipolar disorder) unless she immediately checks herself into inpatient care. And it all goes downhill from there.
The psych ward stay at an LA hospital lasts longer than the anticipated 72 hours, and proves overall more traumatic than therapeutic. An increasingly distressed Emilie suffers through the inappropriate comments of creepy doctors, the poor bedside manners and general cluelessness of emotionally numb nurses, the intimidating presence of armed guards around the hospital, being stripped of her belongings and privacy, the lack of transparency or actual care in the ward, her partner's indifference during the occasional phone call, the bad hospital food (I can see how that would suck in such a context), having to repeatedly fill out forms and questionnaires (okay, that's annoying too), a patient eating yoghurt in her vicinity (uh...) and staff members existing while fat (wait, what?). She documents the whole unpleasant experience in a journal that she has to turn in at bedtime.
One day, upon recovering her notebook in the morning, Emilie starts finding torn scraps of ancient wallpaper between the pages. They're scribbled with letters from a young woman named Emily, who is also locked up against her will in a psychiatric facility – namely, a women's insane asylum... in Victorian England. Awaiting each new time-traveling letter with bated breath, Emilie gradually learns that the Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls (yes, that's its actual name within the story) isn't so much a hospital as it is a dumping ground / torture dungeon. Women – who aren't so much “crazy” as unconventional and inconvenient to men – are kept in chains, subjected to leechings and ice baths, pimped out as human exhibits and sex slaves, and killed en masse in gruesome medical experiments by a psychopathic doctor who's like a Disney-villain take on Dr Mengele. “My life and hers are basically the same. Nothing has changed at all in mental healthcare,” thinks Emilie in the modern-day psych ward, as a nurse offensively tells her that it's time for art therapy.
Alright, that was a long summary, and I'm showing my bias a little bit. But the contents and tone of the book are relevant to this write-up – as are, of course, the common criticisms that arose in the years after its publication.

A (BI)POLARIZED RECEPTION

In the spirit of neutrality and historical accuracy, I will quote some 5-star Goodreads reviews that I think reflect the reasons why many people genuinely loved and continue to love the book...

I don't think I've ever read anything like TAFWVG. It is amazing, horrifying, and both a work of magical fiction and brutal honesty. I felt like for the first time I had found someone who could understand how I feel. I identified on so many levels with this book, both physically, mentally, and emotionally. I appreciate Emilie as an artist so much more now because I realize just how much of herself she puts into everything she does. (...)
What scares me is that it is so incredibly real and several times, I felt as if Emilie was speaking thoughts I've had myself. (...) So many of the things she expressed during states of depression for these characters make so much sense to me, though, and I greatly value how real and honest this is. (📝)
Having some of Emilie Autumn's actual handwriting in the book made it much more personal and made it seem much more like a journal than just any ordinary book. This is a must read for any "muffin" (Emilie Autumn fan). (📝)

...and some of the less scathing and more nuanced 1-star reviews, highlighting common complaints about the book's contents and tone:

The writing was not strong enough to handle the story being told and there were so many issues from how mental health was handled to the entitled behaviour of the main character to the treatment of all the other characters, I ended up giving up in frustration. It’s a shame as this could have been a really interesting exploration of the mental health system in America paralleled with that of the 1800s, but instead just turned into a lot of, in some cases offensive, ramblings. (📝)
I was shocked in the opening pages by the voice of the main character, and I don't think it was a technique to give her depth. It sounded like genuine elitism with the flavor of "I should be allowed to kill myself." Um. Ok??? (...) I wish the prose had been tolerable for me to get to the high concept journal entry stuff, but everything that the premise promises... from the quality of what I read, it falls very, very short. There are horrible elements to being inside an institution: it's scary, it's dehumanizing, it definitely isn't the "best" space for healing... but this author does not have the knowledge, expertise, or perspective to provide an adequate critique. (📝)
The torture and rape are mentioned as daily occurrences and, while I'm sure such things did occur in Victorian times, it was so overdone and hinted to with such macabre glee, I felt I was watching someone's sordid fantasy. (...) This is not a solemn look at mental illness from the inside. It is a glamorized, twisted, fetishist notion of mental illness and asylums which made me feel truly uncomfortable. (📝)

...I opted not to quote this one because it was too savage and not always fair, but it's a fun read.
In short, the people who enjoy the book tend to praise the engaging storyline, the witty and eloquent writing, the raw authenticity, the depths of insight, and getting to take a peek inside EA's brain. The people who don't, on the other hand, criticize the unbalanced structure, the overwrought and rambling style, the obvious distortions or straight-up fabrications (we'll get to that, all in good time), the acute main character syndrome, the seeming lack of self-awareness or appropriate research (despite claims of “historical accuracy”), the flippant and even dangerous claims about highly sensitive topics, and being made to read stuff that should probably have stayed firmly concealed inside EA's brain.
Many critics report being put off by EA's high opinion of her own intellect and booksmarts, as she routinely assumes staff members to be too dim-witted, uncultured and incompetent to be worth engaging with. (Which is a bit rich, coming from a self-tutored West Coaster who inaccurately claims to speak “the Queen's English” and misspells “in memoriam”.) She takes this disdain to... really mean places. Some readers were especially taken aback by a series of straight-up petty, out-of-left-field fatphobic jabs. 📝
Others cringed (and this is a serious problem for an author who claims to be an advocate) at EA's blatant disdain of any other form of mental illness besides her own. This mostly shines though callous and cruel descriptions of those she calls “the real crazies” – meaning the other patients. By callous, I mean she spends several paragraphs calling a detox patient cute nicknames like “the Duchess von Nutsberg”, “Miss Nuttersby” or “the Mayor of Cracktown” as she gleefully mocks her withdrawal meltdown – with a subtle dig at Courtney thrown in for good measure (second screenshot, end of first paragraph). It's one of the only instances when EA expresses sympathy for the staff; as she hears them brutalizing the problematic patient in the other room, she muses that, in their place, she would probably want to “bash [the woman's] head against the wall”. This is intended as comic relief from her own narrative.
But the most all-encompassing complaint is EA's perceived glamorization of mental anguish and extreme suffering. (Not the gross kind that's experienced by lowly crack addicts – the other kind, the refined kind.)
This complaint refers, in large part, to the book's apparent glorification of self-harm, and categorically negative depiction of psychiatric care. On top of the two main narratives, the book also included three pre-hospitalization journals – the “Cutting Diary”, the “Suicide Diary” and the “Drug Diary” – whose unfiltered, unapologetic contents (including high-contrast pictures of fresh self-harm cuts) were very polarizing.
I will note that EA herself, in interviews, has overtly stated that she's not anti-medication or therapy, and that physically hurting yourself is not a great strategy in the long run. But these nuancing statements are not present in the book. Some former fans have cited EA and her work as a reason why they delayed seeking medical help for their own self-harm and mental health issues.
The complaint also refers to the abundant depictions of tragically gorgeous women being subjected to the most odious abuse, and justifying their self-destructive tendencies as appropriate reactions to said abuse.
Mmh, what did that one Goodreads reviewer mean about “someone's sordid fantasy”...? CW for rape, torture, murder. This is the way... step inside! 🎵

PSYCHSPLOITATION EXTRAVAGANZA

Come see our girls! Crazy girls! If you're willing to be thrilled, this is a hell of a ride! Those girls! Crazy girls! They're hot! They're nuts! They're suicidal! (“Girls! Girls! Girls!”, 2012 📺🎵)

Many comparisons have been drawn with the video game Alice: Madness Returns and the movie Sucker Punch. (In fact, EA got thiiis close to accusing Zack Snyder of plagiarism📝, but wisely stopped short.) In my humble opinion, those similarities are essentially cosmetic, and don't really cut to the quick of what makes TAFWVG – and what makes it so familiar, yet so bizarre within its purported genre. So allow me to share my white-hot take on this self-published fantasy novel from the first Obama presidency.
You heard it here first, folks, and only fifteen years late: TAFWVG is basically a Sweeney Todd reskin of Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtues 🔍), by the infamous Marquis de Sade.
I'm doubtful that Sade was a conscious, direct influence on EA, and the two books are obviously very different in style and explicitness – but they have many, many tropes in common. Hear me out.
Both Emily-with-a-Y and Justine are virtuous, pure-hearted heroins of singular eloquence and beauty (or, for those familiar with literary parlance, “Mary-Sues”) who have The Absolute Worst Luck. Both grew up around wealth and sophistication, but abruptly found themselves poor and alone in the world as teenagers – though both are briefly reunited with a long-lost sister during the plot. (In both cases, one sister dies. Like I said, terrible luck!) Both find themselves in a world of sin and depravity that they vehemently reject, while almost all the other characters gleefully revel in base greed, power schemes, and pure sadism.
After fleeing her convent school to escape the indecent advances of a priest, Justine is entrapped by a gang of depraved aristocrats who use her as a sex slave before having her thrown in jail as a thief. A cold, unscrupulous older woman helps her escape, and forces her to join her gang of robbers. Soon, Justine falls in with a succession of colorful maniacs, such as a medical enthusiast who wants to vivisect his own daughter, a man who rapes women specifically to get them pregnant and kill their newborn babies, and an order of lurid monks who turned their convent into a private sex dungeon.
Compare with TAFWVG:
After being groomed by a human trafficking ring fronting as a music school, Emily is sold off to a depraved aristocrat who would use her as a sex slave – and who, we later learn, murdered one of his own daughters for fun during an orgy. She escapes, but is soon arrested and jailed as a thief for stealing a loaf of bread (I suspect that may draw on another classic of French literature 🎵📺). A cold, unscrupulous older woman bails Emily out, but only for a forcible transfer to the Asylum – which her doctor-son uses as an human experimentation lab and for-profit sex dungeon. When inmates inevitably get pregnant, they are forced to receive botched abortions and hysterectomies, and various other un-sedated mutilations, from a twisted surgeon who is implied to be (gasp!) a young Jack the Ripper.
(In both cases, I personally find that it's the sheer accumulation of impossibly sordid twists that makes the reading bearable, and possibly even fun, rather than just sickening. Each new misfortune is so fantastically awful that the whole thing becomes about as poignant and realistic as The Human Centipede.)
One last intriguing detail: not only were Justine and TAFWVG both written while “inside” (the Bastille and an LA hospital, respectively), both were also reworked by their author several times after publication. And both heroins' fates somehow got worse with every re-issue! Lest we forget: one narrative is a 2009 historical fiction that was meant to champion female empowerment, sisterhood, and more compassion in the treatment of mental illness. The other is 18th century non-con porn that was so brutally graphic, so outrageously deranged, that its author was deemed a menace to society and sentenced to live out his days... in an insane asylum. (Tangent: it's even more darkly funny when you know that 1. Sade was a legit monster, a repeat offender of heinous sexual crimes, but it was the freaking book that got him locked away for good, and 2. he was arrested while on his way to submit yet another version of the manuscript.)
What's interesting is that EA explicitly addresses – and ostensibly calls out! – the exact sort of exploitation and objectification, specifically of mentally ill women, which many readers feel she enacts in the book. It was a central theme in Opheliac: here's her discussing the erotic undertones in Romantic-era depictions of dying women. 🎤 In TAFWVG, the inmates are forcibly dressed with ethereal white gowns and flowers in their hair for a human exhibit / brothel that the doctors call “The Ophelia Gallery”. 🪞 Johns frequently pay to see the girls re-enact Ophelia's death in a bathtub; Emily deems this “madness at its most perverse”.
But then again, it's a time-honored tradition for exploitation media, both fiction and non-fiction – from Reefer Madness 🔍 to Cannibal Holocaust to Michelle Remembers – to cover its ass by clamoring that it's merely "raising awareness" and "showing the truth" of the horrors it depicts in exquisite, lurid detail.

”AFFLICTION, PASSION, HELL ITSELF, SHE TURNS TO FAVOUR AND TO PRETTINESS” (LAERTES, ACT IV SCENE 5): WINNERS OF THE 'MISS UNDERSTOOD' BEAUTY PAGEANT

A number of fans certainly raised an eyebrow at this darkly fetishistic aspect 🐀 📝 of the Asylum narrative, even when they couldn't quite put their finger on what didn't sit right with them. Some wrote it off as cathartic fantasy, like a lot of EA's work. Some expressed mild discomfort, and kindly called the book “paradoxical”. Others were outright disgusted by what they perceived as blatant hypocrisy and trauma-profiteering. The concept definitely hasn't aged very well; in fact, in recent years, there's been increasing pushback 🔍 against the “insane asylum” as a setting for horror fiction. Advocates find that those stories tend to reinforce harmful stereotypes against psych patients, trivialize medical brutality as entertainment, and make it even scarier for people to seek treatment when they need it.
But! For the book's first several years of existence, this discomfort was definitely not mainstream in the fandom. In fact, it was pretty marginal – underground, even; the general consensus was that the whole thing was awesome.
Let me illustrate. Soon after the book came out, EA got a tattoo on her right bicep that read “W14A” (Emily's assigned, tattooed number in the Asylum), to symbolize how she had been “branded for life” by her hospital stay. Over the following years, she started assigning “inmate numbers”, with a similar four-digit format, to fans who requested it online or during meet-and-greets. A number of Asylum forum members started using their unique number as a username or flair; to this day, some fans still use theirs to sign comments on EA's Instagram. A fair few also got their inmate number tattooed.
There are a few reasons for this years-long honeymoon period before the first waves of outrage. First of all, “years” is how long it took before a substantial portion of the active fanbase had actually read the book. On top of dispatching delays, the first and second editions were full-color hardbacks, selling in limited pressings at about $50 plus shipping, which a lot of youngepoorer fans could not readily afford: they had to rely on second-hand accounts from the ultra-fans who did manage to get their hands on a copy. And many such ultra-fans were also young people, who may have been led to EA by their own mental health struggles, a taste for the dramatic – and in many cases, sadly, a personal history of trauma that made it easy not to be phased. To a good part of EA's audience, the blunt violence and over-the-top edginess wasn't tacky or unsettling: it was unironically cool and genuinely relatable. Cool enough to overlook the bad takes and casual bigotry, if you picked up on them at all in the excitement.
Besides, EA pushed The Book so hard, as early as 2007, that before it was even officially released in late 2009, it had become the all-encompassing framework for the entire fan experience. From the music to the stage shows to the in-group slang and lore, everything was Asylum now. So I imagine that even if you hadn't read the book, or weren't all that into it, it was kind of a “tune in or else tune out” situation.
Anyway, that's about all I can think of to explain what possessed dozens, hundreds of fans, across continents, for years, to actually cosplay as “Wayward Victorian Girls” from the story (just to reiterate: mentally ill rape-and-torture victims who, by the end, are being killed in droves and either buried in mass graves or incinerated). I'm talking madwoman tousled hair, sleep-eludes-me smoky eyes, thigh-high black-and-white striped stockings, and virginal “hospital gowns” (white slip dresses), sometimes complete with fake blood splatter. Dressing up for EA shows, or public Muffin Meetups. Posing wistfully for artsy photoshoots in empty bathtubs or childhood bedrooms – or your local abandoned house, through the metal bars of a smashed ground floor window, so it looks like you're in jail. (No, I am not going to dig through DeviantArt for evidence of my claims. I'm assuming a number of the people in those pictures now have kids and stable jobs, and I'm afraid someone might put a hit on my head for causing their blunderyears to resurface.)
Look, I'm not clutching my pearls and saying that those dreamy-edgy visuals were all horrendously insensitive or caused any tangible harm. OR that there's no merit in “shocking” or “distasteful” art that takes a controversial approach to real-world horrors, including glamorizing them.
But even as an outspoken proponent of smut and an staunch cringe apologist, I do find it a bit surreal, looking back from the year 2024, how chill most of the fandom was with the core concept of LARPing as... survivors... of mass incarceration and torture... in striped uniforms... with numbers tattooed on their bodies...? Yeaaah, this feels more and more uncomfortable the longer I think about it. Your Honor, I plead collective insanity for this one. After all, as Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “you are what you pretend to be.”
*
Ah, well. Art sure is complicated! We can at least take some comfort in the fact that the Offensively Titillating material is mainly contained within the obviously fictional part of the book. Can you imagine the mess if, like the autobiographical portions, the Bedlam Softcore bits featured actual people from EA's real life?!
I mean. Given enough time, that could get pretty awkward.
...We'll circle back to that in the next installment.

TL: DR Summary:
Fei's Medium Output DD is comparable to Raian's Removal in Physical Strength, his linear movement speed is fast but certaintly slower than Rei's and is not enough to outright blitz, & his striking speed (his power strikes likely slower than Gaolang's Flash) can be dealt with via Pre-I and diverting the damage in various potential ways (limping, water kata, redirection Kata, Adamantine Kata etc) even if blows land, Tachypsychia can be countered by striking from outside of Fei's awareness, they all have shown better timing and precision in their counter-attacks, achieving better results despite having much less raw power than DD Fei, they make better combat decisions, and most of all they can all certaintly take him down once his stamina in DD lowers and his output drops.
Supporting Details
Speed & Strength
Firstly, Fei only knocked around Wakatsuki across the ring in DD with his first two hits by taking him off guard with a mid-range dash + punch combo. Off-guard martial artist= no bracing or steeling the muscles , no blocking with your arms, or rooting yourself on the ground with your feet muscles to enhance the force of friction with the ground etc, = Fei virtually only has to knock around Wakatsuki's body weight, and not his body weight + his muscle force strength . It shows at best Fei's torque overpowered than Waka in those moments due to his surprising speed, but Waka himself confirms 3 times via statements that he still has more raw power than (medium output) Fei, which is also proven by the fact that he was gonna bear hug Fei for the W until Fei was forced to go max output.
Furthermore, Fei even with kicks, let alone punches, was shown to not ragdoll Waka that far at any point afterward showing it was just mostly Waka just being off-guard from the first few times. And while his blows did put a big hurting on Waka, he furthermore he couldn't do enough damage to Waka with just his raw force as Fei himself comments that Waka is difficult to put down and is like a tanky video game boss, and very early on was already considering going max output to begin with, but only decided it against it because he knew the risks of going max output. His harrasment blood bullet attacks didn't work, and he never landed a fatal blow until the very end with the max-output counter punch. So Fei, even in Standard DD, doesn't think he had a way to defeat Waka other than just straightforwardly beating him up over a prolonged time period, and later wonders if the guy is even still a human that can be taken down.
. Making this all the more consistent is Waka saying the DD output is several times that of Ohma's Advance, but in the same breath mentions that Fei's power is PROBABLY> The removal ( Raian's Removal?) in momentary bursts, which makes it consistent since back in Ashura Waka was confirmed to be stronger than Removal Raian by Ohma, and we know Waka could stomach the blows of Julius, who was comparable in striking power to Waka. And while Fei is faster than Advance Ohma, this is consistent with Fei not being compared to Rei in movement speed, which makes for a much more tame speed scaling.
I think this makes consistent sense, because we know Base Ohma caught up to Base Raian after a year of training, yet they are still considered overall equals in the powerscale with both being compared to Lolong and Kanoh through manga and author statements, yet if Ohma's Advance was much better than Raian's Removal I'd expect Ohma to be much stronger than Raian in momentary bursts which is not how it's portrayed. And with Speed at this level, it's not the raw speed alone that does the high-level characters in, but rather the speed being unexpected. Fei's speed has been observed so it's not gonna be as likely to take these guys off guard with manga knowledge.
The same goes for striking speed, as we don't even have any confirmation that Fei's regular strikes in DD are as fast as Gaolang's Flash of Flicker Jabs, who in Ashura was stated by the narrator during Kuroki vs Kanoh to have the fastest blows of all the Kengan fighters ( so that would include Advance Ohma and Removal Raian), something which largely has carried over to the sequel given Gaolang only praises Lolong's Shoulder Rotation Jabs as being close to his Flash in speed, and otherwise only Carlos is explicitly noted to have faster jabs, largely due to being a bantamweight. And with a Jab, a lot of it's speed comes from precise technique as well, which Advance lowers for Fei, and ofc jabs sacrifice power for speed.
People call Fei out for needlessly imploding in the end, but I'd argue he didn't have any other out anyways, he needed to prove himself to Niko, so he risked killing himself as otherwise he was likely gonna outright lose regardless.
So taking note that DD Fei is generally below Waka in raw sriking strength, and keep in mind Ohma with Adamantine Kata could survive Waka's blows long enough to eventually get the W with Demonsbane. Same goes for Agito, who was said by the narrator during his fight with Kuroki could whether the few hits Waka landed in their fight as long as he was aware of them and could brace himself for them, and he has Adamantine Kata too himself. This is made consistent by Agito surviving the punches of ~75% Lu Tian, who isn't that far from his 96% self who rivaled Julius, Waka's peer in physical power.
So Fei's striking strength isn't gonna overwhelm to the point of death these Pre-I users who will generally be less caught off guard than Waka was, and can use Adamantine Kata or going limp in the muscles, and in Ohma's case, additionally Water Kata, Redirection Kata, and going limp in the joints (Shared by Lolong) as replacements for lacking Superman Syndrome. So Fei would have even more trouble than Waka did in putting these guys down, and his speed is not quite as overwhelming as often claimed.
Fei's Fighting IQ and Technique
To be clear, it was WAKA who tricked/goaded Fei into using the DD in the first place, because Waka had convinced Fei that he had sealed off his regular Niko Style ( when in reality he hadn't quite done so). So Fei is thinking that his regular niko style techniques won't work and bought Waka's bluff, and so thinks his only option for beating Waka is overpowering him with DD, and as addressed above, he couldn't even do even that quite right. To make matters worse, after stalling out the DD a bit and waiting for Fei to get tired, in the Lowest DD setting, Waka was able to bait and tag him with Blast Core and injure him a bit, even with Fei reducing the impact with water kata. So a big part of Fei's loss ultimately comes from Waka outsmarting him in truth. DD Fei didn't have the ability to think outside the box, and/or lacked the technique to put Waka Down, and it makes sense too that we know that the Advance still lowers your precision a bit, even if Niko style can still be used in the mode if you're skilled enough. Ironically, if he stuck to Base, didn't bite on Waka's bait, and used DD only sparingly, and continued to use more of his regular niko style creatively, he probably would have had ,theorectically, a greater chance of winning.
Compare and contrast this with Lolong one-shotting Toa Mudo, by using Toa Mudo's own right straight against him in a very well-timed counter ( the more powerful your strike, the greater the "car crash "effect) from essentially outside Mudo's awareness, landing a critical hit to his liver. And yes it was a one shot because these two fighters weren't shown fighting each other for that long prior to the liver blow counter- there was no other injuries shown on either character before that, and it's said that Lolong hasn't had a tough fight in Purgatory until Ohma. And Toa Mudo is the same dude who is comparable to Julius and Waka in physique. And Ofc, there's Ohma having Demonsbane which let him beat Waka back in Ashura. And for Ohma, we saw how even cleaning up his timing on his ordinary ironbreaker counter was something Raian called him out on, and we saw it improved against lolong.
https://preview.redd.it/kbeo196ebhxc1.png?width=225&format=png&auto=webp&s=e5c0590bf841701fe2fa6fa4dcac6fba53e3c1c0
So even ordinary counters can always be improved in their precision and timing, Shen's existence proves this even further, and DD would lower your overall precision so it makes sense that Fei would struggle a bit with landing proper counters on Waka even with enhanced speed and reflexes. So Ohma, Lolong, And Kanoh are clearly way more efficient than Fei with their technique timing and counters, and make better combat decisions.
It's just like Lolong said, Fei technically has "x10" the [raw] power as Ohma, but is less dangerous because his overall fighting technique and fighting IQ are much lower, and Rolon said this BEFORE Ohma was creatively using Advance in short bursts for a surprise factor, reaping all the rewards and minimizing the risks of Advance. Fei just kinda spammed continously up until he died and had no other bright ideas. As Niko 4 said during Raian vs Ohma in KAT, Martial arts Technique and Strategy exist to overcome those [rawly] stronger than you.
Tachypsychia
This is arguably the most powerful and busted ability in Fei's arsenal, yet also the most overrated at the same time.
https://preview.redd.it/1p4vtn1mbhxc1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=175265f7b1173fe2549e21284676d453877f4ca0
https://preview.redd.it/lgsseehnbhxc1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=029ced9b3050a2f404c812565b7ca921ee90c7e5
https://preview.redd.it/has39ncubhxc1.png?width=847&format=png&auto=webp&s=f390a6ba41e9932ffe6d2cd26c923b550a858b29
https://preview.redd.it/lfdubf9jchxc1.png?width=847&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b302bb1cd35cdb48c544c1e4ca6e86cf2c3823f
This feat of Fei dodging Waka's punch at the last second, while very impressive is overstated at times, Gaolang did almost the same thing to Kanoh here 1:1, but no one puts Gao as untouchably faster than Kanoh. So yeah, it's an impressive feat, and we know Fei's DD is faster sure, but we have seen it's not invincible.
More generally though, Tachypsychia isn't all powerful. Explosively increasing your sensory processing speed is nice, but it doesn't expand your attentional capacity. Human beings miss very slow moving, salient objects in their enviornment all the time, if their focus is occupied and they're caught off guard.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/but-did-you-see-the-gorilla-the-problem-with-inattentional-blindness-17339778/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/invisible-gorilla-experiment-goals-setting-process-milena-ribarova/
Humans can normally see things within a few hundred milliseconds, yet objects in our field of vision for upwards of 10 seconds can be missed ( a factor of 100 times slower) if our attention is directed elsewhere. If you're familiar with Hajime no Ippo and The Boxer :
It's shown for example Itagaki Manabu, who basically has a form of Tachypsychia/Bullet Time on top of immense movement speed born from being in the Zone basically,
>! suffered from a form of change blindness/inattentional blindness when he faced the much slower switch !<hitter Randy Boy Junior, Chapters 796-799 https://ippo.fandom.com/wiki/Bullet\_Time.
>! Itagaki did not notice Randy's unexpected stance switch and took a southpaw punch from outside of his awareness. !<
Aaron's sheer force of movement was able to lessen the effectiveness of Yu's tachypyschia by overloading his attention by shaking the ring while
creating air shockwaves at the same time naturally with each haymaker he threw, dividing Yu's attention and thus
slowing his processing speed.
This is why Kuroki, by making Kiryu forget about his right hand, could strike from outside of Fallen Demon's awareness.
I also don't think Ohma got much stronger after KVP until now. And in that time he showed the ability to hide a punch completely from all of Koga's senses, the inception of intent and the punch itself were all hidden in his blindspot despite him having the Fist Eye.
Kanoh and Lolong pulled off similiar tricks against Koga when training him, Lihito pulled it off against (an albeit tired) Koga, and Okubo used a similiar concept against terashi's more advanced Emperor's Eye). The Kengan Eye is functionally similiar to Tachypsychia, even if the mechanism is a bit different. The Kengan Eye is like a high speed camera, taking more images/frames per second than you normally can on average in a sense, allowing you to see objects in high motion while missing lessing less details per unit time, which makes the objects smooth, clear, and slower.
Tachypyschia doesn't necessarily increase frames per second, but it effectively "elongates" the duration of time with you experience each of the frames you do see, achieving the same goal of making high speed movement easier to track and boosting reaction times. Granted, Tachypsychia enhances the processing of all forms of sensory information, not just eyesight, but eyesight is still the most useful in a striking fight so the ability to counter Fist Eye would still largely transfer over, and this is where the superior skill over Fei helps a lot, Fei can be hit outside of his awareness in an attentional and/or visual blindspot.
In summary, worst case scenario they can stall Fei's attacks which will almost never catch them outside of their awareness until he gets tired , and if Waka can tag low output DD Fei with strategy, then so can these 3.

Hi
I'm trying to gather some statistics about structures and their HU values.
I implemented something alongside this VARIAN example.
and used the method Image.VoxelToDisplayValue to get the HU values, as suggested in another post from 5 years ago.
The issue I'm having: the values do not match those found in the contouring workspace for a regular (low-resolution) structure. However, when I convert the same structure to a high-resolution structure in the contouring workspace, it does have the same values (more or less).
Why do statistics (minimal and maximal HU value as well as standard deviation) change when converting the structure to a high-resolution structure? In my case, the standard deviation of HU values increases from 9 to 22, which is quite a lot. The structure isn't small either (>6cm³).
ESAPI seems to give the values from the high-resolution structure, but how would I get the low-resolution values?

MarvelNCU proudly presents…

STREETS RUN RED

Issue One: City on Fire
Story by u/VoidKiller826, u/Predaplant & u/FrostFireFive
Written by u/VoidKiller826
Edited by u/Predaplant & u/AdamantAce
*************************************************************
Recommended Reading:

• Fantomex #13 & #14
• Amazing Spider-Man #21, #22 & #23

*************************************************************
Paulie’s Warehouse, Midtown:
“Hey, you up to hanging out over at Little Russia after this? Heard some of the Cicero boys are making a memorial for their boss,” said a Maggia goon wearing Hammerhead’s colors. He was looking over an assault rifle, checking the weight and handle of the weapon before setting it on the table. “They said it would be nice if the other family soldiers joined in.”
His partner, an older Maggia soldier who had been part of the Hammerhead family since its inception, was placing a grenade on top of a pile inside a box, making a quick count for it before setting it on the same table. “Other family soldiers? Aren’t we all now under Hammerhead after Chaka’s job offed the other bosses in that mess in Purgatory?”
It had been a week since the Golden Tigers attacked the Purgatory nightclub, led by Chaka, now the leader of the Tigers after Billy Hao’s death. He and his followers were able to kill the other Maggia bosses who were meeting in the club, with the enhanced crime lord Hammerhead as the only survivor. In the aftermath, the other four families' leadership was gone. Hammerhead quickly took control of the situation and made a speech promising to avenge his peers’ deaths, declaring war on those who wronged them.
And so, the divided Maggia, became a united organization under Hammerhead, making the already large organization powerful.
“Don’t know, but I heard the capos in the other families aren’t happy about Hammerhead waltzin’ in. Especially the older guys,” noted a young man who joined the family only two years ago. “Some of the Silvermane guys reckon Hammerhead whacked ‘em to take all the families’ power for himself.”
He whispered the last part, making sure his colleagues didn’t hear him say it out loud.
The older mobster scoffed. “Gotta be careful throwing stones like that,” he said. “Hammerhead is the biggest earner, everyone knows that. If those old fossils wanted his place at the top they had plenty of time to make a play for it.”
“So that’s it then? Hammerhead’s the new Kingp—?”
“Get back to work you two,” one Maggia capo yelled from the office upstairs. “We are going to war here, not throwin’ a picnic!”
“Sure, skipper,” the older Maggia nodded then to his junior. “Don’t say what you just said ever again, not in front of the others… We got enough problems as it is.”
The two, alongside the other Maggia soldiers, went back to arming their weapons that were sprawled all over the long table. Weapons ranging from assault rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, grenades, handguns in different sizes, and even a few barbed-wire baseball bats for extra measure.
The newly united Maggia were eager to strike back, hungry for blood. The Golden Tigers’ attack was more than enough reason for the Maggia to start a gang war, and if they won it, no one will be able to stop Hammerhead and the Maggia from getting control over New York City’s criminal underworld.
And so, all over the city, various Maggia-owned warehouses had become an armory for soldiers of different families to come together and arm themselves for the coming fight. Costa, Cicero, Fortunata, Silvermane, Hammerhead, and even some of the smaller families who work under the table were all getting ready to fight Chaka and his Triad, and it would be a bloody affair.
\CRASH**
As they were arming their weapons, the sound of glass shattering rang from the ceiling above, and pieces of it began raining down on the Maggia who looked up in confusion.
\Clank**
Falling from high above and landing on top of the long table in front of the Maggia was a circular object, around the size of a large baseball. It was orange, with green highlights; from afar, you would think it looked like a pumpkin—
*BOOOM\*
The Pumpkin Bomb lit up with a fiery blaze, sending everyone who was near the table flying all over the room, their bodies charred and blown to bits. The grenades that were placed on the table also exploded the moment the Pumpkin Bomb activated, further causing a larger detonation.
Screams came from the Maggia as many were either burning or holding on to their missing limbs from the explosion. One of the Maggia looked up and his eyes widened in horror when he saw who was above them, smiling in glee at what had happened.
Hobgoblin howled in laughter as he threw a few more Pumpkin Bombs, and all detonated on impact. More explosions followed as the warehouse’s inferno grew and grew.
Atop his high tech glider, Hobgoblin watched the city around him as more explosions detonated from various Maggia-owned buildings that he had sent his followers, the Goblin Nation, to destroy.
“Sorry to cut this little relationship short, partner,” said Hobgoblin to himself as he watched the burning buildings like a child watching fireworks. “But the scene is set, and you are no longer needed in my play.”
Hobgoblin flew through the air, continuing on his rampage as he threw more Pumpkin Bombs at other Hammerhead businesses, raining hell down on those inside.
The Goblin Nation had declared war on the Maggia.
And the streets would run slick with their blood.
*************************************************************
Genghis Connie, Harlem:
“Food still up to your liking, Mr. Cage?”
Luke Cage looked up from his bowl of noodles to see an older man looking at him with a smile. He responded in kind and answered truthfully. “Just Luke, Mr. Lin. And this food right here, compared to the food I got from prison, is like it was sent from God himself for me to enjoy.”
Luke Cage never thought the day would come when he would call Genghis Connie’s food a gift from God, but after spending time in prison and enduring the cruelty of it, he considered any food as a blessing that he would never misjudge.
“That’s good to hear,” Mr. Lin, an older man who owned this establishment alongside his wife who cooked in the back, welcomed Luke the moment he stepped into their restaurant. “And consider this on the house for coming back home.”
Luke chuckled. “Mrs. Lin told you?”
“Ha!” The older man laughed. “She’ll have my balls if we let anyone eat for free! Not even Tony Stark gets that privilege.”
“He’ll respect that,” Luke noted and brought out a few dollars from his pocket, the same ones he had on him when he went to prison. Finally, he could spend them. “Here, and tell Connie I enjoyed the food.”
Saying his goodbyes, Luke stepped out into the streets and smelled the air. “Harlem… I missed this place…”
It had been a couple of days since he was released from prison after serving… God, he didn’t even remember how long; all of it was a blur in his mind. Being sentenced to life would mean just that, for life, behind bars, all for killing a truly depraved man like Zebediah Killgrave.
The law might have not favored him that day despite his friends’ best efforts, but he knew he would sleep well at night once a man like Killgrave was well and truly gone from the world.
As to how he got out, Tony Stark, the billionaire futurist and famous Iron Man, worked out a deal to get him out early, rubbing shoulders and making promises to a lot of people that Luke could do more good outside of prison. The most important request is not get into any troubles or break any laws, including committing vigilantism.
For now, while Tony was readying things, Luke could walk around New York unsupervised. As long as he kept himself out of trouble, there would be no problem.
And so, Luke walked around Harlem, his home, trying to reclaim that feeling of freedom. To smell the air, taste it, even if it was the usual New York stink… it beat out the cold air of a prison cell.
\BOOOOM**
Luke swiveled his head after hearing a loud explosion. He could see smoke rising in the distance, and the cloud was expanding, fast. Around him, the people of Harlem were in a panic. Some quickly ran in the other direction, others hid in their stores, and some were curious about what had happened, bringing out their phones to film it instead of calling for help.
‘The more things change…’
Despite his brain telling him to let the cops handle this, Luke’s heart told him to go towards the smoke. With his bulletproof skin, he could be of help. Running towards the cloud, he could hear more explosions from a distance.
His eyes widened in shock as he saw the burning building. He couldn’t make out what exactly caused the fire, but the screams were clear signs that there were people inside, and there were clearly a lot of them.
“DIE, YOU FREAKS!”
Luke quickly took cover, hiding himself. Hearing shouting and bullets being fired, He peeked his head out and saw a group of suit-wearing men in front of the burning building firing their weapons at another group wearing what looked to be Halloween costumes. Their clothes consisted of orange and blue tunics, and on their faces were goblin masks.
“Told you this building was Maggia!” called out one of the Goblins, hiding himself behind a car.
“Scream for me!” Another one of the Goblins shouted as they threw out a Pumpkin Bomb that was strapped on their belt. The moment it landed behind the suits, it exploded, sending them flying through the air, before they too got gunned down by the Maggia carrying assault rifles.
One minute, the neighborhood was quiet, lively even, and the next, war had come to its streets. And, from the sounds of the other explosion Luke could hear in the distance, it was happening everywhere, not just in Harlem.
“Sweet Christmas…” Luke Cage exclaimed in shock as he stared at the battle unfolding between the two factions. If he heard right, the suits were Maggia. It shocked him they were able to expand their reach to all the way out here in Harlem. He heard that after Daredevil - revealed to be none other than Luke’s own lawyer, Matt Murdock - dealt with Fisk, a sizable power vacuum opened up for the Maggia to vie for. But he never would have guessed they also had control over some of the gangs in Harlem.
The Goblins were people he had yet to read about: the news in prison wasn’t as up-to-date as people thought it was.
“Mom?”
Luke turned his head when he heard a child cry out nearby. He couldn’t be more than 12 years old, clearly lost and wandering in the chaotic streets of Harlem looking for a parent. And if he came any closer, he would get caught in the crossfire.
“Kid, get out of here—!”
He couldn’t get another word out as the Goblins threw another of their bombs toward the Maggia. The bomb blew up a couple parked cars, sending them flying everywhere and crashing toward the Maggia and the nearby storefronts.
One car was flying toward the child, who was staring in shock at the falling vehicle.
Springing into action, Luke ran toward the child and covered him with his body as the car landed on Luke’s back, almost knocking him over. Slowly and carefully, Luke lifted the car on top of him and tossed it aside, his clothes covered in burn marks and tears. His body itself was untouched.
The benefits of having bulletproof skin.
“You okay?” Luke asked the child, safely carrying him in his arms toward an alley nearby.
The child nodded, too terrified from all the chaos happening around him to respond.
“Alright, how about we find your mom?” Luke asked gently, and the child nodded. “Good, just tell me where you last saw her and you’ll be together in no time.”
Luke Cage buried his feelings deep in his gut. He could hear sirens in the distance. The smell changed from the usual NYC air. Now, Luke could smell burning. Burning, and blood.
*************************************************************
The Triskelion, East River
[...Just minutes ago, a series of bombings began across Manhattan. We have yet to confirm the origins of these explosions, but reports seem to indicate that these attacks have occurred in Midtown, Chinatown, Hell’s Kitchen, the Upper East Side, and Harlem, with numerous casualties.]
“It ain’t New York without another mess happening every other month…”
Fixing his arrows in his workstation at the Triskelion - SHIELD’s headquarters in New York - Clint Barton watched the news and couldn’t help but watch intently. He had just returned from a long mission in the distant nation of Madripoor, and was just about to sit down and enjoy a nice hot coffee in peace, only for it to be interrupted with this news.
[...We’ve just received word from Captain George Stacy of the NYPD of an ongoing battle between the Maggia crime syndicate and the infamous Goblin Nation across the city. Citizens are advised to stay indoors and find shelter from these skirmishes as authorities are deployed to maintain order.]
“Shit… Hobgoblin is on the move too? And here I thought Hammerhead taking over was bad enough…” Clint had to give it to the NYPD. They had a thankless job trying to keep the city under control with all these superpowered villains and heroes running around every day. And now, this bombing possibly turning into a gang war between two crews was just a cherry on top of the shit heap.
Other SHIELD agents nearby seemed to be watching the news as well. Some of them were on their phones, possibly with friends and loved ones in Manhattan, ensuring their safety. What confused Clint was that no one was rushing out to help; wasn’t SHIELD about security? What were they waiting for?
He felt a vibration from a phone nearby, his phone. Picking it up, he saw the name on it and couldn’t help but worry. Answering it, he called her name. “Kate?”
[Clint!] Kate Bishop said on the line in a frantic tone. [What the hell is going on? I’m back in NYC for five minutes and already things have gone to shit?!]
“Where are you now?”
[Over at the FEAST shelter! I managed to save a couple of people and got them to safety inside the building, the folks working here are a big help. But it’s getting bad, really really bad. A fully-blown gunfight’s broken out right outside!]
That was what Clint feared. He never expected Hobgoblin to suddenly start a war with Hammerhead, and from the sounds of it, it would only get worse if they didn’t put a stop to it.
“Listen to me,” Clint got up from his seat and began readying himself. “Whatever you do, keep those people safe and inside. The Maggia is bad enough, but if Hobgoblin and his crew are around, that means this is a full-scale war between the two factions,” he noted, grabbing as many trick arrows as he could fit into the quiver. “The cavalry’s on its way.”
[Bring me more arrows while you are at it, lost a couple when I had to stop a few Maggia from shooting at us.]
Putting on his mask, Clint picked up his bow - a customized, collapsible recurve - now fully armed and ready.
“Will do, Hawkeye.”
Clint picked up another spare quiver and placed more arrows inside. He had planned for a while to give Kate a personalized bow, the type that SHIELD money would buy, but a quiver would be the first step. He just wished it was under better circumstances.
“Where are you going?”
Clint turned to see a familiar face looking at him with furrowed brows. Bobbi Morse - codename: Mockingbird - had been Clint’s partner when he first joined up with SHIELD. There was an interesting story behind it, but Clint couldn’t let himself get caught up in reminiscing. Bobbi had been, and still was, his handler on missions. And the two had grown from colleagues, to friends, to - at times - something more.
“Uh, a gang war’s come to Manhattan?” Clint replied, confused by her question. “Or am I the only one seeing all that smoke on the news?”
Bobbi sighed, rubbing her forehead. “No, you’re not blind, Clint. I should have told you this before I asked…” she took a deep breath and continued. “I knew you were planning to head there before any orders came down, and I'm here to tell you that you have to wait until we get the green light.”
“Green light… Bobbi, Kate just called me and she says it’s getting bad,” Clint said. “Hammerhead and Hobgoblin are warring with one another for Godknowswhat and we have to wait for SHIELD to say its okay to go and stop them?”
“I understand, Clint, I truly do, especially with Kate. But SHIELD’s treating this as a local issue, not something that needs our attention,” Bobbi went on. “The NYPD can handle this without any SHIELD intervention.”
Clint scoffed. “The NYPD can barely handle things as it is, and you expect them to handle two crime syndicates at once? Plus whatever other gangs might join in? Come on, Bobbi.”
“I know, Clint,” Bobbi put her hands on Clint’s shoulders, who swiped them away. “But right now we gotta stay put until SHIELD makes a decision. These days, we gotta be careful, with SHIELD’s image not being the best.”
“Gee, I wonder why…” Clint muttered as he went back to his seat. “Whole city could be flooding again and SHIELD would still see it as a non-issue…”
Bobbi said nothing, but smiled in appreciation nonetheless. She was not that happy either, but they couldn't act like Stark or Spider-Man. There were rules and regulations in place that they needed to follow, even if they didn’t like it.
Clint, for his part, hoped that Kate could stay safe and away from trouble. He trusted her abilities. She was a natural when it came to a bow and arrow, and Bobbi personally took her under her wing to train her hand-to-hand with the possible hopes of joining SHIELD one day.
But he feared that she might come across something that even he couldn’t beat.
*************************************************************
Chinatown, Manhattan
Chinatown, like everywhere else, was burning.
Various buildings were damaged, caught in the crossfire. Not just Maggia-controlled businesses, but even those that were Triad-owned. Hobgoblin didn't discriminate; he was starting this war on his own terms, whether the other gangs wanted him to or not.
“Who the fuck are these guys?!”
“I thought they were Golden Tigers!”
“Tigers don’t wear a goddamn elf mask!”
A group of Maggia men fired a wide volley of bullets at a group of Goblin Nation’s followers. Each was more deranged than the last, not stopping even after their fellows were gunned down. Until one Goblin stepped out and threw a Pumpkin Bomb, and it detonated on the Maggia after it landed behind them, sending them and various cars and pieces of scaffolding flying in the process.
“Christ!” one of the Maggia screamed in pain as he grabbed his injured arm, caught under the debris. “These freaks are insane!”
“Just waste them!” Another, wearing Manfredi colors, sprayed bullets at a few Goblins. “And where are the Tigers?! I thought they’d be out here fighting too!”
“They’re probably waiting it out until we are all dead,” noted yet another. “Doesn’t matter either way, I heard Hammerhead sent in the heavy guns to help us out here.”
“I am afraid those guns won’t be coming, gentlemen!”
The Maggia goons all turned and aimed their weapons at a figure who was leaning by the rooftop above.
“Who the fuck are you?!”
The figure jumped out of the way to avoid the hail of gunfire from the Maggia and made such a leap that he landed in the middle of the Maggia group. He swiped the leg, knocking the mobster down to the ground. Before they could stand up, the figure delivered a series of precise punches that knocked all of them out cold.
Danny Rand, also known to the city's people as the Immortal Iron Fist, a steadfast protector who tirelessly worked to keep New York safe, stood tall and looked at the burning neighborhood with sadness. How did this happen so quickly? From the rooftop, he could see smoke and fire happening all across Manhattan, and now he could see gangs just killing each other in the streets like animals.
Either way, he would not stand by and allow this chaos to keep happening, not while he could still put up a fight.
“Iron Fist…” One of the Goblins muttered. “The Spider’s friend…”
The Goblins rushed toward Danny, who calmly waited for them to get closer to dodge one of their knife attacks. With the opening that provided him, he kicked at their sides, sending one of them flying and slamming into a car. Another tried to lunge at him, but that was dodged with the grace and fluidity expected from the master martial artist, who then elbowed them on the jaw, knocking them out.
He continued to beat them all down, one by one. Even when they tried in groups, they were knocked down and out cold after Iron Fist used his skills and martial arts to handle them rather easily.
He heard a clicking noise behind him, and he instinctively dodged and took cover behind a car nearby as the recovered Maggia goons began firing their weapons at the Goblins. They would have caught Danny, too, if he wasn’t as fast as he was.
“DIE YOU FREAKS!”
Danny grimaced as he saw the Goblin’s eyes going dark, their life flickering away into darkness. He took a deep breath. This chaos was overwhelming for him, but he had to keep fighting, for he was the Immortal Iron Fist, the Living Weapon, and this was his duty.
“Come on out!” The Maggia shouted as he and his men were approaching the car Danny was hiding behind. “I’ll make sure it will be quick!”
Taking a deep breath, he brought his right fist to his palm and focused. Silently calling inwardly upon his inner being, his chi. He felt it flowing, melding, converging in one place, into his hand. Soon, it began to glow. Soon, it turned to iron.
The Iron Fist pulled his shimmering fist back, and then thrusted it forth with all his might at the car, launching it through the air and over the Maggia who stared at it in shock. With their attention on the vehicle, Danny rushed toward them, and one by one began to take each of them out with such speed that he looked like a blur.
He grabbed one of the Maggia’s arms, and with one knee he broke it in half. He delivered a swinging leg kick to another, cracking him in the jaw. And he simply kicked the last one’s knee, as the sound of kneecaps breaking echoed in the streets.
Danny was done. Breathing deeply, he looked around him and saw all the knocked-out Maggia and Goblin followers, still alive but out cold for now. He looked down at his glowing fist, and calmly called it to stop. He could feel his chi going back to its place, turning his fists back to normal.
“That should do it here…” Danny surveyed his surroundings. He could hear the sirens coming from all directions. This war was clearly happening all across Manhattan, and if it wasn’t stopped, things would turn dire. “I need to call Peter… maybe he can give me the rundown on these Goblins—”
His trained ears heard movement behind him. He turned as he heard footsteps, loud and heavy, approaching him. Closing his fists, he kept his focus on the burning smoke ahead until a figure emerged from it. A dark woman with a half-shaved head. She was dressed in black leather and covered in blood. Danny made note that she didn’t appear wounded, despite her clothes being riddled with bullet holes.
“Should have known these idiots were going to fuck this up…” said the woman as she looked down at the knocked out Maggia. “But I can’t blame them if they were going up against you… Iron Fist.”
“And you are?” Danny asked, feeling tense. This woman felt very different from the others.
“People call me Frenzy,” the woman introduced herself, looking completely disinterested in the chaos around her. “I was supposed to come here to take care of the Golden Tigers before half the city started blowing up, so now I have to take out any nuisance that might come against Hammerhead,” she said as she looked around her. “That makes you the nuisance.”
“You’re Maggia?” Danny asked. She seemed to focus on them, while she ignored the Goblin Nation’s followers. “You don’t exactly look like one.”
“They decided to diversify,” she said with a shrug. “Can’t exactly say no to orders, or money.”
There it was, that feeling in his gut telling him that this woman was someone he should not be tangoing with right now. But he couldn’t listen; if Hammerhead sent this woman, that meant trouble for everyone, and he couldn’t just step aside here.
Frenzy stretched her neck and arms, readying herself before she hardened her eyes at Danny, smirking. “Wonder if you can make this fun for me.”
She took a step back, then ran forward like a charging bull toward Danny. With every step she took, the ground shook. She stomped even the Goblins on the ground without care, crushing them beneath her feet, which did little to slow her down.
Iron Fist did not stand down or step back in fear. He stood his ground, taking a stance, ready for the charging woman. Just as she approached, she extended her arm out from her side, and swung it, trying to catch him with a clothesline. Danny dodged it, passing under her arm and going behind her.
With her side open, he delivered a series of strikes, which did little to affect Frenzy. It seemed like she barely noticed them. Danny noted, to his shock, that it felt like hitting a wall, a very hard wall. ‘Hardened skin…’ he realized, and if she had hardened skin, that meant she was bulletproof. ‘Explains the lack of wounds beneath those bullet holes.’
He continued his kata, dodging every last one of them, not wanting to get caught by whatever power was behind those punches. She struck a car door nearby, crumpling it. She quickly grabbed the door, and tore it off the car, swinging it around and catching Danny, sending him flying toward another car.
Frenzy was quickly on top of him again, lunging at him, but Danny moved out of the way, and the woman crushed the side of the car with her entire weight.
“Come on!” Frenzy goaded him, removing herself from the destroyed car. “I heard you got a glowing fist that can break through an armored truck! Show it to me!”
Danny shook his head off and took a stance, trying to think of anything that could even make a dent in this woman.
“You’re enhanced…” Danny said to the woman. “No… the rumors said Hammerhead had mutants under his employment… I just never thought they were true…”
“Well, congrats for figuring it out.” She grabbed the destroyed car and flung it at him with all her strength. “Now eat this!”
Danny knew he was too close to be able to move out of the way, so he decided to run toward the flying car and jump over it. Using his hands, he pushed himself off the hood of the car as he passed by it, and twisted his body into a position where he could load his arm.
And his fist began to glow.
Frenzy’s eyes widened when she saw the light, then she smiled, as if happy to be able to see him use the Iron Fist’s fabled weapon. With a mighty roar, Danny Rand brought his fist down, and Frenzy raised her arms up to try and block the attack.
A shockwave followed after the two connected, a powerful one at that. Various cars and debris began flying everywhere in the street after the clash, and all the stores around them had their windows smashed wide open.
The dust settled, and the one who was standing wasn’t the Iron Fist.
“Holy shit…” Frenzy said in awe. She held Danny by the throat. “I definitely felt that one…”
Danny tried to escape from her grip, but her superstrength held him tightly. The young man could do nothing but curse his luck. He should have known that she would be able to tank the attack if she expected it.
And now she had him at her mercy.
The punch that hit his chest felt like a truck hitting him, and it was just as strong as it sent him flying across the street and landing hard on the ground. He tried to stand back up, but pain shot all over his body. Even with the adrenaline from the battle, his body was screaming at him that he could not take another hit like that without being killed.
Frenzy smelled blood, and rushed towards him. The dazed Danny could do nothing but half-heartedly dodge and punch the powerful woman, who playfully allowed him to get a few hits in before pushing him with an open palm, once again sending him crashing into a car.
“Gotta say, that fist of yours does live up to the legend,” Frenzy complimented him as she caught an errant strike from Rand. “Shame that you couldn’t keep it up, it would have been fun to knock me out.”
Danny gritted his bloody teeth before Frenzy punched him in the chest one last time, nearly knocking him out and dropping him to the ground. He heaved, heavily, feeling like he skipped a breath as pain in his chest sent shockwaves all over his body.
Frenzy stood over him and sighed, disappointed. “If I wasn’t under orders, I might have kept you breathing, but now, I have to finish you—”
“That’s enough!”
The woman heard a crash behind her, and she turned to see what the commotion was about. Her eyes widened when saw someone land on top of a destroyed car.
“You…”
Twirling one of his billy clubs and wearing a worn-out red suit was Hell's Kitchen's Daredevil, the blind lawyer that had been doing this vigilante thing for decades now. Even from where she was standing, she could sense that, compared to Iron Fist, this man was decidedly less human. He truly looked like a devil standing in the inferno around him.
“Should have known you’d come out of your rathole in the middle of this warzone… Hammerhead put a bounty on your head for killing some of his guys,” noted Frenzy. “He said he might send one of us after you.”
Murdock said nothing, instead focusing on the heavily injured Danny. His jaw tightened beneath his scraggly copper beard. Giving his billy club another flourish, he circled around Frenzy, sensing, hearing her, waiting for her to act first.
“Come on, demon, you are here for me?” Frenzy goaded him. “I am waiting for someone to put me out of my misery.”
“You're not yourself,” Matt noted. “Doesn't seem to drugs. More like something's inside you, twisting you into doing all this.”
“So? Not like I feel a thing about it.”
“You’re lying,” his voice boomed in return, angering Frenzy. “And I don’t have time for this; I'm not here for you.”
Grabbing something from the ground, Daredevil lifted the object to reveal it to Frenzy, whose eyes widened when she saw what it was.
It was an unexploded Pumpkin Bomb left behind by the Goblins.
“You wouldn’t dare…” Frenzy said with a dangerous tone.
“Dare is in my name,” Matt Murdock played with the Pumpkin Bomb. “And you can take it.”
He flung the Pumpkin Bomb like pitching a baseball. It rocketed through the air, and Frenzy could do nothing but raise her arms to block it. But unlike Iron Fist’s attack, which she was ready for, the Pumpkin Bomb came at her as a surprise, and it detonated the moment it hit her.
“Come on, Danny,” Daredevil helped Iron Fist up, who groaned in pain, mumbling complaints that were ignored. “Let’s get you out of here before she wakes up…”
By the time Frenzy shook out of her daze, she was standing in the middle of an empty street, with the only sounds being a burning building, the pained groans of the Maggia, and the sirens in the distance.
*************************************************************
To be continued...

This game was absolutely spectacular. The combat was more fun than it was in Fallen Order, the exploration and platforming was more fun thanks to the new movement abilities and visuals were stunning.
Now how about that story? For a good portion of it, it was amazing. A really fun action adventure, and a great follow up from where Fallen Order had dropped off. The finaly is where it kinda lost me however. I suspected Bode being a traitor since his introduction, however he kept being an absolute bro throughout the story that I began to believe I was wrong. When his betrayal was shown I was shocked and intrigued by what his motivations could possibly be at that point, and the reveal left me rather dissapointed.
It seems like they frame it as just him being extremely paranoid over Kata's safety, which I suppose can explain why he isn't eager to let Tanalor be flooded with random people across the galaxy. I also assume this is why he kills Cordova, so that there isnt any chance more compasses can be made.
While I can "understand" his motives though, I don't like it. Bode during the final stretch of the plot felt like a completely different character from who he'd been up until that point. You can argue it was an act the entire time, especially considering how tense he was during the fight with Dagan. I couldn't image he'd get THAT unhinged in the finaly though!
Is Respawn really trying to say Bode never bonded with Cal at all during the whole advenutre? His complete unwillingess to even try cooparation (worst case scenario, he can run and hide again) just baffles me. After all he and Cal had gone through and Kata being right there and begging him to stop, him going for murder there just left a bad taste in my mouth. Heck he's seen first hand how capable Cal's team is at fighting the empire, and Tanalor is damn near uninvadeable without Khri's arrays or the compass. The odds were really in his favor to help Cal and co if you ask me.
I fail to see what the narrative benefit is of having Bode become an antagonist here. Like truly. The story would've been plenty satisfying with just Dagan and the raiders as the end boss. Alternatively they could've had a final mission where Cal and Bode had to rescue Kata from the empire, then we could give Cal a rematch with Vader or something. I feel like there were way better ways of using Bode's character and I'm really sad about how it wound up in the end :[.

Mix of Federal and State Governments but the point stands.
After arguing with people about airsoft and being told "pleb gun neckbeard" and me saying "nah our regime just likes crackdowns and bans that make no sense" I present to you...

1. Western Australia introduces new limits on ham at school canteens, banning iconic lunch
2. South Australia introduces new limits on iconic fairy bread at schools
3. Australian expat reveals list of illegal things Down Under that are allowed in the UK - Feet up on the train, drinking a beer in public, riding a pushbike without a helmet
4. How will the government's changes to vaping work? (but tobacco is okay... cough cough taxes)
5. Everyday items you could soon be fined $11,000 for: plastic: straws, cutlery, cotton buds, shampoos/facewashes/toothpaste containing plastic microbeads.
6. Victoria announces ban on gas connections to new homes from January 2024
7. Small high powered magnets
8. Novelty cigarette lighters
9. Yo-Yo water balls: "intended to be thrown and returned to the hand with an elasticised cord capable of extending at least 500 mm in length and usually with a loop on one end to wear around the finger a soft synthetic object on the other." You know like one of those tennis balls you can throw and catch yourself.
10. A long list of video games
11. The Play Equipment Banned In Australian Schools "Remember swings? Seesaws? Carousels (those playground spinny things)? Well, it may sadden you to know that all three are now officially banned in Australian public schools."
12. Banned Baby Names: Sorry, But You Can’t Name Baby That personally most make sense but Bishop is a name I have seen around, anyway comrades, the state has you covered.
13. That one episode of Peppa Pig about not being afraid of spiders
14. Cultural protocols for photographers - Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park "Uluru is one of the most photographed landmarks in Australia, and it’s easy to see why... Cultural protocols for photographers: Uluru and Kata Tjuta have a number of culturally sensitive sites. The rock details and features at these sites are equivalent to sacred scripture for Anangu – they describe culturally important information and should only be viewed in their original location and by specific people. It is inappropriate for images of sensitive sites to be viewed elsewhere, so taking any photos of these places is prohibited. But don’t worry – culturally sensitive sites in the park are quite spread out, giving you plenty of opportunities to take amazing photos while respecting Anangu culture.

Anyway I hope I have made my point - there is nothing to large or to small, too harmful or too harmless - the Australian government is here to help you manage your coffee spoon, what you name your child, which parts of Uluru you can take a photo of (race depending), whether you have the correct cigarette lighter, and how many ham sandwiches you eat.
​
​

Berikut adalah beberapa tips untuk public speaking yang bisa membantu Anda tampil lebih percaya diri dan efektif di depan publik:

1. Persiapkan Materi Anda dengan Bai: Ketika Anda memberikan pidato atau presentasi, pastikan Anda mempersiapkan materi Anda dengan baik. Ketahui topik yang akan Anda bicarakan, susunlah poin-poin utama, dan siapkan contoh atau ilustrasi yang mendukung.

​

1. Latihan Berulang-ulang: Latihan adalah kunci untuk menjadi lebih percaya diri saat berbicara di depan umum. Latihlah presentasi Anda secara berulang-ulang, baik secara verbal maupun mental. Cobalah berlatih di depan cermin atau dengan merekam diri sendiri untuk menilai ekspresi tubuh dan intonasi suara Anda.

​

1. Ketahui Audiens Anda: Usahakan untuk memahami siapa audiens Anda dan apa yang mereka harapkan dari presentasi Anda. Penyesuaian konten dan gaya berbicara Anda dengan audiens dapat membuat Anda lebih terhubung dan efektif dalam menyampaikan pesan.

​

1. Gunakan Bahasa Tubuh yang Positif: Bahasa tubuh Anda dapat memengaruhi cara Anda disampaikan dan diterima oleh audiens. Usahakan untuk menggunakan gerakan tubuh yang mendukung dan menunjukkan kepercayaan diri, seperti postur tubuh yang tegak, kontak mata, dan senyum.

​

1. Berbicara dengan Jelas dan Tenang: Cobalah untuk berbicara dengan jelas dan tenang. Kendalikan laju bicara Anda, hindari mengumbar kata-kata, dan beri penekanan pada kata-kata kunci. Juga, jangan takut untuk menggunakan jeda yang sesuai untuk memberikan penekanan dan membuat audiens mengikuti.

​

1. Gunakan Visual Aids dengan Bijak: Jika Anda menggunakan visual aids seperti slide PowerPoint, pastikan mereka mendukung presentasi Anda tanpa mengalihkan perhatian dari Anda sebagai pembicara. Gunakan gambar, grafik, atau diagram dengan sedikit teks dan pastikan mereka relevan dengan pesan Anda.

​

1. Jangan Takut dengan Keterlibatan Audiens: Membuat keterlibatan dengan audiens dapat membuat presentasi Anda lebih menarik dan interaktif. Ajukan pertanyaan, undang tanggapan, atau bahkan lakukan aktivitas pendukung yang melibatkan audiens.

​

1. Menerima Umpan Balik: Setelah Anda selesai, minta umpan balik dari audiens atau rekan sejawat. Hal ini dapat membantu Anda memperbaiki presentasi Anda di masa depan dan menumbuhkan keterampilan public speaking Anda.

Kehidupan manusia tidak lepas dari yang namanya berbagai macam peristiwa. Terkadang kita mengalami pasang surut. Maka dari itu, kita membutuhkan kata kata bijak yang dapat memotivasi kita agar kita lebih semangat menjalani hidup.

1. Tantangan adalah sesuatu yang membuat kehidupan menjadi lebih menarik. Cara mengatasinya membuat hidup lebih bermakna – Joshua Marine.
   
2. Semakin kau tahu tentang jati diri dan sesuatu yang kau inginkan, semakin sedikit pula kau membiarkan berbagai hal yang membuatmu kesal berlalu – Stephanie Perkins.
   
3. Aku hanya ingin orang lain mengambil langkah mundur, mengambil napas yang dalam, dan benar-benar mengamati sesuatu dengan cara yang berbeda. Namun, mayoritas orang tidak akan pernah melakukannya – Brian Mc.Knight.
   
4. Orang yang meninggal memperoleh lebih banyak bunga dibandingkan orang yang masih hidup karena penyesalan lebih kuat dibandingkan rasa syukur – Anne Frank.
   
5. Jangan biarkan ambisimu yang besar menghalangi berbagai pencapaian kecil yang jauh lebih bermakna – Bryant H. Mc.Gill
   
6. Lebih baik mempunyai kehidupan yang bermakna dan memberikan perbedaan dibandingkan hanya mempunyai umur yang panjang – Bryant H. Mc.Gill.
   
7. Sesuatu akan terlihat berkesan jika hal tersebut dapat bermakna dan penuh warna – Joshua Foer.
   
8. Aku telah belajar jika ada lebih banyak kekuatan di dalam sebuah pelukan yang kuat dibandingkan dengan seribu kata-kata – Ann Hood.
   
9. Jangan merusak sesuatu yang kau miliki dengan mengharapkan sesuatu yang tidak akan pernah kau miliki; ingatlah jika sesuatu yang kau miliki saat ini pernah menjadi salah satu hal yang kau harapkan – Epicurus.
   
10. Kebahagiaan berada di dalam. Hal itu tidak ada hubungannya dengan seberapa banyak tepuk tangan yang kau peroleh atau seberapa banyak orang yang menyanjungmu. Kebahagiaan datang saat kau percaya telah melaksanakan sesuatu yang benar-benar berharga – Martin Yan.
    
11. Ini adalah agamaku yang sederhana. Tak perlu ada kuil; tak perlu filosofi yang rumit. Otak kita sendiri, hati kita sendiri adalah kuil kita; filosofinya adalah kebaikan – Dalai Lama.
    
12. Lakukanlah sesuatu yang harus kau lakukan hingga kau tidak dapat melakukan sesuatu yang kau inginkan – Oprah Winfrey.
    
13. Kau tidak pernah dilahirkan untuk hidup kalah, tertekan, bersalah, malu, terkutuk, dan tidak layak. Kau dilahirkan untuk menjadi seorang pemenang – Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.
    
14. Hidup bukanlah untuk menunggu badai berlalu, tetapi belajar menari di tengah hujan – Henry Ford.
    
15. Kau harus membiarkan orang lain untuk pergi. Setiap orang yang ada dalam kehidupanmu ditakdirkan untuk berada dalam perjalanan, tetapi tidak semuanya dimaksudkan untuk tinggal hingga akhir – Vasco da Gama.
    
16. Jadilah orang yang kuat, tetapi tidak kasar. Bersikaplah baik, tetapi jangan lemah. Bersikaplah rendah hati, tetapi tidak menjadi pemalu. Percaya dirilah, tetapi tidak sombong – Thomas Robert Malthus.
    
17. Seseorang pernah bertanya kepadaku, “Mengapa kau selalu bersikukuh mengambil jalan tersulit?” Aku menjawabnya, “Mengapa kau menganggapku memilih dua jalan?” – John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
    
18. Ketika dirimu tidak memperoleh solusi untuk mengatasi permasalahan, itu mungkin bukanlah masalah yang harus diatasi, melainkan kebenaran yang harus diterima – Mao Zedong.
    
19. Keraguan akan membunuh lebih banyak mimpi dibandingkan kegagalan – Francis Bacon.
    
20. Orang paling kesepian memiliki kepribadian yang baik hati. Orang paling sedih memiliki senyum paling cerah. Orang paling rusak memiliki kebijaksanaan yang luas. Semua itu karena mereka tidak ingin orang lain menderita seperti mereka – Zarathustra.
    

Kalau bicara tentang hidup, memang tak selamanya sesuai dengan keinginan kita, tetapi kita tetap harus tetap semangat dalam menjalani hidup ini. Untuk Grameds yang sedang mencari buku tentang kata-kata kehidupan, jawabannya ada di dalam buku Ketika Aku Tak Tahu Apa yang Aku Inginkan.
Kata-Kata Bijak Berkelas Tinggi
Temukan juga berbagai contoh kata-bijak berkelas bermakna mendalam lainnya yang dapat membangkitkan semangatmu di bawah ini.

1. Semakin sedikit dirimu merespons orang-orang negatif, akan semakin damai juga kehidupanmu – Blaise Pascal.
   
2. Hidup itu seperti piano. Tombol putih menunjukkan kebahagiaan, sedangkan tombol hitam menunjukkan kesedihan. Namun, ketika dirimu menjalani perjalanan hidup, ingatlah jika tuts hitam juga menghasilkan musik – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
   
3. Salah satu rahasia kebahagiaan adalah tidak pernah mengharapkan apa pun dari siapa pun – Martha Argerich.
   
4. Mereka berucap, “Sebelum mengawali perang, sebaiknya dirimu tahu sesuatu yang sedang diperjuangkan” – Georgy Zhukov.
   
5. Menyakiti seseorang dapat semudah seperti halnya melemparkan batu ke laut. Namun, apakah kau tahu seberapa dalam batu itu dapat masuk ke lautan? – William Faulkner.
   
6. Keheningan yang bermakna selalu lebih baik dibandingkan kata-kata yang tidak berarti apa pun – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
   
7. Jika kau mencintai seseorang, katakanlah kepadanya karena hati sering kali. Bekerjalah untuk suatu tujuan, bukan untuk pujian. Jalanilah hidup untuk berekspresi, bukan untuk mengesankan – J.R.R. Tolkien.
   
8. Sisi lain dari ketakutan adalah kebebasan – James Joyce.
   
9. Hanya karena jalanku berbeda bukan berarti diriku tersesat. Ketidakberanian menjalani perubahan sering kali menyebabkan tidak adanya suatu kemajuan – Ernest Hemingway.
   

Rasanya kurang puas, kalau membaca kata-kata motivasi hanya dari artikel saja. Biar tidak penasaran lagi dengan kata-kata motivasi kehidupan, Grameds dapat membaca buku Kata-Kata Motivasi Dosis Tinggi. Buku ini sangat cocok untuk dijadikan sebagai referensi agar semakin percaya diri.
Kata-Kata Bijak Berkelas dari Kutipan Tokoh Beberapa contoh kata-kata bijak berkelas bermakna mendalam di bawah ini juga diambil dari kutipan para tokoh-tokoh terkenal lainnya, simak ulasannya berikut ini.

1. Hati mempunyai nalarnya sendiri, sedangkan nalar tidak mempunyai hati – Arthur Conan Doyle.
   
2. Cinta merupakan perbuatan. Sementara itu, kata-kata dan tulisan indah merupakan omong kosong – Tere Liye.
   
3. Seseorang yang benar-benar hebat merupakan orang yang membuat tiap orang merasa hebat – G.K. Chesterton.
   
4. Aku tidak takut badai karena telah belajar berlayar dengan kapalku – Louisa May Alcott.
   
5. Cara terbaik untuk menyiapkan kehidupan adalah memulai hidup – Elbert Hubbard.
   
6. Cinta itu seperti halnya angin. Kita tidak dapat melihatnya, tetapi dapat merasakannya – Nicholas Sparks.
   
7. Kebahagiaan kita tergantung kepada diri kita sendiri – Aristoteles.
   
8. Kebahagiaan dari hidupmu tergantung dari kualitas pikiranmu – Marcus Aurelius.
   
9. Kebahagiaan dirasakan oleh orang-orang yang dapat merasa puas kepada dirinya sendiri – Agatha Christie.
   
10. Kedamaian hilang karena kita lupa jika sebenarnya memiliki satu sama lain – Bunda Maria Teresa Bojaxhiu.
    
11. Orang yang hebat tidak dilahirkan begitu saja, tetapi mereka tumbuh menjadi lebih hebat – Mario Puzo.
    
12. Dia yang mengetahui semua jawaban belum pernah memperoleh pertanyaan – Confucius.
    
13. Tindakan merupakan kunci dasar untuk memperoleh semua kesuksesan – Pablo Picasso.
    
14. Bekerja keraslah dengan diam. Kesuksesan adalah suaramu – Frank Ocean.
    
15. Setiap ada kefokusan, di situlah akan ada energi yang akan mengalir – Tony Robbins.
    
16. Cinta itu seperti suatu peperangan. Mudah untuk memulainya, tetapi sangat sulit untuk menyudahinya – H.L. Mencken.https://warpcast.com/~/conversations/0x122a1f068592d523d5ac0d82a796d5c9493445f6
    

1. Tantangan adalah sesuatu yang membuat kehidupan menjadi lebih menarik. Cara mengatasinya membuat hidup lebih bermakna – Joshua Marine.
   
2. Semakin kau tahu tentang jati diri dan sesuatu yang kau inginkan, semakin sedikit pula kau membiarkan berbagai hal yang membuatmu kesal berlalu – Stephanie Perkins.
   
3. Aku hanya ingin orang lain mengambil langkah mundur, mengambil napas yang dalam, dan benar-benar mengamati sesuatu dengan cara yang berbeda. Namun, mayoritas orang tidak akan pernah melakukannya – Brian Mc.Knight.
   
4. Orang yang meninggal memperoleh lebih banyak bunga dibandingkan orang yang masih hidup karena penyesalan lebih kuat dibandingkan rasa syukur – Anne Frank.
   
5. Jangan biarkan ambisimu yang besar menghalangi berbagai pencapaian kecil yang jauh lebih bermakna – Bryant H. Mc.Gill
   
6. Lebih baik mempunyai kehidupan yang bermakna dan memberikan perbedaan dibandingkan hanya mempunyai umur yang panjang – Bryant H. Mc.Gill.
   
7. Sesuatu akan terlihat berkesan jika hal tersebut dapat bermakna dan penuh warna – Joshua Foer.
   
8. Aku telah belajar jika ada lebih banyak kekuatan di dalam sebuah pelukan yang kuat dibandingkan dengan seribu kata-kata – Ann Hood.
   
9. Jangan merusak sesuatu yang kau miliki dengan mengharapkan sesuatu yang tidak akan pernah kau miliki; ingatlah jika sesuatu yang kau miliki saat ini pernah menjadi salah satu hal yang kau harapkan – Epicurus.
   
10. Kebahagiaan berada di dalam. Hal itu tidak ada hubungannya dengan seberapa banyak tepuk tangan yang kau peroleh atau seberapa banyak orang yang menyanjungmu. Kebahagiaan datang saat kau percaya telah melaksanakan sesuatu yang benar-benar berharga – Martin Yan.
    
11. Ini adalah agamaku yang sederhana. Tak perlu ada kuil; tak perlu filosofi yang rumit. Otak kita sendiri, hati kita sendiri adalah kuil kita; filosofinya adalah kebaikan – Dalai Lama.
    
12. Lakukanlah sesuatu yang harus kau lakukan hingga kau tidak dapat melakukan sesuatu yang kau inginkan – Oprah Winfrey.
    
13. Kau tidak pernah dilahirkan untuk hidup kalah, tertekan, bersalah, malu, terkutuk, dan tidak layak. Kau dilahirkan untuk menjadi seorang pemenang – Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.
    
14. Hidup bukanlah untuk menunggu badai berlalu, tetapi belajar menari di tengah hujan – Henry Ford.
    
15. Kau harus membiarkan orang lain untuk pergi. Setiap orang yang ada dalam kehidupanmu ditakdirkan untuk berada dalam perjalanan, tetapi tidak semuanya dimaksudkan untuk tinggal hingga akhir – Vasco da Gama.
    
16. Jadilah orang yang kuat, tetapi tidak kasar. Bersikaplah baik, tetapi jangan lemah. Bersikaplah rendah hati, tetapi tidak menjadi pemalu. Percaya dirilah, tetapi tidak sombong – Thomas Robert Malthus.
    
17. Seseorang pernah bertanya kepadaku, “Mengapa kau selalu bersikukuh mengambil jalan tersulit?” Aku menjawabnya, “Mengapa kau menganggapku memilih dua jalan?” – John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
    
18. Ketika dirimu tidak memperoleh solusi untuk mengatasi permasalahan, itu mungkin bukanlah masalah yang harus diatasi, melainkan kebenaran yang harus diterima – Mao Zedong.
    
19. Keraguan akan membunuh lebih banyak mimpi dibandingkan kegagalan – Francis Bacon.
    
20. Orang paling kesepian memiliki kepribadian yang baik hati. Orang paling sedih memiliki senyum paling cerah. Orang paling rusak memiliki kebijaksanaan yang luas. Semua itu karena mereka tidak ingin orang lain menderita seperti mereka – Zarathustra.
    

Kalau bicara tentang hidup, memang tak selamanya sesuai dengan keinginan kita, tetapi kita tetap harus tetap semangat dalam menjalani hidup ini. Untuk Grameds yang sedang mencari buku tentang kata-kata kehidupan, jawabannya ada di dalam buku Ketika Aku Tak Tahu Apa yang Aku Inginkan.
Kata-Kata Bijak Berkelas Tinggi
Temukan juga berbagai contoh kata-bijak berkelas bermakna mendalam lainnya yang dapat membangkitkan semangatmu di bawah ini.

1. Semakin sedikit dirimu merespons orang-orang negatif, akan semakin damai juga kehidupanmu – Blaise Pascal.
   
2. Hidup itu seperti piano. Tombol putih menunjukkan kebahagiaan, sedangkan tombol hitam menunjukkan kesedihan. Namun, ketika dirimu menjalani perjalanan hidup, ingatlah jika tuts hitam juga menghasilkan musik – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
   
3. Salah satu rahasia kebahagiaan adalah tidak pernah mengharapkan apa pun dari siapa pun – Martha Argerich.
   
4. Mereka berucap, “Sebelum mengawali perang, sebaiknya dirimu tahu sesuatu yang sedang diperjuangkan” – Georgy Zhukov.
   
5. Menyakiti seseorang dapat semudah seperti halnya melemparkan batu ke laut. Namun, apakah kau tahu seberapa dalam batu itu dapat masuk ke lautan? – William Faulkner.
   
6. Keheningan yang bermakna selalu lebih baik dibandingkan kata-kata yang tidak berarti apa pun – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
   
7. Jika kau mencintai seseorang, katakanlah kepadanya karena hati sering kali
   

dirimu sendiri – Orison Sweet Marden.

1. Mimpi merupakan ilustrasi dari buku yang ditulis oleh jiwamu.
   
2. Hidup bukanlah tentang menemukan dirimu sendiri. Hidup adalah tentang menciptakan diri sendiri.
   
3. Jika berpikir dengan sikap percaya diri, seseorang dapat melaksanakan hal-hal yang menakjubkan.
   
4. Kau tidak pernah terlalu tua untuk memutuskan tujuan lain atau untuk memimpikan impian yang baru.
   
5. Masa depan merupakan milik seseorang yang memercayai keindahan impiannya.
   
6. Kau tidak akan pernah dapat merencanakan masa depan di masa lalu.
   
7. Jika kapalmu tidak lekas datang, berenanglah.
   
8. Jika salah “perbaikilah”, jika gagal “cobalah lagi”. Namun, jika kau menyerah, semuanya akan selesai.
   
9. Bertahanlah selama kamu masih dapat bernapas, jangan keluar dari proses perjuangan. Tolong jangan menyerah, kau tidak akan pernah sendirian, kita bersama-sama.
   
10. Jangan sampai lehermu terpotong hanya karena ulah dari lidahmu.
    
11. Gagal merupakan masalah yang kecil, tetapi putus asa merupakan masalah yang besar.
    
12. Dengan bekerja keras kau akan mengalahkan banyak orang-orang berbakat.
    
13. Jangan bosan menjadi orang yang baik dan terus berbuat baiklah kepada sesama.
    
14. Kebahagiaan ada jika dirimu mau menjemputnya.
    
15. Tuhan selalu mengganti harapan kita dengan sesuatu yang jauh lebih baik.
    
16. Menyerah itu seperti halnya jatuh bebas di tebing yang tinggi dan berharap ada tangan yang mau menangkapmu.
    
17. Hidup itu menyedihkan jika kau hanya fokus kepada kesedihanmu. Namun, hidup sangat menggairahkan jika kau fokus kepada aliran semangat kehidupan.
    
18. Hari ini bukanlah hari untuk menyerah, tetapi hari untuk tetap semangat menggapai seluruh cita-cita dan tujuan.
    
19. Selalu tanamkanlah di dalam pikiranmu jika dirimu harus terus berjalan tanpa berhenti.
    

Biar Grameds semakin memahami isi dari suatu kata yang penuh motivasi, sehingga hidup yang dijalani jadi lebih semangat, kalian dapat membaca buku Bukan Sekadar Kata. Buku ini ditujukan untuk membantu pembacanya menemukan sisi positif dari setiap pengalaman hidup yang dijalani.
Kata-Kata Bijak Berkelas Simpel 80. Perbaikilah dirimu sebelum orang lain yang memberikanmu ucapan maaf.

1. Jadilah pribadi yang baik agar kau mudah dimaafkan.
   
2. Tekunilah salah satu bidang dan kau akan menjadi orang hebat.
   
3. Jangan menyerah ketika doa-doamu belum terjawab. Jika kau dapat bersabar, Tuhan akan memberikan sesuatu lebih dari apa yang kamu inginkan.
   

1. Bermimpilah yang besar dan selalu berani untuk gagal.
2. Belajarlah dari hari hari kemarin dan hiduplah untuk hari ini, lalu berharaplah untuk hari esok.
3. Kesulitan yang sebenarnya ialah mengatasi caramu berpikir mengenai diri kamu sendiri.
4. Tidak perlu menjadi seseorang yang serba bisa, tekuni saja salah satu bidang yang paling kamu suka, kemudian jadilah seseorang yang hebat dengan bidang tersebut.
5. Tidak ada kata tidak mungkin, sebelum kamu sempat mencobanya.

“Kegagalan akan mengalahkan pecundang. Kegagalan akan menginspirasi pemenang." - Robert T. Kiyosak

The Big Mom and Beast Pirates, celebrating their new alliance a *little* too hard in Wano, wake up from their drunken stupors to find out that they’re numbers have halved.
Oh, and also, each and every one of them is now two dudes.
Each Beast Pirate has now fused with an accompanying Big Mom Pirate, forming a new individual combining all of their strengths. The Emperor’s subordinate crews are also included (regardless of timing, for the sake of having more fusions). For all intents and purposes, the fusions are additive in nature (not multiplicative like in DBZ); for instance, Katakuri and King’s fusion would take the best of both component individuals (Kata’s Conqueror’s, Observation, and Devil Fruit + King’s Physiology, Durability, and Devil Fruit + both of their skills and weapons). Also, noted fusions will only include characters with actual feats (sorry to Snack).
All run-of-the mill Beast Pirates fuse with a Big Mom counterpart, for a total of 30,000 combatants (with random semi-notable fusions of gifters and Big Mom’s less exceptional kids throughout). Alongside these are 10,000 combat capable homies and 10,000 Germa soldiers. Also, the numbers, for lack of a solid group of big things to fuse them with.
Notable fusions are as follows:

Beast Mom — fusion of Kaido and Big Mom, armed with Hassaikai and Napoleon, plus all of BM’s special homies. Absolutely ridiculously powerful and versatile, due to the duo’s wide range of abilities.
King Mochi — fusion of Katakuri and King, armed with Mole and King’s sword. Terrifying precognitive mochi pterodactyl in a spiky gimp suit.
Smoothie Queen — fusion of Smoothie and Queen (a surprise, I’m sure). Armed with their respective swords and Queen’s gadgets. The part of this thing that is Smoothie absolutely *rues* the day the fusion ever happened. The Queen bit just enjoys squeegeeing people.
Cracker Jack — a fusion of, you guessed it, Cracker and Jack (this pun was the whole basis for this post). Armed with their typical weapons. Surrounded by an army of biscuit soldiers, Cracker’s typical durability issues are offset by his fusion with a lumbering juggernaut.
Candy Tiger — fusion of Who’s Who and Perospero. Armed with Who’s Who’s dagger and whatever candy weapons he feels like making.
Trike Genie — fusion of Daifuku and Sasaki. Armed with Karakuri Rasento. No idea if turning into a triceratops affects what the genie looks like.
Sword Spider — fusion of Black Maria and Amande. Armed with Shirauo and brass knuckles. Giant spider swordswoman with a very large hat.
HotHead — fusion of Ulti and Oven. Armed with Ulti’s morning star and Oven’s naginata. Blazing hot pachycephalosaurus with a tendency to meet problems head-on.
Lion Spine — fusion of Pekoms and Page One. Armed with Pekom’s sword, I guess? Needed to round out the Tobiroppo, and their aren’t a lot of BM fighters with actual feats.
Fortress X — fusion of Capone Bege and X Drake. Armed with Drake’s sword and axe, and Capone’s guns. Both served under Emperors for their own purposes, and now both combine to form an Allosaurus that doubles as a castle. Go on, besiege that fucking dinosaur.
Straw Mirror — fusion of Brûlée and Hawkins. Armed with a deck of tarot cards. Honestly just here as an annoying support class.
Heavenly Judge — fusion of Doflamingo and Vinsmoke Judge. Armed with Judge’s spear and tech, and additionally brings the resources of both Germa and Dressrosa to the table. Both decided to work under an Emperor and ended up regretting quite a bit. Doffy’s combat prowess combined with an enormous amount of loyal clone soldiers makes for an intimidating force; additionally, whatever fusion Vergo ends up a part of begins training the oddly familiar clones in combat).

This combined force appears on Onigashima, prior to the Ninja-Pirate-Mink-Samurai Alliance’s attempt to take down Big Mom and Kaido. In short:

• How does this affect the Alliance’s attempt to eliminate the Yonko? (specifically, how would Roof Piece play out with Luffy, Zoro, Law, Kidd, and Killer all focused on Beast Mom? And would the rest of the Alliance be able to take out the amped Commander fusions?)
• If the Big Beast Pirates win the day, what’s their next move? How does the world government react?
• The BB (Big Beast) Pirates meet the BB (Blackbeard) Pirates in open war with all of their allies (let’s say in Tottoland). Who wins the day, and how miffed is Teach that there’s now an entire crew of double-fruit users?
• Alternate Timeline: The Big Beast Pirates appear right before the Summit War. Telling Shanks to fuck off en route, they book it for Marineford with the intent of crushing both Whitebeard *and* the Marines (though they’re willing to play it smart and briefly work with one side to pincer the other). How does this play out, and does Ace manage to survive this time around?

I'm finally on the verge of getting the original SHOGUN novel! I haven't read the original yet, so I'm really looking forward to it. By the way, I love Yodo-dono aka Cha-cha, the model for Ochiba-no-Kata.I will try to describe some interesting stories about the relationships that surround her.Sorry for my bad English. and this is as basic as a Japanese high school student would learn. Maybe,it will be a spoiler.
1.Oichi-no-kata

• Yodo-dono's mother is the sister of Nobunaga Oda, the most popular warlord in Japan (he is the master of the black samurai, Yasuke). Her name is Oichi-no -kata.
• Oichi-no-kata was an extremely beautiful woman and was the object of admiration of Hideyoshi(model of Taikoh).
• Oichi-no-kata was married to an ally by order of Nobunaga. It was a political marriage, but the couple got along very well.
• However, Hideyoshi killed Oichi-no-kata's husband and son by order of Nobunaga. Oichi-no-kata, Yodo-dono and the other daughters fled for their lives back to the Oda family.
• Nobunaga was a strong man at that time, but Nobunaga died due to betrayal by his vassal. It is said that he was burned to death, but his body was never found.
• After Nobunaga's death, Katsuie Shibata, a vassal of Nobunaga, and Hideyoshi discussed what to do about Oichi-no-kata. As a result, Oichi-no-kata remarried Katsuie Shibata.
• Oichi-no-kata was worried about the future of her three daughters and wrote a letter to Hideyoshi asking him to take good care of them.
• In the end, Katsuie Shibata and Hideyoshi fought, and Katsuie Shibata and Oichi-no-kata committed suicide.

2.Hideyoshi (Taikoh)

• Hideyoshi protected three daughters and married Yodo-dono. The age difference between them was more than 30 years.
• It is said that Yodo-dono was most similar to Oichi-no-kata.
• Hideyoshi was famous for his love of women and had many wives, but none of them had children.
• Yodo-dono has a childhood friend Harunaga Ohno, a vassal of Hideyoshi, and it was rumored at the time that the child born to Hideyoshi was Harunaga's child.
• The name Yodo-dono was not used at that time, it became associated with the name of a prostitute, along with the image of an evil woman or whore.It is said that Yodo-gimi, given such a strange name as Yodo-dono and made out to be a bad woman, was a product of the Tokugawa clan period, which destroyed the Toyotomi family.

3.Hidetusgu (Taikoh's nephew)

• Hideyoshi had a nephew, Hidetsugu, who was Hideyoshi's heir until Yodo-dono's child Hideyori was born.
• After Hideyori was born, however, Hidetsugu was forcibly ordained to the priesthood and was confined to his estate at Seigan-ji Temple on Mt.
• Hidetsugu was ordered to commit seppuku. The high priests of the temple condemned the order to commit seppuku. However, he accepted the order and committed seppuku.
• Hidetsugu's head was hanged at Sanjogawara, and his family members were also executed. Young children were beheaded one after another in front of their mothers and nannies.
• In Hideyoshi's later years, Hidetsugu was the only adult relative of the second generation of the Toyotomi family. The near-killing of Hidetsugu and his children left the few Toyotomi relatives even fewer, and put the Toyotomi family in danger of having no clan screen to support Hideyori at all.

Thanks for reading!

⟳ f-droid.org from Wed, 20 Mar 2024 13:53:50 GMT updated on Mon, 25 Mar 2024 10:55:12 GMT contains 4343 apps.

Added (3)

• Libre Memory Game: A memory game
• Flying Carpet: Cross-platform AirDrop between Android/iOS/Linux/macOS/Windows via ad hoc WiFi
• MedTimer: Med reminders and history with full offline privacy

Updated (144)

• Gauguin (version 0.23.0): A Sudoku-like logic game
• Blitz: Fischer chess clock (version 1.5.4): A minimalist Fischer chess clock for Android.
• baresip (version 60.0.0): VoIP User Agent app for Android based on baresip SIP library
• TodoTree (version 1.5): The tree based todo and note taking app
• Freebloks (version 1.4.5): Strategy board game similar to the famous board game Blokus.
• Les Pas - Photo Album for Nextcloud (version 2.9.8): A photo album that saves all your precious memory in your private cloud
• Feeder (version 2.6.20): An awesome Libre and Open Source RSS feed reader
• DAVx⁵ (version 4.3.15-ose): CalDAV/CardDAV Synchronization and Client
• Tasks.org: Open-source To-Do Lists & Reminders (version 13.7): Private, ad-free task lists! Optional sync with Google Tasks, CalDAV or EteSync!
• Inure App Manager (Trial) (version Build100.2.6): An elegant multi-purpose app manager for all rooted and non-rooted devices.
• Copy SMS Code - OTP Helper (version 1.13.4): an open-source app that can detect and copy any code for you
• WG Tunnel (version 3.3.9): An alternative VPN client app for WireGuard with additional features
• WiVeWa (version 1.4.1): Client for the WiVeWa system
• Wikipedia (version 2.7.50479-r-2024-03-21): Official feature-rich viewer of the free online encyclopedia
• Simple Time Tracker (version 1.39): Track how much time you spend on different activities during the day.
• PlainApp: File & Web Access (version 1.2.41): Manage your phone on the web! Access files, contacts, videos, music & more.
• MuPDF mini (version 1.24.0a): Minimalist viewer for PDF, XPS, CBZ, unprotected EPUB, and FB2 documents
• Xtra (version 2.30.4): a Twitch player and browser
• MRepo (version 2.4.5): A Manager for Magisk & KernelSU Modules
• Husky (version 1.5.4): Husky is a client for Pleroma and Mastodon social networks.
• trale (version 0.6.1): privacy-respecting body weight-diary
• Compass (version 1.14.0): Simple and beautiful compass
• Orion Viewer - Pdf & Djvu (version 0.90.0): Orion Viewer is pdf, djvu, xps, cbz and tiff file viewer
• Magisk (version 27.0): The Magic Mask
• WallpaperExport (version 1.1.1): Export the current and the default wallpaper
• Nextcloud Dev (version 20240321): Synchronization client
• Quillpad (version 1.4.14): Markdown notes, task lists, Nextcloud sync and more. A fork of the Quillnote app
• sing-box (version 1.8.9): The universal proxy platform
• WallFlow Plus (version 2.4.3): Beautiful wallpapers from wallhaven.cc and Reddit with object detection feature
• Xed Editor (version 1.1.1): Advanced Text Editor for Android
• Gurgle (version 1.28): Word game
• mLauncher (version 1.4.1): Forked from Olauncher, +minimalization, +customizability
• Voice Audiobook Player (version 8.2.3): Simple audiobook player
• Léon – The URL Cleaner (version 39): Removes tracking & other redundant parameters from web links for sharing
• 拷贝漫画 (version 2.2.7): Third-party client for copymanga with better reading/downloading experience
• Terminal Emulator (version 4.7.1): Turn your device into a computer terminal
• Wulkanowy (version 2.5.2): Client for the Polish school register VULCAN UONET+
• Mull (version 124.0.0): Privacy oriented web browser
• Mattermost Beta (version 2.14.0): Secure, self-hosted workplace messaging
• Simple Counter (version 1.1.4): Keep track of things
• Kotatsu (version 6.8): Manga reader with online catalogues
• Obtainium (version 1.0.6): Get android app updates directly from the source
• Arcticons Day & Night (version 9.0.0): A monotone line-based icon pack for dark & light themed setups.
• Logseq (version 0.10.8): A privacy-first, open-source platform for knowledge management and collaboration
• Mumla (version 3.6.8): Voice chat on Mumble servers
• Alexandria (version 0.3.0): Download and convert EBooks.
• Tournant (version 2.5.0): Recipe manager with Gourmand compatibility
• Binary Eye (version 1.63.4): Yet another barcode scanner
• Circles (version 1.0.27): Secure social sharing for friends and families
• PixelDroid (version 1.0.beta33): Client for Pixelfed, the federated image sharing platform
• Xray (version 6.4.0): Xray GUI Client For Android
• Trekarta (version 2024.03.13): Simple, responsive map for your trek
• Tabletop Tools (version 1.29): Handy tool collection for tabletop games
• openHAB Beta (version 3.11.2-beta): Vendor and technology agnostic open source home automation
• Ameixa (version 4.11.1): Port of TwelF CMTheme for many launchers
• Acode editor - Android code editor (version 1.10.0): A lightweight but powerful text/code editor.
• Oinkoin (version 1.0.56): Oinkoin Money Manager makes managing personal finances easy and secure.
• App Manager - Android package manager (version 3.1.5): A full-featured open source package manager for android.
• MoLe (version 0.21.7): Convenient front-end to hledger-web
• Squawker (version 3.7.8): An open-source privacy oriented TwitteX client
• WallFlow (version 2.4.3): Beautiful wallpapers from wallhaven.cc and Reddit
• LibreTube (version 0.22.1): Alternative YouTube frontend for Android built with Piped
• Dollphone Icon Pack (version 1.1.0): Cute icon pack that isn’t overly hyperactive
• Fennec F-Droid (version 124.0.0): Browse the web
• Arcticons Black (version 9.0.0): A monotone line-based icon pack for light themed setups.
• moreDays (version 1.0.23): A motivation app with journaling
• SaveTo… (version 1.15.10): Save shared image or pdf to selected directory
• Custom Uploader (version 1.3.0): Upload files to a file host of your choice
• Cache Cleaner (version 1.11.1): Clean cache of installed user and system apps using Accessibility
• Next Actualités informatiques (version 2.7.6): Check out french Next computer news (even without an Internet connection)!
• Tuta Mail (version 220.240319.2): Encrypted email & calendar service - easy to use, secure by design.
• ProtonVPN - Secure and Free VPN (version 5.1.51.3): Free Swiss VPN with advanced security and privacy features.
• Passman (version 1.5.0): Allow you to manage the credentials stored in your Nextcloud Passman app.
• ColorBlendr (version v1.3): Express yourself with colors
• Fossify Phone (version 1.1.1): Unlock a secure, open-source calling experience with Fossify Phone
• Chip Defense (version 1.33): A tower defense game with a microprocessor theme
• OpenMensa (version 1.1.1): Show meal plans for more than 150 university canteens in Germany.
• Fossify File Manager (version 1.0.1): Handy, lightweight, open-source file explorer with essential features.
• Candle (version 1.3.2): A display flashlight
• whoBIRD (version 2.5): Recognize birds by their sounds, anywhere in the world!
• Petals (version 3.21.1): Take control of your weed consumption
• Notesnook - Private notes app (version 2.6.18): A fully open source & end-to-end encrypted note taking app
• Screenshot Tile (NoRoot) (version 2.8.2): Quickly take screenshots from the quick settings panel
• Pain Diary (PFA) (version 1.3.1): (SECUSO) Record condition, intensity, location, nature and time of your pain.
• Boxcars (version 1.3.2): Play backgammon online via bgammon.org
• Share via HTTP (version 2.0.15): File sharing tool
• DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser (version 5.193.1): Privacy, simplified
• TKCompanionApp (version 7.1.0): A short and small helper for Toyota Kata practitioners
• Shitter (version 3.5.8): Lightweight Mastodon client
• Activity Manager (version 5.4.11): Advanced activities and shortcuts launcher
• MuPDF viewer (version 1.24.0a): Lightweight document viewer
• Open Stable Diffusion (version 1.10): An app for generating images using AI
• PhotoChiotte (version 1.53): media gallery and comic reader to handle huge device and online collections
• Welefon (version 1.3.2): Phone with API
• M3U (version 1.14.0-beta08): FREE stream media player for android.
• Sayboard (version v4.2.0): An open-source on-device voice IME (keyboard) for Android using the Vosk library
• Ameixa Monochrome (version 4.11.1): Icon pack
• FTPClient (version 2.9.2): A simple FTP, FTPS and SFTP client for Android
• Migraine Log (version 0.11.2): A simple headache diary that respects your privacy
• Arcticons (version 9.0.0): A monotone line-based icon pack for dark themed setups.
• FlashCards (version v1.7.1): Make cards with csv files as input to memorize things
• FairEmail (version 1.2169): Fully featured email client. Neat, intuitive user interface. Privacy friendly
• Immich (version 1.99.0): This is a client app for the self-hostable Immich Server
• Quadermas (version 7.3): View school marks, topics, timetable
• RadarWeather (version 6.4): Lets you watch the weather for cities and locations you are interested in.
• Audile (version 1.4.1): Music recognition app
• Trail Sense (version 5.9.0): Use your phone's sensors to assist with wilderness treks
• AniHyou - AniList client (version 1.2.5): Another unofficial Android AniList client
• FlashDim - Dim your flashlight (version 2.3.3): Modern flashlight app with dim functionality on Android 13+
• P2Play - Peertube client (version 0.5.2): Unofficial client for Peertube
• YtAlarm (version 0.1.5): A simple alarm application using ytdl-android.
• Voyager for Lemmy (version 2.0.0): Join the discussion
• BTC Map (version 0.7.1): See where you can spend your bitcoins
• Arcticons Material You (version 9.0.0): A line-based icon pack with a Material You color palette.
• Symphony (version 2024.3.110): Offline music playback is now a breeze
• Tremotesf (version 2.10.2): Remote-control Transmission BitTorrent client
• Suntimes (version 0.15.13): Sunlight and moonlight times (and alarms)
• TopoSuite (version 1.4.0-beta.3): Tool for land surveyors
• Syncthing-Fork (version 1.27.4.1): File synchronization
• OpenCalc (version 3.0.0): Simple and beautiful calculator for Android
• Open TimeLimit (version 6.9.0): Simply limit the usage duration
• Text Tools (version 1.0.5): Useful text related functions that can be done on the selected text
• Infomaniak Mail (version 1.2.3): The secure messaging service for your emails
• Dark Mode Live Wallpaper (version 1.6.5): Live wallpaper that respects dark theme mode
• Deku SMS (version 0.43.0): Deku is an SMS app that supports end to end encryption and photo sharing
• Forkyz (version 52): Crossword puzzles application, download and play.
• ntodotxt (version 0.7.0): Manage your todos in a todo.txt file
• AELF - Bible and day's reading (version 2.8.3): A simple and discrete daily reading application
• Jellyfin for Android TV (version 0.16.7): Television client for Jellyfin, the free software media system
• uNote microNote (version 1.7.0): Lightweight and minimalist notepad
• BLE Radar (version 0.24.1-beta): A tool to monitor, analyze and find BLE devices around you.
• Box, Box! (version 0.7.2): Unofficial app for Formula 1 lovers!
• SiYuan (version 3.0.4): A privacy-first, self-hosted knowledge management app
• Alovoa (version 1.9.1): Open-source online dating application
• Het Saldo (version 1.1.0): A cross-platform De Lijn "smart"ticket saldo checking application.
• Infomaniak kDrive (version 4.4.7): The most secure cloud in Europe for SMEs and private individuals.
• Canta (version 1.4.1): Uninstall any app without root!
• neutriNote CE (version 4.5.1b): A hub of written thoughts in fast searchable plain text
• baresip+ (version 47.0.0): VoIP User Agent app for Android based on baresip SIP library
• Unciv (version 4.10.21): Open source 4X civilization-building game
• SexyTopo (version 1.8.1): Assist in cave surveying
• Material Files (version 1.7.1): Open source Material Design file manager
• Metronome (version 1.5.0): Simple and beautiful metronome
• BOINC (version 8.0.0): Use your device to advance scientific research.

^{2024-03-25T11:23:06Z}

[First Chapter]
[Previous] [Patreon] [Next]
​
Jel
“I was really hoping to be planetside by now,” Rumarr grumbled, and her eyes flicked from side to side behind her eyepiece as she adjusted its capture settings for the lighting conditions. “Why do you think they’ve got us all crammed into this hall anyway?”
Jel shrugged his shoulders, wincing when he felt something catch in his upper back. Skara had been particularly enthusiastic the previous night. Usually, he bounced right back from the kind of rough treatment that was his preference in the bedroom, but all that activity straight after their cramped shuttle ride had left him sore and tetchy come morning. It had taken a soothing massage (and even then, he’d needed to tell Skara off for her wandering hands) and a good long, uninterrupted soak in the tub before he’d been able to drag himself from their room. When the couple did finally make it to breakfast, Rumarr had sidled up, acting for all the world like an old friend.
He was pretty sure that had something to do with his forgiveness of her ‘dishonourable conduct.’ Ursinians were a strange species like that.
Skara seemed to have let the whole thing go, barely sparing the larger woman a glance when she approached and even passing her a carton of protein supplement without being prompted.
It must have been the sex.
The message that had come from the Admiralty that morning had been specific about the time and place, but vague about the reason they were gathered. All they knew was that they, along with every other journalist on board, were being ‘strongly encouraged’ to attend a press conference in the west wing. Exactly who would be giving said conference was unclear, but there were rumours that Vice Admiral Kel’rek was aboard.
“It’s probably just the Admiralty getting ahead of the bad press,” Skara yawned. “A bit of puffery before we get down to the surface and see for ourselves how bad things are.”
Rumarr shook her head. “The brass would want us all lined up and orderly if that was their plan. They’d vet the questions in advance. This is too chaotic. I feel like a paparazzi standing off to the side of a celebrity walkway.”
Jel eyed the door to his right where a group of military personnel— he had no idea how many there had been as the scales of the duradians among them had blurred into a formless mass— had passed by earlier. “It would also help if they told us where to look. Covering both doors is stressing me out.”
“I’ll watch the entrance if you watch that door.” Skara offered, and he nodded gratefully. He’d no sooner found a better angle to do so though, than the sound of the entrance doors opening caught his attention, and his wife’s hand patted his shoulder urgently.
He whipped around, and his eyes widened. A human.
It had to be. The being matched all the descriptions he’d been given. That wasn’t the only thing surprising about her though. This human was wearing the Imperial greys over the same tight-fitting power armour that the other soldiers in the room were equipped with.
So that’s how they’re playing things. Clever.
The human spared them just a glance as she entered, a flick of the eyes that took in the surprise and rapidly rising fervour of the journalists in the room before fixing her gaze squarely on the double doors at the end of the hall.
Even as his camera came up, he rankled in distaste. It was no wonder now why the Admiralty wanted them in attendance. They needed to control the media’s first exposure to humanity, and what better way to do that than with a human they already had under their thumb? He had no issue with humans wearing the colours of the Imperium, but this was clearly intended as a distraction, and when presented in the right light, this display would likely serve that function.
He was here to do a job though, so he took the photos anyway. Unlike a few of his more overzealous peers, he didn’t bother crushing forward. There was no space set aside for interviews, and the brisk march that she kept up as she passed was a clear indication that she wasn’t about to stop for their questions.
At least, he thought it was a she. The human was shorter than he’d expected, certainly short for a woman, but those were clearly mammary glands, and she had well-defined muscles and a bulky frame that was on clear display beneath the form-fitting suit of the Imperial military. She looked a lot like a war form, he realized with a jolt of shock. He’d been under the impression that the humans didn’t have them.
Another convenient excuse for the brass to hide behind.
If she was a typical specimen, it was entirely possible that the human musculature had played a role in the disaster. Earth was on the extreme upper range for inhabited worlds in terms of gravitational pull, and as the human woman passed by Jel, he couldn’t help but admire the curve to her biceps and shoulders. Her legs were even more noticeable. Squat thighs built like the limbs of a Krikilik tree moved in a perfect marching cadence alongside the ulu’s lopsided strut.
She’s got a better physique than most kespan war forms I’ve seen. And if her muscle density is greater to match the high gravity, she’s probably even stronger. The men aren’t actually bigger than that, are they? Surely that’s just a rumour.
He struggled to wrap his head around what that would look like. The closest reference point he had was the ursinians, who were similarly muscular compared to the human woman, though larger.
A man built like an ursinian woman. There’s a thought. I wonder how they do their makeup.
There were very few images from Ervamir 3 available on the galactic net, outside of a few leaked pictures of some local life forms, including the famous sphynx cat. The tradition of allowing an induction species to introduce themselves on their own terms meant that before the tragedy, no pictures of humans had been made available to the public. The Admiralty had kept the lid on for the past year.
Somehow, despite looking like she could bench press Jel, his first impression was that the human woman was somehow… boyish? She had full lips, smooth skin and… yes, that was definitely some kind of product, a line beneath her eyes darkened to the same shade as her lashes. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was wearing foundation as well— on a planet like Ervamir 3, there was no way a species with bare skin could keep a complexion like that. Her face was just a slightly lighter shade than her neck too, which also wouldn’t make sense unless it was being covered by a product of some kind.
He had no doubt that he was the only one in the room who’d noticed. Of course, there was a chance that she’d been talked into wearing makeup for the photo op, he wouldn’t put it past the Imperial government to want the human to look as good as possible. He doubted it though. This wasn’t an exhibition of male military staffers dressed to impress. Women in the Imperial military didn’t wear makeup.
The implication was that she’d chosen to wear it.
The implication of that he was unsure about.
As the human and the ulu disappeared through the same set of doors that the other soldiers had passed through, Jel’s mind was racing. Already he could see other journalists in the room with similar expressions, typing frantically on their devices, or deep in thought. What questions did he have for her?
He had no doubt that he’d be given a chance to ask them. He had the distinct advantage of being the only male present, which meant that the staffers couldn’t just ignore him, or they’d come off as misandrists. Even as the personnel in the room started clearing space by the doors and his fellow correspondents jostled to the front, he noticed the women in uniform looking his way, whispering amongst themselves and nodding.
The cordons were moved, and a podium was brought in. Then a polite chuff from his left elbow startled him. A duradian materialized as if from thin air, her scales shifting into a slate grey, and several other beings close by squeaked in surprise.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, her voice carrying in a steady low thrum. “You are Mister Jelakka Mar’miar with GalWave magazine, correct? The Admiral would like to invite you to the front.”
Well, that’s one way to do it.
He looked at Rumarr, who grinned. “Don’t worry about me,” she chuckled. “I can see the podium from anywhere in the room, and I dare them to ignore me.”
The duradian rolled her eyes at that, but it was hard to read reptilian facial cues sometimes.
Jel grinned back.“Oh, I wasn’t worried about you,” he replied. “Just surprised you didn’t jump out of your skin like the rest of us.”
“Saw her coming,” Rumarr smirked. “Seventeen years of war correspondence. It’d take a lot more than a duradian to startle me.”
The lizard woman’s eyes rolled again. Yeah, that was definitely annoyance.
To be fair, he was being a little rude.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and she nodded. “Lead the way.”
The crowd in their immediate vicinity was already clearing a path for the soldier, and as they moved to the front, the duradian let out a chuff.
“She didn’t see me,” she said, pushing a gap between a kespan and an Ump’kata, then gesturing him through.
“What?” he asked, bemused.
“Ursinians have a fear response that they display when taken by surprise,” she deadpanned. “The hairs on their neck stand on end. She hid it well, but she was surprised.” They’d arrived in the front of the crowd now, and the duradian stared at him with unblinking reptilian eyes, waiting for a response.
“Okay,” he ventured, and she frowned.
“She did not see me. I am very good at my job,” she pressed.
“I… agree?” Jel tried again, and this time the woman nodded.
“Good,” she said, and then she was gone.
Goddesses, he swore to himself, careful not to speak out loud in case she was still nearby. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that. He might need to; there were nearly as many duradians on Ervamir as there were kespans. Their mooncradles were among the closest to this region of space, and so they’d made up the bulk of the Imperial reinforcements.
After about ten minutes the jostling died down, and within twenty, the crowd had composed itself, waiting rapturously for the human’s return. Half an hour after that, the excitement had bled from the room to be replaced with frustration.
How long do they plan on keeping us here?
Finally, the doors opened, and every journalist leaned forward, cameras clicking feverishly. But it was a kespan, not a human, that appeared in the doorway, and the noise died down as Vice Admiral Kel’rek took to the podium.
“I thank you all for being here, and for waiting so patiently for our business to conclude,” she said, her voice amplified by vocal cord augmentation, a modification that was standard-issue amongst officials. “As I’m sure you’ve all guessed by now, the Admiralty has made the time of one of our newly enlisted lateral hires available for you all to ask questions of her, and yes, she is human.”
She held up a hand as the room began to buzz, and there was quiet again. “Specialist Cardoso will be joining you all in a moment. As a member of the Imperial military, I will remind you all that she is held to a certain standard regarding the disclosure of information pertaining to Imperial military operations. Since her position has only been fully realized as of today and this responsibility is new to her, a member of our public relations team will be vetting all questions posed. Any questions that are interpreted as attempts to garner information on current operations in this system will be discarded, and the responsible party will be asked to leave this conference.”
A uniformed kespan wearing a high-tech eyepiece moved close to the podium, and Jel heard a snort come from behind and above him. Probably Rumarr. The Vice Admiral surveyed the room sternly before carrying on.
“Earlier this morning, you were each provided with an update to your translation software to accommodate the language that Specialist Cardoso will be using to communicate with. If anyone has not yet applied this patch, I will give you an opportunity to do so now.”
No one moved.
“With that said, I’m sure you all have many questions for our first human recruit, so without further ado, I will cede the floor to Specialist Cardoso.”
The double doors opened, and the human stepped out.
Gone was the march and the fixed stare. In its place, there was a hesitance to her steps, and her teeth were bared. ‘Greetings, friendly’ Jel’s translator chip whispered into his brain, but he wasn’t convinced. She looked unsure of herself. She glanced at the Admiral, and something hardened in that expression. ‘Resolve’ whispered his firmware.
She doesn’t want to be here Jel realized, relieved that the human was easier to read than most other species he’d met. He could be completely wrong of course, but given the similarities that humans and kespans shared in their body configurations, he was almost certain of it.
She took to the podium, and the room filled again with mutters that died down as the human leaned forward to address them.
“Hello, everyone,” she said, and Jel tried to focus on the cadence of her words and let the translator's speech take a back seat. “My name is Specialist Ana Cardoso, and I will be answering some questions about myself and my fellow humans on behalf of the Imperial military.”
Her voice was rhythmic and almost melodic, with long vowels stretched out around short hard consonants and rolled soft ones. Where each word ended, he couldn’t be sure. His translator registered almost 100% of the communication as phonetic, which would at least make things easier. Even the best technology could make mistakes with scent and gesture-based languages.
“I’d like to first say that I do not claim to represent all of, or indeed any part of humanity beyond myself here this morning,” she went on. “I am here to represent only the Imperial military in its attempt to… include humanity in the galactic fold. Any answers I give to questions outside of that are my own opinions based on personal experience, and nothing more.”
Limbs shot up across the room, including Jel’s own hand, and a barrage of questions had the human shrinking back slightly, clearly overwhelmed.
The PR woman stepped forward, picking one of the journalists at the front.
“Descanti Publishing ma’am. Why did you decide to join the Imperial military?”
Ana nodded. “That’s a good question, and I’m sure that many of my fellow women on Earth would ask the same thing. The truth is that my planet is on the brink. We are faced with a choice to give in to our choice of two things; hatred and the destruction of everything we have left, or the Imperium, where we can take our place among the stars.”
Another flurry of questions, and the kespan pointed out another reporter.
“Selep Neeb, ma’am, with the Quasar Chronicle. Where were you on the day that the nanobots dropped?”
The kespan aide’s ear twitched, and Specialist Cardoso glanced at her sharply. When no recriminations came, the human nodded, closing her eyes.
“I was at a bar near my home, with my closest friend. He died in my arms,” she said, then swallowed, and her lips drew into a tight line. “He was a good man.”
“Do you hate the Imperium for what happened to your people?” A voice called out above the rabble, and the human squared her shoulders.
“Absolutely.”
​
That's probably not the direction the Admiralty wanted things to go, but oh well, them's the breaks.
Hello fine people, and thanks for reading as always. I've had a very busy start to my week, so I'm a couple of hours later than I'd usually post. Not much else to add, save that the Patreon is still chugging ahead with chapters up to 23 available to read right now.
Thank you all for your support. I read every comment, and I'm pleased that some of you are getting invested in the story and it's characters, it's what motivates me to do more and better.
See you all on Thursday (US time) for the next installment!
Sir ChickenBurger
​
[First Chapter]
[Previous] [Patreon] [Next]

First Prev Next
I created water into the wooden bowl of the last person in line.
"Thank you, Lady Cathalia." The older den-child woman bowed.
I gave her a smile. "Of course."
I took a breath for myself as the line finally cleared up and I looked around to see that Tonio was talking with Red-Talon-Fist and Iris, and seemed to be performing his kata. It's good that Tonio was getting friends other than I.
I found a rock and sat down pulling out the map we had, trying to find our next destination. We needed a good place to leave these people. There was a rumor around camp of a place called 'Bastion' a city that was supposedly a haven for refugees, slaves, and others that sought asylum, especially from the Reign. I wasn't aware of a place like this, but if it was built recently, it might have escaped my notice.
I folded the map up as I found what seemed like a decent route. I'd have to recheck it later and speak with Tonio, and especially Red-Talon if she's as well traveled as she seems.
With time to myself and nothing to do at the moment, there was something I hadn't done in a while now. I closed my eyes, opening my aura to the world, and listening.
First the clamor of camp faded.
Then the sound of the forest and breeze.
And it was silent.
...
Then, a single small voice.
"Cathalia, Goddess of Freedom, thank you bringing mama and me and everyone out of that scary cave."
The voice was joined by first a cacophony of other voices, then, as I took another moment, the cacophony became clear.
"Goddess of Liberation, thank you for this chance,"
"Cathalia, I thank you and your Godhallowed,"
"Thank you, Lady of Freedom."
These weren't misaimed prayers directed at a deity that they didn't know, they were all directed to me. Beyond that, they had something common between all of them.
They were all prayers of gratitude.
Closed as my eyes were, I felt tears water and leak down my cheeks, which I had to wipe away.
That wasn't it though, beyond the prayers of thanks and gratitude, there were still those that cursed my name, words praying to 'me' as the Lady of Order, and most importantly, those that plead to the Goddess of Freedom to help them.
I opened my eyes, the sound rushing back, and began looking through the book of skills as well as running through different routes on the map. There was still much work to be done.

Tonio
I felt myself deflate at what Red said. If I got what Iris taught, that means I couldn't do the cool elemental magic shit.
"Man, everyone gets sad real quick here," Red's words snapped me back to our training. "Don't worry! Even if you can't command the elements, you can straight up do some wild shit with what you got stockpiled."
I took a breath and nodded, "well, alright then." Sure it was disappointing, but those were already things I couldn't do anyway, nothing really changes, and maybe it'd be cheating if I could use all this magic while also having Godhallowed skills.
"Anyway, Tonio, keep doing the thing--the kata, I didn't tell you to stop." Red crossed her arms.
"Oh, uhh," I stammered and started up from the start again. Though, my brain didn't realize to complain until I was already halfway through the movements. Oh well, if it ends with me doing mountain-rending slashes, the tedium is worth, I guess.
"While you're at it," she said, quickly turning to the hobgoblin mage, "Iris, punch me."
"Huh??" Iris said out loud, "I'm sorry... I mean, pardon?"
"C'mon, fist into a ball and straight into my arm." Red put her arms to the side.
"Ms. Red-Talon, I..." Iris said, pausing, "you're not going to get hurt, are you?"
"Nah nah, just go for it," she said, turning, "just here," she pointed at her shoulder, hopping up onto a rock so that the two women were level.
Iris walked forward, hands to her chest, but she was hesitant.
"See, close your eyes, you know where to punch. Just-- imagine the person you hate the most in front of you and just let 'em have it."
"Um... okay, if you insist, Ms. Red-Talon." Iris said and closed her eyes. It took her a while, until she was gritting her teeth and clenching her fist, taking rougher breaths. Finally, with a yell, she drove her fist forward and into Red's shoulder.
Red grunted as Iris opened her eyes.
"Sorry! I'm sorry, Ms. Red!"
Red chuckled, "ya'll forgot 'Talon'," Iris seemed like she was about to apologize again, but Red stopped her, "I'm teasing, you're all good." Red smiled and put her hands on her hips. "I wanted to see just how strong you were because you're a mage."
"I'm... not a mage, Ms. Red-Talon." She said, head low.
"Bull-shit, Iris. You make shit happen with mana, and you can do elemental shit without breaking a sweat. You're more of a mage than that dumb elf guy."
There was a moment of Iris just staring at Red, before she smiled and definitely blushed. "Um... thanks."
"But also!" Red continued, "because you're a mage, we gotta shore up your hand-to-hand, can't be castin' a long spell if there's a sword in ya'll's face. So here,"
Red began tutoring Iris on the basics of self-defense, no fancy martial arts or anything, just how to stand, how to block and how to throw a punch. Sometimes Red would move Iris' arm into a better position and Iris would blush again.
That was cute, but I was getting real bored of doing the same eight moves again and again. Red finally approached me as she had Iris jogging in place. "Ya'll good, Tonio?"
"Honestly?" I swung, moving into the next move in the kata, "real bored," I stepped backward, then sideward.
"Bored of ki training, huh? Well, I guess I'll just keep my techniques to myself." She teased.
I huffed as I restarted the kata. "Please. No. Free me from this hell."
She laughed, "So. Keep the kata up, but the next time you get to that forward thrust, feel your front leg touching the ground."
"What?" I asked, as the kata had already passed that point.
"Really feel it, feel the shake of your calf as you stomp, feel the little painful vibrations from the hard dirt, feel all them muscles contracting and expanding."
I passed the stomp again, as I tried to let her instructions sink in. It was kinda hard to do so since my body was getting sore and tired from the repeated movements, though it took a longer to get there.
As I restarted the kata, I tried to do as she said, focusing on anticipating the feeling of the stomp despite the exhaustion, even adding it to the focus.
Feel the stomp, the vibration, the equal-opposite-reaction going from my sole to my heel, to my ankle to my shin and up to my knee, feel the muscles tensing and releasing.
And...
...
"Nothing happened." I blurted with clear annoyance and disappointment.
"Nothing's supposed to happen yet, you stopped your kata again." Red said, looking at me with arms crossed.
I sighed long and drawn out. "Can we continue this later? I'm gonna go find Cath." I didn't wait for an answer though as I walked off.
"Okay Iris, you can stop now." Was the last thing I heard before they were out of earshot.

Cathalia was kneeling over the fully opened map on the ground, poring over it. She looked up, "oh, Tonio! You're done with training?"
I shrugged. "Just taking a break I guess." I realized I didn't even sheath Pathlighter, which was why my one arm was still straining. I put the sword away.
"Here, the grass is quite soft." She said, motioning to a spot beside her, which I gladly collapsed on, "was the training very intense?"
"Not really," I said, "I just had to repeat my kata a lot."
"How many times?"
Oh, I didn't actually count, how many times did I repeat the kata while waiting for Red? "Actually, was it twenty times? Or even more?"
"Ah, that's why," Cath said with a smile, "I was concerned for your Godhallowed body. It shouldn't get tired quickly."
I exhaled, catching my breath, "what's up with that anyway? I think you explained a bit already, but not fully."
"Well, higher bodily efficiency just means you need to eat less, which you may have noticed. You're also immune to most diseases, and your body doesn't... produce waste because it actually recycles all of the food and water. You also get tired slower."
"Huh." I said. That makes sense, I didn't notice it until now, but, yeah I didn't really 'produce waste' anymore. Though, I still sweated. I wiped my brow, looking at the sweat in my hand. Which also made sense, because sweat is temperature regulation, not waste product, if all my biology knowledge wasn't wrong.
"I plotted out our route," Cath began, "there's a single town on the way, Ropa, which the temple of Meved is near. Then, our last stop before getting to my high temple is a port city called Northerport."
Something caught my eye, and ear, as Cath explained, I looked at the 'Ropa' on the map, which was pointedly different in the way it was named. Most settlements had a sort of suffix to them 'home,' 'berg,' 'port,' but this one didn't "This one is just called Ropa?"
"Noticed that too? I did say you were smart," she said with a smile and a wink, which caused my cheeks to go warm. Which to be honest, probably was just me blushing. "Yes, I don't know the history of this specific town, but, the suffixes are usually for towns that are more Reign-aligned. Which means a town without a suffix is likely not as sympathetic." She leaned forward, supporting her weight with one hand and using the other to poke at the image of 'Ropa.'
I leaned forward too to see what she pointed at.
"And! See how the whole route," she said, tracing the road on the map, "the name, and the town itself looks a bit different from the rest of the map? Touch it, it even feels like the ink is newly dried."
I did, and, yeah, there's definitely a distinct texture.
"I have a feeling this town doesn't exist in official Reign maps."
"Oh weird," I said, leaning back, "we got this map from Burrowden, right?"
"Exactly!" She said with a finger poke.
"Wait, but," I looked back down at the map, "it looks like it's just near the forest, in plain sight, how would a supposed dissident town survive long even if they don't exist on official maps? Wouldn't the Reign ask questions?"
"That I'm unsure of, but it's something we'll find out soon when we actually arrive there." She said, leaning back, basically sitting on her folded legs. "It should be three days out. With fortune, the town is friendly, or at least unfriendly to the Reign, which means we should be able leave the freed people here."
"Cath, you're great!" I blurted out, my brain just caught up to my mouth, but, it seemed like what I said this time was a good thing.
Cathalia blushed, putting a hand over her smile like she usually does, "I'm just glad we're close to our destination, we're still quite far out from toppling the Reign, but finishing one leg of the journey would be good."
"Yeah," I sighed in relief, "but, don't say we're close, you'll jinx it."
Cath chuckled, "oh? Well, we don't have such superstitions here in Valor. I'm sure everything will be perfectly fine now that we're so near!"
I laughed, "Cath, please, you're making it worse."
Which made her laugh in turn.
It's not the first time I've thought about this, but she was so different from what I'd imagined a 'god' would be. Sure, kindness was expected enough, but beyond that, Cath was relatable, down-to-earth ironically, and smart beyond her domain, but not omniscient, which just let me relate to her more.
I looked at her, and a thought crept forward from the back of my mind, what were we supposed to do once all this was done? Did I even have a choice, or would I just be thrust out of the world? Did I even want to stay in Valor?
These were thoughts that needed to be pushed to the back of my head again. I'll think about them later.
"Tonio? You alright?" Cathalia's voice came. Maybe I was staring too much.
"Oh, right, yeah, I was just thinking," I said, "nothing important."
Cath looked unconvinced, but she didn't push it, "...okay."
My smile unconsciously came back as I looked her, just being in her presence felt relaxing, just ...nice.
I stood up, "I'm gonna go continue training, thanks, Cath."
"Thanks? Whatever for?" She asked, but without her characteristic teasing.
"Uhh," I also didn't really know why I thanked her, so I just did my usual shrug, and ran off to where Red and Iris were still practicing.

When I made my way back, Iris was sitting on the ground panting, Red was stretching, but looking at the mage in concern.
"I'm back." I said.
Red turned to me, "ya'll taking a break was good actually. Gave me an idea. Though, something I'd no doubt think of given time anyway."
"It's... not more kata, is it?" I asked with barely contained displeasure.
"Nah. That's done. In fact, you probably didn't need to do all that."
I put my hands on my face and rubbed. I groaned, "seriously?"
"Relax! That probably taught you patience or something. Master always taught me to learn from seemingly random things, so who knows?"
I stopped rubbing, running both my hands through my hair and just holding them above my head with a heavy sigh. "So, what's up with the new idea?" I really hoped it wasn't gonna be tedious.
"Well, talkin' with Iris here, you seem to grasp stuff pretty fast, so why not I just tell you how ki works for me, then you can figure it out?"
That... sounded more bearable. "Yeah actually, that sounds good."
She nodded and stretched one last time, causing me to need to 'clear the horny from my mind' as Red put it. "Iris, you good over there?" She asked.
Iris, having caught her breath, put out a thumb up.
"Great, I'll get back to you later," she turned back to me, "so, what I do is use my mind to feel around the energy in me, then kinda 'burn' it. First, think about what I want to do, then imagine the energy on fire and actually burning away. Like if I wanted to jump, this is me jumping on my own:"
She demonstrated, going into a crouch and jumping. She got a few feet off the ground, but nothing like what I've seen her do.
As she landed, she did a cool three point landing, with none of the knee breaking. "And this is ki empowered."
She used her crouched landing to spring off into another jump, this time much farther up, easily clearing probably two people's worth of height, and grabbing onto a nearby branch with one hand. The spot on the grass she leapt from also had a visible divot in the shape of her talon-feet.
"That's as basic as it gets. There are ki techniques that make the practitioner way lighter, but I basically just made my legs stronger and more durable." She spoke, still clinging on the branch, before letting go and landing smoothly. "the durability bit is important, you don't wanna dislocate your knees because you jumped too hard."
"So..." I began, trying to wrack my brain on what she said, "ki can make your body stronger and more durable, which also makes it faster." And the part about 'burning' reminded me of a particular magic system from a book I've read on Earth, which would be my next question: "What's the rate of the ki burn?'
"Whaddyou mean 'rate'?" She replied quickly.
"Like, when you burn it, how fast does it go?"
She thought for a moment, "ah okay, it depends actually, I can slow burn it, or just burn a ton of it real quick. Fast burning means the effect's bigger, but that also means that ki's burnt up."
So it was exactly like that one magic system, at least the 'burning' and 'flaring' part. "Can you demonstrate the fast burn?"
She squinted at me, then looked at Iris, who caught her eyes but seemed unsure what Red was looking for. She looked back to me. "Fine, but, no funny business."
Red walked over to a nearby tree, it didn't look too thick, but it wasn't a small thin thing either. Though, I didn't know trees so I didn't know how hard the wood on this one was. She balled her fists and put them to her side, going into a wide, solid, combat stance. Her face lit up as she seemed to realize something.
"Hang on," she said, cupping her hands on her mouth and facing camp, "HEY YA'LL, WE'RE JUST TRAINING HERE, DON'T MIND ANY LOUD NOISE, SORRY!" She shouted with a voice that was definitely louder than it probably normally would be.
"Wait, was that ki too?"
She turned to me smiling, "a lil bit of ki, lil bit of aura."
"Aura?"
"Shit. Big mouth," she said, palming her face, "worry about it later."
I had questions, but let it go for now.
She stared at the tree, readjusting her stance, and, after a moment, she inhaled sharply and launched a fist forward. With a loud crack, the trunk splintered. The destruction going through the whole thing and completely wrecking the area she punched.
The tree didn't fall though, it was more like a bullet hit it rather than a felling slash. I walked around to confirm that yes, the force of the punch went all the way through.
Holy shit.
Red panted, straightening her stance and shaking the hand she used to punch. "Should've upped more toughness... shit." She hissed. Though her hand looked scratched, it was much less damaged than what the cracks and splinters on the tree would suggest.
"That was amazing!" I yelled, "you're telling me I can do shit like that?"
She gave a smug smile at the compliment, even through her pain. "Pretty much."
I jogged over to a particularly big rock, "so I just imagine myself burning the ki, right?"
"Uhh, I don't think..." Red trailed off, "y'know what? Sure."
I didn't even take that as suspicious, I just went for it. I took a stance of my own, arms up, legs apart, more like a boxing stance than what she did. Okay. Now, just feel out all the ki inside me. Maybe think of it as all this warmth in my body. Yeah.
I imagined my body as a container filled with water, no, oil! First, think of what I want to accomplish. Shatter this rock. Next, burn the ki. I imagined lighting a match and dropping it into the oil in my body.
Immediately I felt something different as the imaginary match lit a fire that started spreading.
I threw my fist forward.
Wait. Shit. I needed to up the durability of my hand.
Alright. Now...
wait, how can I think so fast when I've already thrown the punch? Does ki also make thoughts faster?
Not now, need to make my fist tougher, I don't want to shatter my b--
My hand connected, cracking the stone where it landed, but not doing much else. On the plus side, my fist wasn't at all injured...
Feeling woozy.
What--
Feels kinda familiar,
Like right before I fell uncon...

Eliad whetted his axe, sitting on a rock with his hat to his side. He looked through the late Selorel's eyes and memory, studying how the mystery Godhallowed moved about.
That parry left him open on one side, a quick stab there, strike an artery, or slow him down.
That feint was badly done, a quick blow to the head would finish the job.
Many times where silent spellcasting could've made quick work of the man.
His leg.
His neck.
The Godhallowed was full of openings. Although, Eliad knew that this memory was a week or so old by that point, and that things may have changed. Fighting the man in reality was not as straightforward as planning and correcting mistakes that have already played out.
Still, he was just a bit disappointed that the man wasn't as skilled as he'd hoped.
He heard steps on the grass behind him, and nervous breathing. Clearly not an assassin, or if they were, they were quite an awful one.
He let it sit for a moment,
and another.
He sighed. "Well? Out with it?"
He heard a small yelp as whoever was here shuffled on their feet. "Lord Magister Eliad, scouts have reported signs of civilization close by."
Eliad finally turned to face the whoever. He was one of the soldier's in Eliad's command, a younger lad. He wore the uniform of a lieutenant, a sword at his side, and a spear being held. He was kin, but not highkin. So his rank was won through effort and skill alone. Good to know.
"Direction?" He asked simply.
"North-North-Easterly, sire. They suspect to find the unmapped town farther along."
Eliad nodded, standing. The lieutenant flinched. His subordinates finding him intimidating was reasonable, but he was concerned. Had someone seen him use his skill? Or perhaps worse yet, seen him dispatch Selorel? He took a subtle exhale. A problem for later. To be rooted out.
"We'll start moving camp at dawn. Tell the scouts to clear a forward position and make sure there aren't any dangers hiding. Continue informing me of any small changes." Eliad told the lieutenant.
The lieutenant did his salute, balling his hand into a fist and cupping his other hand over it in a mimicry of the Lady of Order's symbol. "It will be done, Lord Magister." The lad said as he jogged back to camp.
Eliad kept his axe, turned and lifted the headless deer carcasses, following the lieutenant back to camp.
First Prev Next
Author's Note: I might have to go to one chapter every two weeks, there's different things keeping me busy that I can't reliably finish a chapter a week, so moving it to two weeks should help consistency.