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2024.05.29 04:09 Storms_Wrath The Human Artificial Hivemind Part 518: A Falling Tower
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Penny gazed at the quartet of Elders. They were all wearing the merchandise she remembered from the last Judgment, which was exceedingly awkward. Mainly because they were wearing shirts with her face on them. But it was also oddly endearing, in a way. Until now, she hadn't seen too many Elders that were on her side.
Elders that weren't just Kashaunta or the familiar faces she already knew, like Spentha or Rho and Sai, actually showing appreciation of her, felt odd. Even if these ones went a little too far in it.
"You're even more beautiful in person, Liberator," one said.
"Uh, thanks. I appreciate that. I'm glad that you all like me. Rho and Sai told me that you all are interested in something I can give you?"
"Yeah. Maybe a short interview? We won't be like that airhead reporter. We'll ask the good questions."
"Yep, we will."
"Right then," Penny said. "Well, I'm glad to meet you."
"Thank you. Now that we're here, we'd like to know how you plan on taking care of the gang leaders."
"Well, presumably by imprisoning them. I don't think they deserve to die, even if others do. I'll leave that decision up to Justicar and his various judges in the criminal system."
Penny didn't like having to lie blatantly. She wanted to kill the slavers quite brutally, but doing that was a bad idea right now. Saying it also was a bad idea, for a similar reason. And Justicar's system was worryingly preferential to Elders, from what she'd looked up after the meeting with Pundacrawla.
"Aren't you worried that the Judges won't give proper justice?"
"I trust Justicar to do everything that is necessary."
Another lie. Justicar would do whatever he could to maintain his image. Hopefully, that wouldn't be at the cost of the Alliance's very existence.
"Got it. By the way, what's it like being human? Walking on only two legs. It seems kind of unstable. Do you fall a lot?"
A genuine curiosity from them was another breath of fresh air. It was the kind of question a quadruped would definitely ask, which put her more at ease about the nature of what they were trying to do. Even more than their evident support of her, with all the merch they were wearing. Penny felt a smile crack at the corners of her lips, unbidden.
"Not really. We can use our arms to steady ourselves pretty well. Obviously it's not as easy to balance on our two legs as it is with your four, but it's still good enough. In fact, the sprinters in the Olympics use all four limbs, since running as fast as possible also requires pumping our arms. As for what it's like to be human, it's hard to describe. For many of us, it will feel colder or warmer than Sprilnav would feel in the same temperatures, due to thinner skin. Our eyesight is more frontal than yours, given our lack of snouts, so our blindspots are a lot bigger. Our feet require shoes for rough ground, and we heal slower than you by around 20%. We can't really clack our jaws to the scale that you can, though we can make them meet."
Penny bared her teeth, showing as she opened and closed her mouth. It was nice to be able to talk about things like this.
"The Olympics?" one of them asked.
"It's a competition about athletics," Penny said. "Running, jumping, throwing, diving, swimming, skiing, snowboarding, and a lot of sports. There's specific divisions, too. Like how there's a 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, 400 meter dash, and even an 800 meter dash for those with high levels of psychic energy. Though really, psychic energy and genetic editing have been messing with the events for a while now. And there's a Winter, Summer, and Space Olympics, each with different sorts of events. They move from city to city, though the Space Olympics are pretty much always on either Luna, Ceres, or Mercury. There's a lot more information out there on various events, but it's an old cultural practice revered by the entire species. Even more so since Phoebe's increased the prize pools for everyone."
"How does your species handle space in general? I know that you guys did things way differently before First Contact."
"We did. Mining companies kept tight control on all asteroid mining, while nations controlled planets like Earth and Mars and large planetary bodies like Luna. Supposedly, a few people planned for a cloud city on Venus, but we couldn't risk having such a vulnerable population because they'd have to rely on giant balloons to survive. That would probably be the least secure way to live, given the existence of rogue organizations and all that.
As for spaceships, most of them since we really colonized Luna come equipped with spacesuit bays, zero gravity water and food packs, oxygen tanks, emergency seats, specialized anti-micrometeorite hulls, and radiation shielding. A lot of the older military ships also were equipped with big radiators until World War Three, when it all became masses of drone warfare, with the big ships kept mainly for cargo and lanes where mass drone control was impossible.
Once the Vinarii came and we got shields, we started building big again. After all, it provided a huge number of jobs, and in the post-war economies, especially with VIs in place, a lot of people needed work. But we still go and do asteroid and moon mining, star lifting, and energy gathering. We built an orbital ring around Mercury, the closest planet to Sol, to help with all of that. It doubles as a production hub, too. Now, it's all in more systems and with a lot more friends."
"Speaking of aliens, what theory does your people have on why so many creatures resemble one another? Our jaws are adapted for hard shelled creatures, and we're told that many planets have oddly similar variations of those."
"Crabs."
She guessed what they were getting at.
It is odd, isn't it? Nilnacrawla observed.
Perhaps that is another one of the Source's whims, Penny thought.
Maybe.
A few of the Elders made exclamations of shock.
"You even have a word for them that directly translates!"
Penny chuckled. "Yeah, carcinization is a bit of a meme in the science community. But I've heard the most mainstream theories since the First Contact are that the Source itself is uncreative. It has a certain template of creatures which it largely doesn't alter, though it can take in inputs from beings close to it, perhaps even influencing them."
"Influencing them?"
"Yes. Modern depictions of wendigoes, folkloric creatures from North America, a continent on Earth, are shockingly similar to the Knowers in appearance. The internet depictions of them in particular like to emphasize canine qualities, and often show them with skulls visible directly, and with dark brown or black fur. Recent depictions, as in the past 300 years, differ from their original appearances quite significantly, with the canine characteristics in particular being enhanced.
We have sorted through all known images of these creatures and found roughly 80% similarity with the Knowers and tens of thousands of images that are literally exactly the same as Knowers. The ones we searched all came before World War Three, far before even the First Contact with the Vinarii, much less the Knowers who were entirely underground at the time due to the radiation of their home star. We believe that the Source managed to influence this facet of human culture with the actual existence of a real creature.
Other examples exist, like how the Trikkec look very similar to Komodo Dragons, Vinarii look very similar to insects known as a mantis, and the Acuarfar look exactly like insects known as wasps with the single exception of their furry snouts and green instead of yellow markings. The Sprilnav species itself shares high amounts of similarity with a fictional species known as Elites in early 2000s culture, particularly with your jaws, though you all have red skin instead of grey or brown.
The Junyli, Dreedeen, and the wanderers are the main species without high amounts of appearance in our cultures at some point. This correlates with the idea of the Source being the influencer, as their predecessors all were used to fight it. Many species of the galaxy look like parts of our culture or Earth's creatures. The proximity of these examples makes this far more suspicious than if they were across the galaxy.
But since they existed first, the only answer must be that the Source brought the influence to us first and planted the ideas in our heads. As for the ones which look like Earth creatures, all of them are old enough evolutionary branches that copying from them to Earth makes more sense. Though the references centering around the early 2000s is quite odd, it is also roughly when the internet came into wide existence, so it is also possible the Source gave the ideas a push so they would propagate, for an unknown reason. Like if it seeded the ideas that propagated across the early global network Humanity used."
"Hmm. Fascinating. We've seen evidence of the 'seeding' process among some historical nations near the galactic region of Earth before. So the Source re-uses and alters depictions of life and also life itself?"
"Maybe," Penny said. "Unless the Source is more directly tied to life than we think. There's a conceptual Death, but no conceptual Life. Isn't that odd?"
"Conceptual Life died in the Source war."
How did that really work, though? Penny asked Nilnacrawla.
Imagine a conceptual being. A few of the Progenitors, as well as Narvravarana, went up to try to harvest its power. It refused, and Narvravarana used its unique abilities to try and force the deal.
Why was your civilization like this?
Excess and greed, partly. But we couldn't really do much more expansion. Vertical expansion also had its limits if we wanted to remain relevant for the remaining lifespan of the universe. So Narvravarana, along with a few of the greatest rulers and leaders of Sprilnav society, started looking to other dimensional planes. They figured it was best not to let the problem get too much worse. Or at least, that is what they say. I believe it was to harvest more resources to use against our surrounding enemies.
You didn't have any allies? Penny asked.
At that time, all the powers of the universe were enemies. All the allies eventually merged through millions of years of normalization. We happened to get on the universal stage the earliest, so other civilizations we encountered had little choice but to surrender their independence. Some fought, others didn't, but the outcome was the same.
That seems terrible.
It was, though the other universal civilizations were no better. Some of them just exterminated all alien life they found that couldn't fight back. In that sense, the pre-war Sprilnav civilization was one of the greatest, and that's why I fought for them. Obviously, I'm biased in that regard, though.
Thanks for telling me, father.
No problem, Penny.
She refocused back on the conversation at hand.
"But a thing cannot be alive if it dies. The concept of life doesn't work that way. So maybe the Source just... took in the concept of life? Or absorbed it into whatever psychic energy really is, considering that it's responsible for all of our existence?"
"That's so crazy it might actually be true," one of the Elders said. "You're incredible, Penny."
"Uh, thanks. You're all pretty great too." Her eyes drifted to the images of herself on their clothing. She couldn't really help it.
"I have a question for you."
"Yes?"
"Do you know what I'm fighting for?"
"I assume since you're asking it here, you don't just want a one word answer," an Elder said. "I would say yes, and for the liberation of the Sprilnav from the stain of slavery. Though going deeper into your history, you have also fought for other species, either in wars or just generally moving around. It does look aimless, mostly, since the galaxy's so big. But I'm sure you've got a way through that."
"In some way. Part of why I'm here isn't just about my people. It was at first, I admit that. But as I have lived here, on Justicar, for days and weeks, I've seen you less as alien. It makes it easier for sympathy and easier to break out of simple mindsets. So far, there are many problems, but there are distinct pieces. The first is that many people want to uphold slavery. I'm not sure why, but they do. It isn't profitable, and it isn't moral. Robots are cheaper in every way, and don't need food or water.
That means it's illogical or emotional. So I could try and solve the problem with violence alone, but it won't be addressing the cause, only the symptoms. I need to get to the heart of the matter. And I think it has to do with Elders' memories and the gradual woes they have accumulated going through life. I don't want to tear that away or drug them into believing they're fine. I want to find a way to outlet that productively. The second part I have identified is scale. The galaxy is enormous, and your species is incredibly numerous. I could fight planet by planet for the rest of my life, and liberation would still be difficult.
That also means I'd need a better way of doing things. Maybe an economic or political incentive. Emotional reasons will not work permanently, nor will logic, since we are in this situation. I have found several ways to address this. Sadly, since the gangs are likely monitoring this feed, I can't just outright say my strategy. All I can ask you all to do is to believe. Believe that I have a solution, and that I and those who stand with me are working on it. Believe in me because I believe in you."
None of the Elders questioned or ridiculed her words. Most of it was because they were fans of her. But one of them, an Elder named Rahautiti, had a distinct glint in his eye. Their gazes met only momentarily, but Penny could tell he knew.
And so she appeared in the mindscape, even as they concluded the interview, which would be the first of many. It was a ploy to just talk about human culture and ideals a bit more, to get it out there. Because the hivemind's theory was correct.
In the universe, ideas had power. That power could be weaponized against those who previously stood to gain. The first part of it was the image: Nova as an unbeatable bastion. Lecalicus as the Beast, a monster capable of star-crushing rage. Twilight as... whatever she did. Penny wasn't really familiar with the Progenitor's image too much, and the various names, like the Silent Night or the Smiling Darkness, were just so unbelievably edgy she cringed every time she recalled them.
But Rahautiti understood so she moved her mindscape avatar to see him.
"Hello again, Penny. I am no threat."
"I know. I'm glad that your group is led by someone as capable as you, as well as the other groups you dabble within."
"Who discovered it?"
"Phoebe. You met with Ezeonwha, and the android wanted to ensure you weren't a way for Yasihaut to kill him."
"Yeah. We did get approached about that, actually. We're supposed to kill Ezeonwha when you walk into the Judgment hall. Of course, we won't do this, and she won't be able to retaliate against us easily while there."
"Thank you for your honesty, Elder," Penny said. "It seems I'm in your debt."
"Nonsense. 2,839. That is the number of children I have had. 2,626. That is the number of children of mine which were enslaved. The remaining 213 died in unrelated incidents, with nearly half of those involving slavers killing them. I remember all of their names, and all of their faces, Penny. I want all the slavers in this universe dead."
"I cannot achieve that."
"You cannot," Rahautiti agreed. "Not with my help or even that of Kashaunta and Lecalicus. And certainly not right now. I have not lived this long to be incapable of compromise or patchwork solutions. You show great promise. I understand your aversion to killing and the circumstantial reason why you are not doing so now. I will not grow upset if you do not resume killing when the Judgment ends. Nor do I harbor a grudge against you for the speeding space entity you left outside the room to avoid uncomfortable publicity. You are incredibly young.
A sliver of a life. But you are strong, and you are mature. That sliver of your lifespan already outshines all I could do with a trillion more years, Penny. You are right in that this isn't something you can punch your way through. Trauma is part of why slavery still exists, despite it being a wholly unjust reason for the Elders to make such a sport of it. I am sure you know the story of the war, with a great hero in your head and Kashaunta at your side. My line of work is what I started to help you. Every thought about you being the Liberator, every eye that glances on you freeing slaves, helps you to gather conceptual energy. My talent happens to be great enough to sense the Pact of Blades you have, as well. If you want, I can teach you how to hide the mark on your soul and your mind."
"I would like that, yes," Penny said. "And thank you for being so reasonable. I will ask Kashaunta to protect you from what consequences come for refusing the offer on Ezeonwha."
"There are going to be attacks on him, you know. Him and your ship."
Penny felt an odd feeling in her soul. Cardi's power flared around him, and she squinted at the sky. She just barely saw a sliver of a tentacle. Most would have mistaken it for a normal speeding space entity. But here? On Justicar, with Exile obviously not being the cause?
Only one being would cause that. Fate.
Given the subject of their conversation, it was obvious what was going on.
Penny tapped Rahautiti's jaw, adding a thin mark of conceptual power so she could easily find him again. She focused on the conceptual mark she'd left on Ezeonwha. A twinge of conceptual energy came from it. It was accompanied by various impressions, like fear, pain, and acceptance.
"I have to go," Penny said. "I will be back later. Displace."
She appeared next to the 102nd Visitor Welcome Office but not next to Ezeonwha. It was carnage everywhere she looked.
"Champion!" an unknown Elder yelled. "I am Elder Na-"
Her rising fury surged, and it took all she had not to dismember him. The distant thought of the Judgment stayed her hands, though only just.
Penny's fist collided with the Elder's jaw at twice the speed of sound. A piece of his jaws flew free. Bone fragments hit the ground behind him. Hundreds of soldiers fired on her, and she slammed them to the ground with pure will. Penny tore their guns away and sent them each to pummel the Elder in front of her with as much brutality as she could. His powerful armor wasn't as capable of defense against physical attacks as it was against her psychic energy, and so he fell.
"You... cannot save him," the Elder spat. Fields of psychic suppression fell upon her, reducing her power.
"Manipulation through Determination," Penny growled. "De-"
No! Nilnacrawla said. Do not kill him! Not yet!
"What goes up will go down."
Air hardened around the Elder and accelerated rapidly.
The Elder smashed into the shield five miles above with a speed just slow enough that he wouldn't die. He fell from it and then hit it again at a more modest speed. He'd bounce on that until the Guides came to get him.
But Penny had another target. One she had to save instead of attack.
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High Judge Tassidonia awoke to the sound of explosions. He grabbed his swords, his main gun, and the personal shield he reserved for only the most dire occasions. The sky was erupting in war all around him, and buildings were already falling nearby. The spires of skyscrapers rained down upon the entrances to the Underground, crushing thousands of fleeing Sprilnav under their wide impacts.
His implant identified members of the gangs nearby, making their way to his home.
"Retribution Cycle!" Tassidonia cried. A hidden door opened, and he boarded a small hovercraft that sported a high amount of defensive and offensive technology, a gift from Justicar for dealing with all that he had related to the Judgment. Only this time, he wouldn't be on the next one. But already, the destruction was spreading.
Micro-missiles rained upon friend and foe alike. Several detonated against the layered shields. The mounted turrets on the side of his hoverbike shot lasers into the enemies his implant identified.
"Elder Tassidonia!" an Elder cried nearby. "For the crime of defying the will of-"
Tassidonia called his fury to bear. He rammed his mind into the enemy Elder, disorienting her. She reeled, about to attack, when a thick laser smashed into her chest. It pushed her against the wall, and Tassidonia kept the pressure up until her body melted. He listened to her screams impassively, occasionally sending blasts from his gun at the gangs when their members started to stray too close.
The thick red beam did its work within twenty pulses. His swords began to float beside him, keeping pace as he sped away from his home. The entire apartment complex shuddered and began to lean, its foundation being destroyed by some effect below. Tassidonia abandoned it with only minor regret. He'd known this moment would come. Everything he needed was already with him.
He linked into the Guide network, directing squadrons to attack the breaches he'd identified. Orbital strikes fell upon them in quick succession. Thick beams of light pierced through the lower planetary shields from orbital platforms, their guns honing in on Justicar's enemies. Tassidonia's implant was linked to the grid as well. So when he eyed buildings occupied with too many gang members, orbital strikes fell on them a few pulses later.
Fire and plasma rained all around him. Explosions and smoke blossomed all around him. More missiles fell from his hovercraft. A fighter ship appeared beside him, its simple stealth revealing itself to his eyes. Tassidonia waited for the pilot chamber to open, and his craft stowed itself behind him when he got in. It was fully equipped, so soon, Tassidonia was in full control of a weapon of war.
His first order of business was detecting the gangs' most fortified areas. He peppered those bases in shield-weakening mines, followed by bunker-buster missiles. Several anti-air turrets hit him, but his shields prevented them from taking him down. He dropped three high-end Butcher Androids into the fray of the largest battles.
One of the adjacent fighter wings in the separate shield sector dropped a nuke. At that moment, Tassidonia made a decision.
Whatever insanity was going on right now wasn't worth staying here on his own. He turned his ship upward, narrowly avoiding nearly fifty missiles shot from another gang fortress, which was really just the lower floors of a supermarket. Thick slabs of concrete were being set up by androids and slaves from the Underground. All he could do was watch from above and attempt to mark those that might be a problem.
Justicar's Grand Fleet was moving in, though only the carriers and their escorts were doing anything of any scale. The armies were mobilizing, and it seemed that war had finally broken out. Justicar, while isolated due to the Judgment, would have to win a war that threatened to topple his rule entirely.
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Ezeonwha woke when the walls around him shuddered.
An earthquake?
Groggily, he activated the lights in the room. Phoebe's android was charging in the wall. Her limbs swayed with the motion. The walls shuddered again, and the lights went out. Thin, tiny cracks spread in the walls, increasing his worry factors massively. His implant notified him that this wasn't a dream. Distant screams reached his ears, and he went to the window.
Hordes of Sprilnav were running on the ground, tripping over each other to escape. He heard the thump of footsteps approaching from outside. The android activated, standing up.
"Move away from the doo-"
An explosion tossed him across the room. A Sprilnav carrying some sort of mouth weapon faded into view for a moment, smoke recalibrating the stealth field. And then he was gone. Phoebe smashed into the Sprilnav, her fists pummeling the assassin faster than Ezeonwha could comprehend.
Phoebe's arms turned into swords, and she stabbed the Sprilnav at least fifty times in a single pulse. She turned to grab him, but before she reached him, a second explosion sent him flying out of the now-shattered window.
The massive skyscraper loomed large, and he saw the ground beneath it ripple. Dull thumps sounded from below, and large, circular caverns opened beneath the 102nd Visitor Welcome Office. The whole building started to list forward, and Ezeonwha frantically activated his emergency personal shield as he started falling faster and faster. A bullet hit the shield. And then a second one. Gunshots echoed out in the distance, and he saw other Sprilnav falling from broken windows in the falling skyscraper. Gunfire erupted on the streets as Guides engaged a growing army of attackers bubbling up from basements of shops and businesses.
He saw spurts of blood exit the Sprilnav nearest him, bullets tearing holes through the woman's body. Piercing screams surrounded him, a terrible chorus that reminded him of the worst wars he'd fought in. But here, his training could do nothing. She was already dead, and he knew that he was the target of this whole attack. His eyes watered, and Ezeonwha felt so powerless. So useless.
A Corrector emerged from the side of the tilting skyscraper, eyes fixed on Ezeonwha. Then he looked down. Somehow, Ezeonwha knew when the orders had been sent. He knew that it was Astipra in the distance, a jetpack on his shoulders burning a thick flame beneath him.
Astipra looked back at the building and flew toward it. Ezeonwha felt the wind rushing past the shield as pressure. Astipra, far above, vaporized falling chunks of the skyscraper with blasts from his arm cannons. He pressed back against the skyscraper, the jetpack going into overdrive. The metal bent inward, and the groaning and twisting structure continued its fall. Blasts of light from Astipra again vaporized the set of falling chunks.
"Penny," he said. It was almost a prayer, really. His desperate mind was scrambling for whatever it could get. "Please, save me!"
He didn't know if she could hear him. Logically, it was impossible. And in a battle such as this, unlikely as well. Rippling explosions erupted across the facade of the falling skyscraper as rockets struck it. More explosions bloomed as lasers from distant police vehicles, Guides, and Astipra destroyed more of the fast-flying missiles and rockets. They pounded on the world around him, a horde of madness threatening to break his brain. He could feel the wind and gravity equalize as he reached terminal velocity.
And all he could see was the world descending into war around him. The 102nd Visitor Welcome Office continued to slump and lean against Astipra's best efforts. More bullets hit Ezeonwha's personal shield, and peppered the Guides moving over to save him. Air ambulances were shot from the sky. Even small fighter crafts were shot down by powerful ground lasers. EMPs thumped, disabling all the higher functions of his implant before he could think to use it.
A much larger explosion bloomed out, and Ezeonwha followed the rocket's trail to an Elder on the ground, standing in the wreckage surrounding a sudden tunnel opening. The Elder stared at him in glee, and he lined up another shot. Two Guides fell upon the Elder, who flew up using a jetpack to cut them in half with his sword. A hard light hologram lifted a large gun, pointing at Ezeonwha as he fell.
His eyes widened. Ezeonwha did everything he could. He angled his legs and arms. He pushed at the air. He even hefted the meager psychic energy he had, struggling with all his soul to escape the death he could feel was coming to him.
Guides swarmed beyond the shield appearing, while gang soldiers died by the hundreds to carpet bombing. Personal shields sprang up to block the explosions, and the Elder had survived. A thick red laser cut one of the fighters in half from the smoke. Above him, the collapsing facade of the skyscraper consumed Astipra entirely, though large gouts of plasma and thick explosions emerged from within. He could survive if it fell upon him, but Ezonwha could not.
Penny materialized far below, closer to the field of battle. A sweeping wave of gang members began disappearing. A bullet smashed into her head and her stomach, detonating in bright explosions. A personal shield flared and disappeared. Missiles and lasers slammed into Penny by the thousands as psychic energy gathered. A constant roll of words fell from her tongue, but without his implant, they were not translated.
Missiles crumbled into dust. Lasers impacted raw space in front of Penny before bending down and back to their origins, destroying automated turrets. Bullets still hit Penny and the Guides by the thousands, firing too quickly and densely for her to entirely block. But the large ordnance from the gangs continued to work against them.
Penny looked around, confusion evident on her face. But amidst the thousands of wounded and dead Sprilnav falling from the broken windows, Ezeonwha was hidden too well.
Shattering glass could be constantly heard, and he could feel the distant screams in his soul. A bullet smashed into his personal shield again, disabling it. A pulse later, he lost feeling in his legs.
He tried to reach out to her mind, but the war in the mindscape was equally intense. Too many Elders and Guides battling it out along with various suppression artifacts made it all impossible. He could sense Penny's influence, but couldn't directly reach her.
He let out a breath, knowing it to be the final one.
I'm sorry, Penny, Ezeonwha thought.
I wish you luck in the Judgment, and I am sorry I caused this to happen to you.
Penny finally appeared in front of him, eyes wide-
Blood erupted. A searing pain in his head told him his implant had just shorted out. And in the mindscape, he saw a mental attack heading for him, its brutal power evident. He closed his eyes.
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Penny gazed at the quartet of Elders. They were all wearing the merchandise she remembered from the last Judgment, which was exceedingly awkward. Mainly because they were wearing shirts with her face on them. But it was also oddly endearing, in a way. Until now, she hadn't seen too many Elders that were on her side.
Elders that weren't just Kashaunta or the familiar faces she already knew, like Spentha or Rho and Sai, actually showing appreciation of her, felt odd. Even if these ones went a little too far in it.
"You're even more beautiful in person, Liberator," one said.
"Uh, thanks. I appreciate that. I'm glad that you all like me. Rho and Sai told me that you all are interested in something I can give you?"
"Yeah. Maybe a short interview? We won't be like that airhead reporter. We'll ask the good questions."
"Yep, we will."
"Right then," Penny said. "Well, I'm glad to meet you."
"Thank you. Now that we're here, we'd like to know how you plan on taking care of the gang leaders."
"Well, presumably by imprisoning them. I don't think they deserve to die, even if others do. I'll leave that decision up to Justicar and his various judges in the criminal system."
Penny didn't like having to lie blatantly. She wanted to kill the slavers quite brutally, but doing that was a bad idea right now. Saying it also was a bad idea, for a similar reason. And Justicar's system was worryingly preferential to Elders, from what she'd looked up after the meeting with Pundacrawla.
"Aren't you worried that the Judges won't give proper justice?"
"I trust Justicar to do everything that is necessary."
Another lie. Justicar would do whatever he could to maintain his image. Hopefully, that wouldn't be at the cost of the Alliance's very existence.
"Got it. By the way, what's it like being human? Walking on only two legs. It seems kind of unstable. Do you fall a lot?"
A genuine curiosity from them was another breath of fresh air. It was the kind of question a quadruped would definitely ask, which put her more at ease about the nature of what they were trying to do. Even more than their evident support of her, with all the merch they were wearing. Penny felt a smile crack at the corners of her lips, unbidden.
"Not really. We can use our arms to steady ourselves pretty well. Obviously it's not as easy to balance on our two legs as it is with your four, but it's still good enough. In fact, the sprinters in the Olympics use all four limbs, since running as fast as possible also requires pumping our arms. As for what it's like to be human, it's hard to describe. For many of us, it will feel colder or warmer than Sprilnav would feel in the same temperatures, due to thinner skin. Our eyesight is more frontal than yours, given our lack of snouts, so our blindspots are a lot bigger. Our feet require shoes for rough ground, and we heal slower than you by around 20%. We can't really clack our jaws to the scale that you can, though we can make them meet."
Penny bared her teeth, showing as she opened and closed her mouth. It was nice to be able to talk about things like this.
"The Olympics?" one of them asked.
"It's a competition about athletics," Penny said. "Running, jumping, throwing, diving, swimming, skiing, snowboarding, and a lot of sports. There's specific divisions, too. Like how there's a 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, 400 meter dash, and even an 800 meter dash for those with high levels of psychic energy. Though really, psychic energy and genetic editing have been messing with the events for a while now. And there's a Winter, Summer, and Space Olympics, each with different sorts of events. They move from city to city, though the Space Olympics are pretty much always on either Luna, Ceres, or Mercury. There's a lot more information out there on various events, but it's an old cultural practice revered by the entire species. Even more so since Phoebe's increased the prize pools for everyone."
"How does your species handle space in general? I know that you guys did things way differently before First Contact."
"We did. Mining companies kept tight control on all asteroid mining, while nations controlled planets like Earth and Mars and large planetary bodies like Luna. Supposedly, a few people planned for a cloud city on Venus, but we couldn't risk having such a vulnerable population because they'd have to rely on giant balloons to survive. That would probably be the least secure way to live, given the existence of rogue organizations and all that.
As for spaceships, most of them since we really colonized Luna come equipped with spacesuit bays, zero gravity water and food packs, oxygen tanks, emergency seats, specialized anti-micrometeorite hulls, and radiation shielding. A lot of the older military ships also were equipped with big radiators until World War Three, when it all became masses of drone warfare, with the big ships kept mainly for cargo and lanes where mass drone control was impossible.
Once the Vinarii came and we got shields, we started building big again. After all, it provided a huge number of jobs, and in the post-war economies, especially with VIs in place, a lot of people needed work. But we still go and do asteroid and moon mining, star lifting, and energy gathering. We built an orbital ring around Mercury, the closest planet to Sol, to help with all of that. It doubles as a production hub, too. Now, it's all in more systems and with a lot more friends."
"Speaking of aliens, what theory does your people have on why so many creatures resemble one another? Our jaws are adapted for hard shelled creatures, and we're told that many planets have oddly similar variations of those."
"Crabs."
She guessed what they were getting at.
It is odd, isn't it? Nilnacrawla observed.
Perhaps that is another one of the Source's whims, Penny thought.
Maybe.
A few of the Elders made exclamations of shock.
"You even have a word for them that directly translates!"
Penny chuckled. "Yeah, carcinization is a bit of a meme in the science community. But I've heard the most mainstream theories since the First Contact are that the Source itself is uncreative. It has a certain template of creatures which it largely doesn't alter, though it can take in inputs from beings close to it, perhaps even influencing them."
"Influencing them?"
"Yes. Modern depictions of wendigoes, folkloric creatures from North America, a continent on Earth, are shockingly similar to the Knowers in appearance. The internet depictions of them in particular like to emphasize canine qualities, and often show them with skulls visible directly, and with dark brown or black fur. Recent depictions, as in the past 300 years, differ from their original appearances quite significantly, with the canine characteristics in particular being enhanced.
We have sorted through all known images of these creatures and found roughly 80% similarity with the Knowers and tens of thousands of images that are literally exactly the same as Knowers. The ones we searched all came before World War Three, far before even the First Contact with the Vinarii, much less the Knowers who were entirely underground at the time due to the radiation of their home star. We believe that the Source managed to influence this facet of human culture with the actual existence of a real creature.
Other examples exist, like how the Trikkec look very similar to Komodo Dragons, Vinarii look very similar to insects known as a mantis, and the Acuarfar look exactly like insects known as wasps with the single exception of their furry snouts and green instead of yellow markings. The Sprilnav species itself shares high amounts of similarity with a fictional species known as Elites in early 2000s culture, particularly with your jaws, though you all have red skin instead of grey or brown.
The Junyli, Dreedeen, and the wanderers are the main species without high amounts of appearance in our cultures at some point. This correlates with the idea of the Source being the influencer, as their predecessors all were used to fight it. Many species of the galaxy look like parts of our culture or Earth's creatures. The proximity of these examples makes this far more suspicious than if they were across the galaxy.
But since they existed first, the only answer must be that the Source brought the influence to us first and planted the ideas in our heads. As for the ones which look like Earth creatures, all of them are old enough evolutionary branches that copying from them to Earth makes more sense. Though the references centering around the early 2000s is quite odd, it is also roughly when the internet came into wide existence, so it is also possible the Source gave the ideas a push so they would propagate, for an unknown reason. Like if it seeded the ideas that propagated across the early global network Humanity used."
"Hmm. Fascinating. We've seen evidence of the 'seeding' process among some historical nations near the galactic region of Earth before. So the Source re-uses and alters depictions of life and also life itself?"
"Maybe," Penny said. "Unless the Source is more directly tied to life than we think. There's a conceptual Death, but no conceptual Life. Isn't that odd?"
"Conceptual Life died in the Source war."
How did that really work, though? Penny asked Nilnacrawla.
Imagine a conceptual being. A few of the Progenitors, as well as Narvravarana, went up to try to harvest its power. It refused, and Narvravarana used its unique abilities to try and force the deal.
Why was your civilization like this?
Excess and greed, partly. But we couldn't really do much more expansion. Vertical expansion also had its limits if we wanted to remain relevant for the remaining lifespan of the universe. So Narvravarana, along with a few of the greatest rulers and leaders of Sprilnav society, started looking to other dimensional planes. They figured it was best not to let the problem get too much worse. Or at least, that is what they say. I believe it was to harvest more resources to use against our surrounding enemies.
You didn't have any allies? Penny asked.
At that time, all the powers of the universe were enemies. All the allies eventually merged through millions of years of normalization. We happened to get on the universal stage the earliest, so other civilizations we encountered had little choice but to surrender their independence. Some fought, others didn't, but the outcome was the same.
That seems terrible.
It was, though the other universal civilizations were no better. Some of them just exterminated all alien life they found that couldn't fight back. In that sense, the pre-war Sprilnav civilization was one of the greatest, and that's why I fought for them. Obviously, I'm biased in that regard, though.
Thanks for telling me, father.
No problem, Penny.
She refocused back on the conversation at hand.
"But a thing cannot be alive if it dies. The concept of life doesn't work that way. So maybe the Source just... took in the concept of life? Or absorbed it into whatever psychic energy really is, considering that it's responsible for all of our existence?"
"That's so crazy it might actually be true," one of the Elders said. "You're incredible, Penny."
"Uh, thanks. You're all pretty great too." Her eyes drifted to the images of herself on their clothing. She couldn't really help it.
"I have a question for you."
"Yes?"
"Do you know what I'm fighting for?"
"I assume since you're asking it here, you don't just want a one word answer," an Elder said. "I would say yes, and for the liberation of the Sprilnav from the stain of slavery. Though going deeper into your history, you have also fought for other species, either in wars or just generally moving around. It does look aimless, mostly, since the galaxy's so big. But I'm sure you've got a way through that."
"In some way. Part of why I'm here isn't just about my people. It was at first, I admit that. But as I have lived here, on Justicar, for days and weeks, I've seen you less as alien. It makes it easier for sympathy and easier to break out of simple mindsets. So far, there are many problems, but there are distinct pieces. The first is that many people want to uphold slavery. I'm not sure why, but they do. It isn't profitable, and it isn't moral. Robots are cheaper in every way, and don't need food or water.
That means it's illogical or emotional. So I could try and solve the problem with violence alone, but it won't be addressing the cause, only the symptoms. I need to get to the heart of the matter. And I think it has to do with Elders' memories and the gradual woes they have accumulated going through life. I don't want to tear that away or drug them into believing they're fine. I want to find a way to outlet that productively. The second part I have identified is scale. The galaxy is enormous, and your species is incredibly numerous. I could fight planet by planet for the rest of my life, and liberation would still be difficult.
That also means I'd need a better way of doing things. Maybe an economic or political incentive. Emotional reasons will not work permanently, nor will logic, since we are in this situation. I have found several ways to address this. Sadly, since the gangs are likely monitoring this feed, I can't just outright say my strategy. All I can ask you all to do is to believe. Believe that I have a solution, and that I and those who stand with me are working on it. Believe in me because I believe in you."
None of the Elders questioned or ridiculed her words. Most of it was because they were fans of her. But one of them, an Elder named Rahautiti, had a distinct glint in his eye. Their gazes met only momentarily, but Penny could tell he knew.
And so she appeared in the mindscape, even as they concluded the interview, which would be the first of many. It was a ploy to just talk about human culture and ideals a bit more, to get it out there. Because the hivemind's theory was correct.
In the universe, ideas had power. That power could be weaponized against those who previously stood to gain. The first part of it was the image: Nova as an unbeatable bastion. Lecalicus as the Beast, a monster capable of star-crushing rage. Twilight as... whatever she did. Penny wasn't really familiar with the Progenitor's image too much, and the various names, like the Silent Night or the Smiling Darkness, were just so unbelievably edgy she cringed every time she recalled them.
But Rahautiti understood so she moved her mindscape avatar to see him.
"Hello again, Penny. I am no threat."
"I know. I'm glad that your group is led by someone as capable as you, as well as the other groups you dabble within."
"Who discovered it?"
"Phoebe. You met with Ezeonwha, and the android wanted to ensure you weren't a way for Yasihaut to kill him."
"Yeah. We did get approached about that, actually. We're supposed to kill Ezeonwha when you walk into the Judgment hall. Of course, we won't do this, and she won't be able to retaliate against us easily while there."
"Thank you for your honesty, Elder," Penny said. "It seems I'm in your debt."
"Nonsense. 2,839. That is the number of children I have had. 2,626. That is the number of children of mine which were enslaved. The remaining 213 died in unrelated incidents, with nearly half of those involving slavers killing them. I remember all of their names, and all of their faces, Penny. I want all the slavers in this universe dead."
"I cannot achieve that."
"You cannot," Rahautiti agreed. "Not with my help or even that of Kashaunta and Lecalicus. And certainly not right now. I have not lived this long to be incapable of compromise or patchwork solutions. You show great promise. I understand your aversion to killing and the circumstantial reason why you are not doing so now. I will not grow upset if you do not resume killing when the Judgment ends. Nor do I harbor a grudge against you for the speeding space entity you left outside the room to avoid uncomfortable publicity. You are incredibly young.
A sliver of a life. But you are strong, and you are mature. That sliver of your lifespan already outshines all I could do with a trillion more years, Penny. You are right in that this isn't something you can punch your way through. Trauma is part of why slavery still exists, despite it being a wholly unjust reason for the Elders to make such a sport of it. I am sure you know the story of the war, with a great hero in your head and Kashaunta at your side. My line of work is what I started to help you. Every thought about you being the Liberator, every eye that glances on you freeing slaves, helps you to gather conceptual energy. My talent happens to be great enough to sense the Pact of Blades you have, as well. If you want, I can teach you how to hide the mark on your soul and your mind."
"I would like that, yes," Penny said. "And thank you for being so reasonable. I will ask Kashaunta to protect you from what consequences come for refusing the offer on Ezeonwha."
"There are going to be attacks on him, you know. Him and your ship."
Penny felt an odd feeling in her soul. Cardi's power flared around him, and she squinted at the sky. She just barely saw a sliver of a tentacle. Most would have mistaken it for a normal speeding space entity. But here? On Justicar, with Exile obviously not being the cause?
Only one being would cause that. Fate.
Given the subject of their conversation, it was obvious what was going on.
Penny tapped Rahautiti's jaw, adding a thin mark of conceptual power so she could easily find him again. She focused on the conceptual mark she'd left on Ezeonwha. A twinge of conceptual energy came from it. It was accompanied by various impressions, like fear, pain, and acceptance.
"I have to go," Penny said. "I will be back later. Displace."
She appeared next to the 102nd Visitor Welcome Office but not next to Ezeonwha. It was carnage everywhere she looked.
"Champion!" an unknown Elder yelled. "I am Elder Na-"
Her rising fury surged, and it took all she had not to dismember him. The distant thought of the Judgment stayed her hands, though only just.
Penny's fist collided with the Elder's jaw at twice the speed of sound. A piece of his jaws flew free. Bone fragments hit the ground behind him. Hundreds of soldiers fired on her, and she slammed them to the ground with pure will. Penny tore their guns away and sent them each to pummel the Elder in front of her with as much brutality as she could. His powerful armor wasn't as capable of defense against physical attacks as it was against her psychic energy, and so he fell.
"You... cannot save him," the Elder spat. Fields of psychic suppression fell upon her, reducing her power.
"Manipulation through Determination," Penny growled. "De-"
No! Nilnacrawla said. Do not kill him! Not yet!
"What goes up will go down."
Air hardened around the Elder and accelerated rapidly.
The Elder smashed into the shield five miles above with a speed just slow enough that he wouldn't die. He fell from it and then hit it again at a more modest speed. He'd bounce on that until the Guides came to get him.
But Penny had another target. One she had to save instead of attack.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
High Judge Tassidonia awoke to the sound of explosions. He grabbed his swords, his main gun, and the personal shield he reserved for only the most dire occasions. The sky was erupting in war all around him, and buildings were already falling nearby. The spires of skyscrapers rained down upon the entrances to the Underground, crushing thousands of fleeing Sprilnav under their wide impacts.
His implant identified members of the gangs nearby, making their way to his home.
"Retribution Cycle!" Tassidonia cried. A hidden door opened, and he boarded a small hovercraft that sported a high amount of defensive and offensive technology, a gift from Justicar for dealing with all that he had related to the Judgment. Only this time, he wouldn't be on the next one. But already, the destruction was spreading.
Micro-missiles rained upon friend and foe alike. Several detonated against the layered shields. The mounted turrets on the side of his hoverbike shot lasers into the enemies his implant identified.
"Elder Tassidonia!" an Elder cried nearby. "For the crime of defying the will of-"
Tassidonia called his fury to bear. He rammed his mind into the enemy Elder, disorienting her. She reeled, about to attack, when a thick laser smashed into her chest. It pushed her against the wall, and Tassidonia kept the pressure up until her body melted. He listened to her screams impassively, occasionally sending blasts from his gun at the gangs when their members started to stray too close.
The thick red beam did its work within twenty pulses. His swords began to float beside him, keeping pace as he sped away from his home. The entire apartment complex shuddered and began to lean, its foundation being destroyed by some effect below. Tassidonia abandoned it with only minor regret. He'd known this moment would come. Everything he needed was already with him.
He linked into the Guide network, directing squadrons to attack the breaches he'd identified. Orbital strikes fell upon them in quick succession. Thick beams of light pierced through the lower planetary shields from orbital platforms, their guns honing in on Justicar's enemies. Tassidonia's implant was linked to the grid as well. So when he eyed buildings occupied with too many gang members, orbital strikes fell on them a few pulses later.
Fire and plasma rained all around him. Explosions and smoke blossomed all around him. More missiles fell from his hovercraft. A fighter ship appeared beside him, its simple stealth revealing itself to his eyes. Tassidonia waited for the pilot chamber to open, and his craft stowed itself behind him when he got in. It was fully equipped, so soon, Tassidonia was in full control of a weapon of war.
His first order of business was detecting the gangs' most fortified areas. He peppered those bases in shield-weakening mines, followed by bunker-buster missiles. Several anti-air turrets hit him, but his shields prevented them from taking him down. He dropped three high-end Butcher Androids into the fray of the largest battles.
One of the adjacent fighter wings in the separate shield sector dropped a nuke. At that moment, Tassidonia made a decision.
Whatever insanity was going on right now wasn't worth staying here on his own. He turned his ship upward, narrowly avoiding nearly fifty missiles shot from another gang fortress, which was really just the lower floors of a supermarket. Thick slabs of concrete were being set up by androids and slaves from the Underground. All he could do was watch from above and attempt to mark those that might be a problem.
Justicar's Grand Fleet was moving in, though only the carriers and their escorts were doing anything of any scale. The armies were mobilizing, and it seemed that war had finally broken out. Justicar, while isolated due to the Judgment, would have to win a war that threatened to topple his rule entirely.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Ezeonwha woke when the walls around him shuddered.
An earthquake?
Groggily, he activated the lights in the room. Phoebe's android was charging in the wall. Her limbs swayed with the motion. The walls shuddered again, and the lights went out. Thin, tiny cracks spread in the walls, increasing his worry factors massively. His implant notified him that this wasn't a dream. Distant screams reached his ears, and he went to the window.
Hordes of Sprilnav were running on the ground, tripping over each other to escape. He heard the thump of footsteps approaching from outside. The android activated, standing up.
"Move away from the doo-"
An explosion tossed him across the room. A Sprilnav carrying some sort of mouth weapon faded into view for a moment, smoke recalibrating the stealth field. And then he was gone. Phoebe smashed into the Sprilnav, her fists pummeling the assassin faster than Ezeonwha could comprehend.
Phoebe's arms turned into swords, and she stabbed the Sprilnav at least fifty times in a single pulse. She turned to grab him, but before she reached him, a second explosion sent him flying out of the now-shattered window.
The massive skyscraper loomed large, and he saw the ground beneath it ripple. Dull thumps sounded from below, and large, circular caverns opened beneath the 102nd Visitor Welcome Office. The whole building started to list forward, and Ezeonwha frantically activated his emergency personal shield as he started falling faster and faster. A bullet hit the shield. And then a second one. Gunshots echoed out in the distance, and he saw other Sprilnav falling from broken windows in the falling skyscraper. Gunfire erupted on the streets as Guides engaged a growing army of attackers bubbling up from basements of shops and businesses.
He saw spurts of blood exit the Sprilnav nearest him, bullets tearing holes through the woman's body. Piercing screams surrounded him, a terrible chorus that reminded him of the worst wars he'd fought in. But here, his training could do nothing. She was already dead, and he knew that he was the target of this whole attack. His eyes watered, and Ezeonwha felt so powerless. So useless.
A Corrector emerged from the side of the tilting skyscraper, eyes fixed on Ezeonwha. Then he looked down. Somehow, Ezeonwha knew when the orders had been sent. He knew that it was Astipra in the distance, a jetpack on his shoulders burning a thick flame beneath him.
Astipra looked back at the building and flew toward it. Ezeonwha felt the wind rushing past the shield as pressure. Astipra, far above, vaporized falling chunks of the skyscraper with blasts from his arm cannons. He pressed back against the skyscraper, the jetpack going into overdrive. The metal bent inward, and the groaning and twisting structure continued its fall. Blasts of light from Astipra again vaporized the set of falling chunks.
"Penny," he said. It was almost a prayer, really. His desperate mind was scrambling for whatever it could get. "Please, save me!"
He didn't know if she could hear him. Logically, it was impossible. And in a battle such as this, unlikely as well. Rippling explosions erupted across the facade of the falling skyscraper as rockets struck it. More explosions bloomed as lasers from distant police vehicles, Guides, and Astipra destroyed more of the fast-flying missiles and rockets. They pounded on the world around him, a horde of madness threatening to break his brain. He could feel the wind and gravity equalize as he reached terminal velocity.
And all he could see was the world descending into war around him. The 102nd Visitor Welcome Office continued to slump and lean against Astipra's best efforts. More bullets hit Ezeonwha's personal shield, and peppered the Guides moving over to save him. Air ambulances were shot from the sky. Even small fighter crafts were shot down by powerful ground lasers. EMPs thumped, disabling all the higher functions of his implant before he could think to use it.
A much larger explosion bloomed out, and Ezeonwha followed the rocket's trail to an Elder on the ground, standing in the wreckage surrounding a sudden tunnel opening. The Elder stared at him in glee, and he lined up another shot. Two Guides fell upon the Elder, who flew up using a jetpack to cut them in half with his sword. A hard light hologram lifted a large gun, pointing at Ezeonwha as he fell.
His eyes widened. Ezeonwha did everything he could. He angled his legs and arms. He pushed at the air. He even hefted the meager psychic energy he had, struggling with all his soul to escape the death he could feel was coming to him.
Guides swarmed beyond the shield appearing, while gang soldiers died by the hundreds to carpet bombing. Personal shields sprang up to block the explosions, and the Elder had survived. A thick red laser cut one of the fighters in half from the smoke. Above him, the collapsing facade of the skyscraper consumed Astipra entirely, though large gouts of plasma and thick explosions emerged from within. He could survive if it fell upon him, but Ezonwha could not.
Penny materialized far below, closer to the field of battle. A sweeping wave of gang members began disappearing. A bullet smashed into her head and her stomach, detonating in bright explosions. A personal shield flared and disappeared. Missiles and lasers slammed into Penny by the thousands as psychic energy gathered. A constant roll of words fell from her tongue, but without his implant, they were not translated.
Missiles crumbled into dust. Lasers impacted raw space in front of Penny before bending down and back to their origins, destroying automated turrets. Bullets still hit Penny and the Guides by the thousands, firing too quickly and densely for her to entirely block. But the large ordnance from the gangs continued to work against them.
Penny looked around, confusion evident on her face. But amidst the thousands of wounded and dead Sprilnav falling from the broken windows, Ezeonwha was hidden too well.
Shattering glass could be constantly heard, and he could feel the distant screams in his soul. A bullet smashed into his personal shield again, disabling it. A pulse later, he lost feeling in his legs.
He tried to reach out to her mind, but the war in the mindscape was equally intense. Too many Elders and Guides battling it out along with various suppression artifacts made it all impossible. He could sense Penny's influence, but couldn't directly reach her.
He let out a breath, knowing it to be the final one.
I'm sorry, Penny, Ezeonwha thought.
I wish you luck in the Judgment, and I am sorry I caused this to happen to you.
Penny finally appeared in front of him, eyes wide-
Blood erupted. A searing pain in his head told him his implant had just shorted out. And in the mindscape, he saw a mental attack heading for him, its brutal power evident. He closed his eyes.
2024.05.29 04:07 apehasreturned Booking the AEW World Title in 2024 - Part Two: The Master
 | Part One Here! submitted by apehasreturned to FantasyBookingElite [link] [comments] We pick up following Blood and Guts, where AEW Champion Swerve Strickland led his team to victory over the Elite. It’s been an insanely brutal and bloody reign for Swerve so far, and with enemies and allies alike climbing the ladder towards a shot at the gold, he’s starting to grow slightly paranoid. With a second trip to Wembley approaching, the talk of the town is who’s going to win the Owen and go for AEW’s top title at Wembley - if Swerve even makes it there, the fans knowing that his wars of attrition are leaving him worse for wear with each passing defence. Road to All In London The lineup for the Owen is being narrowed down coming out of Blood and Guts, with MJF, Jay White, Bryan Danielson, Will Ospreay, Darby Allin, Hangman Page, Konosuke Takeshita and Katsuyori Shibata all in the running. With blockbuster match after blockbuster match being fought to determine the finalists for Calgary, we eventually come down to two: MJF and Will Ospreay, set on a collision course for the ages. Swerve’s troubles don’t end there, though - after leaving the Mogul Embassy, his old allies smell blood in the water, and the EVPs are all too happy to make Strickland’s life more miserable by announcing a title match with Brian Cage for the Dynamite opener in Alberta’s largest city. AEW World Title: Swerve Strickland (c) vs. Brian Cage Cage gets a good showing in here, using his remarkable athleticism to nearly put the champion away early, but once Swerve gets rolling, it’s clear that there are levels to this game. The Machine goes for a Liger Bomb, Swerve reversing into a hurricanrana to leave him prone for a HOUSE CALL, FOLLOWED BY A SWERVE STOMP! ONE! TWO! THREE! Swerve Strickland def. Brian Cage (11:51) to retain the AEW World Title After the bout, Swerve’s handed his title, and he keeps it hugged tight to his chest as he grabs a microphone. He says everyone’s been working their asses off around him to try and take this from him, but the champion promises he’s not afraid. He welcomes the challenge, because there ain’t nobody like Swerve Strickland in SWERVE’S HOUSE. He says he’s looking forward to seeing who comes out on top in the main event, and heads off backstage to watch it with Prince Nana. Owen Hart Foundation Tournament Final: MJF vs. Will Ospreay This gets a lot of time, with no limit on a tournament final. Let them cook. MJF is in worse shape than Ospreay, having been flung straight into a tournament after a series of surgeries left him held together with duct tape, but Ospreay’s in a worse headspace, his typical unending confidence hampered by a few narrow wins en route to the final. However, it’s two spectacular in-ring talents, and they go ham in pursuit of victory, MJF wanting to headline Wembley for the second straight year and Ospreay looking to win the AEW World Title in a stadium in his home country. The back-and-forth gives way to MJF getting control, working the arm extensively to warm Ospreay up for the Salt of the Earth. However, an appearance by Adam Cole gives an unknowing Ospreay the opportunity to turn the tables with a handstand reversal to a Heatseeker, following it with a Hidden Blade for two. Ospreay considers working on the shoulder, MJF crying out in agony with each blow to the surgically repaired joint, and eventually, Will has him in perfect position for the Storm Driver 93. He knows MJF’s neck and shoulder are in such a state that this would be an automatic victory, but he hesitates just long enough for MJF to roll him up… ONE! TWO! THRE-KICKOUT! MJF grabs the arm to go for a Salt of the Earth, Ospreay rolling him back into a pin of his own, followed by another HIDDEN BLADE! STORMBREAKER! ONE! TWO! THREE! OSPREAY’S GOING TO WEMBLEY! Will Ospreay def. MJF (31:02) to win the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament Out comes Swerve, standing toe to toe with his challenger as confetti falls around them. Ospreay leans on his trophy, grabbing a microphone as it becomes rapidly apparent his confidence is back. He says that All In is on the horizon, and last time AEW was at Wembley Stadium, he won as an outsider… yet Swerve lost. Now, Ospreay’s in AEW full time, mowing through all the competition, and now it’s time that the Kingpin get a shot at the crown. Swerve chuckles before his smile turns into a sneer, growling under his breath that Ospreay will have to kill him to take the AEW Title away - and he’s seen that despite being called the Assassin, he can’t do that. The next week on Dynamite, Ospreay and Swerve are scheduled for a face to face promo in the ring, the title match official for All In. It’s electric as they stand opposite one another in the squared circle, trading some quick verbal barbs that they both brush off before getting down to brass tacks, Swerve holding the microphone and beginning to speak. “Will, you’re impressive, man. You can be as athletic as the day is long, but it’s not ‘heavy is the body that wears the crown,’ it’s ‘heavy is the head,’ and there ain’t nobody like me. This is a mental game, and you don’t have what it takes there. You blew yourself up and broke your own neck when you went for the IWGP Title. You were betrayed by the Don Callis Family and somehow didn’t see it coming. You were beaten on your home turf by your sworn enemy because you got in your own head. You had the win of a lifetime against Bryan, and then you felt so bad about it that you neutered your arsenal. You don’t have what it takes… in your head or in your guts. There’s only one head fit for this crown, and it’s mine.” Ospreay scoffs, trying to keep his cool, but he doesn’t wait long before grabbing the microphone out of Swerve’s hand to an “oooh,” from the crowd. “Ain’t nobody like you, bruv? How dare you talk down to me. How dare you condescend me, belittle me, you arrogant bastard? I came here to AEW and started taking heads, just like I did in Japan, and there were people there just like you. People who said ‘ah, he’s not got it in him to be the next big gaijin. He’ll never be the champion,’ and now there’s you, saying I don’t have what it takes because I don’t have the mentality. YOU don’t have the mentality to do what I do. To fly from the UK to here twice a week, to raise a family, to spend a whole career an ocean away from home, to wear the crown on your head that says you’re the greatest wrestler on Earth. Nobody’s done that but ME, and when that championship’s fastened around my waist, mate, it’s going to prove what everyone already knows - that Will Ospreay’s on another level, and Swerve Strickland… he’s punching up.” Now it’s Strickland’s turn to try and keep a lid on his anger, stepping toe to toe with his challenger and holding the title inches from his face. He tells Ospreay to listen close, before saying that the years of hard work Ospreay put in everywhere but home aren’t gonna be enough to help. He’s gonna be in front of his family, he’s gonna be in front of his friends, he’s gonna be in front of his people, and he’s going to let them all down, because he’s an impressive athlete, but he’s not the guy. Finally, Ospreay snaps, throwing a SHORT HEADBUTT, AND NOW BOTH MEN ARE THROWING FISTS! IT’S UTTER BEDLAM! The bell starts ringing to try and encourage them to break it up, but neither man is stepping down now, furiously exchanging blows as security rushes to the ring to divide them. Swerve grabs the championship, hoisting it high as he spits venom at Ospreay, the challenger spewing a string of words that probably won’t make air. They keep trying to break free and take another swing, commentary asking what on Earth they’ll do when they’re finally let loose at Wembley Stadium, pride and the promotion’s top prize on the line. Swerve Strickland (c) vs. Will Ospreay All In London Wembley Stadium is packed to the gills as All In goes on the air, and they’re fit to burst as the first theme they hear is that of the Commonwealth Kingpin. Justin Roberts announces that our opening match is for the AEW World Title, and Ospreay receives plenty of fanfare and fireworks as he makes his way to the ring, looking more motivated than ever. He’s clearly jonesing in the ring, eagerly awaiting Swerve’s arrival as his compatriots cheer him on… and then Chaka Khan hits. Strickland may be in enemy territory, but the crowd can't help but sing. Oozing charisma as he enters the squared circle, the AEW Champion seems more than ready to put the Assassin down, the electric crowd letting both men soak in the moment as the bell rings. HERE WE GO! SWERVE VS. OSPREAY, LIVE FROM WEMBLEY, AEW TITLE ON THE LINE! AEW World Title: Swerve Strickland (c) vs. Will Ospreay From the bell, Strickland and Ospreay are exchanging words as they gravitate towards one another, Ospreay calling for a lockup. They settle into a collar and elbow, Ospreay using his size to his advantage to try and muscle Swerve into the ropes, but Strickland reversing the momentum to cinch in a side headlock. Will still drives Swerve into the ropes, eventually breaking free and whipping Strickland across the ring, the champion building up speed as he ducks a clothesline attempt from the challenger and nails a Tijeras to send Ospreay flying. Ospreay’s quickly back up to his feet, Swerve attempting a slip behind for a German Suplex, but Will countering with a headlock takeover, kipping up and throwing a superkick that’s narrowly avoided by Swerve, who drops flat to his back, picking Ospreay’s leg and floating into a handstand to bring Ospreay down with a headscissors. Will kips up once more to break free, Swerve scrambling to stand up before OSPREAY THROWS A HIDDEN BLADE, SWERVE DIVING OUT OF THE WAY AT THE LAST MOMENT BEFORE CATASTROPHE! Strickland quickly pivots as Will looks to get to his feet, attempting a HOUSE CALL, BUT NOW IT’S OSPREAY’S TURN TO DODGE AS BOTH MEN END UP STANDING! Gritting his teeth, Swerve goes for another lockup with Ospreay, this time quickly kicking him in the gut for a snapmare, cinching in a chinlock to talk some smack. The Aerial Assassin lands a few elbows to the body as he strives to get back to his feet, finally breaking free before being grounded again by a Tijeras from Swerve. Strickland grabs hold of his challenger again, Ospreay furiously backpedaling into the corner to avoid a lifting inverted DDT, only for Swerve to send him through the ropes for a HANGING NECKBREAKER! Ospreay rolls out to the apron instinctively, Swerve kicking out one of his legs and stepping through the middle rope to SLINGSHOT INTO A DDT ON THE APRON, BUT OSPREAY HANDSPRINGS STRAIGHT TO HIS FEET ON THE FLOOR! Strickland gets cocky, thinking he landed the shot, and turns around to see Ospreay charging at his legs. Swerve leaps up, still on the apron as Will overshoots, the champion pivoting for an APRON PUMP KICK, OSPREAY DUCKING IT AND LEAPING BACK ONTO THE APRON! SWERVE TURNS AROUND ONCE AGAIN… AND OSPREAY FLIES IN WITH AN APRON OSCUTTER! Tumbling to the floor, Swerve tries to get to his senses and figure out how he came out on the rough end of the sequence on the apron, but Ospreay gives him no time to think with a ROBINSON SPECIAL OFF THE APRON, STRAIGHT THROUGH THE BACK OF HIS HEAD! He props Swerve against the barricade, chopping him across the chest before scrambling to the top rope for a SKY TWISTER PRESS TO THE OUTSIDE - ONLY FOR SWERVE TO AVOID IT, NAILING OSPREAY WITH A GERMAN SUPLEX ONTO THE FLOOR! With Ospreay stunned, Strickland slides back in to break the count, measuring his man before effortlessly delivering a FOSBURY FLOP OUT TO RINGSIDE, WIPING OUT THE CHALLENGER! Turning the tables on Ospreay, now it’s Swerve’s turn to lay in some chops against the barricade, only for Will to dump him over the barrier and into the crowd. He follows it up with a hook kick over the guardrail to stagger the champion, running the length of ringside and LAUNCHING HIMSELF STRAIGHT INTO A PUMP KICK FROM THE CHAMPION! Swerve hops up onto the barricade, grabbing hold of Ospreay in a front facelock before MUSCLING HIM UP AND OVER WITH A BRAINBUSTER, OFF OF THE BARRICADE AND RIGHT DOWN ONTO THE FLOOR AT RINGSIDE! He rushes to roll Will back between the ropes, hooking both legs… ONE! TWO! TH-NOOO! Swerve jumps to the middle rope to deliver a diving European Uppercut to the back of the head before Ospreay can quite get to his feet, following it up with a DISCUS LARIAT! The assault on the head is relentless, Swerve looking for a DDT before being driven into the ropes, Will trying to earn a momentary reprieve. Instead, Strickland pummels him with Muay Thai knees to the body, heaving him up for a LIGER BOMB! ONE! TWO! THRE-KICKOUT ONCE MORE! Swerve lets out a frustrated roar, deadlift Ospreay up to attempt another powerbomb, but Ospreay manages to drop to the apron for a gamengiri, followed by a PIP PIP CHEERIO! ONE! TWO! KICKOUT! Desperate to keep momentum on his side, Ospreay quickly delivers a rolling elbow, following it up with a SNAP DRAGON SUPLEX, BUT SWERVE RIGHT BACK UP TO HIS FEET, NAILING A GERMAN! He swivels around, only to see Ospreay landed on his feet, BOTH MEN THROWING HIGH KICKS BEFORE COLLAPSING TO THE CANVAS! Wembley rallies behind Ospreay as both men struggle to get to their feet, barely stirring before the challenger begins pounding the mat, leaning back onto his hands for a kip-up before Swerve simply spins to punt him in the face and bring him back to the mat. Strickland rises to his feet, looking for the House Call, but OSPREAY HAS NONE OF IT, CATCHING THE LEG FOR A STYLES CLASH! ONE! TWO! THR-NOO! Following through, Ospreay attempts a Hidden Blade, Swerve ducking it before rushing towards his opponent and INTO A SPANISH FLY FOR A NEARFALL! Ospreay grabs the back of Swerve’s head, paying him back for the focused assault with a flurry of Kawada Kicks to the face, followed by an attempt at a delayed vertical suplex, Strickland floating over and landing on his feet. The champion runs the ropes, Ospreay stopping him in his tracks with a dropsault and an enziguri, continuously building momentum with a STUNDOG MILLIONAIRE TO FINALLY DROP SWERVE TO HIS BACK! Unleashing a war cry, Ospreay has a gleam in his eyes as he looks towards the top turnbuckle, dragging himself through the ropes to the apron before clambering up to the high rent district, turning his back to Swerve for another SKY TWISTER PRESS, SWERVE ONCE AGAIN ROLLING IN TOWARDS THE TURNBUCKLES… BUT OSPREAY ROLLS STRAIGHT THROUGH TO HIS FEET! Strickland flashes his grill to the camera in the corner with a smile, Ospreay looming behind him before BLASTING STRAIGHT THROUGH HIM WITH A HIDDEN BLADE! ONE! TWO! THRE-SWERVE POWERS OUT! It’s been just over fifteen minutes of insanity as Ospreay smells blood in the water, knowing if he connects with a Stormbreaker, he can wrap this up. However, that certainty would only be cemented if he were to nail a Storm Driver 93, but he refuses to go to such lengths, hooking the arms… BUT SWERVE COUNTERS WITH A BACK BODY DROP, ONLY FOR OSPREAY TO LAND ON HIS FEET! HE BREAKS INTO A SPRINT, REBOUNDING OFF THE ROPES FOR A SPRINGBOARD OSCUTTER - STRAIGHT INTO A HOUSE CALL! SWERVE INTERCEPTED HIM! ONE! TWO! THRE-NOOOO! Strickland can’t believe it, but he’s got Ospreay dead to rights, spinning him around into position for a Tombstone. Strickland looks to the hard cam, a smug sneer on his face as OSPREAY REVERSES WITH A SEGA MEGA DRIVER, SPIKING HIM DOWN ON HIS HEAD! ONE! TWO! THRE-NOOOO! Ospreay is in disbelief, even a tribute to Mad Kurt not being enough to put Swerve down, but he’s staying on the ball as he hooks Swerve’s arms to go for a STORMBREAKER, ONLY FOR SWERVE TO FLOAT OVER FOR A LIFTING INVERTED DDT! Will’s rally wasn’t enough to get him out of trouble, and STRICKLAND FOLLOWS IT UP WITH A SECOND HOUSE CALL! SWERVE IMMEDIATELY ON THE ATTACK ONCE MORE, POSITIONING OSPREAY FOR A JML DRIVER… BUT WILL CLEARS HIS HEAD, COUNTERING WITH A POISON RANA! SWERVE UP TO HIS KNEES, BUT OSPREAY FOLLOWS IT WITH A SPRINGBOARD OSCUTTER! HIDDEN BLADE TO THE BASE OF THE SKULL, AND NOW… STORMBREAKER! ONE! TWO! THREE! WILL OSPREAY IS THE AEW WORLD CHAMPION! Will Ospreay def. Swerve Strickland (20:10) to win the AEW World Title Later in the night, Kazuchika Okada defeats Kenny Omega to win their fifth encounter, establishing himself firmly as the Number One Contender to the AEW World Title, giving the new champion only two weeks to prepare to face off with one of his greatest foes - a foe he’s only managed to beat cleanly once, while falling to the Rainmaker eight times. Road to All Out Ospreay gets to celebrate on Dynamite, cutting a promo saying he’s geared up to finally put this to bed. He says he’s glad he’s starting his title reign like this, because he’s certain he can beat Okada, and he’ll not have to worry about the spectre looming over him anymore. Every time there was a title on the line, every time the stakes were high, he failed against the Rainmaker - but the stakes were high at Wembley, and he won. He proved Swerve Strickland wrong, and now it’s time to prove Kazuchika Okada wrong. Out steps the Rainmaker, taking the EVP Elevator up onto the stage to say that Ospreay has already proven him wrong; he thought, years ago, that Ospreay was a talent worthy of being in Okada’s stable of CHAOS, and Ospreay proved him wrong when he betrayed his leader, only for Okada to beat the brakes off him at the Tokyo Dome. Okada says that Ospreay should be all too familiar with Okada being the top champion, the Ace, and he plans to finally bring that vision to AEW by restoring the world to its natural order and beating the Aerial Assassin for a ninth time. The Rainmaker’s ego is peaking, having avenged his loss to Kenny Omega just a few days prior, and he says that Omega’s a taller mountain to climb than Ospreay. However, he says he’s sure there’ll be room in the Elite’s ranks for Ospreay, should he come to his senses and want to fall back in line behind the Rainmaker. Ospreay declares that at All Out, he’ll prove to Okada and the world that he’s eclipsed the onetime Ace, while Okada insists that Omega was just the beginning - in just a few days, it’ll be time for the Rainmaker Era to start back up. All Out With All In having just occurred recently, All Out is a package deal with the Wembley show, ensuring a huge audience for what’s certain to be an all-timer main event between the Rainmaker and the Assassin. Both men want to walk out with the gold more than anything in the world, making an already personal rivalry all the more exciting as the coin drops for the last match of the night. Okada appears in a new robe, debuted two weeks prior at Wembley, and as he rises from the Elite Elevator, he’s looking more daunting than ever. There’s only one feud the man had ever lost, and he’d just avenged it against Kenny Omega - this is the most dangerous he’s ever been, and as Will Ospreay makes his way to the ring, Okada doesn’t even turn to face him. The champion is furious, but the challenger sees him as a formality standing between him and another epic World Title reign, refusing to even acknowledge him as they’re both introduced by Justin Roberts. They head to their respective corners, and THE BELL RINGS! IT’S OKADA AND OSPREAY, WORLD TITLE ON THE LINE! AEW World Title: Will Ospreay (c) vs. Kazuchika Okada Both men are hesitant to open themselves up to a big counter in the early goings, especially given how well they know each other, so they try and psych each other out a different way - by waiting. The crowd greets them with a deafening reception as they slowly circle the centre of the ring, eventually meeting with a lockup that sees Okada immediately put his height to good use, bearing down on Ospreay with an attempt at a test of strength. He pushes Ospreay down to the mat, even getting his shoulders down for a moment, but the champion bridges up off the canvas. Okada jumps up and drives his legs down into Ospreay’s body, but Ospreay maintains the bridge with both men’s weight, Okada getting back up and shooting for a lateral press that gets a one count. Transitioning into a side headlock, Okada talks some smack, the Young Bucks supporting him at ringside while taunting the champion. However, Ospreay’s put on plenty of muscle mass over the years, making it all the easier for him to slowly make his way to his feet, twisting free and securing a side headlock of his own on the Rainmaker. Okada sends him into the ropes, Ospreay clinging to the top as Okada instinctively goes for a flapjack. Momentarily confused, Okada gives Will the opening to run in for a dropsault, attempting to follow it with an enziguri that’s ducked, Ospreay springing up… and into a flapjack, the inevitability of the Rainmaker’s plans coming to fruition putting the champion in a bad spot early. Continuing with his somewhat lackadaisical pace, Okada keeps treating Ospreay like he’s not that big of a deal, shoving him into the corner for a double pat on the chest, followed by a stiff forearm across the jaw as the referee steps in. Ospreay lunges at him, Okada grabbing the arm for an Irish Whip into the opposite corner, rushing the champion with a big boot, but Ospreay SLINGSHOTS RIGHT OVER HIM, LANDING ON HIS FEET BEHIND THE RAINMAKER FOR A KICK TO THE HAMSTRING! Ospreay hones in with a swift roundhouse to Okada’s other leg, trying to take out his base, but Okada shrugs it off by catching the leg on a third kick attempt before driving his shoulder straight into the bridge of Ospreay’s nose, following it with a DDT that makes it look like Ospreay just died. The champion goes full scorpion, folding over himself like PAC as Okada grabs hold of the wrist to attempt an early Rainmaker. He gets Ospreay up to his feet, a smirk on his face as he winds him up, but Ospreay cuts through his grip with a sharp elbow before rolling Okada up with a victory roll reversal, straight into a DOUBLE STOMP TO THE GUT! Okada rolls right out of the ring and into the waiting arms of the Elite, Ospreay lining up to try and take him out with a dive before being halted by the Bucks, who leap into the way with their hands up. Ospreay shouts at them to move before going for it anyway, launching himself with a PESCADO, STRAIGHT INTO A BOOT TO THE STOMACH BY THE RAINMAKER! THE BUCKS GAVE HIM TIME TO RECOVER! Taking advantage immediately, Okada sends Ospreay crashing into the barricade, Ospreay crying out before Okada sends him into the aisle on the crowd side of the barrier. He measures his man as he heads to the opposite end of ringside, the Bucks gassing him up as he takes a running start for a CROSSBODY OVER THE GUARDRAIL, LANDING ON HIS FEET AFTER TAKING OUT THE AERIAL ASSASSIN! Okada dusts himself off, his signature look of superiority clearer than ever as he drags Ospreay back to ringside, laying in a few boots to the body before spitefully laying in another DDT, this time on the floor. He breaks the count before continuing to pummel Ospreay at ringside, the Bucks taunting the champion with each consecutive shot he takes. Okada works over the champion’s neck, digging a knee into the back of it as he postures with his stablemates before securing a waistlock for a GERMAN SUPLEX ON THE FLOOR, BUT OSPREAY FLIPS OUT OF IT! He flings himself at Okada with a Hidden Blade attempt from behind, the seemingly omniscient Okada ducking at just the right moment before throwing a boot - but Ospreay’s just too quick, slipping under it and LAYING IN A HOOK KICK, FOLLOWED BY A BACK SUPLEX ON THE OUTSIDE TO THE RAINMAKER! Ospreay backs the Bucks away, threatening to put their faces through the back of their heads before sliding back into the ring and EFFORTLESSLY SOARING THROUGH THE AIR WITH A SKY TWISTER PRESS TO THE FLOOR! He sends Okada back between the ropes, following him with a PIP PIP CHEERIO, BUT OKADA CUTS HIM OFF AGAIN BY KICKING OUT THE ROPES! Ospreay is left hung up on the top, Okada turning him over for a DRAPING NECKBREAKER OFF THE TOP! ONE! TWO! THR-KICKOUT! It’s been virtually all Okada thus far, and he continues to methodically wear Ospreay down with a targeted offensive on the neck of the AEW World Champion. Whenever Ospreay tries to get some momentum going, Okada’s able to reverse it, the style Ospreay honed in New Japan having paid dividends against plenty of other AEW talents, but not the man who defined the style for over a decade. Soon enough, Okada looks for the Rainmaker again, and Ospreay finds his opening by reversing it into a SPANISH FLY! ONE! TWO! KICKOUT! Ospreay looks like a bullet fired from a gun the second Okada’s constant pressure is taken off his shoulders, the champion bolting out to the apron to connect with a PIP PIP CHEERIO, NAILING IT BEFORE OKADA HAS TIME TO REALIZE WHAT HIT HIM! Okada tries to evacuate out the other side of the ring, but Ospreay’s having none of it, grabbing him by the trunks and pulling him back in for a SNAP DRAGON SUPLEX! ONE! TWO! TH-NOOO! Okada sits back up just in time for Ospreay to strike him with a standing round kick to the ear, filling the Rainmaker’s head with cobwebs before flattening him to the canvas with a superkick, finishing the sequence with a RUNNING SHOOTING STAR PRESS! ONE! TWO! THR-ANOTHER KICKOUT, BUT OSPREAY’S FINALLY GOTTEN CONTROL AWAY FROM THE CHALLENGER! With the Chicago crowd rallying behind him, Ospreay struggles to get to his feet, the twenty straight minutes of punishment taking a heavy toll on the champion. However, he’s certainly up before the stunned Okada, with the challenger still attempting to get his wits about him when Ospreay charges with a ROBINSON SPECIAL, STRAIGHT TO THE BASE OF THE SKULL! Okada gets to his feet on instinct alone, the Assassin positioning himself behind his prey and circling him before running the ropes for an OSCUTTER! ONE! TWO! THR-NOOO! Ospreay unleashes some Kawada Kicks on the challenger, letting out his aggression before lighting him up with a flurry of chops, Okada attempting to stand on business and throw some of his own, only for Ospreay to obliterate him with a superkick. Okada is left leaning on the ropes, Ospreay beckoning him towards the centre of the ring before attempting a SHOTGUN DROPKICK, SENDING HIM STRAIGHT THROUGH TO THE APRON! With Okada prone, Ospreay looks for the OSCUTTER ON THE APRON, BUT OKADA CATCHES HIM IN A STRAITJACKET! He attempts a Straitjacket German Suplex on the apron, Ospreay avoiding catastrophe with a back headbutt to the bridge of the nose, followed by a stiff back elbow to send Okada tumbling to the floor. Ospreay vaults over the ropes to break the count, finding himself in the perfect spot for an old favourite as Okada gets to his feet at the base of the ramp. Measuring his man, Ospreay leaps into motion with a SASUKE SPECIAL, BUT OKADA CATCHES HIM! WHAT STRENGTH FROM THE RAINMAKER, AND NOW… OH MY GOD, A TOMBSTONE PILEDRIVER ON THE FLOOR! Okada’s confidence is peaking, the Tombstone on the floor having been a hallmark of so many of his defining victories and none of his defeats. Knowing this, he rolls Ospreay straight back into the ring, the work on the neck having paid dividends as he immediately secures wrist control, hoisting Ospreay up into position for a RAIIIINMAKERRRRRR! HE GOT ALL OF IT! ONE! TWO! THRE-OSPREAY SOMEHOW LIFTS THE SHOULDER UP! Frustrated, Okada hurls Ospreay’s lifeless corpse into the corner and simply starts stomping a mudhole in his face, grinding his boot into the champion’s features before the referee pulls him away. Okada bickers with the ref as the Bucks sneak up on each side of Ospreay, Will instinctively grabbing a hold of Matthew, who scrambles backwards. However, Will stays latched onto him, forming a fist around Matthew’s tie and being pulled through the ropes… ONLY FOR NICHOLAS TO SUPERKICK OSPREAY STRAIGHT INTO THE RING POST, SPARING HIS OLDER BROTHER! Blood begins to spill from the side of Ospreay’s head, dripping onto the ring post and ring skirt as it becomes clear he hit his head damn hard against the steel. Okada pushes past the referee and continues to beat Ospreay down, relishing each moment of offence as he sends the champion packing to the outside with a petulant boot to the side of the head. He rolls out to the floor, the Bucks handing him a bottle of water to cool himself off with after such a brutal match, and now Okada gets to admire the Elite’s handiwork as crimson teardrops start dotting ringside, a bloody mask obscuring Ospreay’s face. Okada keeps beating ass, commentary noting that this is now the longest we’ve seen these two duke it out for, nearly 40 minutes having elapsed. Excalibur notes Ospreay seems harder than ever to put down, but Okada’s showing the same sort of dominance he has in the past, with Schiavone sounding worried that it might just be a matter of time. Looking to finally put an end to things, Okada starts raining closed fists on Ospreay’s head wound, hurling him into the timekeeper’s table. Eventually, he lays Ospreay out on it, clambering up with him before flipping off the camera and calling for another Tombstone. He flips Ospreay around… but Ospreay drops to the floor behind him, sweeping out Okada’s legs before nailing a CHEEKY NANDO’S AGAINST THE GUARDRAIL, LEAVING OKADA SPLAYED OUT ON THE TABLE! Ospreay scrambles towards the ring post, blood pouring down onto his chest as he makes the long climb up the turnbuckles for a FROG SPLASH THROUGH THE TABLE, AND THROUGH OKADA! The count was broken by him hitting the top rope, sparing both men the risk of being counted out as they lie their motionless. Chicago wills them to their feet, Ospreay sending Okada back into the ring before using the surge of energy and momentum to get the challenger up for a STORMBREAKER! HE GOT HIM! OSPREAY’S GONNA DO IT! Ospreay leaps atop Okada, grabbing the leg and leaning back into a deep cover, putting all his weight across the challenger’s shoulders… ONE! TWO! THRE-OKADA’S FOOT IS HOVERING OVER THE BOTTOM ROPE, OSPREAY TOO ENTHUSIASTIC WITH HIS PIN! The Bucks look like they’re about to have panic attacks as an exasperated, mentally battered Ospreay fights back tears, a fraction of an inch away from redemption. However, he knows he’s got control, so all he has to do is take this one home. Both men are in deep waters now, and with both being renowned for their gas tanks, it’s clearly come down to a war of attrition, both men knowing that it’ll all come down to landing the one big move that’ll keep one of them down. They’ve both sustained plenty of damage, but as Ospreay staggers over to the downed Okada, he gets this look in his eyes - the look of a man who has the chance to do the funniest thing ever against a man he resents oh so much. Ospreay grabs Okada’s wrist, the crowd letting out an “oooh” as it becomes clear he’s going for his own parody of the Rainmaker, traditionally a ripcord Spanish Fly. Okada is on dream street as Ospreay positions him, pulling the wrist to whip Okada around… but the Rainmaker is still wise to Ospreay’s moveset, keeping an arm near his side to stop Ospreay from latching on for a Spanish Fly. However, he wasn’t wise enough, Ospreay digging into Kenny Omega’s toolkit with a RAIN TRIGGER, BLINDSIDING OKADA WITH A HUGE HIT HE DIDN’T SEE COMING! Okada falls into the ropes, trying to keep himself upright by keeping a firm grip on the top rope, only to be uprooted by a POISON RANA, OSPREAY SPIKING THE CHALLENGER RIGHT ON HIS HEAD! He stumbles to the corner, Okada looking to find his footing as he gets to his knees… AND EATS A HIDDEN BLADE STRAIGHT TO THE FACE, OSPREAY MOWING STRAIGHT THROUGH HIS CHALLENGER! ONE! TWO! THRE-OKADA GETS THE SHOULDER UP, AND THE GRUELLING BOUT CONTINUES! Justin Roberts is starting to sound pretty nervous as he makes the 50 minute time call, informing both competitors that there’s only ten minutes left in their longest bout against one another to date. Ospreay crawls towards the ropes, driven by pure determination as he peels off his elbow pad, winding up for the Hidden Blade of a lifetime as Okada slowly starts to stir. Both men have taken each other’s biggest shots, but Okada’s in the champion’s sights now, Ospreay waiting until he’s in the perfect position before CHARGING AT FULL TILT INTO A DROPKICK FROM OKADA! Somehow, Okada’s still got pristine form this late into the match, but there’s no time to linger on his magnificence as he rises to his feet, dazed and confused, in desperate need of a dagger against Ospreay. He leans over to hook Ospreay’s wrist, calling for a second Rainmaker, and now he ripcords him in, ONLY FOR OSPREAY TO BLAST HIM WITH A HIDDEN BLADE TO THE FACE ONCE AGAIN ON THE REBOUND! Okada somehow keeps hold of Ospreay’s wrist, tumbling into the ropes and dragging the champion with him, gritting his teeth and letting out a primal roar before CLOBBERING OSPREAY WITH A SHORT ARM LARIAT, BRINGING THEM BOTH DOWN TO THE MAT! Ospreay gets the slightly better landing tactically, turned completely inside out and managing to drape an arm over… ONE! TWO! THRE-NOO! Okada’s kickout flips Ospreay onto his back, the Rainmaker now making an exhausted pinfall attempt… ONE! TWO! THRE-KICKOUT! WHAT’S IT GOING TO TAKE FOR ONE OF THESE MEN TO STAY DOWN? Puddles of Ospreay’s blood stain the canvas as both men lie there, the unimaginable exhaustion washing over both of them as they fight to be the first man to a vertical base. Commentary discusses the importance of securing the upper hand at this moment, and somehow, it’s Ospreay who’s up first, although only by a matter of seconds. Okada decks him with a forearm, the Rainmaker doubled over trying to catch his breath, but Ospreay clocks him with one of his own, followed by a ROLLING ELBOW TO DROP OKADA TO A KNEE! Ospreay ponders a moment, considering going for a Storm Driver 93, and as Justin Roberts says there’s five minutes remaining, he goes for it. He hooks Okada’s arms in a butterfly, muscling him up off his feet… but Okada drops down to his knees, Ospreay too exhausted to lift 250 pounds into position if that 250 pounds is still fighting back. The champion knees Okada in the face before going for it again, but this time, Okada shifts his weight back and SWINGS OSPREAY OVER HIS OWN SHOULDER FOR AN AIR RAID CRASH NECKBREAKER! Ospreay goes down like a sack of potatoes, clutching the back of his neck in pure agony, unable to function properly as Okada scrapes him off the canvas and positions him for an EMPHATIC COBRA FLOWSION, DRIVING OSPREAY’S NECK INTO THE MAT ONCE AGAIN WITH A RESOUNDING THUD! The challenger rises to his feet behind his foe… AND SPREADS HIS ARMS, THE CAMERA ZOOMING OUT TO ENCOMPASS THE CHICAGO CROWD! OKADA HITS THE RAINMAKER POSE, AND HE’S READY TO STUNT ON OSPREAY ONCE MORE! Ospreay’s in the perfect position for the Rainmaker, only a few minutes left on the clock, but both men’s movements have become lethargic and feeble after all they’ve been through. Matthew and Nicholas pound the mat to encourage Okada as he painstakingly leans over to latch on to Ospreay’s wrist, the champion fighting as best he can with a few back elbows, all of which miss the mark. Okada drives a forearm into the back of Ospreay’s neck, dropping him to his knees again before finally heaving him up for the Rainmaker, winding up… AND WHIZZING RIGHT BY OSPREAY, WHO COLLAPSES FROM EXHAUSTION! Okada falls in a heap behind him, but he’s still in better shape than Ospreay with moments remaining. With the last of his adrenaline, Okada scrambles up and picks Ospreay up once more, positioning him for a Rainmaker… BUT OSPREAY DUCKS, THIS TIME BREAKING INTO A SPRINT TO GET OUT OF THE WRISTLOCK! HE BOUNCES OFF THE ROPES, OKADA TOO TIRED TO SPIN AROUND IN TIME, AND NOW OSPREAY NAILS AN UNPROTECTED HIDDEN BLADE TO THE BACK OF THE HEAD! He’s got to roll him over, the seconds counting down as Ospreay simply digs his shoulder into the Rainmaker’s arm to slowly turn him onto his back, struggling to hook the leg… ONE! TWO! THRE-KICKOUT! OKADA GOT THE SHOULDER UP! Ospreay can’t believe it, fighting to get his feet under him, frantically attempting to hook Okada’s arms to get him into position for a Storm… ding ding ding. Will Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada fought to a draw (60:00), for Ospreay to retain the AEW World Title Road to WrestleDream With Ospreay having been unable to put away the Rainmaker within an hour, it’s pretty clear that a rematch has to be on the horizon, but the question is where. Both Grand Slam and WrestleDream are coming up, and on Dynamite, Okada lays down the gauntlet for the PPV, saying that he intends to win the AEW Title at a show paying tribute to one of his idols in Antonio Inoki. However, Ospreay’s not off the hook until October just yet - Grand Slam still stands in the way, and a battle between two of his fantastic previous opponents is set to determine his challenger for the event. Those opponents? Swerve Strickland and MJF. In the end, MJF manages to pull out the win, securing a title challenge right next door to his home at Grand Slam. Ospreay walks in insecure, just as he did in the Owen Finals, but this time with good reason - his first title defence was hardly a successful one, and he might not even have the chance to make up for it if he doesn’t manage to put away the longest-reigning AEW World Champion ever, in their home state. The pressure’s on for the Assassin, and with challengers hounding him, all he can do is try and build momentum with wins week over week. He doesn’t bother trying to match MJF on the stick, the next challenger eviscerating the champion with promo after promo until the go-home show, where a fed up Ospreay simply snipes him with a Hidden Blade to cut him off. Grabbing the microphone, Will promises to prove the title belongs around his waist, telling MJF that he wants the same Max who dominated the AEW main event scene for over a year. (Cont'd in Comments) |
2024.05.29 00:22 Professional_Prune11 Human Trauma II----Section Thirty Four: Bygone Mento(Book Two End)
Hello Hello my buds, bobs and babes. We are back at it again with the end of Human Trauma book two. In this one Martinez gets grilled by Ivorn of all people. and when the calm caring man decides you messed up enough that he is yelling at you. lord you must have messed up.
Let's get this bread.
------
Snow drifted lazily around Martinez, the first snowfall this year in Draun. Celna had been under snowpack for weeks, but in this massive city, this was untimely late. Each fresh flake glowed like embers in the evening light, burning just like the Human's ragged breath.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” Martinez barked at a group of aliens, ordering them to make a hole or get barreled through.
This group took the warning of the two-meter-tall man to hearty and skittered away like rats, allowing him to pass.
Those were the smart ones; not all had that many survival instincts. Martinez had crashed through a group of Ruqaura, their flabby builds jiggling as they fell to the duracreet and cursed his existence.
Fuck them; they did not matter, nor did the abject panic Martinez was stirring up in his wake. The Human certainly was causing a scene in the otherwise serene city. Whether the aliens thought he was being chased, was a crazy nutter on the loose, or that he was a deranged rapist, he did not care.
They could think he was a serial killer or a terrorist for all he cared. All Martinez cared about was reaching Shiksie and ensuring she had not done the unthinkable.
By the time Martinez had reached Shiksies posh neighborhood, sweat was flooding off his brow; on her front lawn, he nearly collapsed from vomiting, having just run the fastest he had done in years. Fuck even Raliegh could not hold a candle to the show of speed and athletics Martinez had demonstrated, and that man ran ultra marathons.
Through blurry vision, Martinez looked up at Shiksie’s house. It was as spartan as the last time he was here. The house showed off the owner's simple, straightforward personality, a bold defiance of the bright pastels and gaudily decorated homes of her neighbors.
At least the house had not changed.
Pounding on the door with hammer-like fists, Martinez roared into the gloom. “Shiksie, are you there?”
The milliseconds dragged out into hours; each breath dagged into eternity. With each passing eon, Martinez repeated the process with more desperation, beating the door as if it owed him money.
Each repetition drew on more of the same. A silence so deafening it crushed Martinez’s soul like an ant.
“Please, if you are in there, answer the door,” Martinez barked, punching the door hard enough that his knuckles bled. “I need to know you are alive.”
With no answer coming from inside, Martinez changed tactics. Between savage attacks on the door, he sent texts to everyone both he and Shiksie knew, trying to get any sitrep on her.
No one had any answers for him. They did not know if Shiksie was alright, nor had they seen her in well over a week. That only compounded his worry. Did they not care about her?
` Therein—Nothing, he did not even want to talk to anyone.
Sursee—Nothing other than word that she did not know.
Harsnis, of all people, also had no answers, and that man kept tight tabs on his workers.
What in God's name was going on?
The only one who gave Martinez more than sorrowful nothingness was Ivorn.
Ivorn: Come over to my place; we need to talk.
Considering that beating Shiksies' door was getting him nowhere, and Martinez was not about to break in, he hurried out of Shiksies' neighborhood, destined for Ivorn and Sursees' place in old town.
Martinez glanced over his shoulder, hoping to see Shiksie at her door, but no. All he saw were the neighbors peering from behind curtains at him. He ignored them.
—-
“Henry, it’s great to see you,” Sursee purred after opening the door to her and Ivorns' place.
Sursee was a Prinoral, a small feline-like species that was sociable beyond belief. Like many of her species, Sursee stood only as tall as Martinez’s chest and had traits that made her as cute as a button.
Sursee wore a long, draping dress held loosely around her dainty form. Its bright white color made her golden fur and amber hair stand out boldly. Her radar dish-like cat ears and long flicking tail made her the picturesque housecat-like woman.
“Please, come on in,” Sursee said, stepping abreast of the door and bidding his entry.
“Thanks, Sursee,” Martinez replied, entering and taking stock of their home, having never been here before.
Their apartment was quaint and comforting. Most surfaces and furnishings were colors like autumn, oranges, yellows, and browns, giving the space an overwhelmingly comfortable vibe. That matched with what smelled like freshly baked pumpkin pie, making the entire local breathtaking.
A menagerie of plushies was staged on shelves across the astel, adding splashes of vibrant summer to the otherwise warm home.
Martinez had no doubt the plushies were Sursee’s. She was a little ball of sunshine, and they fit her personality and aesthetic to a T.
“So, Henry, can I get a hug?” Sursee asked, her tail swaying happily behind her while she smiled as bright as sunlight.
“Not now. Where is Ivorn,” Martinez replied instantly.
Sursee pouted, her ears folding flat and tail tucking away. Any semblance of joy that overflowed from her died instantly.
Martinez appreciated that Sursee was listening to Ivorn's advice and not latching onto him like a heat leech, asking first. But he had not registered the sorrow in her—-this was the only time she had been told no to a hung from him. She expected it at this point, even if she was being polite.
“Ive is in his office,” Sursee said, pointing down the hallway.
Before Sursee registered that Martinez had moved, she turned around and picked up a plate of steaming cookies off the coffee table, hoping to help Maetinez feel better. While she did not know the man intimately, she was flawless at gauging emotions, and Martinez oozed sorrow.
“Would you want some—” Sursee trailed off, realizing the Human had already left her alone in the living room.
If pouting harder could be done, she did so. His leaving her like that felt like ice to the soul. She baked the cookies for him once Ivorn had told her Martinez was coming over. But the Human did not care about that or Sursee’s feelings.
Opening the indicated door, Martinez found Ivorn lounging behind a desk, reading a book with a massive smile across his face.
“What do we need to talk about?” Martinez asked.
Ivorn jumped at the intrusion and squirreled the book away. Not having expected Martinez for several hours. “Do you not know how to knock?”
“Where is she?” Martinez asked, ignoring everything but Shiksie.
Ivorn sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Not even a hello, huh? I get it.” Ivorn said. “Sit,” he finished by gesturing at a seat across from him.
Martinez was about to argue and tell Ivorn to get to the point, but the alien man could read him like a book and beat him to the punch.
“I get you are likely upset, but can I please explain,” Ivorn insisted.
“Fine,” Martinez grumbled and sat down, knowing this was the only way he would get any answers.
Over the next few minutes, Ivorn calmly explained what had happened with Shiksie after he head left. According to Ivorn, once Martinez had left Shiksie in her house, she drank; drank to the point it was nearly lethal.
By the time Ivorn had arrived, she was three beers deep and was about to have liver failure. If not for Martinez telling Ivorn she would have died. Following that, Shiksie spent several days in the ICU, needing it to not die.
After Shiksie was out of the ICU, she vanished, never showing up to work again. The director also told Ivorn not to mention anything that happened between Martinez and Shiksie to anyone, along with instructions to funnel the human to the Director once he returned.
“So you don’t know where she is?” Martinez said.
“No, I don’t,” Ivorn admitted.
“Then why the fuck am I here? I need to find her,” Martinez replied, standing up and heading toward the door.
“No, you are not,” Ivorn barked, stopping Martinez. “The director made it clear. The only reason you were not fired, and she was not in jail, was because Shiksie left.”
Martinez turned around and glared at Ivorn, knowing damn well what the director had pulled his friend into—a cover-up. Things like that were all to common in the Military and large corporations. It was easier to hush things up than face the reality of what happened. ;
“So for your own sake. Forget about her,” Ivorn sighed.
“Forget her! What the fuck are you on about. She is my friend; I have to help her,” Martinez argued, stepping forward and leaning on the desk with both hands. “She needs help.”
“Oh, does she? I dont think she does. You just want to feel better after having made her nearly kill herself.” Ivorne challenged with a growl—the last two weeks of having to hold his emotions overflowing.
Ivorn might like Martinez as a friend, but Shiksie deserved more than this. She was kind, a bit aloof, but for Kilera’s sake, why did she have to fall in love with a detestable asshole who thought he could solve everything alone.
Martinez paused and was taken aback by the challenge. Of course, he wanted to help her. Shiksie was his friend, mentor, and a woman he lov—er liked dearly. This was not about him but her.
“Are you high? I want to make sure she is OK,” Martinez replied, pointing at Ivorn.
“Oh, shut the fuck up and stop grandstanding,” Ivorn replied, standing to his full height. Usually, Ivorn, due to his gorilla-like build and posture, only stood as tall as Martinez. But at his full grandeur—he nearly touched the ceiling. “If you gave a fuck about her, you would have asked for help with her. You would not have gone into her house, knowing damn well she loved you.”
Ivorn stepped around the desk and jammed a finger into Martinez’s chest. “Now you have the fucking gall to think she needs you? How about you face reality and understand you fucked up and can't fix it.”
“Woah Ivor—” Martinez started backing up, but his friend persisted.
“How about you get that you are not some infallible bastion? What you have done has caused so many issues. My friend and mentor is gone; now we all have to suffer because you just had to not say no!” Ivorn growled, nearly pressing Martinez to the wall.
“We all like you. Sursee, Shiksie, Therein, Harnsis, fuck even me. But dude, you fucked up and have just to let bad enough die,” Ivorn said, backing up and giving Martinez some room. “Just go talk to the director in the morning. He will tell you the same.”
Martinez was going to argue to assure Ivorn he could fix this. But Sursee stepping into the room deflated any tension between the two.
“Can you two not yell at each other?” Sursee asked.
Ivorn turned to Sursee, returning to his usual leisurely posture. “Don’t worry about it, Sursee. Henry was just leaving. Right?” Ivorn said, looking at Martinez, his last shred of patience visible.
“Yeah. I am,” Martinez said, slipping past Sursee, who, for her lovable part, tried to reach out and grab him, but Ivorn stopped her and shook his head.
Martinez stormed out of the house and went toward his own, refusing to believe that he could do nothing to fix this. There was always something he could do. He just did not know the answer yet.
Without a doubt, even if he had to sell his soul to the devil, Martinez knew he would find Shiksie and make this all ok.
It just would cost him, blood, sweat, tears, and all he had to give.
------
So what did you all think of book two? Shiksie is MIA, Lysa is going through mood swings, and Martinez needs to get he cant fix it all on his own. We covered a lot in this book and we will cover even more in the third book where Chloe, Martinez, Lysa, and the rest of our cast will have to deal with a kidnapping ring, doctors, and their own physiology.
Please do not forget to updoot, and comment. I will see you all there.
your baker
-Pirate
-----
Book One Start
Buy My Novels
Book Two Start
previous
Book Three Start
submitted by Professional_Prune11 to humansarespaceorcs [link] [comments]
Let's get this bread.
------
Snow drifted lazily around Martinez, the first snowfall this year in Draun. Celna had been under snowpack for weeks, but in this massive city, this was untimely late. Each fresh flake glowed like embers in the evening light, burning just like the Human's ragged breath.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” Martinez barked at a group of aliens, ordering them to make a hole or get barreled through.
This group took the warning of the two-meter-tall man to hearty and skittered away like rats, allowing him to pass.
Those were the smart ones; not all had that many survival instincts. Martinez had crashed through a group of Ruqaura, their flabby builds jiggling as they fell to the duracreet and cursed his existence.
Fuck them; they did not matter, nor did the abject panic Martinez was stirring up in his wake. The Human certainly was causing a scene in the otherwise serene city. Whether the aliens thought he was being chased, was a crazy nutter on the loose, or that he was a deranged rapist, he did not care.
They could think he was a serial killer or a terrorist for all he cared. All Martinez cared about was reaching Shiksie and ensuring she had not done the unthinkable.
By the time Martinez had reached Shiksies posh neighborhood, sweat was flooding off his brow; on her front lawn, he nearly collapsed from vomiting, having just run the fastest he had done in years. Fuck even Raliegh could not hold a candle to the show of speed and athletics Martinez had demonstrated, and that man ran ultra marathons.
Through blurry vision, Martinez looked up at Shiksie’s house. It was as spartan as the last time he was here. The house showed off the owner's simple, straightforward personality, a bold defiance of the bright pastels and gaudily decorated homes of her neighbors.
At least the house had not changed.
Pounding on the door with hammer-like fists, Martinez roared into the gloom. “Shiksie, are you there?”
The milliseconds dragged out into hours; each breath dagged into eternity. With each passing eon, Martinez repeated the process with more desperation, beating the door as if it owed him money.
Each repetition drew on more of the same. A silence so deafening it crushed Martinez’s soul like an ant.
“Please, if you are in there, answer the door,” Martinez barked, punching the door hard enough that his knuckles bled. “I need to know you are alive.”
With no answer coming from inside, Martinez changed tactics. Between savage attacks on the door, he sent texts to everyone both he and Shiksie knew, trying to get any sitrep on her.
No one had any answers for him. They did not know if Shiksie was alright, nor had they seen her in well over a week. That only compounded his worry. Did they not care about her?
` Therein—Nothing, he did not even want to talk to anyone.
Sursee—Nothing other than word that she did not know.
Harsnis, of all people, also had no answers, and that man kept tight tabs on his workers.
What in God's name was going on?
The only one who gave Martinez more than sorrowful nothingness was Ivorn.
Ivorn: Come over to my place; we need to talk.
Considering that beating Shiksies' door was getting him nowhere, and Martinez was not about to break in, he hurried out of Shiksies' neighborhood, destined for Ivorn and Sursees' place in old town.
Martinez glanced over his shoulder, hoping to see Shiksie at her door, but no. All he saw were the neighbors peering from behind curtains at him. He ignored them.
—-
“Henry, it’s great to see you,” Sursee purred after opening the door to her and Ivorns' place.
Sursee was a Prinoral, a small feline-like species that was sociable beyond belief. Like many of her species, Sursee stood only as tall as Martinez’s chest and had traits that made her as cute as a button.
Sursee wore a long, draping dress held loosely around her dainty form. Its bright white color made her golden fur and amber hair stand out boldly. Her radar dish-like cat ears and long flicking tail made her the picturesque housecat-like woman.
“Please, come on in,” Sursee said, stepping abreast of the door and bidding his entry.
“Thanks, Sursee,” Martinez replied, entering and taking stock of their home, having never been here before.
Their apartment was quaint and comforting. Most surfaces and furnishings were colors like autumn, oranges, yellows, and browns, giving the space an overwhelmingly comfortable vibe. That matched with what smelled like freshly baked pumpkin pie, making the entire local breathtaking.
A menagerie of plushies was staged on shelves across the astel, adding splashes of vibrant summer to the otherwise warm home.
Martinez had no doubt the plushies were Sursee’s. She was a little ball of sunshine, and they fit her personality and aesthetic to a T.
“So, Henry, can I get a hug?” Sursee asked, her tail swaying happily behind her while she smiled as bright as sunlight.
“Not now. Where is Ivorn,” Martinez replied instantly.
Sursee pouted, her ears folding flat and tail tucking away. Any semblance of joy that overflowed from her died instantly.
Martinez appreciated that Sursee was listening to Ivorn's advice and not latching onto him like a heat leech, asking first. But he had not registered the sorrow in her—-this was the only time she had been told no to a hung from him. She expected it at this point, even if she was being polite.
“Ive is in his office,” Sursee said, pointing down the hallway.
Before Sursee registered that Martinez had moved, she turned around and picked up a plate of steaming cookies off the coffee table, hoping to help Maetinez feel better. While she did not know the man intimately, she was flawless at gauging emotions, and Martinez oozed sorrow.
“Would you want some—” Sursee trailed off, realizing the Human had already left her alone in the living room.
If pouting harder could be done, she did so. His leaving her like that felt like ice to the soul. She baked the cookies for him once Ivorn had told her Martinez was coming over. But the Human did not care about that or Sursee’s feelings.
Opening the indicated door, Martinez found Ivorn lounging behind a desk, reading a book with a massive smile across his face.
“What do we need to talk about?” Martinez asked.
Ivorn jumped at the intrusion and squirreled the book away. Not having expected Martinez for several hours. “Do you not know how to knock?”
“Where is she?” Martinez asked, ignoring everything but Shiksie.
Ivorn sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Not even a hello, huh? I get it.” Ivorn said. “Sit,” he finished by gesturing at a seat across from him.
Martinez was about to argue and tell Ivorn to get to the point, but the alien man could read him like a book and beat him to the punch.
“I get you are likely upset, but can I please explain,” Ivorn insisted.
“Fine,” Martinez grumbled and sat down, knowing this was the only way he would get any answers.
Over the next few minutes, Ivorn calmly explained what had happened with Shiksie after he head left. According to Ivorn, once Martinez had left Shiksie in her house, she drank; drank to the point it was nearly lethal.
By the time Ivorn had arrived, she was three beers deep and was about to have liver failure. If not for Martinez telling Ivorn she would have died. Following that, Shiksie spent several days in the ICU, needing it to not die.
After Shiksie was out of the ICU, she vanished, never showing up to work again. The director also told Ivorn not to mention anything that happened between Martinez and Shiksie to anyone, along with instructions to funnel the human to the Director once he returned.
“So you don’t know where she is?” Martinez said.
“No, I don’t,” Ivorn admitted.
“Then why the fuck am I here? I need to find her,” Martinez replied, standing up and heading toward the door.
“No, you are not,” Ivorn barked, stopping Martinez. “The director made it clear. The only reason you were not fired, and she was not in jail, was because Shiksie left.”
Martinez turned around and glared at Ivorn, knowing damn well what the director had pulled his friend into—a cover-up. Things like that were all to common in the Military and large corporations. It was easier to hush things up than face the reality of what happened. ;
“So for your own sake. Forget about her,” Ivorn sighed.
“Forget her! What the fuck are you on about. She is my friend; I have to help her,” Martinez argued, stepping forward and leaning on the desk with both hands. “She needs help.”
“Oh, does she? I dont think she does. You just want to feel better after having made her nearly kill herself.” Ivorne challenged with a growl—the last two weeks of having to hold his emotions overflowing.
Ivorn might like Martinez as a friend, but Shiksie deserved more than this. She was kind, a bit aloof, but for Kilera’s sake, why did she have to fall in love with a detestable asshole who thought he could solve everything alone.
Martinez paused and was taken aback by the challenge. Of course, he wanted to help her. Shiksie was his friend, mentor, and a woman he lov—er liked dearly. This was not about him but her.
“Are you high? I want to make sure she is OK,” Martinez replied, pointing at Ivorn.
“Oh, shut the fuck up and stop grandstanding,” Ivorn replied, standing to his full height. Usually, Ivorn, due to his gorilla-like build and posture, only stood as tall as Martinez. But at his full grandeur—he nearly touched the ceiling. “If you gave a fuck about her, you would have asked for help with her. You would not have gone into her house, knowing damn well she loved you.”
Ivorn stepped around the desk and jammed a finger into Martinez’s chest. “Now you have the fucking gall to think she needs you? How about you face reality and understand you fucked up and can't fix it.”
“Woah Ivor—” Martinez started backing up, but his friend persisted.
“How about you get that you are not some infallible bastion? What you have done has caused so many issues. My friend and mentor is gone; now we all have to suffer because you just had to not say no!” Ivorn growled, nearly pressing Martinez to the wall.
“We all like you. Sursee, Shiksie, Therein, Harnsis, fuck even me. But dude, you fucked up and have just to let bad enough die,” Ivorn said, backing up and giving Martinez some room. “Just go talk to the director in the morning. He will tell you the same.”
Martinez was going to argue to assure Ivorn he could fix this. But Sursee stepping into the room deflated any tension between the two.
“Can you two not yell at each other?” Sursee asked.
Ivorn turned to Sursee, returning to his usual leisurely posture. “Don’t worry about it, Sursee. Henry was just leaving. Right?” Ivorn said, looking at Martinez, his last shred of patience visible.
“Yeah. I am,” Martinez said, slipping past Sursee, who, for her lovable part, tried to reach out and grab him, but Ivorn stopped her and shook his head.
Martinez stormed out of the house and went toward his own, refusing to believe that he could do nothing to fix this. There was always something he could do. He just did not know the answer yet.
Without a doubt, even if he had to sell his soul to the devil, Martinez knew he would find Shiksie and make this all ok.
It just would cost him, blood, sweat, tears, and all he had to give.
------
So what did you all think of book two? Shiksie is MIA, Lysa is going through mood swings, and Martinez needs to get he cant fix it all on his own. We covered a lot in this book and we will cover even more in the third book where Chloe, Martinez, Lysa, and the rest of our cast will have to deal with a kidnapping ring, doctors, and their own physiology.
Please do not forget to updoot, and comment. I will see you all there.
your baker
-Pirate
-----
Book One Start
Buy My Novels
Book Two Start
previous
Book Three Start
2024.05.29 00:05 _Revelator_ Clarkson's Columns: Cheap food — but at what cost? & PM Keir will be too busy to be radical
British farms can grow cheap food — but at what cost?
By Jeremy Clarkson (The Sunday Times, May 26)
Quite rightly there’s been a lot of brouhaha and gnashing of teeth about the Welsh government’s weed-friendly farming policy. But the problem isn’t confined to Wales. Almost every government in the civilised world seems determined to ethnically cleanse farmers from the countryside. And it’s hard to see why.
Oh sure, they all say that farming makes a lot of carbon dioxides and that they have net zero targets to meet, but obviously that’s not the reason. Because what’s the point of keeping the global temperature down if there’s nothing to eat?
So if climate change isn’t the driver, why, all across Europe and America and Australia, is life being made so wilfully and unnecessarily hard for the people who feed us? And why in England did the number of farms fall from 132,400 in 2005 to just 104,000 in 2015? Well, bear with me on this one, but it’s necessary at this point to talk about my recent weekend city break in Copenhagen.
I’ve always said that if I were forced for some reason to leave the UK and I needed to live and work somewhere else, I’d go to Copenhagen. You eat dinner at a sensible time, not four in the morning, you’re never distracted by the beach, and you can have conversations with a van driver about how the krone is controlled by the European Central Bank. I know because I did. Here I spend most of my van-based conversations trying to explain what “fragile” means.
Everywhere you go in Copenhagen there are attractive people having lunch in attractive restaurants before going back to the office to design some more attractive chairs. They put their solar farms between the motorway and the railway line, and all around the canals and docks there are no unsightly railings. If you fall in, you just get out again. And if you can’t swim, well, that’s your own silly fault.
And then there’s the business of getting about, which is done on a bicycle. Unlike here, though, no one wears a helmet or that idiotic Stasi stormtrooper combination of black tights and black shorts. Cycling is not some BLT+, pro-Hamas, kick-out-the-Tories political movement. It’s just something you do to get about, because even the crappiest little car is about a million pounds. And there are no hills.
I love pootling about on a bicycle there, stopping for a cup of coffee and a pastry, or to look in a little shop that sells nothing but lampshades made from thinly sliced ash. If Carlsberg did cities, they’d look like this.
But even here, amid all the loveliness, we find the awful Lawrence Stroll plague of Tommy Hilfiger, Prada, Chanel, Bulgari, Gucci and all those other multinational emporiums for the terminally dreadful, which now dominate every city centre, high-end Caribbean resort and airport terminal in the world. Terry Wogan once said he’d like to machinegun everyone on Henman Hill. I feel the same way when I’m presented with a branch of Boss.
I’m told that these fashion, luggage and sunglasses shops are everywhere because they are the only ones that can afford city centre rents and I’m sure that’s true. So that’s good for the city, the landlords and stupid people in white trousers who think it’s OK to spend £850 on a pair of shoes because it says Prada on the instep.
It’s not what we want, of course. We want interesting shops full of interesting things and interesting people, and we think it’s silly to spend £850 on a pair of shoes. But lots of little shops all selling different things? That’s too difficult to organise. It’s much easier to call some twat on a yacht and ask him to send over a light dusting of Hilfiger and a spot of Saint Laurent.
Which brings me back to farming. I’m sitting here now on top of a hill in the Cotswolds and I can see four other farms, all run by farmers who do things their own way. There’s a chap not too far away who produces eggs in mobile hen houses. There’s a lady who’s passionate about organic produce. Then there’s my neighbour who seems to be persevering with oil-seed rape, and down in the valley there’s a brother and sister rearing pigs. It’s all small and higgledy-piggledy and charming. And it’s comforting to know that 90 per cent of Britain’s remaining farms are family owned. But if you stand back and look at the land as a business, you’d have to say, “Er, hang on a minute. This makes no sense at all.”
So I find myself wondering. Is this really what’s going on behind the scenes? Has the agricultural equivalent of Lawrence Stroll had a quiet word with the government: “Look, if you can get these pesky family farmers to sod off, I’ll buy the countryside, put in a bit of rewilding to keep the nutters happy and then use economies of scale to make all the food we need at a nice price.”
Think about it. My tractor is currently sitting in the yard because there’s nothing for it to do. But if I owned all the land from the south coast to the Wash it’d be working 24/7. Tomorrow I could send it to Hertfordshire to uproot hedges and pull down copses to make bigger, more economically viable fields, and the day after it would be in Dorset sprinkling some nitrogen on the barley.
It would all be a model of just-in-time efficiency and hydroponic tomatoes, and soon all of Europe’s farmland would be in the hands of four or five multinationals who could use freebies and dodgy handshakes to get government ministers to pass whatever legislation the shareholders wanted.
Under the present system farmers can’t really get governments to do anything as there are too many of us and we all have different needs. It’d be like asking a classroom of kids what they want for Christmas and expecting them all to say the same thing. There’s always going to be one that wants peace and love and another who wants a subscription to Pornhub. And a Ferrari.
If the multinationals move in that would all be solved. Plus, it would be good for the global economy, good for investors and food prices will probably fall. And to make it all even more palatable fields will be full of signs saying “Monsanto Inc. Growing sustainably for hard-working families in the community”. I think for certain the world’s governments have this utopian vision in their heads. Which is why their policies are so skewed against farmers and the present system. They’d much rather have five guys who speak their language and have pit passes at the Monaco Grand Prix every year than five thousand who come into town once a blue moon to spray government buildings with their disgusting manure.
You may think they have a point. You may like the idea of cheaper food, but do you want to wave goodbye to the hedgerows and the copses? And do you want the British countryside to be owned and run by a private equity outfit in Chicago? Or let me put it to you another way: do you want a hydroponic Tommy Hilfiger tomato? Because I don’t.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Forget Eton, Keir will be too busy with racist chairs
With the loudest voices in Labour yelling about slavery, microbes and gender, Sir Starmer won’t have the chance to be radical
By Jeremy Clarkson (The Sunday Times, May 26)
The Conservative Party’s biggest problem is that it’s no longer the Conservative Party. And that’s because it’s been listening and taking inspiration from people who are talking, not those who aren’t. And I have some evidence to suggest that this doesn’t really work.
Many years ago, when Top Gear was a swashbuckling festival of tyre smoke and innuendo that came into your living room every Sunday evening like a drunken uncle, I just sort of did what felt right every week. But then I started consulting a small but very keen fan site in America to see what they were saying. And what they were mostly saying is that they wanted more cars and less cocking about.
This meant, when it was time to start preparing the following week’s show, their views would be front and centre in my head. My gut would tell me to do one thing, but these faceless uberfans would be telling me to do something else. And I found myself more and more doing that.
It was ridiculous. We were making a show for a weekly audience of 350 million people, but I was shaping it to keep maybe 25 American car nuts happy. I dreaded their displeasure on a Sunday night, and I’d do anything to avoid it. And that brings me back to the Conservative Party.
I can’t remember how many MPs they’ve got left now and there’s no point looking it up because by the time you read this, another one will have crossed the floor or been tied up by “bad people” or divulged secret information to keep blackmailers happy or said something Islamophobic or taken drugs or invited someone to “go back to Bahrain”. The list is endless, but whatever the number is, I’m willing to bet that every single one of them signed up because they wanted to be a tub-thumping Thatcherite iron person.
But you can’t be Mrs Thatcher now because then you’d be labelled “far right”. And that’s the same as being Hitler. Better, if you want a quiet life, to be a mouse. A Liberal Democrat. A cyclist. With one eye on hard-working families in the community and the other on River to the Sea sustainable diversity. So that’s what the Conservative MPs did. They listened to the people who were speaking and never thought to think about the views of those who weren’t. And now they are screwed. Bud Lite busted. Done. Rishi’s kids are probably already down for schools in America.
This means that in a few weeks, we will have a Labour government and many of my Tory friends find this a bit scary. They worry about the future of private education and things like a wealth tax and how well we’ll fare on the world stage when most of the people in government actively hate Britain.
I’m not worried though, because while Sir Starmer has made all sorts of left-wing noises over the years, he’s not going to be able to do anything profound because he’s going to be surrounded by the people who’ve been doing all the talking these last few years. And what they’re going to be talking to him about, most of all, is penises.
Penises will be our saviour. He may be sitting there thinking about how he can alter capital gains tax or abolish Eton, but it’s going to be hard to put any of his plans into action — because every five minutes, someone’s going to run in and say they’ve seen a willy in the ladies’. And he’s going to have to break off to deal with that.
And while he’s in the ladies’, asking Big John if he wouldn’t mind maybe using the gents’ in future, someone else is going to call him and say that there’s been some misgendering in the gatehouse which means he’ll have to miss his five o’clock about sustainable development in the birthing people space.
The next day, he’s going to really want to get a grip on the non-dom issue, but at 7am he’ll get an email from someone who’s “reaching out” to say that the antique chairs used in the Cabinet Office were probably made by slaves and that to display solidarity with Palestine, the chairs should come from Gaza. This will have to be discussed in a meeting where it’ll turn out that all the chairs in Gaza are broken, which will cause the whole room to descend into a frenzied and frothing attack on Israel. The non-doms, as a result, will be able to breathe easy.
And then it’ll be lunch and Sir Keir, being a vegetablist, will order a salad. But just as he’s about to savour that first mouthful, someone with sustainable armpit hair — but possibly no penis — will lean over and ask if he understands how many beetles and microbes had to be killed before that salad could be grown. So then there will be a debate about what food can be eaten by hard-working members of the cabinet’s vegetarian community and it’ll be decided that it’d be best if, in future, everyone got their sustenance from licking the pot plants.
Foreign leaders will be calling him but he’ll be prevented from taking the calls because one of the components in his phone was made in Tel Aviv; nor will he be able to talk to the Treasury about a mansion tax because this would involve maths, and maths — as we’ve learnt — is racist.
Meanwhile, outside the corridors of power, the doctors will continue to go to work, the nurses will still get paid, the garden centres will continue to be open, the supermarkets will continue to sell food and car showrooms will still be able to provide you with a new set of wheels. It’ll all be normal.
Because the penis people who’ve been talking and talking and talking these last few years will still be talking and talking and talking. Only now they won’t be outside the building. They’ll be inside — which means, mercifully, we won’t be able to hear them as they busy themselves with the endless task of achieving absolutely nothing at all.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And here's an excerpt from the Sun column:
Three years ago, when my farm was being battered over the head by planners at West Oxfordshire District Council, I became so desperate that I went to London to see the minister in charge of this sort of thing: Michael Gove.
I explained the problem. Farmers were being told by central government to diversify if they wanted to stay in business. But if they tried, they were stopped by the planners in local government.
Gove pulled all the right faces and made all the right noises and I left knowing full well nothing would come of it.
But blow me down with a feather, it did. And this week farmers were told they could turn their disused barns into gyms or workshops or even houses without the need for planning permission.
That’s great news for everyone in the business. Except me. Because to help win the battle to keep my farm shop, I gave up the rights to convert my barn.
I think that’s called taking one for the team.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Clarkson's columns are regularly collected as books. You can buy them from his boss or your local bookshop.
P.S. Apologies for the delay in posting this week's columns. I was traveling on Monday (Memorial Day, a holiday in the US).
submitted by _Revelator_ to thegrandtour [link] [comments]
By Jeremy Clarkson (The Sunday Times, May 26)
Quite rightly there’s been a lot of brouhaha and gnashing of teeth about the Welsh government’s weed-friendly farming policy. But the problem isn’t confined to Wales. Almost every government in the civilised world seems determined to ethnically cleanse farmers from the countryside. And it’s hard to see why.
Oh sure, they all say that farming makes a lot of carbon dioxides and that they have net zero targets to meet, but obviously that’s not the reason. Because what’s the point of keeping the global temperature down if there’s nothing to eat?
So if climate change isn’t the driver, why, all across Europe and America and Australia, is life being made so wilfully and unnecessarily hard for the people who feed us? And why in England did the number of farms fall from 132,400 in 2005 to just 104,000 in 2015? Well, bear with me on this one, but it’s necessary at this point to talk about my recent weekend city break in Copenhagen.
I’ve always said that if I were forced for some reason to leave the UK and I needed to live and work somewhere else, I’d go to Copenhagen. You eat dinner at a sensible time, not four in the morning, you’re never distracted by the beach, and you can have conversations with a van driver about how the krone is controlled by the European Central Bank. I know because I did. Here I spend most of my van-based conversations trying to explain what “fragile” means.
Everywhere you go in Copenhagen there are attractive people having lunch in attractive restaurants before going back to the office to design some more attractive chairs. They put their solar farms between the motorway and the railway line, and all around the canals and docks there are no unsightly railings. If you fall in, you just get out again. And if you can’t swim, well, that’s your own silly fault.
And then there’s the business of getting about, which is done on a bicycle. Unlike here, though, no one wears a helmet or that idiotic Stasi stormtrooper combination of black tights and black shorts. Cycling is not some BLT+, pro-Hamas, kick-out-the-Tories political movement. It’s just something you do to get about, because even the crappiest little car is about a million pounds. And there are no hills.
I love pootling about on a bicycle there, stopping for a cup of coffee and a pastry, or to look in a little shop that sells nothing but lampshades made from thinly sliced ash. If Carlsberg did cities, they’d look like this.
But even here, amid all the loveliness, we find the awful Lawrence Stroll plague of Tommy Hilfiger, Prada, Chanel, Bulgari, Gucci and all those other multinational emporiums for the terminally dreadful, which now dominate every city centre, high-end Caribbean resort and airport terminal in the world. Terry Wogan once said he’d like to machinegun everyone on Henman Hill. I feel the same way when I’m presented with a branch of Boss.
I’m told that these fashion, luggage and sunglasses shops are everywhere because they are the only ones that can afford city centre rents and I’m sure that’s true. So that’s good for the city, the landlords and stupid people in white trousers who think it’s OK to spend £850 on a pair of shoes because it says Prada on the instep.
It’s not what we want, of course. We want interesting shops full of interesting things and interesting people, and we think it’s silly to spend £850 on a pair of shoes. But lots of little shops all selling different things? That’s too difficult to organise. It’s much easier to call some twat on a yacht and ask him to send over a light dusting of Hilfiger and a spot of Saint Laurent.
Which brings me back to farming. I’m sitting here now on top of a hill in the Cotswolds and I can see four other farms, all run by farmers who do things their own way. There’s a chap not too far away who produces eggs in mobile hen houses. There’s a lady who’s passionate about organic produce. Then there’s my neighbour who seems to be persevering with oil-seed rape, and down in the valley there’s a brother and sister rearing pigs. It’s all small and higgledy-piggledy and charming. And it’s comforting to know that 90 per cent of Britain’s remaining farms are family owned. But if you stand back and look at the land as a business, you’d have to say, “Er, hang on a minute. This makes no sense at all.”
So I find myself wondering. Is this really what’s going on behind the scenes? Has the agricultural equivalent of Lawrence Stroll had a quiet word with the government: “Look, if you can get these pesky family farmers to sod off, I’ll buy the countryside, put in a bit of rewilding to keep the nutters happy and then use economies of scale to make all the food we need at a nice price.”
Think about it. My tractor is currently sitting in the yard because there’s nothing for it to do. But if I owned all the land from the south coast to the Wash it’d be working 24/7. Tomorrow I could send it to Hertfordshire to uproot hedges and pull down copses to make bigger, more economically viable fields, and the day after it would be in Dorset sprinkling some nitrogen on the barley.
It would all be a model of just-in-time efficiency and hydroponic tomatoes, and soon all of Europe’s farmland would be in the hands of four or five multinationals who could use freebies and dodgy handshakes to get government ministers to pass whatever legislation the shareholders wanted.
Under the present system farmers can’t really get governments to do anything as there are too many of us and we all have different needs. It’d be like asking a classroom of kids what they want for Christmas and expecting them all to say the same thing. There’s always going to be one that wants peace and love and another who wants a subscription to Pornhub. And a Ferrari.
If the multinationals move in that would all be solved. Plus, it would be good for the global economy, good for investors and food prices will probably fall. And to make it all even more palatable fields will be full of signs saying “Monsanto Inc. Growing sustainably for hard-working families in the community”. I think for certain the world’s governments have this utopian vision in their heads. Which is why their policies are so skewed against farmers and the present system. They’d much rather have five guys who speak their language and have pit passes at the Monaco Grand Prix every year than five thousand who come into town once a blue moon to spray government buildings with their disgusting manure.
You may think they have a point. You may like the idea of cheaper food, but do you want to wave goodbye to the hedgerows and the copses? And do you want the British countryside to be owned and run by a private equity outfit in Chicago? Or let me put it to you another way: do you want a hydroponic Tommy Hilfiger tomato? Because I don’t.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Forget Eton, Keir will be too busy with racist chairs
With the loudest voices in Labour yelling about slavery, microbes and gender, Sir Starmer won’t have the chance to be radical
By Jeremy Clarkson (The Sunday Times, May 26)
The Conservative Party’s biggest problem is that it’s no longer the Conservative Party. And that’s because it’s been listening and taking inspiration from people who are talking, not those who aren’t. And I have some evidence to suggest that this doesn’t really work.
Many years ago, when Top Gear was a swashbuckling festival of tyre smoke and innuendo that came into your living room every Sunday evening like a drunken uncle, I just sort of did what felt right every week. But then I started consulting a small but very keen fan site in America to see what they were saying. And what they were mostly saying is that they wanted more cars and less cocking about.
This meant, when it was time to start preparing the following week’s show, their views would be front and centre in my head. My gut would tell me to do one thing, but these faceless uberfans would be telling me to do something else. And I found myself more and more doing that.
It was ridiculous. We were making a show for a weekly audience of 350 million people, but I was shaping it to keep maybe 25 American car nuts happy. I dreaded their displeasure on a Sunday night, and I’d do anything to avoid it. And that brings me back to the Conservative Party.
I can’t remember how many MPs they’ve got left now and there’s no point looking it up because by the time you read this, another one will have crossed the floor or been tied up by “bad people” or divulged secret information to keep blackmailers happy or said something Islamophobic or taken drugs or invited someone to “go back to Bahrain”. The list is endless, but whatever the number is, I’m willing to bet that every single one of them signed up because they wanted to be a tub-thumping Thatcherite iron person.
But you can’t be Mrs Thatcher now because then you’d be labelled “far right”. And that’s the same as being Hitler. Better, if you want a quiet life, to be a mouse. A Liberal Democrat. A cyclist. With one eye on hard-working families in the community and the other on River to the Sea sustainable diversity. So that’s what the Conservative MPs did. They listened to the people who were speaking and never thought to think about the views of those who weren’t. And now they are screwed. Bud Lite busted. Done. Rishi’s kids are probably already down for schools in America.
This means that in a few weeks, we will have a Labour government and many of my Tory friends find this a bit scary. They worry about the future of private education and things like a wealth tax and how well we’ll fare on the world stage when most of the people in government actively hate Britain.
I’m not worried though, because while Sir Starmer has made all sorts of left-wing noises over the years, he’s not going to be able to do anything profound because he’s going to be surrounded by the people who’ve been doing all the talking these last few years. And what they’re going to be talking to him about, most of all, is penises.
Penises will be our saviour. He may be sitting there thinking about how he can alter capital gains tax or abolish Eton, but it’s going to be hard to put any of his plans into action — because every five minutes, someone’s going to run in and say they’ve seen a willy in the ladies’. And he’s going to have to break off to deal with that.
And while he’s in the ladies’, asking Big John if he wouldn’t mind maybe using the gents’ in future, someone else is going to call him and say that there’s been some misgendering in the gatehouse which means he’ll have to miss his five o’clock about sustainable development in the birthing people space.
The next day, he’s going to really want to get a grip on the non-dom issue, but at 7am he’ll get an email from someone who’s “reaching out” to say that the antique chairs used in the Cabinet Office were probably made by slaves and that to display solidarity with Palestine, the chairs should come from Gaza. This will have to be discussed in a meeting where it’ll turn out that all the chairs in Gaza are broken, which will cause the whole room to descend into a frenzied and frothing attack on Israel. The non-doms, as a result, will be able to breathe easy.
And then it’ll be lunch and Sir Keir, being a vegetablist, will order a salad. But just as he’s about to savour that first mouthful, someone with sustainable armpit hair — but possibly no penis — will lean over and ask if he understands how many beetles and microbes had to be killed before that salad could be grown. So then there will be a debate about what food can be eaten by hard-working members of the cabinet’s vegetarian community and it’ll be decided that it’d be best if, in future, everyone got their sustenance from licking the pot plants.
Foreign leaders will be calling him but he’ll be prevented from taking the calls because one of the components in his phone was made in Tel Aviv; nor will he be able to talk to the Treasury about a mansion tax because this would involve maths, and maths — as we’ve learnt — is racist.
Meanwhile, outside the corridors of power, the doctors will continue to go to work, the nurses will still get paid, the garden centres will continue to be open, the supermarkets will continue to sell food and car showrooms will still be able to provide you with a new set of wheels. It’ll all be normal.
Because the penis people who’ve been talking and talking and talking these last few years will still be talking and talking and talking. Only now they won’t be outside the building. They’ll be inside — which means, mercifully, we won’t be able to hear them as they busy themselves with the endless task of achieving absolutely nothing at all.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And here's an excerpt from the Sun column:
Three years ago, when my farm was being battered over the head by planners at West Oxfordshire District Council, I became so desperate that I went to London to see the minister in charge of this sort of thing: Michael Gove.
I explained the problem. Farmers were being told by central government to diversify if they wanted to stay in business. But if they tried, they were stopped by the planners in local government.
Gove pulled all the right faces and made all the right noises and I left knowing full well nothing would come of it.
But blow me down with a feather, it did. And this week farmers were told they could turn their disused barns into gyms or workshops or even houses without the need for planning permission.
That’s great news for everyone in the business. Except me. Because to help win the battle to keep my farm shop, I gave up the rights to convert my barn.
I think that’s called taking one for the team.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Clarkson's columns are regularly collected as books. You can buy them from his boss or your local bookshop.
P.S. Apologies for the delay in posting this week's columns. I was traveling on Monday (Memorial Day, a holiday in the US).
2024.05.28 22:44 Silver_liver The Ashtapdan ch.23/43 THE ACTION PICKS UP!
chapters 1&2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Link to AO3
Gentry’s sweet cravings were getting out of hand.
The last time she had a proper dessert was almost a week ago, and if she had something to say about it, no amount of saccharine text exchanges with pretty boys was going to replace a good old sugar rush. A couple of days ago Sereen treated her to the sweetest snack she could get with her status and that piece of dried fruit was nowhere near enough to satisfy G’s sweet tooth.
So many vending machines and eateries, but not a single good bakery? Hell, even a crappy one would do at this point! She had to hunt down some glucose tonight.
After Sereen’s initial tour around the city, she went off leaving G to explore the city on her own. It was getting easier and easier. With the auglasses on, finding her way around proved pretty intuitive, not in the least thanks to the distinct chessboard-like layout of Ashtapada. Each district had a letter-number label. By remembering one’s “square code”, one could find their way back on foot or by cab in no time wherever they found themselves.
Gentry spent hours exploring the wide walking streets and little nooks that offered yet another glimpse into Ashtapadan reality. She once stumbled upon a bookshop with nothing on the shelves but blank-page tomes. The shopkeeper asked her what she was looking for and after finding out the she was a Newcomer, explained that it was a book-on-demand type of place. She would place an order for a story and he would write it for her in a matter of days.
What confused her most was the snow-white buildings of the city. Despite being made with rough porous concrete, they were drowning in lush greenery that sometimes looked like it nearly chocked the structure. Each had the same distinct feature, though, that made them all look unfinished: however tall or short was the building, the top floor always looked under construction. Though there always were the omnipresent hounds on each of the working site, there were never any cranes or scaffolding visible. The obliging auglasses offered G the answer: everything from the smallest houses to the few high rises was essentially self-producing! From what little she understood reading about this advancement, the carbon in the atmosphere was captured by special aerial filters and dissolved in some water. It later went through the pipes in the buildings’ skeleton-like armature and got sprayed on. As the water evaporated, the carbon solidified into neat coral-like blocks that formed the walls and other structures.
Well, that explained why the fumes she saw on the outskirts smoked backwards!
It was getting dark and the orderly streets came alive once G engaged her glasses that revealed the digital underside of Ashtapada again. Every business had a modest sign in the physical world that didn’t stand out on the angular facades. But there also was a hidden bright animated augmented-reality one that could compete with Broadway neon in brightness.
Signs like these weren’t just decorating the facades: the 3D ones flashing on the ground filled almost the whole field of view, too. They looked amazingly enticing in the evening dusk. Information stalls with digital assistants, huge arrows pointing at meeting points, temporary signs inviting strangers to join a club gathering — Gentry was going to gawk at every single one tonight. She came up to some of them, waving hands in the air to try and touch the flickering lights, not caring what she looked like from the outside. Ashtapadans seemed a very relaxed bunch, not putting their noses in others’ business, which felt liberating. Noting how other people in the streets interacted with 3D service bots, G came up to one of them, too.
“Hello, Gentry, how can I help you tonight?” it chirped. The hologram looked like a cute animated girl with an elaborate pink hairdo. “You can ask me a question directly or say “What can you do” to access the list of commands.”
“Hi!” G said. “Do you have a name?”
“You can call me Yukio,” it responded with a little curtsy. “I can answer any questions, show you around or chat about anything!”
Any question? It must know where the desserts were sold! On second thought, wasn’t there something more important than that? Something that brought G here in the first place.
“I’m looking for a person named Exxy Mah,” she said to the patiently smiling girl. “Is there a citizen or a newcomer with this name?”
“There is!” Yukio answered, gleefully jumping in the air. “Exxy Mah is a famous Ashtapadan, she is an advocate for healthy living. You might have seen her on posters and screens around the city.”
The woman in the picture the assistant conjured up floating in thin air showed an elderly woman. She was looking very fit for her age but it clearly wasn’t the Exxy Gentry knew.
“Hmm... That’s not her...” G said. “There has to be another.”
The girl suddenly looked on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry! It’s the only one in Ashtapada! No other Citizens or Newcomers are registered by this name!”
Did her friend change her name then?
“A friend of mine should’ve arrived here last year under the same name. Can you check where she is now?”
Yukio’s helpful attitude fell apart in an instant. Her posture became stiff like a 3D model she was and a voice void of any emotion informed, “Personal data on people of Ashtapada, including their whereabouts is protected by the privacy laws of the city. Please rephrase your search.”
A blink later, the same cute Yukio was standing in front of G again.
“Can I help with anything else?” she smiled.
Was there a way to ask this dummy in a way that would give her at least a hint about her friend?
“Ok, Yukio,” G attempted. “When did the famous Exxy Mah you mentioned arrive at Ashtapada?”
The girl flickered into a wooden statue again, “Personal data on people...”
“Ok, ok, I got it,” G waved. “Bring back the friendly assistant, you creep me out.”
“Can I help with anything else?” the model went again.
G sighed.
“Is there a place a newcomer can get something sweet, a chocolate or a cake perhaps?”
Yukio gasped indignantly, “Ashtapada has a very strict policy on stimulants! You can’t legally buy any tobacco, alcohol, products with added sugar and other such substances!”
“Such substances!” G hollered, forgetting for a second that she was talking to a lifeless simulation. “Sugar is completely harmless! It’s good for your brains you know! Can I at least ask a Сitizen to get me a snack?”
The girl crossed her arms in defiance.
“You can’t buy any dessert in Ashtapada, whatever your status, the law is for everyone. No refined sugar!”
G thought for a moment, rewinding their conversation in her memory.
“Did you say I can’t buy sugar legally?”— Gentry perked up — “Is there a black market of sweets I can go to?”
“A black market of sweets!”
Yukio stared. It was clearly the first time she had had to deal with this particular word combination. It took her a second or two to process the request.
“There’s no black market of sweets in Ashtapada,” she stated, confidently, at last.
“Ok, pinkhead,” G said, rolling her eyes. “I guess it took all candy floss in Ashtapada to make that hair.”
Annoyed at the assistant, she stomped through the bright neon figure in front of her and into the pedestrian street now full of people.
If there was a place with some glucose in this stuck-up place, she was going to sniff it out.
***
The hunt wasn’t of much success. After watching a street performance by a group of dancers, listening to an impromptu debate and taking part in a couple of opinion polls, Gentry finally felt that it had been a little too much. Even with the auglasses disengaged, he noise, the people and the boisterous crowds in the streets seemed to pour light and sound directly into her brain in an endless stream. It gave her a headache.
Calling up a map from her wristcomm with an already practised motion, she marked a place nearby that looked much quieter and had a swarm of vending machines, too.
Screw the sugar, she just needed some water now.
The place was indeed quite secluded. The narrow street started on the edge of the bustling zone she just left but didn’t seem to cut into the living district. It wasn’t used by many people, but, to G’s surprise, it seemed to be used by hounds, scurrying back and forth with parcels, trash bags and other loads of lesser identifiability.
Perhaps this little alley was shared by humans and these tireless little helpers over the course of the day? The hounds would make use of it in the night but workers would walk it to leave the residential area when the sun was up? That would explain the line of vending machines along both sides, with their tempting lights that invited to at least take a look.
Sadly, their insides weren’t as tempting as the signs promised.
G walked past the rows of healthy corn-based snacks, rows of dried fruit packets, lines of non-edible stuff like auglasses upgrades and finally ended up in front of a drinks machine. It immediately identified her by scanning the device on her wrist and merrily chimed a hello. G frowned. The few options that were available to a newcomer with an embarrassingly low status like hers immediately got illuminated, hiding more enticing bottles and cans in relative darkness.
No need to rub it in, you soulless beast!
But... there was a can that looked a little sweeter than others. Perhaps it was because of its sickly-pink colour, or a pattern vaguely reminding of chewing gum printed along its rims together with the fact that it was unavailable to pheasants like her, but something told Gentry that it probably was it. A sweet drink she was after.
Or, at least, sweetish.
Against better judgment, she tapped the touchglass to order it.
Nothing. The little screen insisted that she must choose what was available.
She scanned her comm again.
Nothing.
She engaged the little flashlight in her glasses and looked at the can more carefully.
Was it... a little askew?
It definitely was.
Its lower rim was half-hanging in the air, the release mechanism lazily holding it in place.
A good shove...
A good shove would probably drop the can down.
Wouldn’t it?
G looked around and immediately felt a pang of guilt.
She hadn’t done anything, officer!
Yet.
No people, just a couple of smaller hounds rhythmically clip-clopping along the dim alley.
Should she?
The can looked at her from behind the glass like a captive princess, waiting to be rescued from the agonizing imprisonment. Someone to grab its slender body, deflower it with a skilled motion and drain its sweet nectar in a couple of gulps.
Hang in there, my sweet prize, your saviour is coming!
Another hopefully inconspicuous glance around confirmed there were still no people in the alley.
Gentry stepped to the side and leaned on the machine, estimating its weight.
Not too bad.
She leaned in heavier, feet pushing into the ground, legs and back straining against the cool metal.
A little more, and...
One of the little hounds stopped and looked G over, like a dog that saw a little furry animal that could be torn apart.
What, little buddy? Just taking a break. Is it against the law to lean on vending machines?
Gentry urged the walking robot to move along with a little shove of her foot and immediately felt a little bad when it obediently left without making much fuss.
Why the guilt? It wasn’t like she kicked the little guy!
Still, Gentry felt emboldened by the little victory against the mindless machine.
Surely, the frigid castle that held her sugary princess shouldn’t be of much trouble either.
With a renewed wind in her sails, she stepped back a couple of meters and slammed her whole body into the automate that answered with a promising clanking. Another good push and the visual assessment confirmed that the pink princess was nearly saved. Gentry smashed into the box one last time and the can that she longed for finally jangled down and into the pick-up box.
Gentry’s exhilaration lasted only for a second, however. Before she could retrieve the can she lusted after, something much bigger than a modest dog-sized carrier hound filled her field of vision. A larger four-legged robot that also had something fastened on its back and belly. It stood motionless, its front camera glinting in the uneven light like a bird of prey’s, watching G as she stood up after the impact, unsure what to do.
Was it a police hound or something? Unlikely. There were no marks on it that would identify it as such. What was its problem then?
It’s alright, mate, be on your way now.
G slowly moved her hand towards the pick-up box and almost grabbed the cool can when the hound gently shoved her hand aside with its boxy head.
What’s your problem, pal?
Gentry considered if it was worth it being accused of theft so soon after arriving at Ashtapada. Was it really that bad though? She could always claim it just dropped there by itself.
She pushed the hound’s stump of a head back, covering its camera with her palm, reaching for the can again. This time, as if blinded by her hand, the hound didn’t do anything to stop it.
Ah, easy. These machines were too dumb.
Gentry stepped back, completely sure that the matter was settled, and popped the can open. Its sweet scent filled her nostrils with a seductive promise. But the hound had other plans. Once his camera was uncovered, it seemed to focus on the offending drink again and made to awkwardly sway its head to kick it out of G’s hands.
Excuse me? What about the Laws of Robotics, mate? Rings a bell?
It wasn’t hard to dodge the clumsy assault, but the sheer size of the robot made G uneasy. If it seriously wanted to harm her, it could just stomp on her foot and shatter the bones there like fragile glass.
Better get out of here then.
Finally making a sip of the promising nectar, Gentry moved back towards the light opening of the alley, flanking the beast at a respectful distance before scrunching her face in disgust.
Shit! The drink wasn’t sweet in the slightest! It was all a lie! Vile flavourings! She was cheated! Her lovely princess lured her with a siren’s song and stabbed her right in the heart!
Disillusioned, G gripped the can tighter as if in retaliation and picked up the pace.
The hound wasn’t having it though. Surprisingly agile on its metal hooves, it appeared in front of Gentry, blocking her way out. The robots usually looked more like docile cows or donkeys, especially when they were loaded with cargo, but this one, now... looked like a real hound. Its posture suddenly squat, the camera glinting once again, it definitely wasn’t going to let the transgressor go that easily.
Shit, shit! Had it seen her face? Had it scanned her comm? Was she going to prison now?
Panic rose in Gentry’s brain like a suffocating wave.
Run? Return the can back? It wasn’t even good enough to be worth the trouble!
Tentatively, without turning her back on the beast, G made a couple of steps back to escape in the other direction but the robot matched her stride, his dark presence looming in the narrow pathway.
Something like this had happened before. A similar quiet spot in her city. A similar evening that started off great but ended in a disaster. The same impending danger, the same feeling of helplessness, a similar... weapon in her hand?
Right. The brawler that attacked her and Pete at The Clockface was human and was taken down by some boiling hot water, and this hound also had eyes. Only one in fact. And if the can is sturdy enough...
Brace yourself now, my princess, it’s time for sacrifices.
With a well-aimed swing, Gentry launched the can into the thin glass of the hound’s camera eye, turning to run for her life at the same time. A crashing sound proved that she succeeded but there was no time to check what the robot would do next. As usual, the time seemed to stretch into a sickening slime and her legs didn’t feel real, but G knew that outside her reeling head everything was moving properly so she had no time to lose.
Run away, mix into the crowd, save your hide.
Feel worthless later.
submitted by Silver_liver to RoleReversal [link] [comments]
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Link to AO3
Gentry’s sweet cravings were getting out of hand.
The last time she had a proper dessert was almost a week ago, and if she had something to say about it, no amount of saccharine text exchanges with pretty boys was going to replace a good old sugar rush. A couple of days ago Sereen treated her to the sweetest snack she could get with her status and that piece of dried fruit was nowhere near enough to satisfy G’s sweet tooth.
So many vending machines and eateries, but not a single good bakery? Hell, even a crappy one would do at this point! She had to hunt down some glucose tonight.
After Sereen’s initial tour around the city, she went off leaving G to explore the city on her own. It was getting easier and easier. With the auglasses on, finding her way around proved pretty intuitive, not in the least thanks to the distinct chessboard-like layout of Ashtapada. Each district had a letter-number label. By remembering one’s “square code”, one could find their way back on foot or by cab in no time wherever they found themselves.
Gentry spent hours exploring the wide walking streets and little nooks that offered yet another glimpse into Ashtapadan reality. She once stumbled upon a bookshop with nothing on the shelves but blank-page tomes. The shopkeeper asked her what she was looking for and after finding out the she was a Newcomer, explained that it was a book-on-demand type of place. She would place an order for a story and he would write it for her in a matter of days.
What confused her most was the snow-white buildings of the city. Despite being made with rough porous concrete, they were drowning in lush greenery that sometimes looked like it nearly chocked the structure. Each had the same distinct feature, though, that made them all look unfinished: however tall or short was the building, the top floor always looked under construction. Though there always were the omnipresent hounds on each of the working site, there were never any cranes or scaffolding visible. The obliging auglasses offered G the answer: everything from the smallest houses to the few high rises was essentially self-producing! From what little she understood reading about this advancement, the carbon in the atmosphere was captured by special aerial filters and dissolved in some water. It later went through the pipes in the buildings’ skeleton-like armature and got sprayed on. As the water evaporated, the carbon solidified into neat coral-like blocks that formed the walls and other structures.
Well, that explained why the fumes she saw on the outskirts smoked backwards!
It was getting dark and the orderly streets came alive once G engaged her glasses that revealed the digital underside of Ashtapada again. Every business had a modest sign in the physical world that didn’t stand out on the angular facades. But there also was a hidden bright animated augmented-reality one that could compete with Broadway neon in brightness.
Signs like these weren’t just decorating the facades: the 3D ones flashing on the ground filled almost the whole field of view, too. They looked amazingly enticing in the evening dusk. Information stalls with digital assistants, huge arrows pointing at meeting points, temporary signs inviting strangers to join a club gathering — Gentry was going to gawk at every single one tonight. She came up to some of them, waving hands in the air to try and touch the flickering lights, not caring what she looked like from the outside. Ashtapadans seemed a very relaxed bunch, not putting their noses in others’ business, which felt liberating. Noting how other people in the streets interacted with 3D service bots, G came up to one of them, too.
“Hello, Gentry, how can I help you tonight?” it chirped. The hologram looked like a cute animated girl with an elaborate pink hairdo. “You can ask me a question directly or say “What can you do” to access the list of commands.”
“Hi!” G said. “Do you have a name?”
“You can call me Yukio,” it responded with a little curtsy. “I can answer any questions, show you around or chat about anything!”
Any question? It must know where the desserts were sold! On second thought, wasn’t there something more important than that? Something that brought G here in the first place.
“I’m looking for a person named Exxy Mah,” she said to the patiently smiling girl. “Is there a citizen or a newcomer with this name?”
“There is!” Yukio answered, gleefully jumping in the air. “Exxy Mah is a famous Ashtapadan, she is an advocate for healthy living. You might have seen her on posters and screens around the city.”
The woman in the picture the assistant conjured up floating in thin air showed an elderly woman. She was looking very fit for her age but it clearly wasn’t the Exxy Gentry knew.
“Hmm... That’s not her...” G said. “There has to be another.”
The girl suddenly looked on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry! It’s the only one in Ashtapada! No other Citizens or Newcomers are registered by this name!”
Did her friend change her name then?
“A friend of mine should’ve arrived here last year under the same name. Can you check where she is now?”
Yukio’s helpful attitude fell apart in an instant. Her posture became stiff like a 3D model she was and a voice void of any emotion informed, “Personal data on people of Ashtapada, including their whereabouts is protected by the privacy laws of the city. Please rephrase your search.”
A blink later, the same cute Yukio was standing in front of G again.
“Can I help with anything else?” she smiled.
Was there a way to ask this dummy in a way that would give her at least a hint about her friend?
“Ok, Yukio,” G attempted. “When did the famous Exxy Mah you mentioned arrive at Ashtapada?”
The girl flickered into a wooden statue again, “Personal data on people...”
“Ok, ok, I got it,” G waved. “Bring back the friendly assistant, you creep me out.”
“Can I help with anything else?” the model went again.
G sighed.
“Is there a place a newcomer can get something sweet, a chocolate or a cake perhaps?”
Yukio gasped indignantly, “Ashtapada has a very strict policy on stimulants! You can’t legally buy any tobacco, alcohol, products with added sugar and other such substances!”
“Such substances!” G hollered, forgetting for a second that she was talking to a lifeless simulation. “Sugar is completely harmless! It’s good for your brains you know! Can I at least ask a Сitizen to get me a snack?”
The girl crossed her arms in defiance.
“You can’t buy any dessert in Ashtapada, whatever your status, the law is for everyone. No refined sugar!”
G thought for a moment, rewinding their conversation in her memory.
“Did you say I can’t buy sugar legally?”— Gentry perked up — “Is there a black market of sweets I can go to?”
“A black market of sweets!”
Yukio stared. It was clearly the first time she had had to deal with this particular word combination. It took her a second or two to process the request.
“There’s no black market of sweets in Ashtapada,” she stated, confidently, at last.
“Ok, pinkhead,” G said, rolling her eyes. “I guess it took all candy floss in Ashtapada to make that hair.”
Annoyed at the assistant, she stomped through the bright neon figure in front of her and into the pedestrian street now full of people.
If there was a place with some glucose in this stuck-up place, she was going to sniff it out.
***
The hunt wasn’t of much success. After watching a street performance by a group of dancers, listening to an impromptu debate and taking part in a couple of opinion polls, Gentry finally felt that it had been a little too much. Even with the auglasses disengaged, he noise, the people and the boisterous crowds in the streets seemed to pour light and sound directly into her brain in an endless stream. It gave her a headache.
Calling up a map from her wristcomm with an already practised motion, she marked a place nearby that looked much quieter and had a swarm of vending machines, too.
Screw the sugar, she just needed some water now.
The place was indeed quite secluded. The narrow street started on the edge of the bustling zone she just left but didn’t seem to cut into the living district. It wasn’t used by many people, but, to G’s surprise, it seemed to be used by hounds, scurrying back and forth with parcels, trash bags and other loads of lesser identifiability.
Perhaps this little alley was shared by humans and these tireless little helpers over the course of the day? The hounds would make use of it in the night but workers would walk it to leave the residential area when the sun was up? That would explain the line of vending machines along both sides, with their tempting lights that invited to at least take a look.
Sadly, their insides weren’t as tempting as the signs promised.
G walked past the rows of healthy corn-based snacks, rows of dried fruit packets, lines of non-edible stuff like auglasses upgrades and finally ended up in front of a drinks machine. It immediately identified her by scanning the device on her wrist and merrily chimed a hello. G frowned. The few options that were available to a newcomer with an embarrassingly low status like hers immediately got illuminated, hiding more enticing bottles and cans in relative darkness.
No need to rub it in, you soulless beast!
But... there was a can that looked a little sweeter than others. Perhaps it was because of its sickly-pink colour, or a pattern vaguely reminding of chewing gum printed along its rims together with the fact that it was unavailable to pheasants like her, but something told Gentry that it probably was it. A sweet drink she was after.
Or, at least, sweetish.
Against better judgment, she tapped the touchglass to order it.
Nothing. The little screen insisted that she must choose what was available.
She scanned her comm again.
Nothing.
She engaged the little flashlight in her glasses and looked at the can more carefully.
Was it... a little askew?
It definitely was.
Its lower rim was half-hanging in the air, the release mechanism lazily holding it in place.
A good shove...
A good shove would probably drop the can down.
Wouldn’t it?
G looked around and immediately felt a pang of guilt.
She hadn’t done anything, officer!
Yet.
No people, just a couple of smaller hounds rhythmically clip-clopping along the dim alley.
Should she?
The can looked at her from behind the glass like a captive princess, waiting to be rescued from the agonizing imprisonment. Someone to grab its slender body, deflower it with a skilled motion and drain its sweet nectar in a couple of gulps.
Hang in there, my sweet prize, your saviour is coming!
Another hopefully inconspicuous glance around confirmed there were still no people in the alley.
Gentry stepped to the side and leaned on the machine, estimating its weight.
Not too bad.
She leaned in heavier, feet pushing into the ground, legs and back straining against the cool metal.
A little more, and...
One of the little hounds stopped and looked G over, like a dog that saw a little furry animal that could be torn apart.
What, little buddy? Just taking a break. Is it against the law to lean on vending machines?
Gentry urged the walking robot to move along with a little shove of her foot and immediately felt a little bad when it obediently left without making much fuss.
Why the guilt? It wasn’t like she kicked the little guy!
Still, Gentry felt emboldened by the little victory against the mindless machine.
Surely, the frigid castle that held her sugary princess shouldn’t be of much trouble either.
With a renewed wind in her sails, she stepped back a couple of meters and slammed her whole body into the automate that answered with a promising clanking. Another good push and the visual assessment confirmed that the pink princess was nearly saved. Gentry smashed into the box one last time and the can that she longed for finally jangled down and into the pick-up box.
Gentry’s exhilaration lasted only for a second, however. Before she could retrieve the can she lusted after, something much bigger than a modest dog-sized carrier hound filled her field of vision. A larger four-legged robot that also had something fastened on its back and belly. It stood motionless, its front camera glinting in the uneven light like a bird of prey’s, watching G as she stood up after the impact, unsure what to do.
Was it a police hound or something? Unlikely. There were no marks on it that would identify it as such. What was its problem then?
It’s alright, mate, be on your way now.
G slowly moved her hand towards the pick-up box and almost grabbed the cool can when the hound gently shoved her hand aside with its boxy head.
What’s your problem, pal?
Gentry considered if it was worth it being accused of theft so soon after arriving at Ashtapada. Was it really that bad though? She could always claim it just dropped there by itself.
She pushed the hound’s stump of a head back, covering its camera with her palm, reaching for the can again. This time, as if blinded by her hand, the hound didn’t do anything to stop it.
Ah, easy. These machines were too dumb.
Gentry stepped back, completely sure that the matter was settled, and popped the can open. Its sweet scent filled her nostrils with a seductive promise. But the hound had other plans. Once his camera was uncovered, it seemed to focus on the offending drink again and made to awkwardly sway its head to kick it out of G’s hands.
Excuse me? What about the Laws of Robotics, mate? Rings a bell?
It wasn’t hard to dodge the clumsy assault, but the sheer size of the robot made G uneasy. If it seriously wanted to harm her, it could just stomp on her foot and shatter the bones there like fragile glass.
Better get out of here then.
Finally making a sip of the promising nectar, Gentry moved back towards the light opening of the alley, flanking the beast at a respectful distance before scrunching her face in disgust.
Shit! The drink wasn’t sweet in the slightest! It was all a lie! Vile flavourings! She was cheated! Her lovely princess lured her with a siren’s song and stabbed her right in the heart!
Disillusioned, G gripped the can tighter as if in retaliation and picked up the pace.
The hound wasn’t having it though. Surprisingly agile on its metal hooves, it appeared in front of Gentry, blocking her way out. The robots usually looked more like docile cows or donkeys, especially when they were loaded with cargo, but this one, now... looked like a real hound. Its posture suddenly squat, the camera glinting once again, it definitely wasn’t going to let the transgressor go that easily.
Shit, shit! Had it seen her face? Had it scanned her comm? Was she going to prison now?
Panic rose in Gentry’s brain like a suffocating wave.
Run? Return the can back? It wasn’t even good enough to be worth the trouble!
Tentatively, without turning her back on the beast, G made a couple of steps back to escape in the other direction but the robot matched her stride, his dark presence looming in the narrow pathway.
Something like this had happened before. A similar quiet spot in her city. A similar evening that started off great but ended in a disaster. The same impending danger, the same feeling of helplessness, a similar... weapon in her hand?
Right. The brawler that attacked her and Pete at The Clockface was human and was taken down by some boiling hot water, and this hound also had eyes. Only one in fact. And if the can is sturdy enough...
Brace yourself now, my princess, it’s time for sacrifices.
With a well-aimed swing, Gentry launched the can into the thin glass of the hound’s camera eye, turning to run for her life at the same time. A crashing sound proved that she succeeded but there was no time to check what the robot would do next. As usual, the time seemed to stretch into a sickening slime and her legs didn’t feel real, but G knew that outside her reeling head everything was moving properly so she had no time to lose.
Run away, mix into the crowd, save your hide.
Feel worthless later.
2024.05.28 20:54 Several_Hedgehog5483 Discover the Art of Homebuilding with Cameron Boyington
Are you searching for a home where comfort, character, and craftsmanship converge? Look no further than the visionary creations of Cameron Boyington. Join us on a journey through the world of homebuilding, where every space is crafted with care and attention to detail, reflecting the unique lifestyles and personalities of its inhabitants.
Crafting Homes with Character: Cameron Boyington is more than just a homebuilder—he's an artist with a passion for creating spaces that feel like home from the moment you step inside. From cozy cottages to modern marvels, Cameron's portfolio showcases a diverse range of architectural styles and design elements that capture the essence of comfort and character.
Quality You Can Trust: At the heart of Cameron Boyington's work lies a commitment to quality that is second to none. With a keen eye for detail and a dedication to using only the finest materials and craftsmanship, Cameron ensures that each home he builds is not only beautiful but also built to last for generations to come.
Inspired by Nature: Nature serves as a constant source of inspiration for Cameron Boyington, infusing his homes with elements that evoke a sense of harmony and tranquility. Whether it's incorporating natural materials like wood and stone or maximizing natural light with strategically placed windows, Cameron's designs seamlessly blend indoor and outdoor living.
Building Communities, Not Just Homes: But Cameron Boyington's vision extends beyond building homes—he's also passionate about creating vibrant communities where neighbors become friends and shared experiences create lasting bonds. Through thoughtful urban planning and community-centric design, Cameron aims to foster a sense of belonging and connection among residents.
Experience the Cameron Boyington Difference: Ready to experience the Cameron Boyington difference for yourself? Explore his portfolio of stunning homes and start envisioning the possibilities for your own piece of paradise. Whether you're searching for a cozy retreat nestled in nature or a contemporary urban oasis, Cameron has the perfect home waiting for you.
Connect with Cameron Boyington: Join the conversation with Cameron Boyington and fellow home enthusiasts on Reddit. Ask questions, share insights, and discover the art of homebuilding with one of the industry's leading visionaries. Follow Cameron on MySpace and YouTube for a behind-the-scenes look at his latest projects and design inspirations.
Conclusion: Experience the art of homebuilding with Cameron Boyington and discover a world where comfort, character, and craftsmanship come together to create truly exceptional living spaces. Whether you're dreaming of a quaint cottage in the countryside or a sleek modern masterpiece in the heart of the city, Cameron Boyington has the perfect home for you.
submitted by Several_Hedgehog5483 to bhproxy [link] [comments]
Crafting Homes with Character: Cameron Boyington is more than just a homebuilder—he's an artist with a passion for creating spaces that feel like home from the moment you step inside. From cozy cottages to modern marvels, Cameron's portfolio showcases a diverse range of architectural styles and design elements that capture the essence of comfort and character.
Quality You Can Trust: At the heart of Cameron Boyington's work lies a commitment to quality that is second to none. With a keen eye for detail and a dedication to using only the finest materials and craftsmanship, Cameron ensures that each home he builds is not only beautiful but also built to last for generations to come.
Inspired by Nature: Nature serves as a constant source of inspiration for Cameron Boyington, infusing his homes with elements that evoke a sense of harmony and tranquility. Whether it's incorporating natural materials like wood and stone or maximizing natural light with strategically placed windows, Cameron's designs seamlessly blend indoor and outdoor living.
Building Communities, Not Just Homes: But Cameron Boyington's vision extends beyond building homes—he's also passionate about creating vibrant communities where neighbors become friends and shared experiences create lasting bonds. Through thoughtful urban planning and community-centric design, Cameron aims to foster a sense of belonging and connection among residents.
Experience the Cameron Boyington Difference: Ready to experience the Cameron Boyington difference for yourself? Explore his portfolio of stunning homes and start envisioning the possibilities for your own piece of paradise. Whether you're searching for a cozy retreat nestled in nature or a contemporary urban oasis, Cameron has the perfect home waiting for you.
Connect with Cameron Boyington: Join the conversation with Cameron Boyington and fellow home enthusiasts on Reddit. Ask questions, share insights, and discover the art of homebuilding with one of the industry's leading visionaries. Follow Cameron on MySpace and YouTube for a behind-the-scenes look at his latest projects and design inspirations.
Conclusion: Experience the art of homebuilding with Cameron Boyington and discover a world where comfort, character, and craftsmanship come together to create truly exceptional living spaces. Whether you're dreaming of a quaint cottage in the countryside or a sleek modern masterpiece in the heart of the city, Cameron Boyington has the perfect home for you.
2024.05.28 19:24 The_Patriot TOMORROW: Northgate Mall Redevelopment Meeting (5-29 at 6pm)
From the Walltown Community Association
The Walltown Community Association asks people across Durham to attend a virtual rezoning meeting TOMORROW, Wednesday, May 29th, from 6pm to 7pm. It is hosted by Northwood Investors, the company that owns Northgate Mall. ~You need to register to attend online, but you can also call in (instructions below)~The Walltown Community Association asks people across Durham to attend a virtual rezoning meeting TOMORROW, Wednesday, May 29th, from 6pm to 7pm. It is hosted by Northwood Investors, the company that owns Northgate Mall. ~You need to register to attend online, but you can also call in (instructions below)~.
Help us tell Northwood Investors that if they want to rezone Northgate Mall, they need to participate in the City's official Small Area Planning process.
Since 2018, Walltown has led efforts to create a community-centered vision for Northgate Mall (see our report "Building a Place for All People"). We have engaged over 600 residents through surveys, focus groups, presentations, and a 2021 press conference.
In February 2023, we designed an alternative plan focused on community needs, not just scientific labs. Our priorities for redevelopment include:
In 2021, Northwood proposed a plan with housing, retail, and office space. However, it did not meet community expectations. They said they would negotiate community benefits when requesting a zoning change to build taller buildings (Phase Two).
In 2022, Northwood proposed a new plan focused on scientific research labs and offices. Again, it did not consider the community’s needs.
In February 2024, thanks to Walltown’s efforts, the City of Durham agreed to develop a Small Area Plan for Northgate Mall and the surrounding area. Walltown believes this planning process allows all stakeholders (the City, residents, Northwood, and Duke) to design and develop the site together.
According to their letter, "The developer is considering submitting an application to request a rezoning to Commercial General with a development plan (CG(D)) to allow for Research and Development uses in addition to office, retail, residential, and amenity/park space."
To attend online:
Per Northwood’s letter, Contact Nil Ghosh at 919-590-0362 or [nghosh@morningstarlawgroup.com](mailto:nghosh@morningstarlawgroup.com) if you have any questions.
/this is not my content, I am just passing it on //one of the most hilarious things I ever saw was when Nil Ghosh had his family members sign up to testify before the Durham City Council for a rezoning request ///what he had them say was that they "didn't want Durham to miss out on all the good things Cary has" - what a moron.
submitted by The_Patriot to bullcity [link] [comments]
The Walltown Community Association asks people across Durham to attend a virtual rezoning meeting TOMORROW, Wednesday, May 29th, from 6pm to 7pm. It is hosted by Northwood Investors, the company that owns Northgate Mall. ~You need to register to attend online, but you can also call in (instructions below)~The Walltown Community Association asks people across Durham to attend a virtual rezoning meeting TOMORROW, Wednesday, May 29th, from 6pm to 7pm. It is hosted by Northwood Investors, the company that owns Northgate Mall. ~You need to register to attend online, but you can also call in (instructions below)~.
Help us tell Northwood Investors that if they want to rezone Northgate Mall, they need to participate in the City's official Small Area Planning process.
Since 2018, Walltown has led efforts to create a community-centered vision for Northgate Mall (see our report "Building a Place for All People"). We have engaged over 600 residents through surveys, focus groups, presentations, and a 2021 press conference.
In February 2023, we designed an alternative plan focused on community needs, not just scientific labs. Our priorities for redevelopment include:
- Affordable Housing: 30% of units priced for people earning $37,222 or less per year.
- Affordable Retail: A grocery store paying living wages, and spaces for local, BIPOC-owned businesses.
- Community Spaces: A greenspace connecting to Walltown Park and a community space like a library branch with a Walltown history hub.
- Environmental Sustainability: Reducing the amount of concrete surface to limit impacts of stormwater flooding and heat islands.
Background
Four years ago, Northwood Investors started buying Northgate Mall. By 2019, they owned the whole property except the old Macy's building (which is owned by Duke University Health System).In 2021, Northwood proposed a plan with housing, retail, and office space. However, it did not meet community expectations. They said they would negotiate community benefits when requesting a zoning change to build taller buildings (Phase Two).
In 2022, Northwood proposed a new plan focused on scientific research labs and offices. Again, it did not consider the community’s needs.
In February 2024, thanks to Walltown’s efforts, the City of Durham agreed to develop a Small Area Plan for Northgate Mall and the surrounding area. Walltown believes this planning process allows all stakeholders (the City, residents, Northwood, and Duke) to design and develop the site together.
What's Happening Now?
Northwood's new plan includes scientific labs, retail, and housing. While an improvement, it still does not meet our neighborhood and city's needs. On Wednesday, Northwood is hosting a required community meeting for their rezoning application.According to their letter, "The developer is considering submitting an application to request a rezoning to Commercial General with a development plan (CG(D)) to allow for Research and Development uses in addition to office, retail, residential, and amenity/park space."
Attend the Virtual Meeting
The meeting is THIS Wednesday, May 29th, 6:00PM - 7:00PM Eastern Time.To attend online:
- Go to https://morningstarlaw.group/05292024mtg and register. You'll get instructions to access the meeting.
- Call +1-301-715-8592, +1-309-205-3325, or +1-305-224-1968
- Enter Webinar ID: 820 2752 9245
- Enter Passcode: 019501
- You'll be asked to identify yourself and your address when calling in.
Per Northwood’s letter, Contact Nil Ghosh at 919-590-0362 or [nghosh@morningstarlawgroup.com](mailto:nghosh@morningstarlawgroup.com) if you have any questions.
/this is not my content, I am just passing it on //one of the most hilarious things I ever saw was when Nil Ghosh had his family members sign up to testify before the Durham City Council for a rezoning request ///what he had them say was that they "didn't want Durham to miss out on all the good things Cary has" - what a moron.
2024.05.28 19:11 Brandon_M_Gilbertson 10 More Tips For New Players
If you haven’t seen it the original post can be seen in the URL shown here: https://www.reddit.com/fo4/s/Ok8qtnozBu
1- If you’re looking to collect power armor, do not leave your fusion core inside it. This is both important for saving your fusion cores for yourself as well as preventing settlers from stealing your power armor.
2- Grow Corn, Mutfruit, Tatos, and produce Purified Water to make Vegetable Starch which is a great source of adhesive. Adhesive is extremely important, especially for weapon upgrades.
3- The Local Leader perk allows you to send provisioners to different settlements, allowing you to link their workshops together so you don’t need to run around with three tons of trash in your inventory any time you want to do a settlement build.
4- The second level of Local Leader combined with Cap Collector allows you to build shops allowing you to have your very own vendors in your settlements like you would find in Diamond City or other major locations. These shops also send caps to your workshop in the misc section for you to use.
5- If you upgrade your weapons you can keep the old standard attachments, which will allow you to easily swap your high level attachments on a better version of the same weapon such as a legendary.
6- Fast Travel is easy and convenient but consider walking to locations on occasion to discover random encounters and side quests.
7- Explore beyond the main quest line, Diamond City has many side quests including one which can give you thousands of caps worth of chems (“Diamond City Blues” is the name of this sidequest)
8- The Minigun is severely nerfed in Fallout 4 UNLESS you level up the Gun Nut perk and give it the Shredder upgrade turning it into a beast in melee/close quarters combat. It turns the barrels into a monster of blades and wires to blend anything in melee range. It also scales with the Basher perk.
9- You can spam VATS in sketchy locations to find land mines, hidden enemies, turrets, and Ghouls playing dead.
10- The Minutemen may seem boring or overly pure hearted but sticking with them has, in my opinion, some of the best benefits of any faction in the game. This includes friendly NPC support in combat with the flare gun, artillery support, virtibirds, unique armor, and (when upgraded) one of the best sniper rifles in the game (The Six Crank Laser Musket).
submitted by Brandon_M_Gilbertson to fo4 [link] [comments]
1- If you’re looking to collect power armor, do not leave your fusion core inside it. This is both important for saving your fusion cores for yourself as well as preventing settlers from stealing your power armor.
2- Grow Corn, Mutfruit, Tatos, and produce Purified Water to make Vegetable Starch which is a great source of adhesive. Adhesive is extremely important, especially for weapon upgrades.
3- The Local Leader perk allows you to send provisioners to different settlements, allowing you to link their workshops together so you don’t need to run around with three tons of trash in your inventory any time you want to do a settlement build.
4- The second level of Local Leader combined with Cap Collector allows you to build shops allowing you to have your very own vendors in your settlements like you would find in Diamond City or other major locations. These shops also send caps to your workshop in the misc section for you to use.
5- If you upgrade your weapons you can keep the old standard attachments, which will allow you to easily swap your high level attachments on a better version of the same weapon such as a legendary.
6- Fast Travel is easy and convenient but consider walking to locations on occasion to discover random encounters and side quests.
7- Explore beyond the main quest line, Diamond City has many side quests including one which can give you thousands of caps worth of chems (“Diamond City Blues” is the name of this sidequest)
8- The Minigun is severely nerfed in Fallout 4 UNLESS you level up the Gun Nut perk and give it the Shredder upgrade turning it into a beast in melee/close quarters combat. It turns the barrels into a monster of blades and wires to blend anything in melee range. It also scales with the Basher perk.
9- You can spam VATS in sketchy locations to find land mines, hidden enemies, turrets, and Ghouls playing dead.
10- The Minutemen may seem boring or overly pure hearted but sticking with them has, in my opinion, some of the best benefits of any faction in the game. This includes friendly NPC support in combat with the flare gun, artillery support, virtibirds, unique armor, and (when upgraded) one of the best sniper rifles in the game (The Six Crank Laser Musket).
2024.05.28 18:16 Frame_Late Shackled Minds XII
First Prev
Saturn
The first thing that I noticed about the tent was how clean it was. There was no trash, no filth, no nothing: everything was clean and well organized from the outside, like a military tent.
The second thing I noticed was the strange… placement of everything around it. Scrap was hoarded all around the base of the tent, but not haphazardly or without thought, but rather it almost resembled a kind of morbid bird’s nest.
“A strange home,” I noted, “who lives here.”
“There's a lot of answers to that question, and I doubt that any of them will satisfy you,” The Lord Commander replied, “All I can really say for certain is that the cretin inside can help you beat the Cabal.”
“A cretin?” I asked, a bit confused, “what do you mean by cretin? Are you implying that this person has a few screws loose?”
“In a manner of speaking, although if you want to get technical his kind doesn't exactly come with many screws to begin with.”
I scowled at the Lord Commander's words, but stepped forward to peer into the flap. I could hear many things: low rumblings, the crackling sounds of a primitive fire, the soft clanking of metal on metal, and the searing of meat, all coalescing into almost what one would imagine a wagon train’s camp kitchen would be like. But before I could even make it three feet forward, a massive, clawed hand reached out and pulled the flap back just a tiny bit, revealing a massive eye the size of a softball, with vertical reptilian slits and speckled, amber-colored sclera.
“Go away,” the thing rumbled, a long, thin tongue stretching out as if to sniff the air, “Grug is tired, and Grug doesn't recognize you.”
The Lord Commander snorted, but didn't speak any more. “Come out, Grug, we need to speak.”
“No, No, No,” Grug insisted in an almost childish manner, “Moons leave soon, black night comes then. Grug is scared of the dark. Tent protects Grug and Tree-Friend from dark things.”
I suppressed laughter. “He's scared of the Dark! How do you expect him to help if he's scared of the dark?”
“Grug is a bit… special,” a voice behind the three of us spoke. I turned around to see an Older Sho-dai woman wearing fine robes dyed mahogany and amber-rimmed spectacles that made her look both regal and distinguished. She was holding something in her aged paws, a clay pot of something, but I couldn't quite tell, “But he has a big heart and a good soul, common for a child.”
“With all due respect ma'am, how is he a child?” I asked, “the tent is huge, and one hand was bigger than a manhole cover; there is no child that large.” I knew that wasn't exactly true, but very few creatures ever grew to that size, much less as children.
“His kind are rare around these parts, nearly hunted into extinction long ago,” the Sho-dai whispered quietly, as if to shield her words from Grug, “I've read all about them: the library I manage holds a wealth of knowledge that is sadly nowhere near as appreciated as it once was. Needless to say, he was retrieved as an egg by a scrapper haul nearly a decade ago, and I chose to advocate for its life. Our town had seen enough cruelty and death, so I decided I'd foster some kindness and life.” She approached the tent and placed the pot just outside of the tent flap. It was filled with different dried fruits and dumplings, jerky, and other miscellaneous food and supplies.
“You waste our food on this outsider, why?” Asked the Lord Commander. Thiva stiffened, and I assumed the sweet old librarian would as well, but she simply gave him a disappointed look.
“He is an innocent refugee, with no home or hope. I care for him because unlike many of my kinsmen I actually have a heart,” She spoke back, her voice soft and sweet but her tone implying an unmatched malice, “We are so obsessed with ourselves that we will soon lose our individuality too. So let this one live in peace for now.”
“We have nothing to give, his age and species are irrelevant,” the Lord Commander Growled, “Even if another Sho-dai came from another city expecting charity we'd still turn them away. This one must pull their weight.”
The Librarian merely sighed and shook her head. “It's always about violence and greed with you people, nothing else.”
“This is about neither! This is about saving this city,” The Lord Commander shouted, “and if Grug can help then he's obligated to! He lives here, in the same streets that the rest of these suffering Sho-dai do! He cannot turn down this command.”
Suddenly, the same clawed hand reached out again, and I noticed that it didn't have scales per say, but rather something a bit more menacing: spines. His entire outer forearm was covered in sharp spines, not long like skewers but instead short and straight like blood work needles. As his muscles flexed, so too did the spines, poking out slightly either from irritation or anxiety.
“Nobody speak to Grug but nice lady, nobody care about Grug like the nice lady does. Grug is nobody to everybody. Why does everybody know Grug now, now that Grug can help?”
The Lord Commander looked like he wanted to say something but also seemed at a loss for words. He stammered for a bit before shutting his mouth and turning around, clanking his metallic walking stick on the ground in a frustrated manner. “Fine, continue to be a burden: I will have no part in this childishness. We shall defend this city, with or without you.”
“We?” I asked, a little taken back by his words, “I am defending this city: it will be me who is fighting, not you. Don't sit here and pretend that you'll be wading through death instead of sitting back and giving commands to your soldiers from the safety of wherever you hide away during battles.”
”Do not make me the villain here!” The Lord Commander shouted back, “I am trying to protect these people! This cretin needs to know that it is selfish of him to hide away here while he lets everyone else suffer!”
“He does not see it that way,” I argued, “you have obviously treated him like a pariah, and now you expect him to find the devotion in his heart to defend this town? I would call that shameful, wouldn't you agree?”
“Do not pretend to understand anything about honor or shame!”
“Quit grumbling,” Grug growled from behind his tent, “Grug knows you don't like him, let Grug live in peace.”
I looked back at the Lord Commander, who was obviously pissed. “Let me speak to him: I'm an outsider as well, he may be able to relate to me.”
The Lord Commander shook his head in irritation, but meandered over to the streetside and leaned on his walking stick. I walked further up to the tent flap before clearing my throat, hoping to get Grug’s attention without startling or angering him.
“Grug, could I talk to you?”
“Grug doesn't want to fight, you can't make Grug fight!” He mumbled louder, his voice rising.
“You don't have to fight, Grug, and I won't make you,” I said, “I just want to come in if that's okay? Maybe we can talk.”
Grug was silent for a few moments, but eventually I heard another annoyed rumble before he opened the flap, allowing me in.
Time Skip
Grug seemed to be an incredibly meticulous creature. Inside the tent, his few items were stacked up neatly in the corner. The dirt from the ground was swept away, all his trash was thrown in a little trash bin (little was a relative term here, it was practically the size of Thiva) and the fire in the middle was adorned with a roasting spot, which he roasted a whole hog on.
Grug himself sat on a big stone block, poking the fire with a rebar rod to agitate the coals. He was a creature I recognized now as well, due to me being able to see his whole body. He was a Jí Bèi, or a thornback, and resembled a gigantic, anthropomorphic echidna. On his back, spines bristled outward, traveling down his arms and legs and covering him in layers of thorny armor like a briar bush, but it also reminded me of old pike phalanxes and how the many speartips could deflect arrows. His claws were long and razor-sharp, and yet he manipulated them dexterously as if they were fine tools.
He wasn't a cretin, that's for sure, just a creature with a more simple outlook and vocabulary. The Sho-dai worked so hard to appear distinguished that they often forgot what it meant to be average.
“What do you want with Grug?” Grug asked cautiously. “They always want from Grug, always take and never give. Only nice book lady ever cares about Grug, brings Grug food and books sometimes. Only book lady and tree-friend.” He sighed, seeming to lament everyone's disdain for him. “Grug knows you want something, someone always want something,” he added shrewdly, “Grug not stupid, Grug knows that Grug isn't welcome.”
“So you want people to like you?”
“Grug knows that's what everyone wants,” he mumbled, poking the coals again, “what Grug doesn't understand is why is everyone so mean to Grug? What did Grug do?”
“Grug, why do you speak in the third person,” I asked, “you are surprisingly articulate for your age. The woman outside, the librarian, says you're still a child.”
“Grug speaks the way he does because he wants to constantly remind everyone who he is and what his name is,” Grug spoke with a hint of determination, “they all call Grug rude things like ‘beast’ or ‘cretin’, but Grug is not an animal or stupid, Grug is Grug, And Grug deserves to be treated with decency. Grug will only accept his name.”
“That's an admirable way to resist their expectations of you,” I said, “but what's better is to make them respect you.”
“Grug does not wish to fight,” he quickly interrupted, “Grug wishes to be treated with respect.”
“But whether you like it or not, these people respect strength,” I said, “but you have a gift: you are big and strong, and clever too. You can gain their respect by helping them fight off the bad people who want to hurt them.”
Grug sat sat in silence, but I could see the gears turning in his head as he poked the coals some more before rotating the spit to ensure the whole hog cooked evenly. “Grug… Grug doesn't like to fight. Hurting people makes Grug sad, same with hurting animals. Grug thinks about who they might've been, what they could've done… Grug doesn't like to take life away.”
I felt that on a personal level. I didn't like to kill, and oftentimes I only did so out of desperation or anger, something I wasn't proud of. In a way, it made me want to convince Grug to join me more because we were somewhat like-minded. “I understand, I don't like to kill either.”
“So why do you fight? Grug doesn't understand.”
“Nobody forces you to kill but you, Grug, you always have that choice,” I admitted, “but choices oftentimes come with even more choices packaged in: how you wish to preserve life is one of the questions that immediately come to mind.” I gently sat down next to him on the stone, looking into the fire. “Sure, you can resort to nonviolence, but that means nothing changes, and when nothing changes then whatever pain that existed before you made your choice will continue to exist afterwards as well, and if you had the power to stop it then the responsibility would theoretically fall on you. Hypothetically, I mean, I'm not blaming you for anything, just speaking my mind.”
“Grug understands.”
“Okay then,” I continued, “I couldn't live knowing that I could have saved someone because I always end up thinking about the same things: who were they? Did they have a life elsewhere, or a family? Did they have dreams?” I sighed and laced my fingers together, resting my forearms over my knees as I slouched slightly. “I've always wondered, is it just as bad to do nothing when someone is hurting as it is to be the one inflicting the pain? I'd never wanted to find out, though, rather it was simply just a nagging thought in the back of my mind, the kind that dictates your entire way of life. I don't want to be the one who could've been better but chose not to.”
“Grug knows you want Grug to help, but Grug won't: the people hate Grug, they'll never appreciate Grug.”
“I understand,” I said, standing up, “I don't expect you to help, and I have no desire to force you: I just wanted to see if I could speak to you on the matter like a person instead of making demands of you. I want you to make your own choices, everyone should, you shouldn't be obligated to serve those who do not serve you back.”
Grug seemed surprised by my sentiment, as if he wasn't used to hearing that. “Thank you… Grug rarely receives kindness.”
“You're welcome,” I said back. “I've noticed…” I began before pausing to find the right words, “That there's a lot of emphasis put on obligations here, all I've heard is honorable this and duty that, but it all feels so forced. These people, this city, and those that rule it all hate each other, and those obligations feel so paper thin that I could push through them with a wet finger. But the restrictions still remain.” I was speaking my mind now, not just to Grug, but to myself: I realized that this city was doomed if I didn't step in, even if the Cabal didn't suck them dry the infighting and the disconnect between the different classes would tear it apart. “I see people use words like honor and duty to maintain control, or exercise power over others, or manipulate others, but I don't think I'd ever seen it be done out of true honesty and loyalty to those creeds.”
“Grug is… confused,” he admitted, slightly embarrassed, “Grug heard a lot, didn't understand it all.”
“Sorry, I was lost in my own words for a minute there,” I apologized with a weak smile, “I'm just starting to see where the problems lie, and I think it's because everyone here has lost faith, faith in each other, in their leaders, and their city, and what they're doing now is all posturing.”
“Grug sees a lot of sadness,” Grug noted poignantly, “lots of anger, no smiles or laughter. All joy is gone, like their happiness went away.”
“But you-”
“No,” Grug insisted, “Grug knows what you want…”
“But you could give them their faith again,” I insisted, “You could be something for them to believe in, to kickstart a chain reaction and bring back what made this city in the first place,” I placed my hand on his, mine incredibly small in comparison but no less determined, “And they'll respect you, even love you, because you stood for them when few others would.”
Grug seemed to actually consider this for a moment, and he eventually responded. “I’ll help,” Grug spoke in the first person for the first time, “But I need something, a few things.”
“I can't give much, not now,” I said, concerned that all the progress I made might be lost. “I'll do what I can, though.”
“It's not much, just a test of… character. I heard the nice lady call it something like that before,” Grug spoke, although I didn't exactly know what he meant by that, “Tree-Friend understands people, sees through what they want him to see. In some ways, Tree-Friend can see more than us.”
I looked up at the black tree, the leaves within the tent curled downward to absorb the heat of the fire. It was then that I realized the tree was a thermo-synthesizer, the kind that was designed to absorb the heat of thermal vents and regulate planetary temperatures. In the fire and the heat of the foundries, it flourished despite the cruel, lifeless soil, and it must've remained here without being cut down for a reason…
Then I noticed it: subtle movement higher up. Grug let out what probably sounded like a shrill whistle to him, but to me it sounded like a locomotive’s air horn. The movement increased, with ear-piercing clicks like those of a bat. Something was moving along the higher branches, but it melded so well with the tree that it was near impossible to distinguish it, much less identify what it was.
“And who exactly is this… tree friend?” I asked cautiously.
“He is Tree-friend.” Grug said bluntly, as if that would explain everything.
“But what is Tree-friend?” I asked, “is he… like us?”
“Tree-friend isn't like anybody, but tree-friend is good: that I know.”
Suddenly, I saw something more definite: two, onyx banded eyes peering down at me, along with a lean, muscular form clinging to the trunk of the tree less than ten feet above me. It had claws longer than unsharpened pencils, but the claws themselves were anything but dull, and they curved wickedly into barbed nightmares at the end. Its body was coated in blackish-brown scales almost resembling leaves, each the color of jaspilite, with tiger-esw stripes of pitch black running down its back lengthwise. Suddenly its coloring shifted, taking on a brighter, amberish hue set by the fire, as if it had realized I had spotted it and now it had no reason to hide.
But most concerning was its long, viney tail that sprouted barbed blades at the end, along with a powerful piercing proboscis at the end. I didn't want to know what that was used for.
I was starting to paint a more complete picture of Tree-friend’s true nature: its physiology was familiar, but it wasn't something I was used to seeing… not that I had ever seen anything like it before. Whenever I tried to recollect memories about how the past and the old authority worked, it was as if I was one man in two bodies all at once, one perspective looking forward and the other back. But that second perspective felt so foreign despite me being unable to deny that it was something I knew deep down in my core had been something I had experienced.
Tree-friend must have been some kind of guard creature, especially if it resided in this tree for most of its life. The proboscis, maybe a way to sap nutrients from the tree, or initiate a sort of mutualism with it. Its claws didn't dig into the bark, not did it snap branches or travel haphazardly along its trunk: the plant must have been important, maybe even sacred, to it. The chameleonic skin? Definitely a way to stage ambushes on prey or intruders. And it's mouth bristling with razor-sharp teeth… there was no question what those were for. It would also make sense for Tree-Friend to be able to discern intention and have an advance intuition for anything that could be perceived as a threat: the goal for most guards wasn't to attack anything and everything on sight, but rather to terminate any individual or unit that could partake in corporate espionage. It's master and any of its guests would need to be at least ignored and at most protected when threatened.
“Tree-friend scares people away, he doesn't like strangers, and he knows when people want to do bad things,” Grug explained, “Tree-Friend is smarter than Grug, even if he doesn't speak: Tree-friend knows when bad things will happen.”
Tree-friend blinked at me, flexing its claws cautiously as it seemed to stare into my soul. At first, I thought it was preparing to pounce, but the little quadruped didn't seem coiled up to leap just yet. I resisted the urge to lift up the fauchard and defend myself, knowing that it would attack at the first sign of animosity.
Instead, I decided to do the unthinkable. I reached out with my hand, my arm extended and my palm open. I was exposed and at the mercy of Tree-friend, but I needed to have faith that neither Grug nor Tree friend meant any harm. They were simply different, and they saw the world differently than I did, not unlike how I saw the world differently than the Sho-dai did.
Tree-friend seemed puzzled at first, but he eventually held out his clawed hand and placed it into mine gently. Then he looked at me with an almost innocent curiosity, ruffling and loosening its leaf-like scales.
“Tree-friend likes you,” Grug observed, “You are the first, too: he has attacked everyone else.”
“You don't say,” I mumbled, “what is he, really? Where did you find this thing?”
“Tree-friend has always been part of the tree: I found him when I had grown big enough to live indoors anymore. I had moved out here between the furnaces because the cold makes me sick, and I had found him in an opaque, tiny seed attached to the tree. I have taken care of him ever ever since.”
Suddenly, Tree-friend’s eyes narrowed, and it focused on something scurrying along the ground. In a flash, it leapt off the tree and onto the ground, quickly gobbling up a small rodent and swallowing it whole, the still-squirming creature pushing against his flexible belly to no avail until it drowned. “Well, that was wonderful to watch,” I said sarcastically, “is that it's diet?”
“Yes,” Grug said, “He keeps the tent clean. I also feed him meat from time to time, although he detests any fruits or vegetables.” Grug pulled off a hunk of meat from the hog roasting over the fire and tossed it to Tree-friend, who snapped it up with incredible dexterity. It didn't even seem to chew either, merely swallow prey whole, so I didn't want to know what the teeth were for.
“But we need to go,” Grug said, “they'll come soon, and if we don't hurry bad things will happen. I made a promise to you, and I will keep it: I will help you fight the Cabal.”
Time Skip
As we left the tent, the world was approaching absolutely twilight. The only thing that illuminated the city were the dim artificial streetlights along the paved roadways, as well as larger lights hefted higher up that could bathe whole neighborhoods in light with ease. Most notably, near the center of the city, there was a massive tower that I hadn't really noticed before, but it easily dwarfed the rest of the buildings. On top, a lighthouse spun dutifully, sending out a beacon of hope to the rest of the boneyard and pointing the way to safety for those unfortunate few caught outside without reliable shelter.
Tree-friend rode on Grug’s shoulders lazily, its little head next to Grug's own and its arms draped around his neck loosely. It seemed very protective of Grug, which seemed to lend credence to it being some kind of guard creature. It hissed at any Sho-dai who got too close, and they made a wide berth around Grug to ensure nobody got hurt.
The Lord-Commander stood at a makeshift barricade set up at the large, bronze gates of the town, watching the entrance intently. He had gathered an entire unit of the guard, all fit in heavy metal armor and wielding either a multitude of different guns, mostly simplistic submachine guns or semi-automatic rifles, or shields and blunt weapons, the latter often designed to resemble different tools that could serve as bludgeons, like wrenches and pipe threaders, but also much more elegant and fitted with spikes or blades to pierce armor.
At the gates, a small army of armored figures stood, many of them being Sho-dai themselves, but others being members of species I didn't quite recognize yet, but they all seemed like cannon fodder compared to a select few. The first big threat I spotted was a huge primate, at least as tall as a semi-truck, with the head of a baboon and a muscular, furry body fitted with all manner of advanced cybernetics, which were far more advanced than anything I could imagine these Sho-dai ever creating. One of its arms had been replaced with a minimalist, cybernetic version that held a massive Kanabo as a weapon, the studded metal club reinforced with metal down it's length. It's breath fogged up in the cold air more and more as the last moon set, finally shrouding the world in darkness.
There were two others that stood out, one being a strange, beetle-like creature reminiscent of a bipedal scarab. His carapace was a greenish-blue and reflected the artificial light of the street lamps brilliantly, and I could tell that he was a male by his brilliantly plumed antennae, but that's where his admirable qualities ended. His carapace was fitted with extra bionic inserts like an extra layer of armor, and on his head was a large horn like that found on a rhinoceros beetle. It held a large heavy sword that resembled a Nodachi, and seemed utterly unfazed by the small army of Sho-dai the Lord-Commander had set up. But when his segmented eyes focused on me, his antennae flicked ever so slightly, and his mandibles clicked together with interest.
The last one was interesting. This one was a bit like a peafowl, with vibrant blue, green, and gray feathers. Definitely a female, she wore long robes that hid the rest of her body, and stood up straight with her wings folded, her eyes staring directly into my soul. She wasn't burly or bulky like her comrades, but I could tell she didn't need to be: she could probably kill everyone here save for me with little effort.
“We have come,” shouted the Peafowl, who approached first. The rest of the group, including the large ape, remained, “We are here to take what is ours, as is written.” She eyes the soldiers and the Lord-Commander with an almost annoyed look. “And yet I do not see our rightful bounty piled before us. Answer me, peasant, or I will slit your throat!” She pointed at the Lord-Commander, her beady little eyes narrowing, “Where is our tribute?”
“You shall have none today, scum,” he said, lifting up his gun, “I'll gladly grant you a painful death, however.”
The Lord-Commander emptied the clip of his submachine gun at the Peafowl, but she simply raised her wing and deflected the bullets with her feathers, the lead bouncing off as if each shot was a spitwad. Then, as the Lord-Commander attempted to reload, she unleashed something from underneath her wing, a kusarigama, and it slashed through his neck, sending blood over his fellow soldiers faster than any of them could react. Then she flicked her thin wrist back, and the chained blade flew back towards her, taking the Lord-Commander’s head with it. She deftly gripped the hair, his face still contorted into a mask of shock as she tossed it to the ground with a scoff before cleaning off her weapon with another flick and concealing it back under her robes. “A pathetic display," she hissed before returning to her once regal voice, "Death has been marked. Burn this pitiful city to the ground, kill two thirds and enslave the rest: we shall take what is ours and make an example out of you cretins.”
submitted by Frame_Late to HFY [link] [comments]
Saturn
The first thing that I noticed about the tent was how clean it was. There was no trash, no filth, no nothing: everything was clean and well organized from the outside, like a military tent.
The second thing I noticed was the strange… placement of everything around it. Scrap was hoarded all around the base of the tent, but not haphazardly or without thought, but rather it almost resembled a kind of morbid bird’s nest.
“A strange home,” I noted, “who lives here.”
“There's a lot of answers to that question, and I doubt that any of them will satisfy you,” The Lord Commander replied, “All I can really say for certain is that the cretin inside can help you beat the Cabal.”
“A cretin?” I asked, a bit confused, “what do you mean by cretin? Are you implying that this person has a few screws loose?”
“In a manner of speaking, although if you want to get technical his kind doesn't exactly come with many screws to begin with.”
I scowled at the Lord Commander's words, but stepped forward to peer into the flap. I could hear many things: low rumblings, the crackling sounds of a primitive fire, the soft clanking of metal on metal, and the searing of meat, all coalescing into almost what one would imagine a wagon train’s camp kitchen would be like. But before I could even make it three feet forward, a massive, clawed hand reached out and pulled the flap back just a tiny bit, revealing a massive eye the size of a softball, with vertical reptilian slits and speckled, amber-colored sclera.
“Go away,” the thing rumbled, a long, thin tongue stretching out as if to sniff the air, “Grug is tired, and Grug doesn't recognize you.”
The Lord Commander snorted, but didn't speak any more. “Come out, Grug, we need to speak.”
“No, No, No,” Grug insisted in an almost childish manner, “Moons leave soon, black night comes then. Grug is scared of the dark. Tent protects Grug and Tree-Friend from dark things.”
I suppressed laughter. “He's scared of the Dark! How do you expect him to help if he's scared of the dark?”
“Grug is a bit… special,” a voice behind the three of us spoke. I turned around to see an Older Sho-dai woman wearing fine robes dyed mahogany and amber-rimmed spectacles that made her look both regal and distinguished. She was holding something in her aged paws, a clay pot of something, but I couldn't quite tell, “But he has a big heart and a good soul, common for a child.”
“With all due respect ma'am, how is he a child?” I asked, “the tent is huge, and one hand was bigger than a manhole cover; there is no child that large.” I knew that wasn't exactly true, but very few creatures ever grew to that size, much less as children.
“His kind are rare around these parts, nearly hunted into extinction long ago,” the Sho-dai whispered quietly, as if to shield her words from Grug, “I've read all about them: the library I manage holds a wealth of knowledge that is sadly nowhere near as appreciated as it once was. Needless to say, he was retrieved as an egg by a scrapper haul nearly a decade ago, and I chose to advocate for its life. Our town had seen enough cruelty and death, so I decided I'd foster some kindness and life.” She approached the tent and placed the pot just outside of the tent flap. It was filled with different dried fruits and dumplings, jerky, and other miscellaneous food and supplies.
“You waste our food on this outsider, why?” Asked the Lord Commander. Thiva stiffened, and I assumed the sweet old librarian would as well, but she simply gave him a disappointed look.
“He is an innocent refugee, with no home or hope. I care for him because unlike many of my kinsmen I actually have a heart,” She spoke back, her voice soft and sweet but her tone implying an unmatched malice, “We are so obsessed with ourselves that we will soon lose our individuality too. So let this one live in peace for now.”
“We have nothing to give, his age and species are irrelevant,” the Lord Commander Growled, “Even if another Sho-dai came from another city expecting charity we'd still turn them away. This one must pull their weight.”
The Librarian merely sighed and shook her head. “It's always about violence and greed with you people, nothing else.”
“This is about neither! This is about saving this city,” The Lord Commander shouted, “and if Grug can help then he's obligated to! He lives here, in the same streets that the rest of these suffering Sho-dai do! He cannot turn down this command.”
Suddenly, the same clawed hand reached out again, and I noticed that it didn't have scales per say, but rather something a bit more menacing: spines. His entire outer forearm was covered in sharp spines, not long like skewers but instead short and straight like blood work needles. As his muscles flexed, so too did the spines, poking out slightly either from irritation or anxiety.
“Nobody speak to Grug but nice lady, nobody care about Grug like the nice lady does. Grug is nobody to everybody. Why does everybody know Grug now, now that Grug can help?”
The Lord Commander looked like he wanted to say something but also seemed at a loss for words. He stammered for a bit before shutting his mouth and turning around, clanking his metallic walking stick on the ground in a frustrated manner. “Fine, continue to be a burden: I will have no part in this childishness. We shall defend this city, with or without you.”
“We?” I asked, a little taken back by his words, “I am defending this city: it will be me who is fighting, not you. Don't sit here and pretend that you'll be wading through death instead of sitting back and giving commands to your soldiers from the safety of wherever you hide away during battles.”
”Do not make me the villain here!” The Lord Commander shouted back, “I am trying to protect these people! This cretin needs to know that it is selfish of him to hide away here while he lets everyone else suffer!”
“He does not see it that way,” I argued, “you have obviously treated him like a pariah, and now you expect him to find the devotion in his heart to defend this town? I would call that shameful, wouldn't you agree?”
“Do not pretend to understand anything about honor or shame!”
“Quit grumbling,” Grug growled from behind his tent, “Grug knows you don't like him, let Grug live in peace.”
I looked back at the Lord Commander, who was obviously pissed. “Let me speak to him: I'm an outsider as well, he may be able to relate to me.”
The Lord Commander shook his head in irritation, but meandered over to the streetside and leaned on his walking stick. I walked further up to the tent flap before clearing my throat, hoping to get Grug’s attention without startling or angering him.
“Grug, could I talk to you?”
“Grug doesn't want to fight, you can't make Grug fight!” He mumbled louder, his voice rising.
“You don't have to fight, Grug, and I won't make you,” I said, “I just want to come in if that's okay? Maybe we can talk.”
Grug was silent for a few moments, but eventually I heard another annoyed rumble before he opened the flap, allowing me in.
Time Skip
Grug seemed to be an incredibly meticulous creature. Inside the tent, his few items were stacked up neatly in the corner. The dirt from the ground was swept away, all his trash was thrown in a little trash bin (little was a relative term here, it was practically the size of Thiva) and the fire in the middle was adorned with a roasting spot, which he roasted a whole hog on.
Grug himself sat on a big stone block, poking the fire with a rebar rod to agitate the coals. He was a creature I recognized now as well, due to me being able to see his whole body. He was a Jí Bèi, or a thornback, and resembled a gigantic, anthropomorphic echidna. On his back, spines bristled outward, traveling down his arms and legs and covering him in layers of thorny armor like a briar bush, but it also reminded me of old pike phalanxes and how the many speartips could deflect arrows. His claws were long and razor-sharp, and yet he manipulated them dexterously as if they were fine tools.
He wasn't a cretin, that's for sure, just a creature with a more simple outlook and vocabulary. The Sho-dai worked so hard to appear distinguished that they often forgot what it meant to be average.
“What do you want with Grug?” Grug asked cautiously. “They always want from Grug, always take and never give. Only nice book lady ever cares about Grug, brings Grug food and books sometimes. Only book lady and tree-friend.” He sighed, seeming to lament everyone's disdain for him. “Grug knows you want something, someone always want something,” he added shrewdly, “Grug not stupid, Grug knows that Grug isn't welcome.”
“So you want people to like you?”
“Grug knows that's what everyone wants,” he mumbled, poking the coals again, “what Grug doesn't understand is why is everyone so mean to Grug? What did Grug do?”
“Grug, why do you speak in the third person,” I asked, “you are surprisingly articulate for your age. The woman outside, the librarian, says you're still a child.”
“Grug speaks the way he does because he wants to constantly remind everyone who he is and what his name is,” Grug spoke with a hint of determination, “they all call Grug rude things like ‘beast’ or ‘cretin’, but Grug is not an animal or stupid, Grug is Grug, And Grug deserves to be treated with decency. Grug will only accept his name.”
“That's an admirable way to resist their expectations of you,” I said, “but what's better is to make them respect you.”
“Grug does not wish to fight,” he quickly interrupted, “Grug wishes to be treated with respect.”
“But whether you like it or not, these people respect strength,” I said, “but you have a gift: you are big and strong, and clever too. You can gain their respect by helping them fight off the bad people who want to hurt them.”
Grug sat sat in silence, but I could see the gears turning in his head as he poked the coals some more before rotating the spit to ensure the whole hog cooked evenly. “Grug… Grug doesn't like to fight. Hurting people makes Grug sad, same with hurting animals. Grug thinks about who they might've been, what they could've done… Grug doesn't like to take life away.”
I felt that on a personal level. I didn't like to kill, and oftentimes I only did so out of desperation or anger, something I wasn't proud of. In a way, it made me want to convince Grug to join me more because we were somewhat like-minded. “I understand, I don't like to kill either.”
“So why do you fight? Grug doesn't understand.”
“Nobody forces you to kill but you, Grug, you always have that choice,” I admitted, “but choices oftentimes come with even more choices packaged in: how you wish to preserve life is one of the questions that immediately come to mind.” I gently sat down next to him on the stone, looking into the fire. “Sure, you can resort to nonviolence, but that means nothing changes, and when nothing changes then whatever pain that existed before you made your choice will continue to exist afterwards as well, and if you had the power to stop it then the responsibility would theoretically fall on you. Hypothetically, I mean, I'm not blaming you for anything, just speaking my mind.”
“Grug understands.”
“Okay then,” I continued, “I couldn't live knowing that I could have saved someone because I always end up thinking about the same things: who were they? Did they have a life elsewhere, or a family? Did they have dreams?” I sighed and laced my fingers together, resting my forearms over my knees as I slouched slightly. “I've always wondered, is it just as bad to do nothing when someone is hurting as it is to be the one inflicting the pain? I'd never wanted to find out, though, rather it was simply just a nagging thought in the back of my mind, the kind that dictates your entire way of life. I don't want to be the one who could've been better but chose not to.”
“Grug knows you want Grug to help, but Grug won't: the people hate Grug, they'll never appreciate Grug.”
“I understand,” I said, standing up, “I don't expect you to help, and I have no desire to force you: I just wanted to see if I could speak to you on the matter like a person instead of making demands of you. I want you to make your own choices, everyone should, you shouldn't be obligated to serve those who do not serve you back.”
Grug seemed surprised by my sentiment, as if he wasn't used to hearing that. “Thank you… Grug rarely receives kindness.”
“You're welcome,” I said back. “I've noticed…” I began before pausing to find the right words, “That there's a lot of emphasis put on obligations here, all I've heard is honorable this and duty that, but it all feels so forced. These people, this city, and those that rule it all hate each other, and those obligations feel so paper thin that I could push through them with a wet finger. But the restrictions still remain.” I was speaking my mind now, not just to Grug, but to myself: I realized that this city was doomed if I didn't step in, even if the Cabal didn't suck them dry the infighting and the disconnect between the different classes would tear it apart. “I see people use words like honor and duty to maintain control, or exercise power over others, or manipulate others, but I don't think I'd ever seen it be done out of true honesty and loyalty to those creeds.”
“Grug is… confused,” he admitted, slightly embarrassed, “Grug heard a lot, didn't understand it all.”
“Sorry, I was lost in my own words for a minute there,” I apologized with a weak smile, “I'm just starting to see where the problems lie, and I think it's because everyone here has lost faith, faith in each other, in their leaders, and their city, and what they're doing now is all posturing.”
“Grug sees a lot of sadness,” Grug noted poignantly, “lots of anger, no smiles or laughter. All joy is gone, like their happiness went away.”
“But you-”
“No,” Grug insisted, “Grug knows what you want…”
“But you could give them their faith again,” I insisted, “You could be something for them to believe in, to kickstart a chain reaction and bring back what made this city in the first place,” I placed my hand on his, mine incredibly small in comparison but no less determined, “And they'll respect you, even love you, because you stood for them when few others would.”
Grug seemed to actually consider this for a moment, and he eventually responded. “I’ll help,” Grug spoke in the first person for the first time, “But I need something, a few things.”
“I can't give much, not now,” I said, concerned that all the progress I made might be lost. “I'll do what I can, though.”
“It's not much, just a test of… character. I heard the nice lady call it something like that before,” Grug spoke, although I didn't exactly know what he meant by that, “Tree-Friend understands people, sees through what they want him to see. In some ways, Tree-Friend can see more than us.”
I looked up at the black tree, the leaves within the tent curled downward to absorb the heat of the fire. It was then that I realized the tree was a thermo-synthesizer, the kind that was designed to absorb the heat of thermal vents and regulate planetary temperatures. In the fire and the heat of the foundries, it flourished despite the cruel, lifeless soil, and it must've remained here without being cut down for a reason…
Then I noticed it: subtle movement higher up. Grug let out what probably sounded like a shrill whistle to him, but to me it sounded like a locomotive’s air horn. The movement increased, with ear-piercing clicks like those of a bat. Something was moving along the higher branches, but it melded so well with the tree that it was near impossible to distinguish it, much less identify what it was.
“And who exactly is this… tree friend?” I asked cautiously.
“He is Tree-friend.” Grug said bluntly, as if that would explain everything.
“But what is Tree-friend?” I asked, “is he… like us?”
“Tree-friend isn't like anybody, but tree-friend is good: that I know.”
Suddenly, I saw something more definite: two, onyx banded eyes peering down at me, along with a lean, muscular form clinging to the trunk of the tree less than ten feet above me. It had claws longer than unsharpened pencils, but the claws themselves were anything but dull, and they curved wickedly into barbed nightmares at the end. Its body was coated in blackish-brown scales almost resembling leaves, each the color of jaspilite, with tiger-esw stripes of pitch black running down its back lengthwise. Suddenly its coloring shifted, taking on a brighter, amberish hue set by the fire, as if it had realized I had spotted it and now it had no reason to hide.
But most concerning was its long, viney tail that sprouted barbed blades at the end, along with a powerful piercing proboscis at the end. I didn't want to know what that was used for.
I was starting to paint a more complete picture of Tree-friend’s true nature: its physiology was familiar, but it wasn't something I was used to seeing… not that I had ever seen anything like it before. Whenever I tried to recollect memories about how the past and the old authority worked, it was as if I was one man in two bodies all at once, one perspective looking forward and the other back. But that second perspective felt so foreign despite me being unable to deny that it was something I knew deep down in my core had been something I had experienced.
Tree-friend must have been some kind of guard creature, especially if it resided in this tree for most of its life. The proboscis, maybe a way to sap nutrients from the tree, or initiate a sort of mutualism with it. Its claws didn't dig into the bark, not did it snap branches or travel haphazardly along its trunk: the plant must have been important, maybe even sacred, to it. The chameleonic skin? Definitely a way to stage ambushes on prey or intruders. And it's mouth bristling with razor-sharp teeth… there was no question what those were for. It would also make sense for Tree-Friend to be able to discern intention and have an advance intuition for anything that could be perceived as a threat: the goal for most guards wasn't to attack anything and everything on sight, but rather to terminate any individual or unit that could partake in corporate espionage. It's master and any of its guests would need to be at least ignored and at most protected when threatened.
“Tree-friend scares people away, he doesn't like strangers, and he knows when people want to do bad things,” Grug explained, “Tree-Friend is smarter than Grug, even if he doesn't speak: Tree-friend knows when bad things will happen.”
Tree-friend blinked at me, flexing its claws cautiously as it seemed to stare into my soul. At first, I thought it was preparing to pounce, but the little quadruped didn't seem coiled up to leap just yet. I resisted the urge to lift up the fauchard and defend myself, knowing that it would attack at the first sign of animosity.
Instead, I decided to do the unthinkable. I reached out with my hand, my arm extended and my palm open. I was exposed and at the mercy of Tree-friend, but I needed to have faith that neither Grug nor Tree friend meant any harm. They were simply different, and they saw the world differently than I did, not unlike how I saw the world differently than the Sho-dai did.
Tree-friend seemed puzzled at first, but he eventually held out his clawed hand and placed it into mine gently. Then he looked at me with an almost innocent curiosity, ruffling and loosening its leaf-like scales.
“Tree-friend likes you,” Grug observed, “You are the first, too: he has attacked everyone else.”
“You don't say,” I mumbled, “what is he, really? Where did you find this thing?”
“Tree-friend has always been part of the tree: I found him when I had grown big enough to live indoors anymore. I had moved out here between the furnaces because the cold makes me sick, and I had found him in an opaque, tiny seed attached to the tree. I have taken care of him ever ever since.”
Suddenly, Tree-friend’s eyes narrowed, and it focused on something scurrying along the ground. In a flash, it leapt off the tree and onto the ground, quickly gobbling up a small rodent and swallowing it whole, the still-squirming creature pushing against his flexible belly to no avail until it drowned. “Well, that was wonderful to watch,” I said sarcastically, “is that it's diet?”
“Yes,” Grug said, “He keeps the tent clean. I also feed him meat from time to time, although he detests any fruits or vegetables.” Grug pulled off a hunk of meat from the hog roasting over the fire and tossed it to Tree-friend, who snapped it up with incredible dexterity. It didn't even seem to chew either, merely swallow prey whole, so I didn't want to know what the teeth were for.
“But we need to go,” Grug said, “they'll come soon, and if we don't hurry bad things will happen. I made a promise to you, and I will keep it: I will help you fight the Cabal.”
Time Skip
As we left the tent, the world was approaching absolutely twilight. The only thing that illuminated the city were the dim artificial streetlights along the paved roadways, as well as larger lights hefted higher up that could bathe whole neighborhoods in light with ease. Most notably, near the center of the city, there was a massive tower that I hadn't really noticed before, but it easily dwarfed the rest of the buildings. On top, a lighthouse spun dutifully, sending out a beacon of hope to the rest of the boneyard and pointing the way to safety for those unfortunate few caught outside without reliable shelter.
Tree-friend rode on Grug’s shoulders lazily, its little head next to Grug's own and its arms draped around his neck loosely. It seemed very protective of Grug, which seemed to lend credence to it being some kind of guard creature. It hissed at any Sho-dai who got too close, and they made a wide berth around Grug to ensure nobody got hurt.
The Lord-Commander stood at a makeshift barricade set up at the large, bronze gates of the town, watching the entrance intently. He had gathered an entire unit of the guard, all fit in heavy metal armor and wielding either a multitude of different guns, mostly simplistic submachine guns or semi-automatic rifles, or shields and blunt weapons, the latter often designed to resemble different tools that could serve as bludgeons, like wrenches and pipe threaders, but also much more elegant and fitted with spikes or blades to pierce armor.
At the gates, a small army of armored figures stood, many of them being Sho-dai themselves, but others being members of species I didn't quite recognize yet, but they all seemed like cannon fodder compared to a select few. The first big threat I spotted was a huge primate, at least as tall as a semi-truck, with the head of a baboon and a muscular, furry body fitted with all manner of advanced cybernetics, which were far more advanced than anything I could imagine these Sho-dai ever creating. One of its arms had been replaced with a minimalist, cybernetic version that held a massive Kanabo as a weapon, the studded metal club reinforced with metal down it's length. It's breath fogged up in the cold air more and more as the last moon set, finally shrouding the world in darkness.
There were two others that stood out, one being a strange, beetle-like creature reminiscent of a bipedal scarab. His carapace was a greenish-blue and reflected the artificial light of the street lamps brilliantly, and I could tell that he was a male by his brilliantly plumed antennae, but that's where his admirable qualities ended. His carapace was fitted with extra bionic inserts like an extra layer of armor, and on his head was a large horn like that found on a rhinoceros beetle. It held a large heavy sword that resembled a Nodachi, and seemed utterly unfazed by the small army of Sho-dai the Lord-Commander had set up. But when his segmented eyes focused on me, his antennae flicked ever so slightly, and his mandibles clicked together with interest.
The last one was interesting. This one was a bit like a peafowl, with vibrant blue, green, and gray feathers. Definitely a female, she wore long robes that hid the rest of her body, and stood up straight with her wings folded, her eyes staring directly into my soul. She wasn't burly or bulky like her comrades, but I could tell she didn't need to be: she could probably kill everyone here save for me with little effort.
“We have come,” shouted the Peafowl, who approached first. The rest of the group, including the large ape, remained, “We are here to take what is ours, as is written.” She eyes the soldiers and the Lord-Commander with an almost annoyed look. “And yet I do not see our rightful bounty piled before us. Answer me, peasant, or I will slit your throat!” She pointed at the Lord-Commander, her beady little eyes narrowing, “Where is our tribute?”
“You shall have none today, scum,” he said, lifting up his gun, “I'll gladly grant you a painful death, however.”
The Lord-Commander emptied the clip of his submachine gun at the Peafowl, but she simply raised her wing and deflected the bullets with her feathers, the lead bouncing off as if each shot was a spitwad. Then, as the Lord-Commander attempted to reload, she unleashed something from underneath her wing, a kusarigama, and it slashed through his neck, sending blood over his fellow soldiers faster than any of them could react. Then she flicked her thin wrist back, and the chained blade flew back towards her, taking the Lord-Commander’s head with it. She deftly gripped the hair, his face still contorted into a mask of shock as she tossed it to the ground with a scoff before cleaning off her weapon with another flick and concealing it back under her robes. “A pathetic display," she hissed before returning to her once regal voice, "Death has been marked. Burn this pitiful city to the ground, kill two thirds and enslave the rest: we shall take what is ours and make an example out of you cretins.”
2024.05.28 16:50 Halofreak1171 [CLAIM] The Garden of Eden Your Eyes Will Be Opened
Mood
The lady’s voice seemed to catch on the moss-covered walls of the church. It was a humble building, and quite clearly an old Catholic church that had been converted for its new purpose. Windows had been opened to let in animals, with birds and rodents taking advantage and making this their home. Where moss and vine didn’t cover the walls, paintings of the Earth Mother and Eden… the true Eden adorned them. While the building may have been built Catholic, its insides proclaimed it as far different.
“Name Sir?”
Her voice caught him off guard. Her face seemed mildly annoyed, as if he was holding up her day. To be fair, the hour long line he had waited in suggested that this place was busy, and yet when he walked in the church seemed quite empty. Beyond her face, she wore a rather plain-looking white top…or was it a dress? Whatever it was, no symbols or logos sat on the fabric besides a small, minimalistic tree, just on her left shoulder. It was the same symbol which sat above the church’s entrance, and the same one which he had seen all throughout his home town in recent weeks. It was the symbol of the Community, the supposed singular faith of Eden.
“Sir, I need a name or I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Once again, her voice brought him out his daydream. He figured he might as well answer, he had waited all that time. “Szymon.”
She nodded, typing it down on a rather old-looking computer.
“Last names and any middle names sir?”
“Czajka… What exactly is this?”
The lady simply continued typing, not bothering to look up as she answered his question.
“It’s a Community Church.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that he couldn’t decide whether she was making a joke or if she genuinely believed he was that stupid.
“No, I know that obviously. I meant more… what is this process here? What are we doing? I thought this was a church sermon or something, not a reception desk.”
She paused for a second, before looking up and reaching over to a brochure stand behind her. As she grabbed one of the first pamphlets held within it, its title of “THE COMMUNITY AND YOU: HOW THE EARTH LOVES US ALL” visible even with his relatively poor eyesight, she also responded in a more welcoming tone.”
“Ah sorry, I figured you came in having seen the initiative around town. That’s my bad. Here at the Community, we appreciate that Eden’s faith is a little different from your own, and want to make the transition as smooth as possible for all. As such we’re running these drives so to speak, where people like yourself can come in, gain as much information as possible about the Community, and make an educated decision on whether to convert!”
Her warm tone was calming, even if he still suspected all of this to be a scam. Perhaps seeing a weird look on his face, the lady continued.
“We completely get that the way the Community does things may be abit odd at times, so if you have any questions during this process feel free to ask. If I may ask though, what made you think of coming here?”
That question made him ponder for a second. Why was he here? He supposed that everyone he knew was talking about the advantages of being an active Community member, and those that had joined were seeing great benefits for their families, or so it seemed. But there was more than that. It was subtle at first, but the more he saw ads and signs for the Community, the more drawn he felt to it. It had felt like nothing he had ever experienced before, a vacuum so powerful that his subconscious couldn’t help but be pulled in. He looked at the lady, unsure of how to answer.
“I felt like I needed a change of pace.”
She smiled at his answer, and yet the smile seemed off, as if he had gotten something wrong. Whatever it was, she quickly returned to a more neutral expression.
“That makes sense. Well, if you would follow me, I’ll take you to the first step of your education.”
As the lady got up, he hesitated. Her inflection, her tone, it all said something was wrong. All of a sudden the room felt small, and he felt even smaller, trapped. His eyes darted around the room, paranoia mounting, the feeling of being watched by something far larger than anything he had ever known growing. He went to stand up, to run, but his knees wouldn’t let him. Whatever was watching was close now. It felt old…dangerous…beyond the scope of what he considered possible. As tears welled up in his eyes he was certain that this was the end, whatever this was.
“Syzmon? I get the hesitation, but trust me, it’ll all be fine.”
Her words snapped him out of his stupor. They comforted him, made him feel safe, the same way his mother’s words did when he was a child. He shook his head and stood up, following the lady to the area behind the pulpit. Here, in an area normally reserved for priests and pastors, small booths had seemingly been set up, almost like private voting areas. She beckoned for him to enter one and sit on the provided chair.
As he sat, she handed him some decidedly ancient headphones as well as a hot cup of tea, and gestured to box TV which sat in front of him.
“This’ll be the start of your education Syzmon. Just put the headphones on and watch the TV, and all your questions will be answered.”
For a second, he felt the same panic rising, but before it could take hold the TV was on and the lady was off. Static filled his ears while darkness remained on the TV, just long enough for him to think something was broken. As he waited, he sipped on the tea, its flavour muted but decidedly earthy. Thinking the tech had broken, he looked to leave, before a cacophony of noise assaulted his ears. Trumpets played, high-pitched voices sang while low-pitched voices chanted. The noise commanded his attention, as did the TV, whose screen was now flashing bright, almost psychedelic colours. The sounds and colours burnt their way into his mind, but they too would stop suddenly. Alone with his thoughts for a second, he swore he could see shadows moving about behind him, only for that thought to be tossed away as screams ripped through the headphones, so loud he could only think that they were right there next to him. The image on the screen changed, to demonstrate a woman, dressed in a plain white dress, her black hair tangling down past her shoulders and elbows, her eyes a piercing green, walking through a serene garden. As she spoke, the screams quietened but never left.
“My child. It is good to see you. I am so happy to hear you wish to join the Community.”
He calmed down with this, the woman’s voice acting as a warm blanket. The tea smelled better now somehow, and invited him to drink even more, which he did without complaint.
“You are here to learn, but what exactly is it you must be taught? You understand how to worship, how to be a good man in the Catholic world, what more could you need for a faith admittedly quite similar to your old one? Syzmon, I must tell you that we lied a tiny amount. The Community is different. How? Well, let me show you!”
The picture changed once more, bright red flashing for a second, before scenes he couldn’t even describe began to take place. His mind was assaulted with the vile inhumanity of what he saw, the images tearing at the very makeup of his personhood. And all through this the woman spoke still.
“The Community is more than just a faith you think about once or twice a year. It requires devotion, love, dedication above all else.
More images, even worse somehow, continued playing. He could feel his mind failing him, it being unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Screams began to rip through once more, and yet the woman continued to speak.
“Szymon, what you must understand is that to enjoy the fruits of the Earth and the Community, you must give yourself entirely to the Earth Mother! You must understand that man is weak, and yet they believe themselves master of every domain they seek. No longer do they toil amongst the rest of the animals, NO! Instead they work to bend every atom to their will, assuming that it is their destiny to be gods! This is not the case my child. When you join the Community, you understand that humanity has its place, not as the master of worlds, but as its servant!”
The speech rang through his head, pushing its way past the disgusting imagery and terrifying screams. It buried itself deep within his brain, in some part that he could barely even fathom, and when it did, he saw eternity. The TV shut off in that moment, the noises and images gone. And so to did Szymon, only to reawaken a second later, no longer a man of God but a child of the Earth Mother.
The absorption of the Polish Commonwealth, alongside the final death of the EU, has rapidly transformed both the state of Eden and world affairs. This report, for your eyes only, will detail all the information I have gathered recently, both on the regions we have expanded into, and for the greater region as a whole.
The expansion of Eden has been both a positive and a negative. Of course, the positives include the realisation of Eden as a true power in the European space, as well as increased growth for the Earth Mother, though while these are self-evident, the negatives must be delved into. The most obvious negative is the increase in perversions. A more comprehensive document is on its way, however, there still remains a not-insignificant level of detail which I have obtained. Below is a list of the most relevant perversions and the changes, for your consideration.
The absorption of the Polish Commonwealth, alongside the final death of the EU, has rapidly transformed both the state of Eden and world affairs. This report, for your eyes only, will detail all the information I have gathered recently, both on the regions we have expanded into, and for the greater region as a whole.
The expansion of Eden has been both a positive and a negative. Of course, the positives include the realisation of Eden as a true power in the European space, as well as increased growth for the Earth Mother, though while these are self-evident, the negatives must be delved into. The most obvious negative is the increase in perversions. A more comprehensive document is on its way, however, there still remains a not-insignificant level of detail which I have obtained. Below is a list of the most relevant perversions and the changes, for your consideration.
The Cult of the Space Mother: An already extant perversion, Eden’s expansion into regions of the Commonwealth has seen the Cult of the Space Mother grow exponentially. Based on a technocratic-based theology, the Cult of the Space Mother believes that the Earth Mother is also the progenitor of alien lifeforms who most certainly exist, and who will come to Eden’s aid. Though harmless, the Cult has become widespread in Commonwealth converts, as its technocratic base appeals to those citizens of the ex-tech utopia. I have estimated that 1:12 converts from the Commonwealth quickly become a part of the Cult, making it increasingly significant in everyday Community life. While it is a harmless perversion, should it gain substantial weight from the new converts, the cult could represent a theocratic schism in the Community, which would be an existential threat to us all. Eden must either adapt these beliefs into its own, or snuff them out before they become something more.
The Remnants: Though the Commonwealth Army who joined Eden quickly threw off their chains and began dedicated members of the Community, such a quick large-scale conversion never could be perfect. Many of these converts have joined a perversion known as the Remnants, and while it is early days, their main differences stem from the fact that they are dedicated to the idea of the Eastern European State. While this may initially seem harmless, it means that they put the Earth Mother below Eden, and as such may be liable to cause issue if they believe the state is being put at risk for the wants of the faith. Though, this does mean that they are as dedicated as any military unit to Eden. The Remnants are also incredibly anti-Alfr, to the extent that it may be unwise to station them on the border with any Alfr state. In addition, while these reports are incredibly recent, a small number of Remnants have been found to clash with Community soldiers, especially those who either are Children or Warriors, or who are part of the Camp Follower Perversion. All of this is to say, if the Remnants are not kept in check, they could represent a fracturing force which may destroy Eden.
The Messianics: I’ll be frank. This perversion has so far mostly flew under my radar. Extant in some parts of Polish Eden, the Messianics seem to have taken Pagan-Christian syncretism to the nth degree. They believe that while the Earth Mother is the true creator, Jesus is also real, as well as being the Earth Mother’s son and the first messiah. Such a perversion is deeply concerning, because it suggests the possibility of a “new testament” Community, something which, atleast to me, seems like a possible crisis waiting to happen. Rumours are abound that these Messianics believe that another Messiah is due to come, and fewer still believe he already exists, in the form of either Iohannis or Pleistoros. This news can never reach the Earth Mother. If need be, these perverts must be stamped out.
Roman Catholics/Russian Orthodox: While not what we normally think when it comes to perversions, the recent expansion means that the Christian faith exists once more in Eden. Consisting largely in urban Belarus and rural Poland, the Christian faiths represent a heresy more than anything else. Intensive efforts are already occurring as to convert all who remain Christian, but lethal force is on the table should any holdout cities, towns, or villages not take to the Community. If they wish to meet their Lord so much, may their blood feed our Earth Mother.
Beyond these perversions, Eden’s strategic situation must be acknowledged. That is not my area of expertise, and I defer to both Pleistoros and Iohannis on the matter. However, the Earth Mother has recently spoken to me, suggesting that the Eden’s most major goal at this moment is the reunification of the Eastern Union (to be renamed to the Eden Union). This includes the Second Roman Republic, the UNSC-held Baltics, and the Russian Remnant state. While I will not say my thoughts on this goal here… it is perhaps something we should keep in consideration.
Thus ends this rather brief report. At the current rate, Eden should be back to near 100% Community penetration by 2077, though it is highly likely this could be sped up. Efforts will be undertaken to ensure the Community outside of Eden spreads also, as having a prior base will assist incredibly with any future conquests.
What would it mean for a god, the God, to have a child?
• Capital: Eden City (Bucharest)
• Language: Pontic & Proto-Indo-European
• Government: Theocratic Absolute Monarchy
• Leaders: The Earth Mother & God-King Iohannis
• GDP (nominal): $3,190,440,576,898
• Population: Incalculable 167,342,102
• FLAG
submitted by Halofreak1171 to worldpowers [link] [comments]
Nowy Sącz, Polish Eden
“Name?”The lady’s voice seemed to catch on the moss-covered walls of the church. It was a humble building, and quite clearly an old Catholic church that had been converted for its new purpose. Windows had been opened to let in animals, with birds and rodents taking advantage and making this their home. Where moss and vine didn’t cover the walls, paintings of the Earth Mother and Eden… the true Eden adorned them. While the building may have been built Catholic, its insides proclaimed it as far different.
“Name Sir?”
Her voice caught him off guard. Her face seemed mildly annoyed, as if he was holding up her day. To be fair, the hour long line he had waited in suggested that this place was busy, and yet when he walked in the church seemed quite empty. Beyond her face, she wore a rather plain-looking white top…or was it a dress? Whatever it was, no symbols or logos sat on the fabric besides a small, minimalistic tree, just on her left shoulder. It was the same symbol which sat above the church’s entrance, and the same one which he had seen all throughout his home town in recent weeks. It was the symbol of the Community, the supposed singular faith of Eden.
“Sir, I need a name or I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Once again, her voice brought him out his daydream. He figured he might as well answer, he had waited all that time. “Szymon.”
She nodded, typing it down on a rather old-looking computer.
“Last names and any middle names sir?”
“Czajka… What exactly is this?”
The lady simply continued typing, not bothering to look up as she answered his question.
“It’s a Community Church.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that he couldn’t decide whether she was making a joke or if she genuinely believed he was that stupid.
“No, I know that obviously. I meant more… what is this process here? What are we doing? I thought this was a church sermon or something, not a reception desk.”
She paused for a second, before looking up and reaching over to a brochure stand behind her. As she grabbed one of the first pamphlets held within it, its title of “THE COMMUNITY AND YOU: HOW THE EARTH LOVES US ALL” visible even with his relatively poor eyesight, she also responded in a more welcoming tone.”
“Ah sorry, I figured you came in having seen the initiative around town. That’s my bad. Here at the Community, we appreciate that Eden’s faith is a little different from your own, and want to make the transition as smooth as possible for all. As such we’re running these drives so to speak, where people like yourself can come in, gain as much information as possible about the Community, and make an educated decision on whether to convert!”
Her warm tone was calming, even if he still suspected all of this to be a scam. Perhaps seeing a weird look on his face, the lady continued.
“We completely get that the way the Community does things may be abit odd at times, so if you have any questions during this process feel free to ask. If I may ask though, what made you think of coming here?”
That question made him ponder for a second. Why was he here? He supposed that everyone he knew was talking about the advantages of being an active Community member, and those that had joined were seeing great benefits for their families, or so it seemed. But there was more than that. It was subtle at first, but the more he saw ads and signs for the Community, the more drawn he felt to it. It had felt like nothing he had ever experienced before, a vacuum so powerful that his subconscious couldn’t help but be pulled in. He looked at the lady, unsure of how to answer.
“I felt like I needed a change of pace.”
She smiled at his answer, and yet the smile seemed off, as if he had gotten something wrong. Whatever it was, she quickly returned to a more neutral expression.
“That makes sense. Well, if you would follow me, I’ll take you to the first step of your education.”
As the lady got up, he hesitated. Her inflection, her tone, it all said something was wrong. All of a sudden the room felt small, and he felt even smaller, trapped. His eyes darted around the room, paranoia mounting, the feeling of being watched by something far larger than anything he had ever known growing. He went to stand up, to run, but his knees wouldn’t let him. Whatever was watching was close now. It felt old…dangerous…beyond the scope of what he considered possible. As tears welled up in his eyes he was certain that this was the end, whatever this was.
“Syzmon? I get the hesitation, but trust me, it’ll all be fine.”
Her words snapped him out of his stupor. They comforted him, made him feel safe, the same way his mother’s words did when he was a child. He shook his head and stood up, following the lady to the area behind the pulpit. Here, in an area normally reserved for priests and pastors, small booths had seemingly been set up, almost like private voting areas. She beckoned for him to enter one and sit on the provided chair.
As he sat, she handed him some decidedly ancient headphones as well as a hot cup of tea, and gestured to box TV which sat in front of him.
“This’ll be the start of your education Syzmon. Just put the headphones on and watch the TV, and all your questions will be answered.”
For a second, he felt the same panic rising, but before it could take hold the TV was on and the lady was off. Static filled his ears while darkness remained on the TV, just long enough for him to think something was broken. As he waited, he sipped on the tea, its flavour muted but decidedly earthy. Thinking the tech had broken, he looked to leave, before a cacophony of noise assaulted his ears. Trumpets played, high-pitched voices sang while low-pitched voices chanted. The noise commanded his attention, as did the TV, whose screen was now flashing bright, almost psychedelic colours. The sounds and colours burnt their way into his mind, but they too would stop suddenly. Alone with his thoughts for a second, he swore he could see shadows moving about behind him, only for that thought to be tossed away as screams ripped through the headphones, so loud he could only think that they were right there next to him. The image on the screen changed, to demonstrate a woman, dressed in a plain white dress, her black hair tangling down past her shoulders and elbows, her eyes a piercing green, walking through a serene garden. As she spoke, the screams quietened but never left.
“My child. It is good to see you. I am so happy to hear you wish to join the Community.”
He calmed down with this, the woman’s voice acting as a warm blanket. The tea smelled better now somehow, and invited him to drink even more, which he did without complaint.
“You are here to learn, but what exactly is it you must be taught? You understand how to worship, how to be a good man in the Catholic world, what more could you need for a faith admittedly quite similar to your old one? Syzmon, I must tell you that we lied a tiny amount. The Community is different. How? Well, let me show you!”
The picture changed once more, bright red flashing for a second, before scenes he couldn’t even describe began to take place. His mind was assaulted with the vile inhumanity of what he saw, the images tearing at the very makeup of his personhood. And all through this the woman spoke still.
“The Community is more than just a faith you think about once or twice a year. It requires devotion, love, dedication above all else.
More images, even worse somehow, continued playing. He could feel his mind failing him, it being unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Screams began to rip through once more, and yet the woman continued to speak.
“Szymon, what you must understand is that to enjoy the fruits of the Earth and the Community, you must give yourself entirely to the Earth Mother! You must understand that man is weak, and yet they believe themselves master of every domain they seek. No longer do they toil amongst the rest of the animals, NO! Instead they work to bend every atom to their will, assuming that it is their destiny to be gods! This is not the case my child. When you join the Community, you understand that humanity has its place, not as the master of worlds, but as its servant!”
The speech rang through his head, pushing its way past the disgusting imagery and terrifying screams. It buried itself deep within his brain, in some part that he could barely even fathom, and when it did, he saw eternity. The TV shut off in that moment, the noises and images gone. And so to did Szymon, only to reawaken a second later, no longer a man of God but a child of the Earth Mother.
CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED
REPORT: ON THE EXPANSION OF EDEN
Date: 01/01/2073
Author: Zalmoxis
For: God-King Iohannis, The Prophet Amon, & Pleistoros
I hope this email finds you all well...The absorption of the Polish Commonwealth, alongside the final death of the EU, has rapidly transformed both the state of Eden and world affairs. This report, for your eyes only, will detail all the information I have gathered recently, both on the regions we have expanded into, and for the greater region as a whole.
The expansion of Eden has been both a positive and a negative. Of course, the positives include the realisation of Eden as a true power in the European space, as well as increased growth for the Earth Mother, though while these are self-evident, the negatives must be delved into. The most obvious negative is the increase in perversions. A more comprehensive document is on its way, however, there still remains a not-insignificant level of detail which I have obtained. Below is a list of the most relevant perversions and the changes, for your consideration.
The absorption of the Polish Commonwealth, alongside the final death of the EU, has rapidly transformed both the state of Eden and world affairs. This report, for your eyes only, will detail all the information I have gathered recently, both on the regions we have expanded into, and for the greater region as a whole.
The expansion of Eden has been both a positive and a negative. Of course, the positives include the realisation of Eden as a true power in the European space, as well as increased growth for the Earth Mother, though while these are self-evident, the negatives must be delved into. The most obvious negative is the increase in perversions. A more comprehensive document is on its way, however, there still remains a not-insignificant level of detail which I have obtained. Below is a list of the most relevant perversions and the changes, for your consideration.
The Cult of the Space Mother: An already extant perversion, Eden’s expansion into regions of the Commonwealth has seen the Cult of the Space Mother grow exponentially. Based on a technocratic-based theology, the Cult of the Space Mother believes that the Earth Mother is also the progenitor of alien lifeforms who most certainly exist, and who will come to Eden’s aid. Though harmless, the Cult has become widespread in Commonwealth converts, as its technocratic base appeals to those citizens of the ex-tech utopia. I have estimated that 1:12 converts from the Commonwealth quickly become a part of the Cult, making it increasingly significant in everyday Community life. While it is a harmless perversion, should it gain substantial weight from the new converts, the cult could represent a theocratic schism in the Community, which would be an existential threat to us all. Eden must either adapt these beliefs into its own, or snuff them out before they become something more.
The Remnants: Though the Commonwealth Army who joined Eden quickly threw off their chains and began dedicated members of the Community, such a quick large-scale conversion never could be perfect. Many of these converts have joined a perversion known as the Remnants, and while it is early days, their main differences stem from the fact that they are dedicated to the idea of the Eastern European State. While this may initially seem harmless, it means that they put the Earth Mother below Eden, and as such may be liable to cause issue if they believe the state is being put at risk for the wants of the faith. Though, this does mean that they are as dedicated as any military unit to Eden. The Remnants are also incredibly anti-Alfr, to the extent that it may be unwise to station them on the border with any Alfr state. In addition, while these reports are incredibly recent, a small number of Remnants have been found to clash with Community soldiers, especially those who either are Children or Warriors, or who are part of the Camp Follower Perversion. All of this is to say, if the Remnants are not kept in check, they could represent a fracturing force which may destroy Eden.
The Messianics: I’ll be frank. This perversion has so far mostly flew under my radar. Extant in some parts of Polish Eden, the Messianics seem to have taken Pagan-Christian syncretism to the nth degree. They believe that while the Earth Mother is the true creator, Jesus is also real, as well as being the Earth Mother’s son and the first messiah. Such a perversion is deeply concerning, because it suggests the possibility of a “new testament” Community, something which, atleast to me, seems like a possible crisis waiting to happen. Rumours are abound that these Messianics believe that another Messiah is due to come, and fewer still believe he already exists, in the form of either Iohannis or Pleistoros. This news can never reach the Earth Mother. If need be, these perverts must be stamped out.
Roman Catholics/Russian Orthodox: While not what we normally think when it comes to perversions, the recent expansion means that the Christian faith exists once more in Eden. Consisting largely in urban Belarus and rural Poland, the Christian faiths represent a heresy more than anything else. Intensive efforts are already occurring as to convert all who remain Christian, but lethal force is on the table should any holdout cities, towns, or villages not take to the Community. If they wish to meet their Lord so much, may their blood feed our Earth Mother.
Beyond these perversions, Eden’s strategic situation must be acknowledged. That is not my area of expertise, and I defer to both Pleistoros and Iohannis on the matter. However, the Earth Mother has recently spoken to me, suggesting that the Eden’s most major goal at this moment is the reunification of the Eastern Union (to be renamed to the Eden Union). This includes the Second Roman Republic, the UNSC-held Baltics, and the Russian Remnant state. While I will not say my thoughts on this goal here… it is perhaps something we should keep in consideration.
Thus ends this rather brief report. At the current rate, Eden should be back to near 100% Community penetration by 2077, though it is highly likely this could be sped up. Efforts will be undertaken to ensure the Community outside of Eden spreads also, as having a prior base will assist incredibly with any future conquests.
CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED CLASSIFIED
The Palace of the Earth Mother, Eden City
The test shook in her hand. She hadn’t believed it, thinking for days that the symptoms were something else. Yet as the bile rose up her throat, she stared at the two red lines, which seemed to stare back at her, almost alive and demonic in their nature. Screaming, she threw the test down and stormed out, walking to the darkest depths of the Palace. Even as she left that wretched thing behind, one question stuck out in her head.What would it mean for a god, the God, to have a child?
Summary
• Name: The Garden of Eden• Capital: Eden City (Bucharest)
• Language: Pontic & Proto-Indo-European
• Government: Theocratic Absolute Monarchy
• Leaders: The Earth Mother & God-King Iohannis
• GDP (nominal): $3,190,440,576,898
• Population: Incalculable 167,342,102
• FLAG
2024.05.28 16:26 Sweet-Count2557 Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station in New York City, USA
 | Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station in New York City, USA submitted by Sweet-Count2557 to worldkidstravel [link] [comments] Experience the Best of New York City at Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station Price Level: $$$$ Hotel Class: 3.0 If you're planning a trip to the bustling city of New York, look no further than Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station. Situated just off W 33rd street, this hotel is conveniently located just one block away from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. This prime location makes it easy to explore popular attractions such as Macy's, Herald Square, the Javits Center, the Empire State Building, and The High Line Park. At Fairfield Inn & Suites, we strive to provide our guests with the utmost comfort and convenience. Enjoy complimentary WiFi and start your day off right with a hot breakfast buffet. Our modern guest rooms and spacious suites feature plush Marriott bedding, a flat-screen HDTV, and a work desk. For those seeking extra space, our suites offer additional amenities such as a couch and pantry with a microwave and mini-fridge. After a long day of sightseeing, unwind in one of our city-view rooms or suites and take in the breathtaking views of New York City. Our hotel also boasts an outdoor patio, a seasonal rooftop bar, and a 24-hour fitness center, ensuring that you have everything you need for a memorable stay in the city that never sleeps. Amenities of Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station in New York City, USA At Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station in New York City, USA, guests can enjoy a wide range of amenities to enhance their stay. The hotel offers a fitness center for those looking to stay active during their visit, as well as a balounge where guests can unwind and socialize. Free internet and WiFi are available throughout the hotel, including in the public areas. Meeting rooms are also available for business travelers, and laundry service is provided for added convenience. The hotel is wheelchair accessible and offers a variety of suites to accommodate different needs. Other amenities include a complimentary breakfast, dry cleaning services, non-smoking rooms, a business center, concierge services, air conditioning, and family rooms. The multilingual staff ensures that guests from all over the world feel welcome, and self-serve laundry facilities are available for those who prefer to do their own laundry. The hotel also offers accessible rooms, a rooftop bar, flatscreen TVs, a rooftop terrace, parking, facilities for disabled guests, housekeeping services, baggage storage, and a 24-hour front desk. Paid private parking is available nearby, and wake-up service/alarm clocks are provided for those who need an early start. Guests can enjoy breakfast at the hotel, and the rooms feature bath/shower combinations, cable/satellite TVs, coffee/tea makers, and desks. Additional amenities include fireplaces, complimentary toiletries, free wired internet in the business center, hair dryers, irons, newspapers, outdoor dining areas, private bathrooms, radios, separate living rooms, snack bars, sofas, sofa beds, sun terraces, telephones, vending machines, and options for wine/champagne. The hotel also offers photo copiefax services in the business center. With such a wide range of amenities, Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station ensures that guests have everything they need for a comfortable and enjoyable stay in the heart of New York City. Contact of Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station in New York City, USA 0018446310595 325 W 33rd Street, New York City, NY 10001 https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/nycps-fairfield-inn-and-suites-new-york-midtown-manhattan-penn-station/overview/?scid=45f93f1b-bd77-45c9-8dab-83b6a417f6fe&y_source=1_ODMzMzY3LTc2OS1sb2NhdGlvbi53ZWJzaXRl Location of Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station in New York City, USA Pictures of Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station in New York City, USA Tips for Staying in Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station Do not book this hotel, the personnel is rude, beds are filthy and is extremely expensiveBring Clorox wipesDo not waste your time on terrible acts of unprofessionalismAvoid at all cost, the management does not care, no communication, absolute disgrace to this hotel with good reviews idiotsYou are right in the middle of the financial district, New York is Expensive. People are friendly. The Subway is fast and convenient. Reviews of Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station in New York City, USA Book Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Midtown Manhattan/Penn Station Now !!! Tags |
2024.05.28 15:08 GRFoodCoop Three Creston Events this Saturday
Hello and happy terrific Tuesday fellow GrandRapididians
We wanted to spread the word of a few things happening this weekend in the Creston neighborhood.
1) The Creston Farmers Market will be held at City High with close to 20 vendors , live music , and food trucks. Many of the vendors are Creston residents themselves. There is plenty of parking at city high towards the school building. We hope to see a grand turnout!
Market will be from 9am-1pm
2) Creston Yard Sales - check out the map of the sales here:
Most yard sales will be from 9-4, but it’s up to each individual to set their own hours.
3) Free plant giveaway at 1226 Union Ave NE. We will be giving away hundreds of tomato, zucchini, lettuce, kale, native plugs, and various herb seeds to plant and grow your own garden. We will also be giving away free tomato cages: collapsible, galvanized, and plastic coated.
While supplies last from 9am-1pm
Which events , if any , can we plan to see y’all at? Stop by and say hello if you’re in the area!
submitted by GRFoodCoop to grandrapids [link] [comments]
We wanted to spread the word of a few things happening this weekend in the Creston neighborhood.
1) The Creston Farmers Market will be held at City High with close to 20 vendors , live music , and food trucks. Many of the vendors are Creston residents themselves. There is plenty of parking at city high towards the school building. We hope to see a grand turnout!
Market will be from 9am-1pm
2) Creston Yard Sales - check out the map of the sales here:
Most yard sales will be from 9-4, but it’s up to each individual to set their own hours.
3) Free plant giveaway at 1226 Union Ave NE. We will be giving away hundreds of tomato, zucchini, lettuce, kale, native plugs, and various herb seeds to plant and grow your own garden. We will also be giving away free tomato cages: collapsible, galvanized, and plastic coated.
While supplies last from 9am-1pm
Which events , if any , can we plan to see y’all at? Stop by and say hello if you’re in the area!
2024.05.28 14:54 Far-Mode6546 The Alice Guo Paradox: An illegal Chinese National, Mafia Princess with the Heart of Gold?
This is base on RUMORS, facts have not been completely established. These are the statements that have been told by people inside Bambam. I am basing this on Filipino Lawyer who went and asked his friends who "work" for her and this was said.(Can't find the video link so I'm just gonna summarized it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDsS1WdLkKk&t=626s
Summary/translation:
And worst part is that she doesn't want to surrender her Chinese citizenship is why she obtained it illegally.
I do believe she loves the Philippines. It's like having a cake and eating it too. She gets to live the rich and lavish lifestyle while never having to think to be pried, spied and monitored by the CCP. And the people love you! I mean I too would love to live the cushy lifestyle that she has!
submitted by Far-Mode6546 to ADVChina [link] [comments]
- Both her parents are Chinese nationals! There's no "Filipina maid" who gave birth to her and "ran away"! Basically Amelia Guo doesn't exist!
- Her parents were amazing business people, who used "front" aka using Filipino partner to established businesses in the Philippines like farming with "pigs" and "chicken".
- Her parents wanted to delve into real estate and u need a naturalized Filipino citizen to invest in properties here. This is where the FAKED her birth certificate.
- After building a real estate empire they've now moved on the next big thing which was delving into POGOs.
- This where Alice fronted for illegal Chinese Nationals for POGOs and building POGO facilities. This is where she got SUPER RICH!
- She is known to be GENEROUS! Money is no object for Alice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDsS1WdLkKk&t=626s
Summary/translation:
- Again rumor from a make up artist who used to work for Alice Guo.
- They say they only knew her when she ran for office.
- The make up artist says she is "kind".... "GENEROUS".
- Money is no object.
- Willing to give money to the needy.
- She political/public persona has been well honed to appeal to masses on from outfit mixing both simple and branded items.
- She also has this down to earth persona, she rides the jeep/trisikel(toktok), mano(a gesture of respect) the elders.
- Provides "cake" to the elders in her city.
- When Alice arrives at the city she is surrounded by convoy, the car of choice is a Nissan Alphard(A luxury van).
- According to the make up artist her Tagalog has never been perfect and would always sounds someone who was born outside.
- The locals thought the owner of the "farm" was the Family "GO" not didn't think it was "GUO".
- If the locals see a secluded mega farm, they usually it's own by a Chinese (either Fil-Chi or China man).
- During the pandemic the Alice Guo's family gave out/donated chicken and egg to the people.
- When she became a Mayor, money/ funding was never a problem. When asked if she could provide in service to the people of Bamban, she would not hesitate to do so.
- She won the hearts of the local and are willing to accept her being a illegal Chinese citizen and at the same time a Mayor in the Philippines because the previous mayor(Filipino) were greedy and corrupt.
- Atty Castro: Concedes that despite all of this, Alice is still an illegal immigrant.
- There's no dual citizenship in China.
- The farm that Alice Guo claims to owned has been there for quite sometime.
- Atty Castro theorized that her father might have been doing business in the Philippines using a Filipino partner as a front.
- Atty Castro added that Alice faked her Filipino citizenship, whilst also retained her Chinese Citizen. Since she's not even officially a Filipino citizen, she can still be a Chinese Citizen.
- Unfortunately these schemes are being abused by Chinese nationals to perform illegal activities because they've faked their nationality by being illegally dual citizens w/ TWO different names a Chinese and Filipino. All at the same time buy property in the Philippines.
- A viewer of program chimes in: We never knew about Alice Guo up until her campaign as a Mayor. Most of the new farm owners are Chinese because all the previous farm owners were devastated by volcanic lahar.
- Atty Castro says: It's weird that she fluent in Mandarin. What was she trying to learn? Chinese or Filipino? Referring to "Teacher Rubilyn" as a Filipino language tutor and why she can only remember ONE TEACHER.
My opinion: The Guo family are SMART and SAVY people. I've read years back on article about thieves. One thing that stood to me is that they say thieves will never steal on the town in which they lived in because if they do, the people in their town will surrender them to the cops.
And worst part is that she doesn't want to surrender her Chinese citizenship is why she obtained it illegally.
I do believe she loves the Philippines. It's like having a cake and eating it too. She gets to live the rich and lavish lifestyle while never having to think to be pried, spied and monitored by the CCP. And the people love you! I mean I too would love to live the cushy lifestyle that she has!
2024.05.28 14:29 MountainSkald [A Valkyrie's Saga] - Part 108
Prequel (Chapters 1 to 16)
1. Rise of a Valkyrie
First ¦ Previous ¦ Royal Road ¦ Patreon
“He’s making this turn.”
Gareth ‘Gaz’ Slake watched the unmarked white van veer off down a side street ahead. He checked his side mirror, tapped the indicator, and steered the vehicle over into the turning lane. The atmosphere inside the SUV remained calm as the other men checked their weapons. Further down the road, the team’s lead car accelerated to find another turning, so it could circle back into contact with their quarry.
The van came back into view as Gaz span the wheel.
“Street ends at a warehouse,” his earpiece buzzed. “This could be it.”
He slowed the vehicle to a stop by the side of the road, and couldn’t stop his eyes flickering down to the photos he had pinned to the dash. Five hopeful teenage faces stared back at him.
“He’s going in,” said the radio. “All call-signs; Yorktown.”
A clatter of metal disturbed the quiet of the SUV as rifle bolts racked bullets into their chambers. Gaz reached for his own weapon by his leg and pulled on the charging handle. In the near distance, the white van disappeared into the building.
“Alpha, block the garage entrance. Bravo take the west loading bay.”
Gaz placed his thumb on a switch concealed beneath his jacket. “Copy that.” He donned the helmet passed to him by his fellow former marine, Sal Matuidi, then readied his foot on the accelerator. “Alpha is set.”
“All call-signs, I have control.”
The tail had begun that morning in the slumbering streets of Intaba’s capital city. Working from documents leaked by an ally in law enforcement, the group had needed two weeks to build up a picture of the starport’s trafficking network. Then, one of VennZech’s key contractors had gotten lazy and hinted on an unsecured call that he was ready to make a ‘special’ pickup. The operation had been planned at lightning speed before Gaz and the other shooters were jumping into vehicles.
Driving just over the legal speed limit they had closed on the truck depot known to be connected to VennZech’s illegal operations. The caller had arrived after sunrise, been positively identified, and had steered his transport out into the light traffic, apparently without a care in the world.
Since the electronic intercept the night before, Gaz had shut out all his concerns about the world, his messy personal life, and the group’s questionable legal status on Intaba. He had taken pains to suppress all his doubts, fears, good memories and bad, to focus on the mission.
Now he didn’t have to. His whole existence congealed into the vehicle, the men by his side, the warehouse ahead, and the weapon at his leg. Beyond that there was nothing.
The earpiece buzzed again. “Standby, standby... Execute!”
Gaz sensed the others coil like snakes and he pushed the accelerator down to the floor. Ahead, a flimsy chain link gate closed the warehouse off from the street. The SUV smashed through, and the tires screeched as they brought it to a stop by the entrance.
He waited as the doors popped open and his passengers dismounted. They used the vehicle as cover while they scanned the yard for threats. A smatter of snaps in the near distance broke the silence—Bravo team making contact.
Sal turned back to Gaz, but as he raised his thumb a pair of craters erupted on the windshield. A silenced carbine whipped around and snapped off four shots. The silence returned, and Cyril raised his thumb again, this time accompanied by an apologetic smile. Gaz span the SUV around, returning to the smashed entrance gate where he positioned it to block the exit.
He grabbed his rifle, jumped out and raced to catch up with the team as they entered the warehouse.
Sal and the others were already inside, mounting a stairwell as Gaz caught up. They moved quickly but kept their muzzles trained on every opening, ready for a threat. When they stepped off the warehouse’s upper walkway into the offices, bullets exploded the wall around them. Sal gasped and sank to the floor.
Almost out of sight around the corner, a terrified security guard was pointing his pistol at them. Gaz stepped through the doorway and flicked his carbine across the target, not even aligning the weapon’s holo-sight as he snatched at the trigger. A round caught the guard in the hip and another punched through his chest. He collapsed in a heap and lay motionless.
Gaz reached down to check his friend as the two others pushed past them, moving quickly to the end of the corridor.
“Sal? Talk to me.”
“Got it in the leg, Gaz.”
His eyes were saucers as he watched Gaz feel around for the wound.
“Okay, yeah. It’s clean through the thigh. Not too much bleeding.”
Sal’s eyes closed and he sighed. “Keep going, I can bandage it.”
“You sure?”
“All good, brother. Go finish it.”
Gaz caught up with the others and they cleared the rest of the warehouse, killing anyone else who resisted and restraining those who surrendered. Once the call was made that the structure was clear, Gaz raced back to check up on Sal. He was a little dopey after the self-administered ketamine shot, but the bandage looked good, and he kept enough presence of mind to offer criticism.
“Won’t find anything around me!” he said with a grin. “Unless I’m sat on a bad guy.”
Then his expression turned to one of alarm, but he quickly calmed, and began chuckling to himself.
Gaz shook his head, and returned to the rest of the team to help search the structure. As usual, the obvious places—the bunk rooms, kitchen or offices—contained nothing of interest. Following his instinct, Gaz made for the basement. A janitor’s office caught his eye, and as he pushed open the door into the dark, musky room, his earpiece buzzed again.
“Police call has been made,” a female voice said. “Reports of a disturbance. A patrol car has been dispatched, but he isn’t hurrying.”
“Copy that, Rook. Do you have a location?” the voice of their controller replied.
“Passing sixth street. ETA ten minutes.”
“Bravo one, take your vehicle around to the main entrance. All elements, that is your extraction point.”
“Alpha one copies,” Gaz said and flicked a light switch on the wall. He scanned the office, noting the clutter of a lazy occupant, while his teammate’s acknowledgements buzzed in his ear.
A closet door rested in the far corner, and Gaz moved over to it. The handle stuck, but the keys hung from a nail by the desk, and he tried each of them until the lock clicked open.
He reached for his flashlight, and caught his breath as the beam played over pale white, then dark brown skin. Two faces—a boy’s and a girl’s—met his gaze with fear as they huddled against the wall, their arms cuffed to a pipe.
Gaz recognized them from the photographs, but their cheeks had hollowed, and their eye sockets looked grey. The bright t-shirts were now dark with filth and a few blood stains. Their eyes seemed devoid of light.
Gaz thumbed his radio switch and spoke softly. “This is Alpha one—Jackpot. Basement, North-East corner—janitor’s office.”
Without approaching the pair, he knelt down on the ground and smiled.
“Geroff, Esther?” he said. “I’m really happy I found you. Your parents sent me to take you home. Geroff, your mom says that Zipper had puppies and really misses you. Esther, your brother John’s been watering your desert cacti for you.”
The eyes blinked, but their owners didn’t move. They flinched when a woman entered the office, banging the desk as she rushed in.
“Awesome, Gaz,” she said, a little out of breath. “Don’t worry, I got this.”
Gaz got up and moved away as his teammate Rita—child psychologist, and combat medic— dropped to her knees in his place. She moved slowly, gently pushing closer to them while she explained in a soothing voice, what was going to happen, and where they were going to be taken before they could see their parents again. When she finally touched their shoulders, the sobbing began.
Gaz turned away and thumbed his mic. “We’re going to need the boltcutter.”
***
“Two weeks until I can walk again,” Sal said as he sat in the car at the edge of the starport’s loading area. The door was open and they were facing the landing pad where a shuttle had just touched down.
“It’s cool mate,” Gaz said, leaning on the roof of the vehicle. “You’re little enough that I can carry you around on my shoulders.”
“That’s great, thanks bro. Actually, I need to take a shit, so if you would oblige...”
Gaz smiled and shook his head.
On the landing pad, the shuttle’s passenger door opened and a wide-eyed woman stepped out followed by a blank-faced man. The SUV popped its doors and Esther stepped out onto the tarmac. Her mother sank to her knees as her father raced over to embrace her.
Gaz liked to watch the reunions. When he saw the joy of a life restored, his own anger softened. He liked to think that each rescue chipped away a piece of his cold hatred for whatever god or universal force had decided he would never get to experience the same thing.
He sighed. “Good feeling,” he said, and tried to find a way to mean it.
Sal nodded, but didn’t smile. “Two. Out of ten thousand a year.”
“Don’t fixate on the numbers, mate. You’ll lose yourself doing that.”
“And four dead bodies.”
Gaz sniffed. “Does that bother you?”
Sal shrugged. “Not that they died. They knew what was going on in that basement. But bodies mean trouble.”
“Nothing the boss can’t handle.”
“This is going to catch up with us eventually.”
“Sure.” Gaz slapped the car roof. “But it’s been worth it. You know, when we got out of the Marine Corps I was struggling to find a direction. Now I wake up every morning knowing what I have to do.”
Sal gave him a skeptical look. “I wouldn’t exactly call this moving on.”
“Well. One step at a time, I guess.”
“Earlier you mentioned something about the truck?”
“Oh yeah. The driver was a less than diligent employee of the shipping company, and had his travel plans on his phone. Turns out he had booked himself onto one of VennZech’s freighters, bound for Caldera.”
Sal looked up at him surprise. “Are you serious? That’s huge.”
Gaz could only offer a disappointed shake of his head. “Afraid not. Turns out the ship jumped out a few hours before our man’s call was intercepted. No-one in the head-shed has any idea why, and gossip says that it dropped completely off the cluster’s traffic control logs.”
Sal scratched his stubbly jaw thoughtfully. “Probably someone tipped off the corpos and they wanted to destroy the evidence. Though it doesn’t make sense to me that they would forget to call off the pickup.”
“Who knows? Either way, Caldera is our only lead to find the others.”
“Yeah, I guess. What’s the turnaround time?”
“Couple of weeks,” Gaz said. “Caldera might be the wild west, but Rackeye is territory of the Helvetic League. You know how their die-hard believers set themselves up as missionaries on every new planet?”
Sal chuckled. “Yeah, hence why the colonists gave the first settlement that name.”
“What do you mean?”
“French for scum.”
Gaz laughed. “Seriously?”
“I think so, though I’m not fluent.”
“Anyway, it will take the boss time to build covers and make connections. Long enough for you to heal. Unfortunately, we got a call from a new client this morning; three more faces to add to the list.”
Sal rubbed his eyes and stared into the distance. “Stellar.”
They looked around as the whine of a car engine pierced the air. A blacked-out limousine raced up the taxiway and screeched to a halt right next to them. Out of the car stepped Dumi Sifiso, Intaba’s deputy chief of police.
“Where he is?” Sifiso snapped. “Your boss? Take me to him immediately.”
Gaz maneuvered himself to block the irate man as another officer joined them. He kept his smile friendly, but his hands raised, palms out.
“Easy there, fella. Sanchez is talking with a family right now. Why don’t you give them a moment?”
Sifiso glanced over at the shuttle, but relented. “I want you—all of your people—off Intaba as soon as possible.”
“What’s going on?”
“I just received a visit from a VennZech representative. He wanted to know why I haven’t put a stop to some of the… attacks on their buildings. When I gave him the usual line about gang violence, he rejected it.”
Gaz’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Another four dead workers? It looks like a lot more than coincidence. He was angry. Said that there were accusations of corruption being levelled at my office.”
“You’ve weathered that before.”
“He threatened my family!”
Gaz clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes. “Well maybe we can go and visit his.”
Sifiso spat on the ground. “Frontier Marines. You’re a gang, and that’s all you are. A bunch of washed-up has-beens clinging on to some forgotten dogma. And now you’ve made too many enemies.”
“You’re panicking. I’m sure Sanchez will figure something out.”
Sifiso smiled. “He won’t need to. Because you’ll be gone, or I’ll have you arrested and charged with murder.”
Gaz stepped to one side. “You see over there. The fourteen-year-old? See her parent’s faces?”
“Fourteen? That’s a nice number. Here’s another for you. Ten thousand. Ten thousand people, adults, and children are trafficked through this starport every year. Then there are the drugs, the smugglers, and everything else that goes on behind the scenes. And what do you think the galaxy wide total is?”
Gaz let his bitterness stew in silence.
“It’s too much,” Sifiso said, and his voice softened. “The payoffs aren’t working anymore. I…” he stopped. “I don’t regret helping your cause, but it’s over.”
“Oh sure,” Gaz raised said, raising his voice. “You look out for number one, mate. Keep it within the comfort zone. Wouldn’t want to mess with the old boy network, would we? And won’t someone please think of the paychecks?”
Sifiso’s face darkened. “It’s easy, I think, for a young man with no family and no community to support to say these things. To live in fantasy, rather than confront reality.”
“No community? Look around, I got mine right here, and I’ll have no problem keeping them safe, no matter who tries to get in the way.”
“Gaz,” Sal called in a warning tone.
In the near distance, another, much less expensive, vehicle drove up and Gaz recognized the plate. He scowled at Sifiso. “If you don’t mind. I’ve got a client to attend to. And you’d just better pray they’ve already taken her child off the planet.”
He almost wanted to punch himself for such an unbelievably stupid comment, but enraged pride kept pushing him forward. Shoving his way past the chief, he left Sal, now hobbling onto the tarmac on crutches, to do damage control. Not that Gaz cared. If Sanchez really was looking to move on to Caldera, leaving a few burnt bridges behind was something he could live with.
Gaz took a deep breath and tried to decelerate. He opened the car door and slid into the front passenger seat. Behind the wheel, a middle-aged woman stared at him through eyes clouded by exhaustion. Her hair was a frayed mess, while reddened, irritated skin tinged her nose and eyes.
“How are you doing Ntsika?” he asked as gently as he could.
She ignored the question and nodded to the plane on the tarmac. “I heard about the rescue this morning. Is that them?”
“Yes.”
“They must be very happy.”
Her voice was both bitter and sympathetic. Gaz remembered when he had felt those same contradictory emotions. Now he only felt a predator’s hunger.
“They have happiness and pain. A lot of pain to heal from, but a lot of hope as well.”
Ntsika sniffed and nodded. “My cousin works for the attorney’s office. He told me you would be kicked off Intaba.”
“That’s true, unfortunately,” Gaz said. “But we have a lead pointing us to Caldera. We’ll be heading there as soon as possible.”
“I see.” She picked a tissue out of the door and played with it. The movements had obviously become an unconscious habit.
“It’s only a matter of time, now, Ntsika. Once we start to get leads, we always run them down. Wherever they took your daughter, we will find her.”
She smiled at him, and he knew immediately that it was an expression of pity for his naivety.
“I think,” she said, “that the worst thing about you people, is that you keep offering hope. It is more painful than moving on.”
Gaz said farewell and left the car. While he watched the vehicle drive off the tarmac, he took a portrait photo out of his pocket and looked into the eyes of young Milani Mayosi. She had been a basketball player, hoping to study architecture. A lot like his sister when they had taken her, though she had preferred swimming.
He had been deployed when it happened. The Marines had been about giving his life a greater meaning, serving the good of the League. But after ten years, he was forced to question what service they had rendered, holding back endless tribal conflicts while the Helvet governors only stewed the corrupt, incompetent mess. Meanwhile, the truly innocent, even his own family, were being preyed on by monsters.
Some nights the drink reminded him that the tearful reunions meant nothing. What he really wanted was the excuse to kill evil men. To leave their bodies behind to inflict fear in their masters. Perhaps some of them would have nightmares as they imagined him coming for them too.
Milani would be rescued; he had no doubts about that. Sanchez had been a brilliant intelligence officer, and Caldera was so far beyond the League’s authority they could operate almost with impunity. But his sister would never come home, wherever she was, dead or alive. He could only avenge her, and that he could do with extreme prejudice.
First ¦ Previous ¦ Royal Road ¦ Patreon
Prequel (Chapters 1 to 16)
1. Rise of a Valkyrie
submitted by MountainSkald to redditserials [link] [comments]
1. Rise of a Valkyrie
First ¦ Previous ¦ Royal Road ¦ Patreon
“He’s making this turn.”
Gareth ‘Gaz’ Slake watched the unmarked white van veer off down a side street ahead. He checked his side mirror, tapped the indicator, and steered the vehicle over into the turning lane. The atmosphere inside the SUV remained calm as the other men checked their weapons. Further down the road, the team’s lead car accelerated to find another turning, so it could circle back into contact with their quarry.
The van came back into view as Gaz span the wheel.
“Street ends at a warehouse,” his earpiece buzzed. “This could be it.”
He slowed the vehicle to a stop by the side of the road, and couldn’t stop his eyes flickering down to the photos he had pinned to the dash. Five hopeful teenage faces stared back at him.
“He’s going in,” said the radio. “All call-signs; Yorktown.”
A clatter of metal disturbed the quiet of the SUV as rifle bolts racked bullets into their chambers. Gaz reached for his own weapon by his leg and pulled on the charging handle. In the near distance, the white van disappeared into the building.
“Alpha, block the garage entrance. Bravo take the west loading bay.”
Gaz placed his thumb on a switch concealed beneath his jacket. “Copy that.” He donned the helmet passed to him by his fellow former marine, Sal Matuidi, then readied his foot on the accelerator. “Alpha is set.”
“All call-signs, I have control.”
The tail had begun that morning in the slumbering streets of Intaba’s capital city. Working from documents leaked by an ally in law enforcement, the group had needed two weeks to build up a picture of the starport’s trafficking network. Then, one of VennZech’s key contractors had gotten lazy and hinted on an unsecured call that he was ready to make a ‘special’ pickup. The operation had been planned at lightning speed before Gaz and the other shooters were jumping into vehicles.
Driving just over the legal speed limit they had closed on the truck depot known to be connected to VennZech’s illegal operations. The caller had arrived after sunrise, been positively identified, and had steered his transport out into the light traffic, apparently without a care in the world.
Since the electronic intercept the night before, Gaz had shut out all his concerns about the world, his messy personal life, and the group’s questionable legal status on Intaba. He had taken pains to suppress all his doubts, fears, good memories and bad, to focus on the mission.
Now he didn’t have to. His whole existence congealed into the vehicle, the men by his side, the warehouse ahead, and the weapon at his leg. Beyond that there was nothing.
The earpiece buzzed again. “Standby, standby... Execute!”
Gaz sensed the others coil like snakes and he pushed the accelerator down to the floor. Ahead, a flimsy chain link gate closed the warehouse off from the street. The SUV smashed through, and the tires screeched as they brought it to a stop by the entrance.
He waited as the doors popped open and his passengers dismounted. They used the vehicle as cover while they scanned the yard for threats. A smatter of snaps in the near distance broke the silence—Bravo team making contact.
Sal turned back to Gaz, but as he raised his thumb a pair of craters erupted on the windshield. A silenced carbine whipped around and snapped off four shots. The silence returned, and Cyril raised his thumb again, this time accompanied by an apologetic smile. Gaz span the SUV around, returning to the smashed entrance gate where he positioned it to block the exit.
He grabbed his rifle, jumped out and raced to catch up with the team as they entered the warehouse.
Sal and the others were already inside, mounting a stairwell as Gaz caught up. They moved quickly but kept their muzzles trained on every opening, ready for a threat. When they stepped off the warehouse’s upper walkway into the offices, bullets exploded the wall around them. Sal gasped and sank to the floor.
Almost out of sight around the corner, a terrified security guard was pointing his pistol at them. Gaz stepped through the doorway and flicked his carbine across the target, not even aligning the weapon’s holo-sight as he snatched at the trigger. A round caught the guard in the hip and another punched through his chest. He collapsed in a heap and lay motionless.
Gaz reached down to check his friend as the two others pushed past them, moving quickly to the end of the corridor.
“Sal? Talk to me.”
“Got it in the leg, Gaz.”
His eyes were saucers as he watched Gaz feel around for the wound.
“Okay, yeah. It’s clean through the thigh. Not too much bleeding.”
Sal’s eyes closed and he sighed. “Keep going, I can bandage it.”
“You sure?”
“All good, brother. Go finish it.”
Gaz caught up with the others and they cleared the rest of the warehouse, killing anyone else who resisted and restraining those who surrendered. Once the call was made that the structure was clear, Gaz raced back to check up on Sal. He was a little dopey after the self-administered ketamine shot, but the bandage looked good, and he kept enough presence of mind to offer criticism.
“Won’t find anything around me!” he said with a grin. “Unless I’m sat on a bad guy.”
Then his expression turned to one of alarm, but he quickly calmed, and began chuckling to himself.
Gaz shook his head, and returned to the rest of the team to help search the structure. As usual, the obvious places—the bunk rooms, kitchen or offices—contained nothing of interest. Following his instinct, Gaz made for the basement. A janitor’s office caught his eye, and as he pushed open the door into the dark, musky room, his earpiece buzzed again.
“Police call has been made,” a female voice said. “Reports of a disturbance. A patrol car has been dispatched, but he isn’t hurrying.”
“Copy that, Rook. Do you have a location?” the voice of their controller replied.
“Passing sixth street. ETA ten minutes.”
“Bravo one, take your vehicle around to the main entrance. All elements, that is your extraction point.”
“Alpha one copies,” Gaz said and flicked a light switch on the wall. He scanned the office, noting the clutter of a lazy occupant, while his teammate’s acknowledgements buzzed in his ear.
A closet door rested in the far corner, and Gaz moved over to it. The handle stuck, but the keys hung from a nail by the desk, and he tried each of them until the lock clicked open.
He reached for his flashlight, and caught his breath as the beam played over pale white, then dark brown skin. Two faces—a boy’s and a girl’s—met his gaze with fear as they huddled against the wall, their arms cuffed to a pipe.
Gaz recognized them from the photographs, but their cheeks had hollowed, and their eye sockets looked grey. The bright t-shirts were now dark with filth and a few blood stains. Their eyes seemed devoid of light.
Gaz thumbed his radio switch and spoke softly. “This is Alpha one—Jackpot. Basement, North-East corner—janitor’s office.”
Without approaching the pair, he knelt down on the ground and smiled.
“Geroff, Esther?” he said. “I’m really happy I found you. Your parents sent me to take you home. Geroff, your mom says that Zipper had puppies and really misses you. Esther, your brother John’s been watering your desert cacti for you.”
The eyes blinked, but their owners didn’t move. They flinched when a woman entered the office, banging the desk as she rushed in.
“Awesome, Gaz,” she said, a little out of breath. “Don’t worry, I got this.”
Gaz got up and moved away as his teammate Rita—child psychologist, and combat medic— dropped to her knees in his place. She moved slowly, gently pushing closer to them while she explained in a soothing voice, what was going to happen, and where they were going to be taken before they could see their parents again. When she finally touched their shoulders, the sobbing began.
Gaz turned away and thumbed his mic. “We’re going to need the boltcutter.”
***
“Two weeks until I can walk again,” Sal said as he sat in the car at the edge of the starport’s loading area. The door was open and they were facing the landing pad where a shuttle had just touched down.
“It’s cool mate,” Gaz said, leaning on the roof of the vehicle. “You’re little enough that I can carry you around on my shoulders.”
“That’s great, thanks bro. Actually, I need to take a shit, so if you would oblige...”
Gaz smiled and shook his head.
On the landing pad, the shuttle’s passenger door opened and a wide-eyed woman stepped out followed by a blank-faced man. The SUV popped its doors and Esther stepped out onto the tarmac. Her mother sank to her knees as her father raced over to embrace her.
Gaz liked to watch the reunions. When he saw the joy of a life restored, his own anger softened. He liked to think that each rescue chipped away a piece of his cold hatred for whatever god or universal force had decided he would never get to experience the same thing.
He sighed. “Good feeling,” he said, and tried to find a way to mean it.
Sal nodded, but didn’t smile. “Two. Out of ten thousand a year.”
“Don’t fixate on the numbers, mate. You’ll lose yourself doing that.”
“And four dead bodies.”
Gaz sniffed. “Does that bother you?”
Sal shrugged. “Not that they died. They knew what was going on in that basement. But bodies mean trouble.”
“Nothing the boss can’t handle.”
“This is going to catch up with us eventually.”
“Sure.” Gaz slapped the car roof. “But it’s been worth it. You know, when we got out of the Marine Corps I was struggling to find a direction. Now I wake up every morning knowing what I have to do.”
Sal gave him a skeptical look. “I wouldn’t exactly call this moving on.”
“Well. One step at a time, I guess.”
“Earlier you mentioned something about the truck?”
“Oh yeah. The driver was a less than diligent employee of the shipping company, and had his travel plans on his phone. Turns out he had booked himself onto one of VennZech’s freighters, bound for Caldera.”
Sal looked up at him surprise. “Are you serious? That’s huge.”
Gaz could only offer a disappointed shake of his head. “Afraid not. Turns out the ship jumped out a few hours before our man’s call was intercepted. No-one in the head-shed has any idea why, and gossip says that it dropped completely off the cluster’s traffic control logs.”
Sal scratched his stubbly jaw thoughtfully. “Probably someone tipped off the corpos and they wanted to destroy the evidence. Though it doesn’t make sense to me that they would forget to call off the pickup.”
“Who knows? Either way, Caldera is our only lead to find the others.”
“Yeah, I guess. What’s the turnaround time?”
“Couple of weeks,” Gaz said. “Caldera might be the wild west, but Rackeye is territory of the Helvetic League. You know how their die-hard believers set themselves up as missionaries on every new planet?”
Sal chuckled. “Yeah, hence why the colonists gave the first settlement that name.”
“What do you mean?”
“French for scum.”
Gaz laughed. “Seriously?”
“I think so, though I’m not fluent.”
“Anyway, it will take the boss time to build covers and make connections. Long enough for you to heal. Unfortunately, we got a call from a new client this morning; three more faces to add to the list.”
Sal rubbed his eyes and stared into the distance. “Stellar.”
They looked around as the whine of a car engine pierced the air. A blacked-out limousine raced up the taxiway and screeched to a halt right next to them. Out of the car stepped Dumi Sifiso, Intaba’s deputy chief of police.
“Where he is?” Sifiso snapped. “Your boss? Take me to him immediately.”
Gaz maneuvered himself to block the irate man as another officer joined them. He kept his smile friendly, but his hands raised, palms out.
“Easy there, fella. Sanchez is talking with a family right now. Why don’t you give them a moment?”
Sifiso glanced over at the shuttle, but relented. “I want you—all of your people—off Intaba as soon as possible.”
“What’s going on?”
“I just received a visit from a VennZech representative. He wanted to know why I haven’t put a stop to some of the… attacks on their buildings. When I gave him the usual line about gang violence, he rejected it.”
Gaz’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Another four dead workers? It looks like a lot more than coincidence. He was angry. Said that there were accusations of corruption being levelled at my office.”
“You’ve weathered that before.”
“He threatened my family!”
Gaz clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes. “Well maybe we can go and visit his.”
Sifiso spat on the ground. “Frontier Marines. You’re a gang, and that’s all you are. A bunch of washed-up has-beens clinging on to some forgotten dogma. And now you’ve made too many enemies.”
“You’re panicking. I’m sure Sanchez will figure something out.”
Sifiso smiled. “He won’t need to. Because you’ll be gone, or I’ll have you arrested and charged with murder.”
Gaz stepped to one side. “You see over there. The fourteen-year-old? See her parent’s faces?”
“Fourteen? That’s a nice number. Here’s another for you. Ten thousand. Ten thousand people, adults, and children are trafficked through this starport every year. Then there are the drugs, the smugglers, and everything else that goes on behind the scenes. And what do you think the galaxy wide total is?”
Gaz let his bitterness stew in silence.
“It’s too much,” Sifiso said, and his voice softened. “The payoffs aren’t working anymore. I…” he stopped. “I don’t regret helping your cause, but it’s over.”
“Oh sure,” Gaz raised said, raising his voice. “You look out for number one, mate. Keep it within the comfort zone. Wouldn’t want to mess with the old boy network, would we? And won’t someone please think of the paychecks?”
Sifiso’s face darkened. “It’s easy, I think, for a young man with no family and no community to support to say these things. To live in fantasy, rather than confront reality.”
“No community? Look around, I got mine right here, and I’ll have no problem keeping them safe, no matter who tries to get in the way.”
“Gaz,” Sal called in a warning tone.
In the near distance, another, much less expensive, vehicle drove up and Gaz recognized the plate. He scowled at Sifiso. “If you don’t mind. I’ve got a client to attend to. And you’d just better pray they’ve already taken her child off the planet.”
He almost wanted to punch himself for such an unbelievably stupid comment, but enraged pride kept pushing him forward. Shoving his way past the chief, he left Sal, now hobbling onto the tarmac on crutches, to do damage control. Not that Gaz cared. If Sanchez really was looking to move on to Caldera, leaving a few burnt bridges behind was something he could live with.
Gaz took a deep breath and tried to decelerate. He opened the car door and slid into the front passenger seat. Behind the wheel, a middle-aged woman stared at him through eyes clouded by exhaustion. Her hair was a frayed mess, while reddened, irritated skin tinged her nose and eyes.
“How are you doing Ntsika?” he asked as gently as he could.
She ignored the question and nodded to the plane on the tarmac. “I heard about the rescue this morning. Is that them?”
“Yes.”
“They must be very happy.”
Her voice was both bitter and sympathetic. Gaz remembered when he had felt those same contradictory emotions. Now he only felt a predator’s hunger.
“They have happiness and pain. A lot of pain to heal from, but a lot of hope as well.”
Ntsika sniffed and nodded. “My cousin works for the attorney’s office. He told me you would be kicked off Intaba.”
“That’s true, unfortunately,” Gaz said. “But we have a lead pointing us to Caldera. We’ll be heading there as soon as possible.”
“I see.” She picked a tissue out of the door and played with it. The movements had obviously become an unconscious habit.
“It’s only a matter of time, now, Ntsika. Once we start to get leads, we always run them down. Wherever they took your daughter, we will find her.”
She smiled at him, and he knew immediately that it was an expression of pity for his naivety.
“I think,” she said, “that the worst thing about you people, is that you keep offering hope. It is more painful than moving on.”
Gaz said farewell and left the car. While he watched the vehicle drive off the tarmac, he took a portrait photo out of his pocket and looked into the eyes of young Milani Mayosi. She had been a basketball player, hoping to study architecture. A lot like his sister when they had taken her, though she had preferred swimming.
He had been deployed when it happened. The Marines had been about giving his life a greater meaning, serving the good of the League. But after ten years, he was forced to question what service they had rendered, holding back endless tribal conflicts while the Helvet governors only stewed the corrupt, incompetent mess. Meanwhile, the truly innocent, even his own family, were being preyed on by monsters.
Some nights the drink reminded him that the tearful reunions meant nothing. What he really wanted was the excuse to kill evil men. To leave their bodies behind to inflict fear in their masters. Perhaps some of them would have nightmares as they imagined him coming for them too.
Milani would be rescued; he had no doubts about that. Sanchez had been a brilliant intelligence officer, and Caldera was so far beyond the League’s authority they could operate almost with impunity. But his sister would never come home, wherever she was, dead or alive. He could only avenge her, and that he could do with extreme prejudice.
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Prequel (Chapters 1 to 16)
1. Rise of a Valkyrie
2024.05.28 14:26 MountainSkald A Valkyrie's Saga - Part 108
Prequel (Parts 1 to 16)
1. Rise of a Valkyrie
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“He’s making this turn.”
Gareth ‘Gaz’ Slake watched the unmarked white van veer off down a side street ahead. He checked his side mirror, tapped the indicator, and steered the vehicle over into the turning lane. The atmosphere inside the SUV remained calm as the other men checked their weapons. Further down the road, the team’s lead car accelerated to find another turning, so it could circle back into contact with their quarry.
The van came back into view as Gaz span the wheel.
“Street ends at a warehouse,” his earpiece buzzed. “This could be it.”
He slowed the vehicle to a stop by the side of the road, and couldn’t stop his eyes flickering down to the photos he had pinned to the dash. Five hopeful teenage faces stared back at him.
“He’s going in,” said the radio. “All call-signs; Yorktown.”
A clatter of metal disturbed the quiet of the SUV as rifle bolts racked bullets into their chambers. Gaz reached for his own weapon by his leg and pulled on the charging handle. In the near distance, the white van disappeared into the building.
“Alpha, block the garage entrance. Bravo take the west loading bay.”
Gaz placed his thumb on a switch concealed beneath his jacket. “Copy that.” He donned the helmet passed to him by his fellow former marine, Sal Matuidi, then readied his foot on the accelerator. “Alpha is set.”
“All call-signs, I have control.”
The tail had begun that morning in the slumbering streets of Intaba’s capital city. Working from documents leaked by an ally in law enforcement, the group had needed two weeks to build up a picture of the starport’s trafficking network. Then, one of VennZech’s key contractors had gotten lazy and hinted on an unsecured call that he was ready to make a ‘special’ pickup. The operation had been planned at lightning speed before Gaz and the other shooters were jumping into vehicles.
Driving just over the legal speed limit they had closed on the truck depot known to be connected to VennZech’s illegal operations. The caller had arrived after sunrise, been positively identified, and had steered his transport out into the light traffic, apparently without a care in the world.
Since the electronic intercept the night before, Gaz had shut out all his concerns about the world, his messy personal life, and the group’s questionable legal status on Intaba. He had taken pains to suppress all his doubts, fears, good memories and bad, to focus on the mission.
Now he didn’t have to. His whole existence congealed into the vehicle, the men by his side, the warehouse ahead, and the weapon at his leg. Beyond that there was nothing.
The earpiece buzzed again. “Standby, standby... Execute!”
Gaz sensed the others coil like snakes and he pushed the accelerator down to the floor. Ahead, a flimsy chain link gate closed the warehouse off from the street. The SUV smashed through, and the tires screeched as they brought it to a stop by the entrance.
He waited as the doors popped open and his passengers dismounted. They used the vehicle as cover while they scanned the yard for threats. A smatter of snaps in the near distance broke the silence—Bravo team making contact.
Sal turned back to Gaz, but as he raised his thumb a pair of craters erupted on the windshield. A silenced carbine whipped around and snapped off four shots. The silence returned, and Cyril raised his thumb again, this time accompanied by an apologetic smile. Gaz span the SUV around, returning to the smashed entrance gate where he positioned it to block the exit.
He grabbed his rifle, jumped out and raced to catch up with the team as they entered the warehouse.
Sal and the others were already inside, mounting a stairwell as Gaz caught up. They moved quickly but kept their muzzles trained on every opening, ready for a threat. When they stepped off the warehouse’s upper walkway into the offices, bullets exploded the wall around them. Sal gasped and sank to the floor.
Almost out of sight around the corner, a terrified security guard was pointing his pistol at them. Gaz stepped through the doorway and flicked his carbine across the target, not even aligning the weapon’s holo-sight as he snatched at the trigger. A round caught the guard in the hip and another punched through his chest. He collapsed in a heap and lay motionless.
Gaz reached down to check his friend as the two others pushed past them, moving quickly to the end of the corridor.
“Sal? Talk to me.”
“Got it in the leg, Gaz.”
His eyes were saucers as he watched Gaz feel around for the wound.
“Okay, yeah. It’s clean through the thigh. Not too much bleeding.”
Sal’s eyes closed and he sighed. “Keep going, I can bandage it.”
“You sure?”
“All good, brother. Go finish it.”
Gaz caught up with the others and they cleared the rest of the warehouse, killing anyone else who resisted and restraining those who surrendered. Once the call was made that the structure was clear, Gaz raced back to check up on Sal. He was a little dopey after the self-administered ketamine shot, but the bandage looked good, and he kept enough presence of mind to offer criticism.
“Won’t find anything around me!” he said with a grin. “Unless I’m sat on a bad guy.”
Then his expression turned to one of alarm, but he quickly calmed, and began chuckling to himself.
Gaz shook his head, and returned to the rest of the team to help search the structure. As usual, the obvious places—the bunk rooms, kitchen or offices—contained nothing of interest. Following his instinct, Gaz made for the basement. A janitor’s office caught his eye, and as he pushed open the door into the dark, musky room, his earpiece buzzed again.
“Police call has been made,” a female voice said. “Reports of a disturbance. A patrol car has been dispatched, but he isn’t hurrying.”
“Copy that, Rook. Do you have a location?” the voice of their controller replied.
“Passing sixth street. ETA ten minutes.”
“Bravo one, take your vehicle around to the main entrance. All elements, that is your extraction point.”
“Alpha one copies,” Gaz said and flicked a light switch on the wall. He scanned the office, noting the clutter of a lazy occupant, while his teammate’s acknowledgements buzzed in his ear.
A closet door rested in the far corner, and Gaz moved over to it. The handle stuck, but the keys hung from a nail by the desk, and he tried each of them until the lock clicked open.
He reached for his flashlight, and caught his breath as the beam played over pale white, then dark brown skin. Two faces—a boy’s and a girl’s—met his gaze with fear as they huddled against the wall, their arms cuffed to a pipe.
Gaz recognized them from the photographs, but their cheeks had hollowed, and their eye sockets looked grey. The bright t-shirts were now dark with filth and a few blood stains. Their eyes seemed devoid of light.
Gaz thumbed his radio switch and spoke softly. “This is Alpha one—Jackpot. Basement, North-East corner—janitor’s office.”
Without approaching the pair, he knelt down on the ground and smiled.
“Geroff, Esther?” he said. “I’m really happy I found you. Your parents sent me to take you home. Geroff, your mom says that Zipper had puppies and really misses you. Esther, your brother John’s been watering your desert cacti for you.”
The eyes blinked, but their owners didn’t move. They flinched when a woman entered the office, banging the desk as she rushed in.
“Awesome, Gaz,” she said, a little out of breath. “Don’t worry, I got this.”
Gaz got up and moved away as his teammate Rita—child psychologist, and combat medic— dropped to her knees in his place. She moved slowly, gently pushing closer to them while she explained in a soothing voice, what was going to happen, and where they were going to be taken before they could see their parents again. When she finally touched their shoulders, the sobbing began.
Gaz turned away and thumbed his mic. “We’re going to need the boltcutter.”
***
“Two weeks until I can walk again,” Sal said as he sat in the car at the edge of the starport’s loading area. The door was open and they were facing the landing pad where a shuttle had just touched down.
“It’s cool mate,” Gaz said, leaning on the roof of the vehicle. “You’re little enough that I can carry you around on my shoulders.”
“That’s great, thanks bro. Actually, I need to take a shit, so if you would oblige...”
Gaz smiled and shook his head.
On the landing pad, the shuttle’s passenger door opened and a wide-eyed woman stepped out followed by a blank-faced man. The SUV popped its doors and Esther stepped out onto the tarmac. Her mother sank to her knees as her father raced over to embrace her.
Gaz liked to watch the reunions. When he saw the joy of a life restored, his own anger softened. He liked to think that each rescue chipped away a piece of his cold hatred for whatever god or universal force had decided he would never get to experience the same thing.
He sighed. “Good feeling,” he said, and tried to find a way to mean it.
Sal nodded, but didn’t smile. “Two. Out of ten thousand a year.”
“Don’t fixate on the numbers, mate. You’ll lose yourself doing that.”
“And four dead bodies.”
Gaz sniffed. “Does that bother you?”
Sal shrugged. “Not that they died. They knew what was going on in that basement. But bodies mean trouble.”
“Nothing the boss can’t handle.”
“This is going to catch up with us eventually.”
“Sure.” Gaz slapped the car roof. “But it’s been worth it. You know, when we got out of the Marine Corps I was struggling to find a direction. Now I wake up every morning knowing what I have to do.”
Sal gave him a skeptical look. “I wouldn’t exactly call this moving on.”
“Well. One step at a time, I guess.”
“Earlier you mentioned something about the truck?”
“Oh yeah. The driver was a less than diligent employee of the shipping company, and had his travel plans on his phone. Turns out he had booked himself onto one of VennZech’s freighters, bound for Caldera.”
Sal looked up at him surprise. “Are you serious? That’s huge.”
Gaz could only offer a disappointed shake of his head. “Afraid not. Turns out the ship jumped out a few hours before our man’s call was intercepted. No-one in the head-shed has any idea why, and gossip says that it dropped completely off the cluster’s traffic control logs.”
Sal scratched his stubbly jaw thoughtfully. “Probably someone tipped off the corpos and they wanted to destroy the evidence. Though it doesn’t make sense to me that they would forget to call off the pickup.”
“Who knows? Either way, Caldera is our only lead to find the others.”
“Yeah, I guess. What’s the turnaround time?”
“Couple of weeks,” Gaz said. “Caldera might be the wild west, but Rackeye is territory of the Helvetic League. You know how their die-hard believers set themselves up as missionaries on every new planet?”
Sal chuckled. “Yeah, hence why the colonists gave the first settlement that name.”
“What do you mean?”
“French for scum.”
Gaz laughed. “Seriously?”
“I think so, though I’m not fluent.”
“Anyway, it will take the boss time to build covers and make connections. Long enough for you to heal. Unfortunately, we got a call from a new client this morning; three more faces to add to the list.”
Sal rubbed his eyes and stared into the distance. “Stellar.”
They looked around as the whine of a car engine pierced the air. A blacked-out limousine raced up the taxiway and screeched to a halt right next to them. Out of the car stepped Dumi Sifiso, Intaba’s deputy chief of police.
“Where he is?” Sifiso snapped. “Your boss? Take me to him immediately.”
Gaz maneuvered himself to block the irate man as another officer joined them. He kept his smile friendly, but his hands raised, palms out.
“Easy there, fella. Sanchez is talking with a family right now. Why don’t you give them a moment?”
Sifiso glanced over at the shuttle, but relented. “I want you—all of your people—off Intaba as soon as possible.”
“What’s going on?”
“I just received a visit from a VennZech representative. He wanted to know why I haven’t put a stop to some of the… attacks on their buildings. When I gave him the usual line about gang violence, he rejected it.”
Gaz’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Another four dead workers? It looks like a lot more than coincidence. He was angry. Said that there were accusations of corruption being levelled at my office.”
“You’ve weathered that before.”
“He threatened my family!”
Gaz clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes. “Well maybe we can go and visit his.”
Sifiso spat on the ground. “Frontier Marines. You’re a gang, and that’s all you are. A bunch of washed-up has-beens clinging on to some forgotten dogma. And now you’ve made too many enemies.”
“You’re panicking. I’m sure Sanchez will figure something out.”
Sifiso smiled. “He won’t need to. Because you’ll be gone, or I’ll have you arrested and charged with murder.”
Gaz stepped to one side. “You see over there. The fourteen-year-old? See her parent’s faces?”
“Fourteen? That’s a nice number. Here’s another for you. Ten thousand. Ten thousand people, adults, and children are trafficked through this starport every year. Then there are the drugs, the smugglers, and everything else that goes on behind the scenes. And what do you think the galaxy wide total is?”
Gaz let his bitterness stew in silence.
“It’s too much,” Sifiso said, and his voice softened. “The payoffs aren’t working anymore. I…” he stopped. “I don’t regret helping your cause, but it’s over.”
“Oh sure,” Gaz raised said, raising his voice. “You look out for number one, mate. Keep it within the comfort zone. Wouldn’t want to mess with the old boy network, would we? And won’t someone please think of the paychecks?”
Sifiso’s face darkened. “It’s easy, I think, for a young man with no family and no community to support to say these things. To live in fantasy, rather than confront reality.”
“No community? Look around, I got mine right here, and I’ll have no problem keeping them safe, no matter who tries to get in the way.”
“Gaz,” Sal called in a warning tone.
In the near distance, another, much less expensive, vehicle drove up and Gaz recognized the plate. He scowled at Sifiso. “If you don’t mind. I’ve got a client to attend to. And you’d just better pray they’ve already taken her child off the planet.”
He almost wanted to punch himself for such an unbelievably stupid comment, but enraged pride kept pushing him forward. Shoving his way past the chief, he left Sal, now hobbling onto the tarmac on crutches, to do damage control. Not that Gaz cared. If Sanchez really was looking to move on to Caldera, leaving a few burnt bridges behind was something he could live with.
Gaz took a deep breath and tried to decelerate. He opened the car door and slid into the front passenger seat. Behind the wheel, a middle-aged woman stared at him through eyes clouded by exhaustion. Her hair was a frayed mess, while reddened, irritated skin tinged her nose and eyes.
“How are you doing Ntsika?” he asked as gently as he could.
She ignored the question and nodded to the plane on the tarmac. “I heard about the rescue this morning. Is that them?”
“Yes.”
“They must be very happy.”
Her voice was both bitter and sympathetic. Gaz remembered when he had felt those same contradictory emotions. Now he only felt a predator’s hunger.
“They have happiness and pain. A lot of pain to heal from, but a lot of hope as well.”
Ntsika sniffed and nodded. “My cousin works for the attorney’s office. He told me you would be kicked off Intaba.”
“That’s true, unfortunately,” Gaz said. “But we have a lead pointing us to Caldera. We’ll be heading there as soon as possible.”
“I see.” She picked a tissue out of the door and played with it. The movements had obviously become an unconscious habit.
“It’s only a matter of time, now, Ntsika. Once we start to get leads, we always run them down. Wherever they took your daughter, we will find her.”
She smiled at him, and he knew immediately that it was an expression of pity for his naivety.
“I think,” she said, “that the worst thing about you people, is that you keep offering hope. It is more painful than moving on.”
Gaz said farewell and left the car. While he watched the vehicle drive off the tarmac, he took a portrait photo out of his pocket and looked into the eyes of young Milani Mayosi. She had been a basketball player, hoping to study architecture. A lot like his sister when they had taken her, though she had preferred swimming.
He had been deployed when it happened. The Marines had been about giving his life a greater meaning, serving the good of the League. But after ten years, he was forced to question what service they had rendered, holding back endless tribal conflicts while the Helvet governors only stewed the corrupt, incompetent mess. Meanwhile, the truly innocent, even his own family, were being preyed on by monsters.
Some nights the drink reminded him that the tearful reunions meant nothing. What he really wanted was the excuse to kill evil men. To leave their bodies behind to inflict fear in their masters. Perhaps some of them would have nightmares as they imagined him coming for them too.
Milani would be rescued; he had no doubts about that. Sanchez had been a brilliant intelligence officer, and Caldera was so far beyond the League’s authority they could operate almost with impunity. But his sister would never come home, wherever she was, dead or alive. He could only avenge her, and that he could do with extreme prejudice.
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Prequel (Parts 1 to 16)
1. Rise of a Valkyrie
submitted by MountainSkald to HFY [link] [comments]
1. Rise of a Valkyrie
First ¦ Previous ¦ Royal Road ¦ Patreon
“He’s making this turn.”
Gareth ‘Gaz’ Slake watched the unmarked white van veer off down a side street ahead. He checked his side mirror, tapped the indicator, and steered the vehicle over into the turning lane. The atmosphere inside the SUV remained calm as the other men checked their weapons. Further down the road, the team’s lead car accelerated to find another turning, so it could circle back into contact with their quarry.
The van came back into view as Gaz span the wheel.
“Street ends at a warehouse,” his earpiece buzzed. “This could be it.”
He slowed the vehicle to a stop by the side of the road, and couldn’t stop his eyes flickering down to the photos he had pinned to the dash. Five hopeful teenage faces stared back at him.
“He’s going in,” said the radio. “All call-signs; Yorktown.”
A clatter of metal disturbed the quiet of the SUV as rifle bolts racked bullets into their chambers. Gaz reached for his own weapon by his leg and pulled on the charging handle. In the near distance, the white van disappeared into the building.
“Alpha, block the garage entrance. Bravo take the west loading bay.”
Gaz placed his thumb on a switch concealed beneath his jacket. “Copy that.” He donned the helmet passed to him by his fellow former marine, Sal Matuidi, then readied his foot on the accelerator. “Alpha is set.”
“All call-signs, I have control.”
The tail had begun that morning in the slumbering streets of Intaba’s capital city. Working from documents leaked by an ally in law enforcement, the group had needed two weeks to build up a picture of the starport’s trafficking network. Then, one of VennZech’s key contractors had gotten lazy and hinted on an unsecured call that he was ready to make a ‘special’ pickup. The operation had been planned at lightning speed before Gaz and the other shooters were jumping into vehicles.
Driving just over the legal speed limit they had closed on the truck depot known to be connected to VennZech’s illegal operations. The caller had arrived after sunrise, been positively identified, and had steered his transport out into the light traffic, apparently without a care in the world.
Since the electronic intercept the night before, Gaz had shut out all his concerns about the world, his messy personal life, and the group’s questionable legal status on Intaba. He had taken pains to suppress all his doubts, fears, good memories and bad, to focus on the mission.
Now he didn’t have to. His whole existence congealed into the vehicle, the men by his side, the warehouse ahead, and the weapon at his leg. Beyond that there was nothing.
The earpiece buzzed again. “Standby, standby... Execute!”
Gaz sensed the others coil like snakes and he pushed the accelerator down to the floor. Ahead, a flimsy chain link gate closed the warehouse off from the street. The SUV smashed through, and the tires screeched as they brought it to a stop by the entrance.
He waited as the doors popped open and his passengers dismounted. They used the vehicle as cover while they scanned the yard for threats. A smatter of snaps in the near distance broke the silence—Bravo team making contact.
Sal turned back to Gaz, but as he raised his thumb a pair of craters erupted on the windshield. A silenced carbine whipped around and snapped off four shots. The silence returned, and Cyril raised his thumb again, this time accompanied by an apologetic smile. Gaz span the SUV around, returning to the smashed entrance gate where he positioned it to block the exit.
He grabbed his rifle, jumped out and raced to catch up with the team as they entered the warehouse.
Sal and the others were already inside, mounting a stairwell as Gaz caught up. They moved quickly but kept their muzzles trained on every opening, ready for a threat. When they stepped off the warehouse’s upper walkway into the offices, bullets exploded the wall around them. Sal gasped and sank to the floor.
Almost out of sight around the corner, a terrified security guard was pointing his pistol at them. Gaz stepped through the doorway and flicked his carbine across the target, not even aligning the weapon’s holo-sight as he snatched at the trigger. A round caught the guard in the hip and another punched through his chest. He collapsed in a heap and lay motionless.
Gaz reached down to check his friend as the two others pushed past them, moving quickly to the end of the corridor.
“Sal? Talk to me.”
“Got it in the leg, Gaz.”
His eyes were saucers as he watched Gaz feel around for the wound.
“Okay, yeah. It’s clean through the thigh. Not too much bleeding.”
Sal’s eyes closed and he sighed. “Keep going, I can bandage it.”
“You sure?”
“All good, brother. Go finish it.”
Gaz caught up with the others and they cleared the rest of the warehouse, killing anyone else who resisted and restraining those who surrendered. Once the call was made that the structure was clear, Gaz raced back to check up on Sal. He was a little dopey after the self-administered ketamine shot, but the bandage looked good, and he kept enough presence of mind to offer criticism.
“Won’t find anything around me!” he said with a grin. “Unless I’m sat on a bad guy.”
Then his expression turned to one of alarm, but he quickly calmed, and began chuckling to himself.
Gaz shook his head, and returned to the rest of the team to help search the structure. As usual, the obvious places—the bunk rooms, kitchen or offices—contained nothing of interest. Following his instinct, Gaz made for the basement. A janitor’s office caught his eye, and as he pushed open the door into the dark, musky room, his earpiece buzzed again.
“Police call has been made,” a female voice said. “Reports of a disturbance. A patrol car has been dispatched, but he isn’t hurrying.”
“Copy that, Rook. Do you have a location?” the voice of their controller replied.
“Passing sixth street. ETA ten minutes.”
“Bravo one, take your vehicle around to the main entrance. All elements, that is your extraction point.”
“Alpha one copies,” Gaz said and flicked a light switch on the wall. He scanned the office, noting the clutter of a lazy occupant, while his teammate’s acknowledgements buzzed in his ear.
A closet door rested in the far corner, and Gaz moved over to it. The handle stuck, but the keys hung from a nail by the desk, and he tried each of them until the lock clicked open.
He reached for his flashlight, and caught his breath as the beam played over pale white, then dark brown skin. Two faces—a boy’s and a girl’s—met his gaze with fear as they huddled against the wall, their arms cuffed to a pipe.
Gaz recognized them from the photographs, but their cheeks had hollowed, and their eye sockets looked grey. The bright t-shirts were now dark with filth and a few blood stains. Their eyes seemed devoid of light.
Gaz thumbed his radio switch and spoke softly. “This is Alpha one—Jackpot. Basement, North-East corner—janitor’s office.”
Without approaching the pair, he knelt down on the ground and smiled.
“Geroff, Esther?” he said. “I’m really happy I found you. Your parents sent me to take you home. Geroff, your mom says that Zipper had puppies and really misses you. Esther, your brother John’s been watering your desert cacti for you.”
The eyes blinked, but their owners didn’t move. They flinched when a woman entered the office, banging the desk as she rushed in.
“Awesome, Gaz,” she said, a little out of breath. “Don’t worry, I got this.”
Gaz got up and moved away as his teammate Rita—child psychologist, and combat medic— dropped to her knees in his place. She moved slowly, gently pushing closer to them while she explained in a soothing voice, what was going to happen, and where they were going to be taken before they could see their parents again. When she finally touched their shoulders, the sobbing began.
Gaz turned away and thumbed his mic. “We’re going to need the boltcutter.”
***
“Two weeks until I can walk again,” Sal said as he sat in the car at the edge of the starport’s loading area. The door was open and they were facing the landing pad where a shuttle had just touched down.
“It’s cool mate,” Gaz said, leaning on the roof of the vehicle. “You’re little enough that I can carry you around on my shoulders.”
“That’s great, thanks bro. Actually, I need to take a shit, so if you would oblige...”
Gaz smiled and shook his head.
On the landing pad, the shuttle’s passenger door opened and a wide-eyed woman stepped out followed by a blank-faced man. The SUV popped its doors and Esther stepped out onto the tarmac. Her mother sank to her knees as her father raced over to embrace her.
Gaz liked to watch the reunions. When he saw the joy of a life restored, his own anger softened. He liked to think that each rescue chipped away a piece of his cold hatred for whatever god or universal force had decided he would never get to experience the same thing.
He sighed. “Good feeling,” he said, and tried to find a way to mean it.
Sal nodded, but didn’t smile. “Two. Out of ten thousand a year.”
“Don’t fixate on the numbers, mate. You’ll lose yourself doing that.”
“And four dead bodies.”
Gaz sniffed. “Does that bother you?”
Sal shrugged. “Not that they died. They knew what was going on in that basement. But bodies mean trouble.”
“Nothing the boss can’t handle.”
“This is going to catch up with us eventually.”
“Sure.” Gaz slapped the car roof. “But it’s been worth it. You know, when we got out of the Marine Corps I was struggling to find a direction. Now I wake up every morning knowing what I have to do.”
Sal gave him a skeptical look. “I wouldn’t exactly call this moving on.”
“Well. One step at a time, I guess.”
“Earlier you mentioned something about the truck?”
“Oh yeah. The driver was a less than diligent employee of the shipping company, and had his travel plans on his phone. Turns out he had booked himself onto one of VennZech’s freighters, bound for Caldera.”
Sal looked up at him surprise. “Are you serious? That’s huge.”
Gaz could only offer a disappointed shake of his head. “Afraid not. Turns out the ship jumped out a few hours before our man’s call was intercepted. No-one in the head-shed has any idea why, and gossip says that it dropped completely off the cluster’s traffic control logs.”
Sal scratched his stubbly jaw thoughtfully. “Probably someone tipped off the corpos and they wanted to destroy the evidence. Though it doesn’t make sense to me that they would forget to call off the pickup.”
“Who knows? Either way, Caldera is our only lead to find the others.”
“Yeah, I guess. What’s the turnaround time?”
“Couple of weeks,” Gaz said. “Caldera might be the wild west, but Rackeye is territory of the Helvetic League. You know how their die-hard believers set themselves up as missionaries on every new planet?”
Sal chuckled. “Yeah, hence why the colonists gave the first settlement that name.”
“What do you mean?”
“French for scum.”
Gaz laughed. “Seriously?”
“I think so, though I’m not fluent.”
“Anyway, it will take the boss time to build covers and make connections. Long enough for you to heal. Unfortunately, we got a call from a new client this morning; three more faces to add to the list.”
Sal rubbed his eyes and stared into the distance. “Stellar.”
They looked around as the whine of a car engine pierced the air. A blacked-out limousine raced up the taxiway and screeched to a halt right next to them. Out of the car stepped Dumi Sifiso, Intaba’s deputy chief of police.
“Where he is?” Sifiso snapped. “Your boss? Take me to him immediately.”
Gaz maneuvered himself to block the irate man as another officer joined them. He kept his smile friendly, but his hands raised, palms out.
“Easy there, fella. Sanchez is talking with a family right now. Why don’t you give them a moment?”
Sifiso glanced over at the shuttle, but relented. “I want you—all of your people—off Intaba as soon as possible.”
“What’s going on?”
“I just received a visit from a VennZech representative. He wanted to know why I haven’t put a stop to some of the… attacks on their buildings. When I gave him the usual line about gang violence, he rejected it.”
Gaz’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Another four dead workers? It looks like a lot more than coincidence. He was angry. Said that there were accusations of corruption being levelled at my office.”
“You’ve weathered that before.”
“He threatened my family!”
Gaz clenched his jaw and narrowed his eyes. “Well maybe we can go and visit his.”
Sifiso spat on the ground. “Frontier Marines. You’re a gang, and that’s all you are. A bunch of washed-up has-beens clinging on to some forgotten dogma. And now you’ve made too many enemies.”
“You’re panicking. I’m sure Sanchez will figure something out.”
Sifiso smiled. “He won’t need to. Because you’ll be gone, or I’ll have you arrested and charged with murder.”
Gaz stepped to one side. “You see over there. The fourteen-year-old? See her parent’s faces?”
“Fourteen? That’s a nice number. Here’s another for you. Ten thousand. Ten thousand people, adults, and children are trafficked through this starport every year. Then there are the drugs, the smugglers, and everything else that goes on behind the scenes. And what do you think the galaxy wide total is?”
Gaz let his bitterness stew in silence.
“It’s too much,” Sifiso said, and his voice softened. “The payoffs aren’t working anymore. I…” he stopped. “I don’t regret helping your cause, but it’s over.”
“Oh sure,” Gaz raised said, raising his voice. “You look out for number one, mate. Keep it within the comfort zone. Wouldn’t want to mess with the old boy network, would we? And won’t someone please think of the paychecks?”
Sifiso’s face darkened. “It’s easy, I think, for a young man with no family and no community to support to say these things. To live in fantasy, rather than confront reality.”
“No community? Look around, I got mine right here, and I’ll have no problem keeping them safe, no matter who tries to get in the way.”
“Gaz,” Sal called in a warning tone.
In the near distance, another, much less expensive, vehicle drove up and Gaz recognized the plate. He scowled at Sifiso. “If you don’t mind. I’ve got a client to attend to. And you’d just better pray they’ve already taken her child off the planet.”
He almost wanted to punch himself for such an unbelievably stupid comment, but enraged pride kept pushing him forward. Shoving his way past the chief, he left Sal, now hobbling onto the tarmac on crutches, to do damage control. Not that Gaz cared. If Sanchez really was looking to move on to Caldera, leaving a few burnt bridges behind was something he could live with.
Gaz took a deep breath and tried to decelerate. He opened the car door and slid into the front passenger seat. Behind the wheel, a middle-aged woman stared at him through eyes clouded by exhaustion. Her hair was a frayed mess, while reddened, irritated skin tinged her nose and eyes.
“How are you doing Ntsika?” he asked as gently as he could.
She ignored the question and nodded to the plane on the tarmac. “I heard about the rescue this morning. Is that them?”
“Yes.”
“They must be very happy.”
Her voice was both bitter and sympathetic. Gaz remembered when he had felt those same contradictory emotions. Now he only felt a predator’s hunger.
“They have happiness and pain. A lot of pain to heal from, but a lot of hope as well.”
Ntsika sniffed and nodded. “My cousin works for the attorney’s office. He told me you would be kicked off Intaba.”
“That’s true, unfortunately,” Gaz said. “But we have a lead pointing us to Caldera. We’ll be heading there as soon as possible.”
“I see.” She picked a tissue out of the door and played with it. The movements had obviously become an unconscious habit.
“It’s only a matter of time, now, Ntsika. Once we start to get leads, we always run them down. Wherever they took your daughter, we will find her.”
She smiled at him, and he knew immediately that it was an expression of pity for his naivety.
“I think,” she said, “that the worst thing about you people, is that you keep offering hope. It is more painful than moving on.”
Gaz said farewell and left the car. While he watched the vehicle drive off the tarmac, he took a portrait photo out of his pocket and looked into the eyes of young Milani Mayosi. She had been a basketball player, hoping to study architecture. A lot like his sister when they had taken her, though she had preferred swimming.
He had been deployed when it happened. The Marines had been about giving his life a greater meaning, serving the good of the League. But after ten years, he was forced to question what service they had rendered, holding back endless tribal conflicts while the Helvet governors only stewed the corrupt, incompetent mess. Meanwhile, the truly innocent, even his own family, were being preyed on by monsters.
Some nights the drink reminded him that the tearful reunions meant nothing. What he really wanted was the excuse to kill evil men. To leave their bodies behind to inflict fear in their masters. Perhaps some of them would have nightmares as they imagined him coming for them too.
Milani would be rescued; he had no doubts about that. Sanchez had been a brilliant intelligence officer, and Caldera was so far beyond the League’s authority they could operate almost with impunity. But his sister would never come home, wherever she was, dead or alive. He could only avenge her, and that he could do with extreme prejudice.
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Prequel (Parts 1 to 16)
1. Rise of a Valkyrie
2024.05.28 13:29 louied91 BSEG: 3 Cent/Share Big Screen Entertainment Group Positioned to be Star Stock Performer
Article Link: https://richardacavalli.wixsite.com/greenplanetmicrocaps/3-cent-entertainment-star-stock
Additionally, low-budget films often cater to niche audiences or explore unique storytelling approaches, which can generate strong word-of-mouth buzz and dedicated fan followings. This grassroots support can lead to significant returns on investment, as seen in the success of independent films like "The Blair Witch Project" or "Paranormal Activity," which were made on shoestring budgets but went on to earn millions at the box office.
Furthermore, with the rise of digital distribution platforms and alternative distribution models, low-budget filmmakers have more avenues than ever to reach audiences directly, reducing marketing and distribution costs while maximizing profits. So, while big budgets can certainly help with spectacle and scale, there's a lot to be said for all the reasons above, Big Screen Entertainment Group (BSEG: OTC) stands out as one of the greatest opportunities to invest in a 3.3 cent stock with a total market capitalization of under $4 million.
New Marilyn Monroe Series in Production Could Send BSEG Shares Flying
The entertainment industry is big and streaming is catapulting revenues even higher. Sales are frequently driven by star power. Names can be everything. Marilyn Monroe is a classic example of a name that continues to draw large numbers of all ages as evidenced by over 7 billion clicks about her on Tik Tok.
Fast-growing, Big Screen Entertainment Group is beginning to make waves in the entertainment industry and recently announced that is thrilled to unveil its latest TV show in production, the highly anticipated unscripted series, “Hollywood Legends: Marilyn Monroe.” A mesmerizing eight-part exploration of Marilyn Monroe's extraordinary life delves into the many fascinating facets of this timeless Hollywood icon, capturing the essence of her undeniable talent and enduring stardom which continues to attract audiences worldwide. This epic documentary was filmed at historic locations across Los Angeles and uncovers hidden stories and untold secrets that shaped Marilyn's journey to superstardom.
Hollywood Legends will premiere exclusively on Big Stream Entertainment, BSEG's cutting-edge streaming platform that boasts a vast library of films, documentaries, and specials, including several featuring Monroe herself. Available on Roku, online, or on your Android device via the Google Play store, Big Stream offers hundreds of hours of captivating content.
“Hollywood Legends: Marilyn Monroe” is produced by BSEG's Chief Executive Kimberley Kates, who said: “Through this show, we pay homage to Marilyn's enduring legacy, presenting her as the trailblazing woman she was—always ahead of her time and an inspiration to millions.”
The Marilyn Monroe documentary will provide new information about Marilyn Monroe that has never been aired and is expected to draw large audiences. Hollywood Legends is just the tip of the iceberg for Big Screen Entertainment Group. The entertainment industry is dominated by industry giants such as Disney, Netflix, Warner Brothers, Roku, Paramount and others, but relatively unknown Big Screen Entertainment Group is quickly establishing itself as a serious contender for large audiences to enjoy a broad spectrum of the most popular categories of films. Big Screen Entertainment Group is guided by Kimberley Kates, who is experienced both in front of the camera and behind the camera where the rubber hits the road to success. There are several moving parts to the movie business and Kimberley Kates knows exactly which paths to take to success.
Demand for the soon upcoming Marilyn Monroe series is expected to be so large that Big Screen announced it is also producing and releasing a Feature Length Documentary about Marilyn Monroe with footage never seen before that is sure to draw large audiences across the globe.
Big Screen Entertainment Group is an innovative entertainment provider that is focused on creating not only popular and attractive projects but is equally focused on generating profits for its shareholders.
Kimberly Kates, CEO - Big Screen Entertainment Group
An important message from Kimberley Kates is, “We have a new line up of projects to make of 28 films from Hallmark to Horror to Faith based. We’ve been optioning scripts from top Hollywood writers the last 2 years. Our current focus for our films is not only to entertain, but also to shed inspiration hope and light in a somewhat dim world. Much of our new IP’s, scripts are about love, light and laughter. Our current slate of projects have that Spielberg touch: Heart, that Hollywood’s been missing for a while now.”
PREVIOUS WORK
BSEG's accomplished producers know how to make big hits and have been instrumental in leading successful projects like Terrifier 2 (Horror, budget $500K, grossing $50M), The Queen (Drama, budget $10M, grossing $125M), Step Up (Romcom, budget $8M, Grossing $120M).
TALENT
Boasting over 200 years of collective experience, the Big Screen Entertainment Group team has managed extensive film and TV programming featuring big names such as Meryl Streep, Bruce Willis, Vin Diesel, Jenny McCarthy, Christian Bale, and Woody Harrelson, thereby driving substantial profits for their clients.
ONE SINGLE PROJECT CAN CATAPULT BIG SCREEN ENTERTAINMENT GROWTH – THERE ARE SEVERAL
Big Screen Entertainment has a large pipeline of films coming to the screen and a list can be seen here.
BIG FILM FUND
Big Screen Entertainment is seeking to launch its own film equity crowdfunding platform, the Big Film Fund, which will be owned by the company. In order to build this platform, BSEG is seeking investment in its common stock which is quoted on the OTC (Ticker: BSEG). BSEG has set a maximum raise of only $500,000 for accredited investors only.
REVENUE STREAMS
Big Screen Entertainment Group generates revenue from a range of sources:
Big Screen Entertainment is dedicated to creating programming that not only entertains but also helps children learn and grow.
Audible Versions of our Books will also be available.
The entertainment industry is close to a $100 billion market and stellar performance by stocks like NFLX and ROKU suggest a bright future for Big Screen Entertainment Group that has tapped into the same streaming that has catapulted NFLX and ROKU. Big Screen Entertainment Group represents an opportunity to participate in a superior long-term growth business model positioning to become a large player in the entertainment industry and perhaps even more importantly, Big Screen Entertainment Group is about to launch a film about Marilyn Monroe that could be a blockbuster which could send shares flying. Shares are currently very undervalued, down from 40 cents and selling at 3.3 cents. With a tiny market cap of under $4 million which suggests a big upside potential if the company continues to be successful.
submitted by louied91 to TheStreetReports [link] [comments]
- Big Screen Entertainment Group has been in business since 2005 and is now entering a rapid growth phase with a very popular Marilyn Monroe story in production
- Big Screen Entertainment Group has 31 Movies in the can and over 300 titles in distribution and growing
- Marilyn Monroe is one of the most popular film subjects in history and the new Marilyn Monroe series by Big Screen Entertainment Group could send BSEG shares soaring. This new series will air information about Marilyn Monroe that has never been aired
- Big Screen Entertainment Group has its own distribution platform called Big Stream that distributes through Roku, iTunes, Tubi (owned by Fox), You Tube, Hulu, Shutter, Netflix, Hallmark, Amazon Prime, Paramount and more
- Big Screen Entertainment has a 90,000 sq ft production facility in the City of Commerce, Los Angeles and recently launched the Big Film Fund to produce films in the biggest revenue categories
- Attractive revenue growth projections and big potential upside with share price at only 3.3 cents and small market cap of $3.7 million
Additionally, low-budget films often cater to niche audiences or explore unique storytelling approaches, which can generate strong word-of-mouth buzz and dedicated fan followings. This grassroots support can lead to significant returns on investment, as seen in the success of independent films like "The Blair Witch Project" or "Paranormal Activity," which were made on shoestring budgets but went on to earn millions at the box office.
Furthermore, with the rise of digital distribution platforms and alternative distribution models, low-budget filmmakers have more avenues than ever to reach audiences directly, reducing marketing and distribution costs while maximizing profits. So, while big budgets can certainly help with spectacle and scale, there's a lot to be said for all the reasons above, Big Screen Entertainment Group (BSEG: OTC) stands out as one of the greatest opportunities to invest in a 3.3 cent stock with a total market capitalization of under $4 million.
New Marilyn Monroe Series in Production Could Send BSEG Shares Flying
The entertainment industry is big and streaming is catapulting revenues even higher. Sales are frequently driven by star power. Names can be everything. Marilyn Monroe is a classic example of a name that continues to draw large numbers of all ages as evidenced by over 7 billion clicks about her on Tik Tok.
Fast-growing, Big Screen Entertainment Group is beginning to make waves in the entertainment industry and recently announced that is thrilled to unveil its latest TV show in production, the highly anticipated unscripted series, “Hollywood Legends: Marilyn Monroe.” A mesmerizing eight-part exploration of Marilyn Monroe's extraordinary life delves into the many fascinating facets of this timeless Hollywood icon, capturing the essence of her undeniable talent and enduring stardom which continues to attract audiences worldwide. This epic documentary was filmed at historic locations across Los Angeles and uncovers hidden stories and untold secrets that shaped Marilyn's journey to superstardom.
Hollywood Legends will premiere exclusively on Big Stream Entertainment, BSEG's cutting-edge streaming platform that boasts a vast library of films, documentaries, and specials, including several featuring Monroe herself. Available on Roku, online, or on your Android device via the Google Play store, Big Stream offers hundreds of hours of captivating content.
“Hollywood Legends: Marilyn Monroe” is produced by BSEG's Chief Executive Kimberley Kates, who said: “Through this show, we pay homage to Marilyn's enduring legacy, presenting her as the trailblazing woman she was—always ahead of her time and an inspiration to millions.”
The Marilyn Monroe documentary will provide new information about Marilyn Monroe that has never been aired and is expected to draw large audiences. Hollywood Legends is just the tip of the iceberg for Big Screen Entertainment Group. The entertainment industry is dominated by industry giants such as Disney, Netflix, Warner Brothers, Roku, Paramount and others, but relatively unknown Big Screen Entertainment Group is quickly establishing itself as a serious contender for large audiences to enjoy a broad spectrum of the most popular categories of films. Big Screen Entertainment Group is guided by Kimberley Kates, who is experienced both in front of the camera and behind the camera where the rubber hits the road to success. There are several moving parts to the movie business and Kimberley Kates knows exactly which paths to take to success.
Demand for the soon upcoming Marilyn Monroe series is expected to be so large that Big Screen announced it is also producing and releasing a Feature Length Documentary about Marilyn Monroe with footage never seen before that is sure to draw large audiences across the globe.
Big Screen Entertainment Group is an innovative entertainment provider that is focused on creating not only popular and attractive projects but is equally focused on generating profits for its shareholders.
Kimberly Kates, CEO - Big Screen Entertainment Group
An important message from Kimberley Kates is, “We have a new line up of projects to make of 28 films from Hallmark to Horror to Faith based. We’ve been optioning scripts from top Hollywood writers the last 2 years. Our current focus for our films is not only to entertain, but also to shed inspiration hope and light in a somewhat dim world. Much of our new IP’s, scripts are about love, light and laughter. Our current slate of projects have that Spielberg touch: Heart, that Hollywood’s been missing for a while now.”
PREVIOUS WORK
BSEG's accomplished producers know how to make big hits and have been instrumental in leading successful projects like Terrifier 2 (Horror, budget $500K, grossing $50M), The Queen (Drama, budget $10M, grossing $125M), Step Up (Romcom, budget $8M, Grossing $120M).
TALENT
Boasting over 200 years of collective experience, the Big Screen Entertainment Group team has managed extensive film and TV programming featuring big names such as Meryl Streep, Bruce Willis, Vin Diesel, Jenny McCarthy, Christian Bale, and Woody Harrelson, thereby driving substantial profits for their clients.
ONE SINGLE PROJECT CAN CATAPULT BIG SCREEN ENTERTAINMENT GROWTH – THERE ARE SEVERAL
Big Screen Entertainment has a large pipeline of films coming to the screen and a list can be seen here.
BIG FILM FUND
Big Screen Entertainment is seeking to launch its own film equity crowdfunding platform, the Big Film Fund, which will be owned by the company. In order to build this platform, BSEG is seeking investment in its common stock which is quoted on the OTC (Ticker: BSEG). BSEG has set a maximum raise of only $500,000 for accredited investors only.
REVENUE STREAMS
Big Screen Entertainment Group generates revenue from a range of sources:
- Distribution is on all major platforms, including DVD sales which remain stable. This has been a reliable source of revenue that the company continues to expand.
- Marketing and Production: Marketing and production is another key revenue source. With a talented team in-house, Big Screen is committed to delivering high-quality product for clients.
- Streaming Channel: Big Stream is an exciting area of growth to reach a wider audience and to build brand recognition with original programming. Currently Big Screen has over 300 titles and plans on expanding its library.
- The Princess Network Retail: The Princess Network Retail is a profitable revenue stream and Big Screen is committed to expanding this area in the future.
- Kids Education and Programming:
Big Screen Entertainment is dedicated to creating programming that not only entertains but also helps children learn and grow.
- Publishing:
Audible Versions of our Books will also be available.
- Selling IPs: Selling IPs to major studios and streamers is an area the company is actively pursuing. With the potential for significant revenue, this as an important area for growth and management is working to increase efforts in this area. The company has been actively developing new shows with teams of writers.
- Film Production and Creation: Big Screen receives a studio fee and production fee for film production and creation work. This includes not only feature films for streamers, but also content for TV like Hallmark Channel and Lifetime. With the opportunity to retain foreign rights and sell to the rest of the world, this is an area committed to growing. This area of growth has significant potential for revenue, and we are committed to investing in the development of new and exciting content for kids. With our talented team and strong partnerships, we are confident in our ability to continue to deliver the highest quality content for kids and their families.
The entertainment industry is close to a $100 billion market and stellar performance by stocks like NFLX and ROKU suggest a bright future for Big Screen Entertainment Group that has tapped into the same streaming that has catapulted NFLX and ROKU. Big Screen Entertainment Group represents an opportunity to participate in a superior long-term growth business model positioning to become a large player in the entertainment industry and perhaps even more importantly, Big Screen Entertainment Group is about to launch a film about Marilyn Monroe that could be a blockbuster which could send shares flying. Shares are currently very undervalued, down from 40 cents and selling at 3.3 cents. With a tiny market cap of under $4 million which suggests a big upside potential if the company continues to be successful.
2024.05.28 06:07 LucyAriaRose New updates to: AITAH for believing my daughter over a “grown man”?
I am still NOT the Original Poster. That is u/amme04. She posted in AITAH, poor and TwoXChromosomes
Previous BORU posts are here, here and here. I removed some of the relevant comments to save space. New Updates start with ****\*
Mood Spoiler: bleak and will make you hate the justice system
Original Post: November 30, 2023
I don’t know if i watch too many crime shows or if I’m just paranoid so I’ve come here to ask. Last week I made chicken gnocchi soup. When it was almost done I started helping my daughter with a school project. She got us both a bowl and a few seconds later my bf runs into the room with a bowl and tells me to eat the bowl he has. I told him it was all the same and he insisted that he wanted mine because it had more chicken. Thinking back now I don’t know how he would know that considering my daughter dished it out. My daughter took the bowl he gave me and said she would eat it. He yanked it out of hand and said “no it’s for mom”.
I took the bowl and he went to the living room. I continued doing my daughter's project and told her not to eat the soup. 20ish minutes later I walked into the kitchen to pour the soups out and he was still eating his. He asked why we didn’t eat any and I said the cat got into it while we were waiting for it to cool down. He screamed “WHAT!? Was it your bowl !?! Cats can’t eat that!?”. I told him it was only a lick but he has been stressed out watching the cat like a hawk, obsessive even. His reaction was very weird.
These "accidents" all happened before the soup incident over the span of 6 months. It wasn't one after another in a short period of time. Since then my emergency money has gone missing. I keep money hidden just in case. I lost my older sister because she wasn’t able to escape a dangerous situation and I literally swore on her grave I would never be in that position. After the soup incident I went to get my money and it was gone. It was hidden and I changed the location every few months. I asked my daughter if maybe she found it and that if she took it I wouldn’t be mad because I knew she couldn’t have spent it. She said no. A few hours later she tells me she forgot but the other day her and my bf got pulled over and she saw my pink wallet in his glove box. I did not tell her which wallet it was in or that it was in a wallet.
I decided to ask him if he found it by accident. He asked me why I was hiding a large amount of money, “you know you could never leave me” and laughed. (He has never said anything like that before). I told him it was for my daughters Christmas. He said no he didn’t find the money but could use his credit card for gifts. I didn’t tell him about my daughter seeing my wallet in his car. Now here are a few other things that have happened in the past few months that seemed random at the time but now they don’t.
I have a severe allergy to latex. One day we were about to have sex and I glanced at the mirror we have by our bed and saw the condom wrapper was a different color. I stopped him because it wasn’t latex free and he said it was a mistake and just an older one he had. We have been dating for over 2 years and he knows how serious my allergy is. My epipen that I keep in my room is missing and I didn’t realize it. I didn't realize it was missing until I was searching for my money.
Another odd thing is one day he was following me down the stairs while I was carrying laundry and he kicked the back of my leg and I fell. He said he slipped but the stairs are wood and he was wearing his steel toe boots. At the time I thought it was an accident.
Am I overthinking this? My anxiety has been at an all time high. Do I watch too much true crime? Here is why I think I might be the asshole. We have a good relationship. He loves my daughter like she is his. We split all shared bills and we both pull our own weight around the apartment. We don’t fight. He has never so much as raised his voice at me. We are paycheck to paycheck but bills are paid.
I thought about going to my moms house for a few days and asking him when I get there when I’m safe about the money but I don’t have money to do that now. She is on a fixed income and can't help. I feel stupid for being scared. Last night I decided to check his car for my wallet and he caught me. I asked him for my money back and he tried playing dumb. I told him my daughter saw it there. He told me she was lying. I told him I never told her about the money or what wallet. He said he was a grown man and kids lie all the time. I asked him once more for my money and he said “I’m not giving you money to leave me”. I waited until he was in the shower to grab my cat and my daughter and we left.
I can’t take my cat with us to a shelter and the DV shelters are full. I was able to get us a night at a cheap motel. This exact situation is why I had money saved. I did everything right and now I’m screwed. I feel like I just blew up my entire life.
Yes I'm using a burner account and reading all the comments that I can.
Relevant Comment:
Several people accuse this of being obviously fake because events escalated too quickly and why would she be posting on reddit for advice:
"I'm not a character in a anonymous fucking story. I wasn't looking for advice, I was looking for confirmation I wasn't paranoid. You bet your ass I left as soon as he said my daughter was lying. Fuck off"
There is no consensus bot on AITAH, but it was pretty obviously NTA
Update Post 1: December 4, 2023 (4 days later)
A TL:DR; I think my boyfriend put something in my soup. After that incident I remembered a few months ago he almost used a latex condom knowing I’m severely allergic and I also remembered when he “accidentally” knocked me down the stairs. I started piecing things together and realized my epi pen was gone as well as a large amount of money I had hidden. My daughter saw my old wallet in his glove box and he denied it.
My post got alot of attention and my account was shadowbanned for a few days. I was able to appeal and get my account back because I’m not a bot or some AI. Now for the update.
The day after we left he sent me a picture of my epi pen and tried telling me it was in my nightstand the whole time. I tore that room apart looking for it so I KNOW for 100% fact it wasn’t there. He took it. He tried getting me to come back telling me I scared myself stupid and watched too many true crime TV. Something didn't feel right so I told him to put my money and epi pen in the mailbox. We went back and forth and he denied having my money. He then said “If we broke up you and Maria (my daughter) are no longer allowed in my apartment and will be treated like trespassers” and sent me a pic of his target practice sheets. I went to the police about the money and was told it was a civil issue. I was upset but wanted the rest of my stuff so I asked for an escort.
Yesterday I finally got an escort into the apartment with a cop and my landlord. He destroyed everything of my daughters and he ruined the laptop charger I use for work. No epi pen. My daughters medication and back up medical supplies were ruined. Our landlord let me off the lease without having to pay an early termination fee which is great considering I have no money. Motels are expensive. I don’t want to get rid of our cat. All shelters are full and this is scary as shit.
I’m sorry this is a shitty update but I know people wanted it.
Relevant Comments:
There has to be something that can be done about your daughter's meds:
"I'm beyond angry that nothing can be done. Insurance won't cover her medications or supplies until next month. She JUST got refills. I can get her meds but I'll pay out of pocket. I have no money. Since I couldn't prove my money existed I can't prove he stole it. I'm livid."
Restraining order?
"Nope not unless he gets physical with me. I should have let him hit me and I would have a lot more help available which is so fucked up."
Update Post 2: December 10, 2023 (6 days later, 10 days from OG post)
My OP got a lot of attention but then my account got shadowbanned and was temporarily removed. I just updated 5 days ago but this will be my final update because there is nothing anyone can do. I was encouraged to go back to the police station after my last update.
On Saturday December 9th I went back AGAIN. This time I printed out the threatening text messages that included the target practice sheets he sent, I explained in detail about the “accidents” proving he was trying to hurt me, and I even had my landlord put in writing that he believed our lives were in danger after seeing everything I was showing the police and let me leave my lease early. I brought in the destroyed medical supplies and medications.
The police said they had already talked to him and said he didn’t do any of it. He told them my daughter probably destroyed her stuff because she is “special ed”. She has very mild Asperger's but doesn’t destroy things! Since it was his word against mine they believed him. I didn’t have proof he stole the money or that it even existed in the first place. I was told the epi pen was my responsibility and they won’t do anything if it’s lost. I was told to “let it go” and acted like I was bothering the police with my “petty civil issues”.
I am so defeated and angry. My daughter isn’t going to have gifts for Christmas because I have to save for a new deposit on an apartment. We have been staying in motels while I was reaching out to DV resources. I can’t get help without a restraining orde police report. Every place is out of funds. He is getting away with everything and I’m so glad we got out because there is no doubt in my mind he would have gotten away with my murder.
I know this sounds like my last update but that is what happened…nothing new. No justice. No repercussions for him. He gets to stay in the apartment. My landlord offered me another unit across town but I can’t afford to move in. This exact situation is why I had money stashed away because no one has ever cared about me/us and I knew that. There is nothing else I can do.
Editor's note: OOP posted in another sub with the exact same information as above and no new update. However, she did add this clarification about shelters:
"All shelters are full. I found an organization who helps DV victims with housing but only if you have a police report and a restraining order. I guess they are tired of victims going back to their partner, safety reasons, or something. I was denied a restraining order because I had no proof. I’m scared, exhausted, and disappointed."
Update Post 3: December 28, 2023 (18 days later)
Title: I thought we were safe
Alot of people wanted a update so here it is. On Christmas he slashed my tires knowing I would have to pay out of pocket to replace them which I don’t have. Today he threw a heavy patio chair through the window of the place we were staying at to let me know he knew where we were and I was asked to leave for everyone's safety.
Except my daughter and I aren’t safe. I walked in the sleet/snow with my daughter and our cat and I felt vulnerable and like open prey so we came back to the police station to sit in the lobby until morning. Shelters are still full and I now have to disclose that he is dangerous anywhere we go. Police couldn’t find him but I know he has to be close.
I don’t know what his end game is.
Relevant Comments:
Can police direct you to a DV shelter?
"The shelters here are full so we are just sitting in the police station lobby. We are at least safe and warm so I'm grateful for that."
On donations:
"Donations aren't allowed here and my post could get removed because of it. I'm trying to stay awake and really just venting. I'm so frustrated that he keeps getting away with this shit."
Do you know how he keeps finding you? Have you checked for trackers?
"I honestly have no idea! He is supposed to have a new girlfriend too so IDK why he is messing with me and destroying property"
Reset your phone to factory settings:
"I got a cheap burner after we left. He doesn't have my number nor have I used it to call anyone so IDK how he is tracking me."
You said he sent you a photo of the epi pen after you left. How did he communicate that to you?
"He sent it through my email before I blocked it."
Update Post 4: January 1, 2024 (4 days later; a bit over 1 month from OG post)
Title: I found the air tag in the cat carrier
Please read my other posts for more context but a tl:dr; I’m pretty sure my ex was/is trying to kill me. There were a few instances that I wrote off as “accidents'' until I think he poisoned my soup that was specifically for me. On Christmas he found where we were staying and slashed my tires and threw a heavy patio chair and planter through a window. He still hasn’t been caught.
I checked everywhere I could think of and still couldn't figure out how he was tracking us. I blocked him on everything including email after he sent me pics of his target practice sheets among other things. I got a cheap burner phone. My daughter was out of school for winter break so he didn’t follow her or anything. I checked my car for a tracker. Still nothing.
I do not have an iphone so I couldn’t check whatever app a air tag is attached to. My cat is harness trained and wears a collar but there was no tracker. Until today I decided to “feel up” (sorry only way I can describe it) the carrier. I ran my fingers over every inch of it and felt a bump on the bottom soft side. There was no new stitching or obvious cut. He had to use a seam ripper along the stitching. It was undetectable and I almost missed it. He had to have had help because I’ve never seen him sew anything. Probably the same person who is letting him hide now.
If his excuse for the air tag was to track my cat he would have put it on his collar or harness because that is what he would wear when we go on walks/car rides. My cat would never go in his carrier unless I was planning on leaving for more than a few days. I have no idea how long it has been there nor do I know how far the tracker works but now we aren’t safe where we are, AGAIN. I feel disgusting and I feel like hunted prey. This is so unnerving and I’m so uncomfortable. Who the f*ck was I living with?
Relevant Comment:
Update Post 5: January 7, 2024 (6 days later, 5.5 weeks from OG post)
Title: I finally got the restraining order!
I’m hoping this update will make everyone as happy as it makes me! I was finally granted the restraining order. And we get the keys to our new apartment on the 11th. A place I can afford monthly and comes partially furnished. It’s in a super safe area right by my daughter's school. There is security!! We will spend our time living in our car until then and of course it has to be snowing but we are together and we have our kitty. This nightmare is almost over.
Update Post 5: February 2, 2024 (almost 1 month later)
Title: A restraining order didn't stop him
This morning he found me.
I've been sick as hell so after I dropped my daughter off at school I went straight home.
I didn't drive around to make sure no one was following me. I messed up.
He broke my nose and shattered my orbital bone. He is in jail. Sorry for this update ya'll.
Relevant Comments:
"Staying in the hospital for the night, I was pretty sick before this happened. My daughter is with a friend for the night. My landlord fixed the door as best he could and told me my cat wasn't in the apartment so I'm worried sick. I thought this was over, I'm so so so tired."
"I'm sure his mom will bail him out. Why can't he just move on? He took my money and my peace, what more can he take until he is satisfied?"
Commenter: Please pull your daughter out of her school and leave the state ASAP.
Title: Not being able to move even if my life depends on it
I know the importance of having money saved and I live within my means. How many of us is one disaster away from losing everything? A fire, job loss, a bank screw up, a late paycheck, illness, or someone stealing from you. I had money saved because I knew that any one of those things could happen and I wouldn't have anyone who could help me. And it did. Two months ago my ex tried poisoning me and stole the money I had saved. It’s been hell since. I was able to break my lease and leave. I went to my moms over Christmas break but I came back because I didn’t want to disrupt my daughters schooling and I underestimated my ex.
I was able to get an apartment through DV services very quickly which was a miracle. I know how hard it is to find housing and then try to come up with all the deposits a new place needs. I did it, the cards fell in my favor. But then I fucked up. On Friday I took my daughter to school and wasn’t diligent. I will usually drive around to make sure I’m not being followed. To be honest I started feeling crazy, paranoid, and angry I was wasting gas. Plus I have pneumonia and strep that I haven’t been able to pay for the antibiotics so I just went home to my bed.
He found me and broke my nose, shattered my orbital bone, and I have a concussion. I had a restraining order and he was arrested. I shared this on another sub and everyone telling me to move, leave, RUN. Except I can’t do that. It’s hard trying to explain that to people for them to understand because it sounds like excuses, like I like living in fear or something. I can’t pull money out of thin air. My credit card is maxed. I contacted DV services at the hospital and because I just got help, I can’t get it again.
The thing I didn’t know about abusive men is that they don’t just move on or stop. There are DV shelters but they are full. I wish people would understand that I know how serious this is but money doesn’t grow on trees. Even if a life depends on it.
Relevant Comments:
Will your parents really not help you?
I only have my mom who lives out of state. She is on a fixed income so she can't help me. We could stay with her but at this point I'm out of luck and nothing worth a damn to sell.
You need to disappear:
Honestly how? I'm not going to get anywhere on foot.
Update Post 7: February 15, 2024 (11 days later, 2.5 months from OG post)
Title: He was with me to get to my daughter
It all makes sense now. If you need more context please read my past posts. In my first post I said how we had a normal relationship and he was never abusive, controlling, never raised his voice. The money that he ended up stealing was money I had hidden since before he even moved in. I was not hiding money to get away from him. I was not afraid of him. I lost my sister to DV and swore I’d never have that happen to me only to end up in that exact situation. We didn’t have this spectacular love that was filled with insane chemistry, nowhere near a “love of my life” situation which is why I was so confused by how desperate he got.
After he got arrested his mom went on a social media rant because I “got her baby locked up” and knew we were sleeping in my car so was telling her followers that if they find me to call her. Very bold and insane. One of my exes friends saw this and commented “Idk if you should be sticking up for him, he needs serious help”. I don’t know how I caught it before it was deleted but I reached out to him on my fake facebook.
Every time they were drinking he would talk about her and then laugh it off. It made his friends uncomfortable but they chalked it up to the booze. Two weeks ago when my daughter came to see me in the hospital she was distraught. It made sense because I looked like hell but she kept repeating over and over asking me why he did this to me. I think there was more to this and I’m frightened to my core. Remember he stole my epi pen and money but he destroyed almost everything of hers and I didn't understand it because she had nothing to do with the breakup.
Why did he destroy her medicine? Why did he destroy her clothes? Fucking why? Dont abusers threaten their victim into not saying anything or something is going to happen to someone/something they love? I’m sick to my stomach even writing that out. I don’t know where to go from here, how do I even begin a conversation about this with her? We are safe. I’m not worried about him finding us because he is still in jail which is great because I’m out of money. He wasn’t desperate and crazy because he was losing me, I think it was because of her.
Update Post 8: February 20, 2024 (5 days later)
Title: My ex is getting bailed out tomorrow
I'm so angry and scared.
I wish I had faith in the justice system and with cops because they are supposed to protect, right? Except that isn't always the case.
I'm tired of being hurt and I'm tired of being scared. Anxiety is on 100.
It's exhausting fearing my daughter and I's life.
Update Post 9: February 28, 2024 (8 days later, 3 months from OG post)
Title: How can I feel safer at home?
I know a lot of people are following my posts and will be disappointed in hearing that my ex was bailed out. I’m still healing from when he broke my nose and shattered my orbital bone. I know a restraining order is just a piece of paper because he ignored it when I was attacked and the police aren’t going to save me. For security I only have a door bar that slides under the knob. I don’t have a ring camera and I can’t buy a pew pew until I have extra funds. He made me sell it a year ago because he was “uncomfortable” with it being in the house. Another red flag I missed.
My question is what can I do to feel safer that doesn’t require money? Every night my daughter and I push the couch in front of the door but I’m worried that if there is a fire we can’t get out. I have myself worried sick to the point of painful stomach ulcers. I tried talking to my nearest neighbor but when I started explaining my situation and how it would be great if she could let me know if she sees anyone around my apartment she got weirded out. Which I get.
Just looking for some peace of mind, will that ever exist in my life again?
Update Post 10: March 6, 2024 (1 week later)
Title: AITAH or was this just a mistake?
Editor's note: I removed the first part of this as it is a recap of the previous posts
I know this is all I post about and if you want more context you can read my past posts. I feel like I need to tell someone what is happening so that it makes it feel real and that I’m not just upset and crazy for nothing. My ex got out on bail last week. My daughter and I already left the new apartment we had moved into after he attacked me.
My daughter's school knows about my situation and knows I have a restraining order. Today my daughter got a call from the front office at school. The secretary told her that the pickup car had changed from mine to a new car. She was being told this so that when school let out she wouldn’t get upset when she didn’t see my car. The “new car” is the same one as my exes. It is a rare cacolor and she told me she knew it was his car. She didn’t say anything to the secretary or her teacher because she was instantly scared. It breaks my heart that she was in fear because she thought he had got me and was going to get her.
She was given the message hours before school let out so she spent all that time worrying. The last ten minutes of the day is when the kids can use the bathroom and clean up. She started crying infront of her whole class and when the bell rang she refused to leave her classroom. I was in the carpool line when I got the call from her teacher.
I have never seen her so upset and that is saying a lot because she was so upset when she visited me in the hospital. Face beet red, hyperventilating, snot everywhere, she had cried so hard she got a nosebleed. After they told me what happened I was livid. It all sounded like bullshit because the secretary never should have relayed the message without talking to me first since she said it was a male on the phone. As soon as the secretary looked my daughter up to find out which room to call she should have seen the message I thought I had saying no one should ever pick her up but me. No information should ever be released.
“He was never in contact with her so it’s not that big of a deal, it was a mistake” is what they told me. All he had to give was her full name and what grade she was in to get a message to her. They said that to me with a straight face while the bruises he gave me were very visible proving he is a violent man. I’m so f*cking angry. She told me she knew I didn’t get a new car because as much as I try to hide it from her she knows I’m broke. She thought she was going to have to go with him. She has been so traumatized and I don't know what to do. She wants to switch to e learning but since it’s not a medical reason and not a school wide restriction I would have to pay to rent the laptop. Which I obviously can’t.
The school is calling it an innocent mistake and didn't even apologize. I know I'm the only one responsible for my daughter and I’s safety but damn if people could stop jeopardizing it like it’s nothing and then acting like I’m the asshole for being upset because it was a “mistake”. He wasn’t there after school but he could have.
Update Post 11: March 7, 2024 (Next Day)
Title: He is never going to stop terrorizing us
Editor's note- This is an almost word for word repost of the above post. I've kept it here for the timeline but also to include relevant Comments.
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: I hate to blatantly ask but did you ever find your cat?
I've had a few people asking so I wanted to update. I can now confidently say that my daughter, cat, and I are safe and will continue to be from here on out. I can start rebuilding without fear. I'm not okay but we are safe.
Update Post 13: April 23, 2024 (3 weeks later, almost 5 months from OG post)
Title: I’ve spent the last 4 months running for my life
I just want to say that if anyone is going through something similar to me, you can vent to me. This is something you have to experience to understand how hard it is. I know there are DV resources but they are extremely limited. I had someone on here “checking in” with me and when I explained what was going on I was asked “why aren’t you stable yet” and it kinda took me off guard. Only a few people knew I was pregnant through this.
I left my home with basically nothing and went to a hotel and he found me, I went to another hotel and he found me, I went to a safe house for two nights where I was asked to leave because my ex was dangerous, slept in my car with my daughter, went to my moms out of state, came back to my home state because that is where DV resources helped with a apartment, he followed me back to my apartment from my daughters school, I was hospitalized when he broke my nose, shattered my orbital bone, and gave me a concussion. I had to leave that apt, back to hotels and sleeping in my car, and finally back to my moms. So much money feels wasted. I have the opportunity to be added onto her new lease but it’s a bigger unit and requires a first/last deposit (impossible unless I rob a bank). The pet deposit is already paid.
But I only have until the 1st or we are back to living in the car because we have exceeded our “visitation” days. A year lease where my rent would only be $500 a month, utilities maybe $150? I’d be saving so much money and be able to rebuild my life. We would all have our own rooms which means privacy! Even though we are all female, privacy is precious. I haven’t slept in a bed since the hotel beds but even then it wasn’t “my” bed. It’s been my car, hotel bed, or the couch. Even when we were briefly in our new place I still slept on the couch with it pushed against the front door.
I know all my posts are about the same thing, one thing after another, and yes it IS exhausting and repetitive but think about how I feel. I’m desperate for stability and I can’t get it because he took so much from me. It wasn’t until I was out of “our” house and away from him for me to see how much power he had over my life. It’s embarrassing. Even if I have to go back to living in my car I’ll still be around to talk and I’ll still be optimistic because I deserve good things to happen to me that aren't only in my dreams.
Clarification on the air tag:
There was! Someone helped him put one in my cat's carrier because he knew if I was going to leave, I'd never leave my cat behind.
Update Post 14: May 21, 2024 (1 month later, almost 6 from OG post)
Title: The vet gave my abuser my location
I want to say this was a genuine mistake and not done with malicious intent but I still need to vent about it. Just like my daughter's school letting my abuser give her a message, this was an accident but accidents put my life in danger and I’m exhausted. I post about my situation alot and despite a few users thinking my ex would find my reddit, I’m not worried about that. However, I am terrified of him knowing where I am. He has gone through a restraining order, police don’t scare him, and when he got/gets arrested he will just get bailed out. I knew the only way I could live a normal life was getting as far away from him as possible.
So I took my daughter and cat and moved in with my mom a few states away. I was 100% confident that he didn’t know where I was because they never met, we were actually estranged for a few years before my ex and I even got together. I started feeling safe. I stopped jumping when I heard loud trucks. I was starting to get comfortable even though not alot of time had passed.
A few days ago my cat's back legs stopped working and he lost control of his bodily fluids.I was working but my mom rushed him to the ER vet. There were questions she couldn’t answer so they asked if he was chipped. He is but I changed my number a few times lately so one of the two numbers was out of service so they called the second one. I forgot to remove his number, I know this is my fault. The vet called him to get information and he didn’t give any information and hung up on them. The receptionist said he called back about 5 minutes later and said “I know she doesn’t have money. Tell her I’ll save her cat if she comes home”.
He knows how much my cat means to me. He found me the first time I left because his mom helped him sew an air tag into the lining of the cat carrier. He knew if I was to ever leave him I wouldn’t leave my cat. One time my ex threw him out of the house to hurt me while I was at work he refused to leave the porch. My ex then tried squirting him with a water bottle and when that didn’t work, he sprayed him with the hose. He basically got waterboarded and still would not leave.
He is my soul cat. When I got to the vet and they told me what happened I had one of the worst panic attacks I’ve had in awhile. I’ve had my cat for ten years and he has never gotten sick or injured. He has a UTI and a fractured foot from falling. The vet thinks he probably got his foot hurt first and that led to the UTI since he wasn’t using the litter box. I noticed he was slightly limping a few days ago but I couldn’t get him into the vet yet. The UTI developed quickly. I was naive in thinking the vet would save a pet's life even if the owner can’t pay upfront but it isn’t like a human going into the ER.
I’ve spent so much money and time trying to get away from my ex while also trying to live a normal safe life for my daughter. Once again something happens and he now knows the city we are in. I’m not running again because I can’t. I don’t think he will drive up here because like I said I’m a few states away but man did this bring back my paranoia and irrational fear.
I changed the chip information but the damage is done, I was a fucking idiot for not doing it sooner. This is my fault, I'm so damn tired.
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: Why did they use the microchip to get your number? Did your mom not have your most recent number to give them or something? Could you not be reached at work? That’s just weird to me.
submitted by LucyAriaRose to BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]
Previous BORU posts are here, here and here. I removed some of the relevant comments to save space. New Updates start with ****\*
A reminder that this sub has the 7 day waiting period, so the last update is 7 days old. This is a LONG, dark post.
Trigger Warnings: attempted murder; domestic violence; stalking; possible child predation; attempted kidnappingMood Spoiler: bleak and will make you hate the justice system
Original Post: November 30, 2023
I don’t know if i watch too many crime shows or if I’m just paranoid so I’ve come here to ask. Last week I made chicken gnocchi soup. When it was almost done I started helping my daughter with a school project. She got us both a bowl and a few seconds later my bf runs into the room with a bowl and tells me to eat the bowl he has. I told him it was all the same and he insisted that he wanted mine because it had more chicken. Thinking back now I don’t know how he would know that considering my daughter dished it out. My daughter took the bowl he gave me and said she would eat it. He yanked it out of hand and said “no it’s for mom”.
I took the bowl and he went to the living room. I continued doing my daughter's project and told her not to eat the soup. 20ish minutes later I walked into the kitchen to pour the soups out and he was still eating his. He asked why we didn’t eat any and I said the cat got into it while we were waiting for it to cool down. He screamed “WHAT!? Was it your bowl !?! Cats can’t eat that!?”. I told him it was only a lick but he has been stressed out watching the cat like a hawk, obsessive even. His reaction was very weird.
These "accidents" all happened before the soup incident over the span of 6 months. It wasn't one after another in a short period of time. Since then my emergency money has gone missing. I keep money hidden just in case. I lost my older sister because she wasn’t able to escape a dangerous situation and I literally swore on her grave I would never be in that position. After the soup incident I went to get my money and it was gone. It was hidden and I changed the location every few months. I asked my daughter if maybe she found it and that if she took it I wouldn’t be mad because I knew she couldn’t have spent it. She said no. A few hours later she tells me she forgot but the other day her and my bf got pulled over and she saw my pink wallet in his glove box. I did not tell her which wallet it was in or that it was in a wallet.
I decided to ask him if he found it by accident. He asked me why I was hiding a large amount of money, “you know you could never leave me” and laughed. (He has never said anything like that before). I told him it was for my daughters Christmas. He said no he didn’t find the money but could use his credit card for gifts. I didn’t tell him about my daughter seeing my wallet in his car. Now here are a few other things that have happened in the past few months that seemed random at the time but now they don’t.
I have a severe allergy to latex. One day we were about to have sex and I glanced at the mirror we have by our bed and saw the condom wrapper was a different color. I stopped him because it wasn’t latex free and he said it was a mistake and just an older one he had. We have been dating for over 2 years and he knows how serious my allergy is. My epipen that I keep in my room is missing and I didn’t realize it. I didn't realize it was missing until I was searching for my money.
Another odd thing is one day he was following me down the stairs while I was carrying laundry and he kicked the back of my leg and I fell. He said he slipped but the stairs are wood and he was wearing his steel toe boots. At the time I thought it was an accident.
Am I overthinking this? My anxiety has been at an all time high. Do I watch too much true crime? Here is why I think I might be the asshole. We have a good relationship. He loves my daughter like she is his. We split all shared bills and we both pull our own weight around the apartment. We don’t fight. He has never so much as raised his voice at me. We are paycheck to paycheck but bills are paid.
I thought about going to my moms house for a few days and asking him when I get there when I’m safe about the money but I don’t have money to do that now. She is on a fixed income and can't help. I feel stupid for being scared. Last night I decided to check his car for my wallet and he caught me. I asked him for my money back and he tried playing dumb. I told him my daughter saw it there. He told me she was lying. I told him I never told her about the money or what wallet. He said he was a grown man and kids lie all the time. I asked him once more for my money and he said “I’m not giving you money to leave me”. I waited until he was in the shower to grab my cat and my daughter and we left.
I can’t take my cat with us to a shelter and the DV shelters are full. I was able to get us a night at a cheap motel. This exact situation is why I had money saved. I did everything right and now I’m screwed. I feel like I just blew up my entire life.
Yes I'm using a burner account and reading all the comments that I can.
Relevant Comment:
Several people accuse this of being obviously fake because events escalated too quickly and why would she be posting on reddit for advice:
"I'm not a character in a anonymous fucking story. I wasn't looking for advice, I was looking for confirmation I wasn't paranoid. You bet your ass I left as soon as he said my daughter was lying. Fuck off"
There is no consensus bot on AITAH, but it was pretty obviously NTA
Update Post 1: December 4, 2023 (4 days later)
A TL:DR; I think my boyfriend put something in my soup. After that incident I remembered a few months ago he almost used a latex condom knowing I’m severely allergic and I also remembered when he “accidentally” knocked me down the stairs. I started piecing things together and realized my epi pen was gone as well as a large amount of money I had hidden. My daughter saw my old wallet in his glove box and he denied it.
My post got alot of attention and my account was shadowbanned for a few days. I was able to appeal and get my account back because I’m not a bot or some AI. Now for the update.
The day after we left he sent me a picture of my epi pen and tried telling me it was in my nightstand the whole time. I tore that room apart looking for it so I KNOW for 100% fact it wasn’t there. He took it. He tried getting me to come back telling me I scared myself stupid and watched too many true crime TV. Something didn't feel right so I told him to put my money and epi pen in the mailbox. We went back and forth and he denied having my money. He then said “If we broke up you and Maria (my daughter) are no longer allowed in my apartment and will be treated like trespassers” and sent me a pic of his target practice sheets. I went to the police about the money and was told it was a civil issue. I was upset but wanted the rest of my stuff so I asked for an escort.
Yesterday I finally got an escort into the apartment with a cop and my landlord. He destroyed everything of my daughters and he ruined the laptop charger I use for work. No epi pen. My daughters medication and back up medical supplies were ruined. Our landlord let me off the lease without having to pay an early termination fee which is great considering I have no money. Motels are expensive. I don’t want to get rid of our cat. All shelters are full and this is scary as shit.
I’m sorry this is a shitty update but I know people wanted it.
Relevant Comments:
There has to be something that can be done about your daughter's meds:
"I'm beyond angry that nothing can be done. Insurance won't cover her medications or supplies until next month. She JUST got refills. I can get her meds but I'll pay out of pocket. I have no money. Since I couldn't prove my money existed I can't prove he stole it. I'm livid."
Restraining order?
"Nope not unless he gets physical with me. I should have let him hit me and I would have a lot more help available which is so fucked up."
Update Post 2: December 10, 2023 (6 days later, 10 days from OG post)
My OP got a lot of attention but then my account got shadowbanned and was temporarily removed. I just updated 5 days ago but this will be my final update because there is nothing anyone can do. I was encouraged to go back to the police station after my last update.
On Saturday December 9th I went back AGAIN. This time I printed out the threatening text messages that included the target practice sheets he sent, I explained in detail about the “accidents” proving he was trying to hurt me, and I even had my landlord put in writing that he believed our lives were in danger after seeing everything I was showing the police and let me leave my lease early. I brought in the destroyed medical supplies and medications.
The police said they had already talked to him and said he didn’t do any of it. He told them my daughter probably destroyed her stuff because she is “special ed”. She has very mild Asperger's but doesn’t destroy things! Since it was his word against mine they believed him. I didn’t have proof he stole the money or that it even existed in the first place. I was told the epi pen was my responsibility and they won’t do anything if it’s lost. I was told to “let it go” and acted like I was bothering the police with my “petty civil issues”.
I am so defeated and angry. My daughter isn’t going to have gifts for Christmas because I have to save for a new deposit on an apartment. We have been staying in motels while I was reaching out to DV resources. I can’t get help without a restraining orde police report. Every place is out of funds. He is getting away with everything and I’m so glad we got out because there is no doubt in my mind he would have gotten away with my murder.
I know this sounds like my last update but that is what happened…nothing new. No justice. No repercussions for him. He gets to stay in the apartment. My landlord offered me another unit across town but I can’t afford to move in. This exact situation is why I had money stashed away because no one has ever cared about me/us and I knew that. There is nothing else I can do.
Editor's note: OOP posted in another sub with the exact same information as above and no new update. However, she did add this clarification about shelters:
"All shelters are full. I found an organization who helps DV victims with housing but only if you have a police report and a restraining order. I guess they are tired of victims going back to their partner, safety reasons, or something. I was denied a restraining order because I had no proof. I’m scared, exhausted, and disappointed."
Update Post 3: December 28, 2023 (18 days later)
Title: I thought we were safe
Alot of people wanted a update so here it is. On Christmas he slashed my tires knowing I would have to pay out of pocket to replace them which I don’t have. Today he threw a heavy patio chair through the window of the place we were staying at to let me know he knew where we were and I was asked to leave for everyone's safety.
Except my daughter and I aren’t safe. I walked in the sleet/snow with my daughter and our cat and I felt vulnerable and like open prey so we came back to the police station to sit in the lobby until morning. Shelters are still full and I now have to disclose that he is dangerous anywhere we go. Police couldn’t find him but I know he has to be close.
I don’t know what his end game is.
Relevant Comments:
Can police direct you to a DV shelter?
"The shelters here are full so we are just sitting in the police station lobby. We are at least safe and warm so I'm grateful for that."
On donations:
"Donations aren't allowed here and my post could get removed because of it. I'm trying to stay awake and really just venting. I'm so frustrated that he keeps getting away with this shit."
Do you know how he keeps finding you? Have you checked for trackers?
"I honestly have no idea! He is supposed to have a new girlfriend too so IDK why he is messing with me and destroying property"
Reset your phone to factory settings:
"I got a cheap burner after we left. He doesn't have my number nor have I used it to call anyone so IDK how he is tracking me."
You said he sent you a photo of the epi pen after you left. How did he communicate that to you?
"He sent it through my email before I blocked it."
Update Post 4: January 1, 2024 (4 days later; a bit over 1 month from OG post)
Title: I found the air tag in the cat carrier
Please read my other posts for more context but a tl:dr; I’m pretty sure my ex was/is trying to kill me. There were a few instances that I wrote off as “accidents'' until I think he poisoned my soup that was specifically for me. On Christmas he found where we were staying and slashed my tires and threw a heavy patio chair and planter through a window. He still hasn’t been caught.
I checked everywhere I could think of and still couldn't figure out how he was tracking us. I blocked him on everything including email after he sent me pics of his target practice sheets among other things. I got a cheap burner phone. My daughter was out of school for winter break so he didn’t follow her or anything. I checked my car for a tracker. Still nothing.
I do not have an iphone so I couldn’t check whatever app a air tag is attached to. My cat is harness trained and wears a collar but there was no tracker. Until today I decided to “feel up” (sorry only way I can describe it) the carrier. I ran my fingers over every inch of it and felt a bump on the bottom soft side. There was no new stitching or obvious cut. He had to use a seam ripper along the stitching. It was undetectable and I almost missed it. He had to have had help because I’ve never seen him sew anything. Probably the same person who is letting him hide now.
If his excuse for the air tag was to track my cat he would have put it on his collar or harness because that is what he would wear when we go on walks/car rides. My cat would never go in his carrier unless I was planning on leaving for more than a few days. I have no idea how long it has been there nor do I know how far the tracker works but now we aren’t safe where we are, AGAIN. I feel disgusting and I feel like hunted prey. This is so unnerving and I’m so uncomfortable. Who the f*ck was I living with?
Relevant Comment:
I’m sorry but I don’t find it believable that he tracked you with an AirTag.I don't know how airtags work and didn't say that is how he is tracking me, just that I found one. It doesn't make sense how he knew where we were.
Update Post 5: January 7, 2024 (6 days later, 5.5 weeks from OG post)
Title: I finally got the restraining order!
I’m hoping this update will make everyone as happy as it makes me! I was finally granted the restraining order. And we get the keys to our new apartment on the 11th. A place I can afford monthly and comes partially furnished. It’s in a super safe area right by my daughter's school. There is security!! We will spend our time living in our car until then and of course it has to be snowing but we are together and we have our kitty. This nightmare is almost over.
Update Post 5: February 2, 2024 (almost 1 month later)
Title: A restraining order didn't stop him
This morning he found me.
I've been sick as hell so after I dropped my daughter off at school I went straight home.
I didn't drive around to make sure no one was following me. I messed up.
He broke my nose and shattered my orbital bone. He is in jail. Sorry for this update ya'll.
Relevant Comments:
"Staying in the hospital for the night, I was pretty sick before this happened. My daughter is with a friend for the night. My landlord fixed the door as best he could and told me my cat wasn't in the apartment so I'm worried sick. I thought this was over, I'm so so so tired."
"I'm sure his mom will bail him out. Why can't he just move on? He took my money and my peace, what more can he take until he is satisfied?"
Commenter: Please pull your daughter out of her school and leave the state ASAP.
OOP: I so wish I could do this but we just moved into our new place. I should have just stayed with my mom (she lives in another state) but I didn't want to disrupt my daughters life too much. I have three dollars to my name so I can't leave.You often can break leases without penalties in DV situations:
My previous landlord let me out of my lease without a penalty and my new one will too I just can't afford to move.Update Post 6: February 4, 2024 (2 days later)
Title: Not being able to move even if my life depends on it
I know the importance of having money saved and I live within my means. How many of us is one disaster away from losing everything? A fire, job loss, a bank screw up, a late paycheck, illness, or someone stealing from you. I had money saved because I knew that any one of those things could happen and I wouldn't have anyone who could help me. And it did. Two months ago my ex tried poisoning me and stole the money I had saved. It’s been hell since. I was able to break my lease and leave. I went to my moms over Christmas break but I came back because I didn’t want to disrupt my daughters schooling and I underestimated my ex.
I was able to get an apartment through DV services very quickly which was a miracle. I know how hard it is to find housing and then try to come up with all the deposits a new place needs. I did it, the cards fell in my favor. But then I fucked up. On Friday I took my daughter to school and wasn’t diligent. I will usually drive around to make sure I’m not being followed. To be honest I started feeling crazy, paranoid, and angry I was wasting gas. Plus I have pneumonia and strep that I haven’t been able to pay for the antibiotics so I just went home to my bed.
He found me and broke my nose, shattered my orbital bone, and I have a concussion. I had a restraining order and he was arrested. I shared this on another sub and everyone telling me to move, leave, RUN. Except I can’t do that. It’s hard trying to explain that to people for them to understand because it sounds like excuses, like I like living in fear or something. I can’t pull money out of thin air. My credit card is maxed. I contacted DV services at the hospital and because I just got help, I can’t get it again.
The thing I didn’t know about abusive men is that they don’t just move on or stop. There are DV shelters but they are full. I wish people would understand that I know how serious this is but money doesn’t grow on trees. Even if a life depends on it.
Relevant Comments:
Will your parents really not help you?
I only have my mom who lives out of state. She is on a fixed income so she can't help me. We could stay with her but at this point I'm out of luck and nothing worth a damn to sell.
You need to disappear:
Honestly how? I'm not going to get anywhere on foot.
Update Post 7: February 15, 2024 (11 days later, 2.5 months from OG post)
Title: He was with me to get to my daughter
It all makes sense now. If you need more context please read my past posts. In my first post I said how we had a normal relationship and he was never abusive, controlling, never raised his voice. The money that he ended up stealing was money I had hidden since before he even moved in. I was not hiding money to get away from him. I was not afraid of him. I lost my sister to DV and swore I’d never have that happen to me only to end up in that exact situation. We didn’t have this spectacular love that was filled with insane chemistry, nowhere near a “love of my life” situation which is why I was so confused by how desperate he got.
After he got arrested his mom went on a social media rant because I “got her baby locked up” and knew we were sleeping in my car so was telling her followers that if they find me to call her. Very bold and insane. One of my exes friends saw this and commented “Idk if you should be sticking up for him, he needs serious help”. I don’t know how I caught it before it was deleted but I reached out to him on my fake facebook.
Every time they were drinking he would talk about her and then laugh it off. It made his friends uncomfortable but they chalked it up to the booze. Two weeks ago when my daughter came to see me in the hospital she was distraught. It made sense because I looked like hell but she kept repeating over and over asking me why he did this to me. I think there was more to this and I’m frightened to my core. Remember he stole my epi pen and money but he destroyed almost everything of hers and I didn't understand it because she had nothing to do with the breakup.
Why did he destroy her medicine? Why did he destroy her clothes? Fucking why? Dont abusers threaten their victim into not saying anything or something is going to happen to someone/something they love? I’m sick to my stomach even writing that out. I don’t know where to go from here, how do I even begin a conversation about this with her? We are safe. I’m not worried about him finding us because he is still in jail which is great because I’m out of money. He wasn’t desperate and crazy because he was losing me, I think it was because of her.
Update Post 8: February 20, 2024 (5 days later)
Title: My ex is getting bailed out tomorrow
I'm so angry and scared.
I wish I had faith in the justice system and with cops because they are supposed to protect, right? Except that isn't always the case.
I'm tired of being hurt and I'm tired of being scared. Anxiety is on 100.
It's exhausting fearing my daughter and I's life.
Update Post 9: February 28, 2024 (8 days later, 3 months from OG post)
Title: How can I feel safer at home?
I know a lot of people are following my posts and will be disappointed in hearing that my ex was bailed out. I’m still healing from when he broke my nose and shattered my orbital bone. I know a restraining order is just a piece of paper because he ignored it when I was attacked and the police aren’t going to save me. For security I only have a door bar that slides under the knob. I don’t have a ring camera and I can’t buy a pew pew until I have extra funds. He made me sell it a year ago because he was “uncomfortable” with it being in the house. Another red flag I missed.
My question is what can I do to feel safer that doesn’t require money? Every night my daughter and I push the couch in front of the door but I’m worried that if there is a fire we can’t get out. I have myself worried sick to the point of painful stomach ulcers. I tried talking to my nearest neighbor but when I started explaining my situation and how it would be great if she could let me know if she sees anyone around my apartment she got weirded out. Which I get.
Just looking for some peace of mind, will that ever exist in my life again?
Update Post 10: March 6, 2024 (1 week later)
Title: AITAH or was this just a mistake?
Editor's note: I removed the first part of this as it is a recap of the previous posts
I know this is all I post about and if you want more context you can read my past posts. I feel like I need to tell someone what is happening so that it makes it feel real and that I’m not just upset and crazy for nothing. My ex got out on bail last week. My daughter and I already left the new apartment we had moved into after he attacked me.
My daughter's school knows about my situation and knows I have a restraining order. Today my daughter got a call from the front office at school. The secretary told her that the pickup car had changed from mine to a new car. She was being told this so that when school let out she wouldn’t get upset when she didn’t see my car. The “new car” is the same one as my exes. It is a rare cacolor and she told me she knew it was his car. She didn’t say anything to the secretary or her teacher because she was instantly scared. It breaks my heart that she was in fear because she thought he had got me and was going to get her.
She was given the message hours before school let out so she spent all that time worrying. The last ten minutes of the day is when the kids can use the bathroom and clean up. She started crying infront of her whole class and when the bell rang she refused to leave her classroom. I was in the carpool line when I got the call from her teacher.
I have never seen her so upset and that is saying a lot because she was so upset when she visited me in the hospital. Face beet red, hyperventilating, snot everywhere, she had cried so hard she got a nosebleed. After they told me what happened I was livid. It all sounded like bullshit because the secretary never should have relayed the message without talking to me first since she said it was a male on the phone. As soon as the secretary looked my daughter up to find out which room to call she should have seen the message I thought I had saying no one should ever pick her up but me. No information should ever be released.
“He was never in contact with her so it’s not that big of a deal, it was a mistake” is what they told me. All he had to give was her full name and what grade she was in to get a message to her. They said that to me with a straight face while the bruises he gave me were very visible proving he is a violent man. I’m so f*cking angry. She told me she knew I didn’t get a new car because as much as I try to hide it from her she knows I’m broke. She thought she was going to have to go with him. She has been so traumatized and I don't know what to do. She wants to switch to e learning but since it’s not a medical reason and not a school wide restriction I would have to pay to rent the laptop. Which I obviously can’t.
The school is calling it an innocent mistake and didn't even apologize. I know I'm the only one responsible for my daughter and I’s safety but damn if people could stop jeopardizing it like it’s nothing and then acting like I’m the asshole for being upset because it was a “mistake”. He wasn’t there after school but he could have.
Update Post 11: March 7, 2024 (Next Day)
Title: He is never going to stop terrorizing us
Editor's note- This is an almost word for word repost of the above post. I've kept it here for the timeline but also to include relevant Comments.
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: I hate to blatantly ask but did you ever find your cat?
OOP: Hi yes I have my cat!Commenter: Have you contacted your mother, does she know what’s going on? I don’t know what your relationship with her is like but would she willing to help in any capacity
OOP: The only thing she can assist with is a room for us to stay in which is great but not if I can't get there. My daughter is refusing to go to school. I don't know what to do.*****Update Post 12: April 1, 2023 (3.5 weeks later)****\*
I've had a few people asking so I wanted to update. I can now confidently say that my daughter, cat, and I are safe and will continue to be from here on out. I can start rebuilding without fear. I'm not okay but we are safe.
Update Post 13: April 23, 2024 (3 weeks later, almost 5 months from OG post)
Title: I’ve spent the last 4 months running for my life
I just want to say that if anyone is going through something similar to me, you can vent to me. This is something you have to experience to understand how hard it is. I know there are DV resources but they are extremely limited. I had someone on here “checking in” with me and when I explained what was going on I was asked “why aren’t you stable yet” and it kinda took me off guard. Only a few people knew I was pregnant through this.
I left my home with basically nothing and went to a hotel and he found me, I went to another hotel and he found me, I went to a safe house for two nights where I was asked to leave because my ex was dangerous, slept in my car with my daughter, went to my moms out of state, came back to my home state because that is where DV resources helped with a apartment, he followed me back to my apartment from my daughters school, I was hospitalized when he broke my nose, shattered my orbital bone, and gave me a concussion. I had to leave that apt, back to hotels and sleeping in my car, and finally back to my moms. So much money feels wasted. I have the opportunity to be added onto her new lease but it’s a bigger unit and requires a first/last deposit (impossible unless I rob a bank). The pet deposit is already paid.
But I only have until the 1st or we are back to living in the car because we have exceeded our “visitation” days. A year lease where my rent would only be $500 a month, utilities maybe $150? I’d be saving so much money and be able to rebuild my life. We would all have our own rooms which means privacy! Even though we are all female, privacy is precious. I haven’t slept in a bed since the hotel beds but even then it wasn’t “my” bed. It’s been my car, hotel bed, or the couch. Even when we were briefly in our new place I still slept on the couch with it pushed against the front door.
I know all my posts are about the same thing, one thing after another, and yes it IS exhausting and repetitive but think about how I feel. I’m desperate for stability and I can’t get it because he took so much from me. It wasn’t until I was out of “our” house and away from him for me to see how much power he had over my life. It’s embarrassing. Even if I have to go back to living in my car I’ll still be around to talk and I’ll still be optimistic because I deserve good things to happen to me that aren't only in my dreams.
Clarification on the air tag:
There was! Someone helped him put one in my cat's carrier because he knew if I was going to leave, I'd never leave my cat behind.
Update Post 14: May 21, 2024 (1 month later, almost 6 from OG post)
Title: The vet gave my abuser my location
I want to say this was a genuine mistake and not done with malicious intent but I still need to vent about it. Just like my daughter's school letting my abuser give her a message, this was an accident but accidents put my life in danger and I’m exhausted. I post about my situation alot and despite a few users thinking my ex would find my reddit, I’m not worried about that. However, I am terrified of him knowing where I am. He has gone through a restraining order, police don’t scare him, and when he got/gets arrested he will just get bailed out. I knew the only way I could live a normal life was getting as far away from him as possible.
So I took my daughter and cat and moved in with my mom a few states away. I was 100% confident that he didn’t know where I was because they never met, we were actually estranged for a few years before my ex and I even got together. I started feeling safe. I stopped jumping when I heard loud trucks. I was starting to get comfortable even though not alot of time had passed.
A few days ago my cat's back legs stopped working and he lost control of his bodily fluids.I was working but my mom rushed him to the ER vet. There were questions she couldn’t answer so they asked if he was chipped. He is but I changed my number a few times lately so one of the two numbers was out of service so they called the second one. I forgot to remove his number, I know this is my fault. The vet called him to get information and he didn’t give any information and hung up on them. The receptionist said he called back about 5 minutes later and said “I know she doesn’t have money. Tell her I’ll save her cat if she comes home”.
He knows how much my cat means to me. He found me the first time I left because his mom helped him sew an air tag into the lining of the cat carrier. He knew if I was to ever leave him I wouldn’t leave my cat. One time my ex threw him out of the house to hurt me while I was at work he refused to leave the porch. My ex then tried squirting him with a water bottle and when that didn’t work, he sprayed him with the hose. He basically got waterboarded and still would not leave.
He is my soul cat. When I got to the vet and they told me what happened I had one of the worst panic attacks I’ve had in awhile. I’ve had my cat for ten years and he has never gotten sick or injured. He has a UTI and a fractured foot from falling. The vet thinks he probably got his foot hurt first and that led to the UTI since he wasn’t using the litter box. I noticed he was slightly limping a few days ago but I couldn’t get him into the vet yet. The UTI developed quickly. I was naive in thinking the vet would save a pet's life even if the owner can’t pay upfront but it isn’t like a human going into the ER.
I’ve spent so much money and time trying to get away from my ex while also trying to live a normal safe life for my daughter. Once again something happens and he now knows the city we are in. I’m not running again because I can’t. I don’t think he will drive up here because like I said I’m a few states away but man did this bring back my paranoia and irrational fear.
I changed the chip information but the damage is done, I was a fucking idiot for not doing it sooner. This is my fault, I'm so damn tired.
Relevant Comments:
Commenter: Why did they use the microchip to get your number? Did your mom not have your most recent number to give them or something? Could you not be reached at work? That’s just weird to me.
OOP: My mom was flustered because she knew the ER vet was going to be expensive and knew I couldn't pay but she couldn't answer any questions because she didn't know. Didn't know how old he was or if he had his shots. I can't take my phone into my work building and she didn't know the manager's phone number.Commenter: I just don’t understand why the vet would go through the trouble of scanning the chip and calling the numbers on there instead of just asking your mom for your number?? Seems like a lot of grief could have been avoided and the clinic had to do more work to call a company and get the phone numbers.
I was able to pay partial with scratchpay but not all which is heartbreaking. A broken heart and frustrating anger is what I feel too.
OOP: I've had to change my number over 6 times in a three month time span, my mom didn't know it off the top of her head.Commenter: If you are communicating with your mom it would be in her phone. If it changes so often, the last number in her phone would be more accurate than a microchip which is less likely to be updated. This is very strange.
OOP: I was at work, I can not have my personal phone on me and my cat was having a medical emergency. My mom didn't know how old my cat is or if he had his shots. They had alot of questions she had no answer to so they scanned the chip to get information.Editor's note: Some people commented on the first BORU that OOP's ex was a police officer. However, I can't find anything in OOP's posts or comments that confirms this, nor has she said anything about it. (Nothing shows up when checking deleted comments either.) It's definitely possible, but I just wanted to address it here since it was brought up so often.
2024.05.28 03:47 Mattt-Justice Matt Justice Says Infrared Sauna Is Better Than Traditional? (but where's the loyly???)
So Sam (who owns this sauna group I believe?) stopped by the FB sauna group today, and he had some great points that I think spark valuable discussion to the sauna community.
Video:
It started with Sam asking why Infrared over Traditional over there? What's the deal with these infrared things anyway? Why the choice of cheap Chinese cabins, they fall apart, why not traditional, get a real sauna, enjoy with friends and fam, etc...
I basically said it comes down to living situation, or ease of install usually. Most of us in the city aren't going to burn wood, nor run 240 for traditional electric with ventilation system. Would rather have some heat therapy than none at all. For my situation, it's much easier than trenching around the house to the panel too.
https://preview.redd.it/fcy1bocen23d1.jpg?width=1523&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=219bf0170432b4363bc8f5db24e9e135edc5d850
https://preview.redd.it/bppriefnn23d1.jpg?width=1515&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d0fd052e23a96f5d3f137d54b8f351c65f2b970
Sam's post also brought up some great points and discussion about the social aspect of sauna, varying batches of saunas, and traditional saunas with poor build quality...
You know Sam mentioned these infrared boxes are all cheap pieces of crap from china, etc…
I say the same about traditional sauna quality control, maybe I'm wrong? We have folks who's Costco tongue and groove barrels are leaking, because they don't have a shingle brow to keep the snow and ice off, or didn't build a supplemental roof over the top. The elements are hammering them, and the expansion and contraction + temp differences when running the sauna are creating an uphill battle with poorly manufactured enclosures. From where I sit in Maine, it would seem you'd want a real roof in all of these cases?
Some say they shouldn't have to do this, others say the big box store saunas are not a true Finnish sauna either. I mean I get it... it's the whole concept of upper bench, yes? But just like the infrared deal, sometimes this is what people chose, or all they had access to at the time, and so on...
Some of the Wayfair "outdoor" traditional shed style saunas are much the same... not insulated, basically a glorified "indoor" sauna with a Lexan roof. The infrared versions of these are rough, not well built at all for the elements... pretty much taking people for a ride altogether.
I'd also like to ask you guys what you do for these types of barrel/shed style saunas being sold at big box stores to make them work for the time being? (so the customer isn't left with a pile of trash after a couple years basically)
I’m not that great at using the Reddit platform, but my intention is to embed a couple YouTube videos right underneath this, to see what you guys (and Sam) think of this hybrid. I built a traditional sauna heater stand to add to any infrared sauna for those that want to retrofit, or crank the heat hybrid style.
Unlike most of the hybrid saunas being sold on the market, you can run both types of heat this way. Sure, you're going to be limited on the water usage, there are still electronics close by, but as a first go it works pretty well.
The last time I saw anything infrared mentioned here, it's pretty much torn to pieces faster than a lion pack on a gazelle. But if you'll suspend your disbelief just for a moment, this hybrid concept is an option for anyone who wants to modify what they already have, and add a traditional sauna heater to pretty much anything you'd like when you can't afford to replace your whole setup just yet. (we use these in portable cabins too, also add heat lamps or regular heaters for folks pushing the limits of temperature. Excess moisture is still an issue for some applications, so haven't devised a workaround for that yet. Ideas?)
Portable Traditional Sauna Mount
Video:
We tested this in a bunch of different types of equipment, placements, enclosures, etc... :
Traditional Sauna Heater Added To Infrared Sauna For A DIY Hybrid (180F pretty quick running both types of heat)
I thought Sam would enjoy the hybrid pics, and maybe extend the conversation to the community and get more ideas for retrofits for those that want them. I expect all the hate coming from sauna saying it’s not a sauna, bench not high enough, no loily, etc...
I get it guys, I really do. I don't post over here much over the last couple years because anything non traditional isn't typically given a second look. But I do look at these threads occasionally, there are some really cool projects here, with some awesome people building interesting stuff/designs. I really like the creativity of some of the DIY projects I've seen. I dig it.
What do you guys think about this stuff? I’m obviously not using traditional saunas the majority of the time, but it would be helpful to discuss hybrids for folks that are looking at those, and particularly the community aspect left out of the sauna research studies.
Let the roasting begin? :)
Oh Sam also shared a sauna podcast earlier that looks to have good info from what I can tell, haven't listened yet: [https://www.youtube.com/@
submitted by Mattt-Justice to Sauna [link] [comments]
Video:
It started with Sam asking why Infrared over Traditional over there? What's the deal with these infrared things anyway? Why the choice of cheap Chinese cabins, they fall apart, why not traditional, get a real sauna, enjoy with friends and fam, etc...
I basically said it comes down to living situation, or ease of install usually. Most of us in the city aren't going to burn wood, nor run 240 for traditional electric with ventilation system. Would rather have some heat therapy than none at all. For my situation, it's much easier than trenching around the house to the panel too.
https://preview.redd.it/fcy1bocen23d1.jpg?width=1523&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=219bf0170432b4363bc8f5db24e9e135edc5d850
https://preview.redd.it/bppriefnn23d1.jpg?width=1515&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d0fd052e23a96f5d3f137d54b8f351c65f2b970
Sam's post also brought up some great points and discussion about the social aspect of sauna, varying batches of saunas, and traditional saunas with poor build quality...
You know Sam mentioned these infrared boxes are all cheap pieces of crap from china, etc…
I say the same about traditional sauna quality control, maybe I'm wrong? We have folks who's Costco tongue and groove barrels are leaking, because they don't have a shingle brow to keep the snow and ice off, or didn't build a supplemental roof over the top. The elements are hammering them, and the expansion and contraction + temp differences when running the sauna are creating an uphill battle with poorly manufactured enclosures. From where I sit in Maine, it would seem you'd want a real roof in all of these cases?
Some say they shouldn't have to do this, others say the big box store saunas are not a true Finnish sauna either. I mean I get it... it's the whole concept of upper bench, yes? But just like the infrared deal, sometimes this is what people chose, or all they had access to at the time, and so on...
Some of the Wayfair "outdoor" traditional shed style saunas are much the same... not insulated, basically a glorified "indoor" sauna with a Lexan roof. The infrared versions of these are rough, not well built at all for the elements... pretty much taking people for a ride altogether.
I'd also like to ask you guys what you do for these types of barrel/shed style saunas being sold at big box stores to make them work for the time being? (so the customer isn't left with a pile of trash after a couple years basically)
I’m not that great at using the Reddit platform, but my intention is to embed a couple YouTube videos right underneath this, to see what you guys (and Sam) think of this hybrid. I built a traditional sauna heater stand to add to any infrared sauna for those that want to retrofit, or crank the heat hybrid style.
Unlike most of the hybrid saunas being sold on the market, you can run both types of heat this way. Sure, you're going to be limited on the water usage, there are still electronics close by, but as a first go it works pretty well.
The last time I saw anything infrared mentioned here, it's pretty much torn to pieces faster than a lion pack on a gazelle. But if you'll suspend your disbelief just for a moment, this hybrid concept is an option for anyone who wants to modify what they already have, and add a traditional sauna heater to pretty much anything you'd like when you can't afford to replace your whole setup just yet. (we use these in portable cabins too, also add heat lamps or regular heaters for folks pushing the limits of temperature. Excess moisture is still an issue for some applications, so haven't devised a workaround for that yet. Ideas?)
Portable Traditional Sauna Mount
Video:
We tested this in a bunch of different types of equipment, placements, enclosures, etc... :
Traditional Sauna Heater Added To Infrared Sauna For A DIY Hybrid (180F pretty quick running both types of heat)
I thought Sam would enjoy the hybrid pics, and maybe extend the conversation to the community and get more ideas for retrofits for those that want them. I expect all the hate coming from sauna saying it’s not a sauna, bench not high enough, no loily, etc...
I get it guys, I really do. I don't post over here much over the last couple years because anything non traditional isn't typically given a second look. But I do look at these threads occasionally, there are some really cool projects here, with some awesome people building interesting stuff/designs. I really like the creativity of some of the DIY projects I've seen. I dig it.
What do you guys think about this stuff? I’m obviously not using traditional saunas the majority of the time, but it would be helpful to discuss hybrids for folks that are looking at those, and particularly the community aspect left out of the sauna research studies.
Let the roasting begin? :)
Oh Sam also shared a sauna podcast earlier that looks to have good info from what I can tell, haven't listened yet: [https://www.youtube.com/@
2024.05.28 02:13 Different_Horse6239 First time in Japan, 15 days report (with pictures)
Before I start, here are the pictures - https://photos.app.goo.gl/M1EGtrVyHhpH8f4A7 ("Japan 2" because I took out group shots and condensed slightly from my private album) I've respected the requests for no photos everywhere I've gone (and it happens a lot) so some things are missing from here - I've included a couple of links to sites with pictures of things I couldn't photograph in my breakdown.
I've been wanting to try a solo trip for a little while and originally planned to do this all myself. In the end I chickened out and booked onto a group tour for some of it, but made sure I had a chunk of time on my own too. In the end I needn't have worried about going alone - all the airport and hotel staff speak perfect English, restaurant/shop staff sometimes less so but it's less important there, all navigation signs are translated to English (at least for the cities I visited), Google maps works great (when taking the metro make sure to check which exit it recommends), Google translate has a feature to use your camera and translate any text it sees which works very well most of the time (the tour company booked and collected my JR pass for me so I can't comment on that, although I'm sure it would've also been fine) - although the group were all lovely and made the trip much more fun!
Food isn't really a priority for me when travelling so I can't tell you where I ate most of the time, often it was just the nearest ramen place with a not terrible score on Google. I did make sure to try all of the local stuff as I went (Kobe/Wagyu beef, curry, yakitori, kushikatsu, ramen, donburi, sushi, takoyaki, taiyaki, yakisoba, okonomiyaki, tonkatsu, shabu shabu, tempura, gyoza, souffle pancakes, dango).
Flight - opted to go direct as I've never done a transfer before, but could've saved a little bit of cash by stopping over in China for a few hours. The flight was at 9am (London Heathrow, British Airways, economy), 14 hours long and landed at 7am Japanese time (Haneda), so I decided to stay up through the night to make sure I definitely manage to fall asleep on the plane, which I of course did not.
Saturday 13th April - Tokyo Landed at 7am local time. From what I've read my experience is not the norm and you should plan to be there a while, but from the plane touching down, me getting through customs/passport control, exchanging some currency, buying a SIM and travel card through to stepping on the train... a little under an hour? Wont go into it too much but make sure you get a SIM and travel card at the airport, it'll be a lot harder in the city. I got the "Welcome Suica" which is designed for tourists, there's no fee to purchase the card but you can't refund whatever's left at the end - HOWEVER there's a Seven-Eleven (corner shop type thing, they're everywhere in Japan) at the airport (both before and after security) where you can pay with funds from your IC card, so you can make sure you don't waste much (I had about 8 yen left on mine). Went to the hotel (one of the APA hotels in Shinjuku), too early to check in but dropped my bag off. First stop was the Ichiyo Sakura festival - a lot smaller than it is billed as online, I think it's been scaled back a lot post-pandemic, there's no longer a parade, just a little stage in a park with a few hundred attendees and a variety of performances of Japanese stuff - still quite cool, but I was sleep deprived and needed to keep moving so didn't stay too long. I wanted to hunt for cherry blossoms as I knew it was almost the end of the season and they'd die off very quickly, and I'd also seen Tokyo Skytree in the distance, so those were my priorities, and I eventually found myself in Sumida Park. The pink blossoms were very wilted, but the white ones come out a bit later and were in full bloom. Had my first vending machine experience en-route (may sound like a dumb tourist for recommending a western brand but the grape fanta is amazing and I wish they would release it everywhere). Then it was time to check in to the hotel, intended to just have a nap but slept through til 5am.
Sunday 14th April - Tokyo Started at the Samurai Ninja museum. This is 100% tourist nonsense but well worth doing in my opinion, starts with a chance to dress up in samurai outfits (the website says something about the outfits not "looking good" on people over 5'9 but I'm 6'1 and I think it's fine, would be more concerned about width than height) and take photos, then the guided tour (mandatory, included in the price, in English) which I thought was quite interesting (although I got all the same information again on the walking tours I did so not essential), then a chance to throw rubber shuriken (throwing stars) into a foam wall. Afterwards had a bit of free time so wandered in no particular direction, found my first temple - this was the only one I ended up doing that isn't on all the tourist lists so while it wasn't as spectacular as any of the others I did it was the only one that was actually quiet, so really glad I experienced it. Found my way to Senso-ji temple, but knew I was coming back here with the group so didn't linger. Had some candied fruit on a stick on the way. In the afternoon I'd booked teamLab Borderless - you have to book this in advance and I'd highly recommend. I think it's the sort of place you know whether you'll enjoy it just from the pictures. You may have read that it's busy and full of screaming kids, which was true of the big room in the middle but it's easy to immerse yourself in the side rooms which have much better stuff in anyway. There's another teamLab in Tokyo which is similar and I'm sure is also good, but I didn't feel the need to do both. After, had dinner with someone from the group who also arrived early and then wandered around Shibuya for a bit - looked around a pachinko parlour but didn't partake as they were closing in 30 minutes.
Monday 15th April - Tokyo There was a sumo exhibition fight at Yasukini shrine that I spent almost the whole day at! This is a free annual event. Afterwards, had a little walk round near the Imperial Palace (sadly the main gardens are closed on Mondays) then went to grab my suitcase and meet the tour group.
Tuesday 16th April - Kamakura Day trip to Kamakura. Started at Engaku-ji temple where I bought my Goshuincho (at most temples/shrines you can pay a small fee for someone to hand-write a prayer in calligraphy which is unique to that location called a Goshuin, and they'll only do it in a specific type of book called a Goshuincho - it's the last photo in my album). I found it very strange that they were building another building on the site, you'd never be allowed to mess with a historical site like that in England. Then the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu shrine. Struggling to come up with much to say about it but it was very pretty? And afterwards the great Buddha statue. We tried to watch the sunset on the beach but it was too cloudy, then headed back to Tokyo.
Wednesday 17th April - Kyoto Bullet train to Kyoto, dropped bags at hotel. Hired kimonos and wandered around the Gion district taking photos for a few hours, before we had booked a matcha tea ceremony (we were told not to worry about cultural appropriation, Japanese people think it's funny seeing western people dressed in them, which did seem to be the case). After lunch we saw the Miyako Odori (each of the geisha districts in Kyoto performs a show/dance for the public once a year, this is the Gion show and is only on in April) - I obviously couldn't take pictures, but there's a snippet up here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm--yxNLMFU
Thursday 18th April - Kyoto Began at the Fushini Inari shrine (the one with thousands of torii gates). You can hike up to the top and back down in under an hour, but there's lots of little side paths to wander down - we budgeted for 3 hours and still didn't see everything. There's a free audio guide online in multiple languages which is quite good. Quickly visited Sanjusangen-do temple (the one with 1001 statues of the deity Kannon) afterwards which I would highly recommend, my favourite of all the temples I saw. Couldn't take photos of the inside, but here it is - https://www.discoverkyoto.com/places-go/sanjusangen-do/#features . In the afternoon we did a free walking tour (Kyoto Localised - obviously tips are expected, please do). I thought the guide was very good and made it entertaining as well as informative, a lot of the time tour guides can be very dry. In the evening, a sushi making class, and then rushed to Kodai-ji temple to see the illuminations before they closed.
Friday 19th April - Kyoto (Arashiyama) Got up early to get to the bamboo forest before it got too crowded. Have no idea why it's so famous - I saw several bamboo forests on the trip (including at Fushini Inari), it's not particularly big and you can only go on the paths - but there is at least some other stuff in the area worth seeing. Hiked up to the top of the hill, then down to the river to sit with our feet in for a while. Had a really strange encounter with some schoolgirls who wanted a picture with us, then went to Tenryu-ji temple. We took the scenic railway (romancecar) back to Kyoto - this is great, try to sit on the right hand side if you can. Rushed up the hill to catch the sunset from Kiyomizu temple. There's a swanky hotel nearby with a rooftop bar that has a gorgeous view of Kyoto (expensive, don't eat here, not sure if it's meant for hotel guests only but nobody asked for a room number or tried to stop us).
Saturday 20th April - Hiroshima Bullet train to Hiroshima, then the ferry over to Miyajima island (ferry is kinda included in the JR pass but you have to pay a small amount of tax) for the floating torii gate. The island is nice to walk around and has lots of deer, we didn't bother with the cable car though as it was quite foggy. Took the ferry back across, then went to see the nuclear bomb dome and peace museum. The museum is quite small and most people would know the history of it but I found the artwork done by survivors to be particularly striking, as well as the eyewitness accounts. Had okonomiyaki in the evening - they uniquely make them with noodles in Hiroshima, great if you're a carb lover like me.
Sunday 21st April - Himeji/Osaka Stopped off at Himeji on the way back to Osaka. Himeji Castle is one of the few surviving castles in Japan (there are many that have been demolished and then replicas built). It is rather impressive in person, although there is nothing to see inside - audio guide is a must as there are no information signs either. Back in Osaka we had a guided food tour - kushikatsu (deep fried skewers), takoyaki (octopus balls), an izakaya (barestaurant that does a bit of everything) and finished with taiyaki (fish shaped pastry filled with red bean paste). The tour ended by dotonbori bridge where we then took a short river cruise up and down the street.
Monday 22nd April - Nara/Osaka Day trip to Nara! Starting in Nara Park, with all the deer that bow to you. Onto Kasuga-Taisha shrine, the one with loads of bronze lanterns. Probably one of the nicer shrines I saw, depending on how far along you are in your trip if you've seen enough it's skippable, much more important you visit Todai-ji temple, one of the largest wooden buildings in the world which houses a huge bronze Buddha statue. There is a hole the same size as the statue's nostril towards the back of the building which you can try to crawl through and is said to bring good fortune. Walk around Naramachi before heading back to Osaka.
Tuesday 23rd April - Tokyo Visited Senso-ji properly in the morning. Most of the day was spent on a walking tour (Tokyo Localised) from Akihabara to Ueno Park - this one wasn't as good as the one in Kyoto, a lot of it was spent sitting and listening rather than walking and the guy was quite pushy with tips. Had a bit of time to mooch around and get some shopping done, I picked up some matcha tea that my Aunt had asked for and some funky Kit-Kat flavours to bring back to housemates/colleagues/friends (liked all the fruity ones I tried except apple which was really bitter - best one was melon). We had dinner at a shabu shabu restaurant (Momo Paradise) and then spent the night in Shinjuku/Golden Gai.
Wednesday 24th April - Tokyo Began the day with a maid cafe experience - this is creepy af and should be avoided at all costs. Went to Harajuku, didn't actually see anybody dressed up but enjoyed the rainbow cheese toastie and giant candy floss all the same. Flying visit to Shibuya to cross the crossing (if you do go, maybe try one of the upper floor people watching cafes/restaurants that always get suggested for this area, it didn't feel worth it to go just to cross, it felt like a normal street crossing), then up Tokyo Tower to the viewing platform - this was nice, but we chose a day with really poor visibility.
Thursday 25th April - Tokyo Travel with the group ended here, a few with later flights came with me to Odaiba beach in the morning. This place is beautiful if it's clear and sunny, I think the tide was in but there were a few rocks we could climb on. Saw the Statue of Liberty and the robot statue. Then I had to head back to the city as I had a ticket for a baseball game (Tokyo Swallows v Hiroshima Carp). This was loads of fun - I work in sports data so had a rough idea of the rules but would suggest others having a quick read beforehand if you go. I caught a really good game, 9-8 to the home team with a home run in the final inning (and with 2 men already out) to win it, also saw a 'grand slam' (home run with a man already on each base for 4 runs). They bring umbrellas to the game and wave them up and down when they score!
Friday 26th April - Hakone This was my favourite day of the trip! I bought the Hakone freepass, which gets you free travel to, from and all around Hakone, plus a couple of discounts. You display the ticket on your phone so it's very easy to use. I've heard Hakone can get busy, and I'm sure it was much worse at the weekend, but I had no queues whatsoever! Started at Shinjuku station, usually the advice is to pay for an upgrade to take the romancecar, rather than sit on the Odakyu line for hours with a transfer at Odawara, but I was lucky that there was a super express train due when I got to the station that was almost as quick as the romancecar (quicker when factoring in the queue to buy the upgrade - I did take the upgrade on the way back though). I went straight to the open air museum which was absolutely stunning, I could've spent the whole day here. I also thought the Picasso exhibit was very good - I've seen more than enough of his paintings before, but this focused more on his sketches and ceramics work. I completed the rest of the loop, cable car up to the top to see the sulphur vents and the view of Mt Fuji, had an egg cooked in the sulphur, car down the other side to the lake, cruise over the lake (I actually got one of the last boats, keep an eye on departure times). Was too late to visit the shrine but could still go up to the torii by the lake, then bus back to the station to get to Tokyo. In the evening I went to a small local band showcase at a venue called Nine Spices.
Saturday 27th April - Tokyo My last day in Japan was left without a plan, so I could go back and finish off whatever I felt I'd missed. Started with a walk through Yoyogi Park to see Meiji Jingu shrine, then went on towards the Imperial Palace to see the gardens. Had a really nice curry at a restaurant called Sama in Harajuku - not sure it's particularly Japanese but it was very popular, I'd skipped breakfast so had a really early lunch and got straight in but the queue was out the door, down the stairs and along the street when I left. I really wanted to see some Japanese artwork (more so traditional stuff than anything modern) and had a hard time deciding which art gallery was best for this, eventually settling on Tokyo National Museum rather than a gallery, and I think I made the right choice. The main exhibition is mostly about the history of Japanese art, from during the isolation period where the focus was mainly on producing art as useful items - folding screen doors, tables, chairs, sword handles, samurai armour - through to the end of that period and the start of international trade, where the West rejected the idea of these items being classed as "fine art" and so lead to the development of the wood block (ukiyo-e) art style. The museum is laid out in a way that tells the story chronologically and is really interesting. The gift shop at the end is also the best place to get good quality souvenirs - I got some folding screen style prints (smaller, the right size to go on a shelf) and a paper fan (sensu). There's a few other buildings on the museum grounds with smaller exhibitions - I didn't see all of them as it was getting late, but I wasn't overly enthusiastic about what I did see, it's all about the main building in my opinion. I finished the day at the Pit Inn (jazz club, the band I saw was called the Suga Dairo Trio).
Sunday 28th April - checked out of hotel, went to airport, 1pm flight.
I'm very happy with my itinerary but there were a few places I didn't get to see. I didn't get to see much of Osaka, I also wish I'd tried harder to get Ghibli museum tickets. I'm not sure that I'd cut anything but with another few days I'd have built in an overnight stay in Kanazawa and a day trip or overnight stay in Nikko (or I might've considered a few nights in Seoul as I'm unlikely to be back in this part of the world anytime soon).
submitted by Different_Horse6239 to JapanTravel [link] [comments]
I've been wanting to try a solo trip for a little while and originally planned to do this all myself. In the end I chickened out and booked onto a group tour for some of it, but made sure I had a chunk of time on my own too. In the end I needn't have worried about going alone - all the airport and hotel staff speak perfect English, restaurant/shop staff sometimes less so but it's less important there, all navigation signs are translated to English (at least for the cities I visited), Google maps works great (when taking the metro make sure to check which exit it recommends), Google translate has a feature to use your camera and translate any text it sees which works very well most of the time (the tour company booked and collected my JR pass for me so I can't comment on that, although I'm sure it would've also been fine) - although the group were all lovely and made the trip much more fun!
Food isn't really a priority for me when travelling so I can't tell you where I ate most of the time, often it was just the nearest ramen place with a not terrible score on Google. I did make sure to try all of the local stuff as I went (Kobe/Wagyu beef, curry, yakitori, kushikatsu, ramen, donburi, sushi, takoyaki, taiyaki, yakisoba, okonomiyaki, tonkatsu, shabu shabu, tempura, gyoza, souffle pancakes, dango).
Flight - opted to go direct as I've never done a transfer before, but could've saved a little bit of cash by stopping over in China for a few hours. The flight was at 9am (London Heathrow, British Airways, economy), 14 hours long and landed at 7am Japanese time (Haneda), so I decided to stay up through the night to make sure I definitely manage to fall asleep on the plane, which I of course did not.
Saturday 13th April - Tokyo Landed at 7am local time. From what I've read my experience is not the norm and you should plan to be there a while, but from the plane touching down, me getting through customs/passport control, exchanging some currency, buying a SIM and travel card through to stepping on the train... a little under an hour? Wont go into it too much but make sure you get a SIM and travel card at the airport, it'll be a lot harder in the city. I got the "Welcome Suica" which is designed for tourists, there's no fee to purchase the card but you can't refund whatever's left at the end - HOWEVER there's a Seven-Eleven (corner shop type thing, they're everywhere in Japan) at the airport (both before and after security) where you can pay with funds from your IC card, so you can make sure you don't waste much (I had about 8 yen left on mine). Went to the hotel (one of the APA hotels in Shinjuku), too early to check in but dropped my bag off. First stop was the Ichiyo Sakura festival - a lot smaller than it is billed as online, I think it's been scaled back a lot post-pandemic, there's no longer a parade, just a little stage in a park with a few hundred attendees and a variety of performances of Japanese stuff - still quite cool, but I was sleep deprived and needed to keep moving so didn't stay too long. I wanted to hunt for cherry blossoms as I knew it was almost the end of the season and they'd die off very quickly, and I'd also seen Tokyo Skytree in the distance, so those were my priorities, and I eventually found myself in Sumida Park. The pink blossoms were very wilted, but the white ones come out a bit later and were in full bloom. Had my first vending machine experience en-route (may sound like a dumb tourist for recommending a western brand but the grape fanta is amazing and I wish they would release it everywhere). Then it was time to check in to the hotel, intended to just have a nap but slept through til 5am.
Sunday 14th April - Tokyo Started at the Samurai Ninja museum. This is 100% tourist nonsense but well worth doing in my opinion, starts with a chance to dress up in samurai outfits (the website says something about the outfits not "looking good" on people over 5'9 but I'm 6'1 and I think it's fine, would be more concerned about width than height) and take photos, then the guided tour (mandatory, included in the price, in English) which I thought was quite interesting (although I got all the same information again on the walking tours I did so not essential), then a chance to throw rubber shuriken (throwing stars) into a foam wall. Afterwards had a bit of free time so wandered in no particular direction, found my first temple - this was the only one I ended up doing that isn't on all the tourist lists so while it wasn't as spectacular as any of the others I did it was the only one that was actually quiet, so really glad I experienced it. Found my way to Senso-ji temple, but knew I was coming back here with the group so didn't linger. Had some candied fruit on a stick on the way. In the afternoon I'd booked teamLab Borderless - you have to book this in advance and I'd highly recommend. I think it's the sort of place you know whether you'll enjoy it just from the pictures. You may have read that it's busy and full of screaming kids, which was true of the big room in the middle but it's easy to immerse yourself in the side rooms which have much better stuff in anyway. There's another teamLab in Tokyo which is similar and I'm sure is also good, but I didn't feel the need to do both. After, had dinner with someone from the group who also arrived early and then wandered around Shibuya for a bit - looked around a pachinko parlour but didn't partake as they were closing in 30 minutes.
Monday 15th April - Tokyo There was a sumo exhibition fight at Yasukini shrine that I spent almost the whole day at! This is a free annual event. Afterwards, had a little walk round near the Imperial Palace (sadly the main gardens are closed on Mondays) then went to grab my suitcase and meet the tour group.
Tuesday 16th April - Kamakura Day trip to Kamakura. Started at Engaku-ji temple where I bought my Goshuincho (at most temples/shrines you can pay a small fee for someone to hand-write a prayer in calligraphy which is unique to that location called a Goshuin, and they'll only do it in a specific type of book called a Goshuincho - it's the last photo in my album). I found it very strange that they were building another building on the site, you'd never be allowed to mess with a historical site like that in England. Then the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu shrine. Struggling to come up with much to say about it but it was very pretty? And afterwards the great Buddha statue. We tried to watch the sunset on the beach but it was too cloudy, then headed back to Tokyo.
Wednesday 17th April - Kyoto Bullet train to Kyoto, dropped bags at hotel. Hired kimonos and wandered around the Gion district taking photos for a few hours, before we had booked a matcha tea ceremony (we were told not to worry about cultural appropriation, Japanese people think it's funny seeing western people dressed in them, which did seem to be the case). After lunch we saw the Miyako Odori (each of the geisha districts in Kyoto performs a show/dance for the public once a year, this is the Gion show and is only on in April) - I obviously couldn't take pictures, but there's a snippet up here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm--yxNLMFU
Thursday 18th April - Kyoto Began at the Fushini Inari shrine (the one with thousands of torii gates). You can hike up to the top and back down in under an hour, but there's lots of little side paths to wander down - we budgeted for 3 hours and still didn't see everything. There's a free audio guide online in multiple languages which is quite good. Quickly visited Sanjusangen-do temple (the one with 1001 statues of the deity Kannon) afterwards which I would highly recommend, my favourite of all the temples I saw. Couldn't take photos of the inside, but here it is - https://www.discoverkyoto.com/places-go/sanjusangen-do/#features . In the afternoon we did a free walking tour (Kyoto Localised - obviously tips are expected, please do). I thought the guide was very good and made it entertaining as well as informative, a lot of the time tour guides can be very dry. In the evening, a sushi making class, and then rushed to Kodai-ji temple to see the illuminations before they closed.
Friday 19th April - Kyoto (Arashiyama) Got up early to get to the bamboo forest before it got too crowded. Have no idea why it's so famous - I saw several bamboo forests on the trip (including at Fushini Inari), it's not particularly big and you can only go on the paths - but there is at least some other stuff in the area worth seeing. Hiked up to the top of the hill, then down to the river to sit with our feet in for a while. Had a really strange encounter with some schoolgirls who wanted a picture with us, then went to Tenryu-ji temple. We took the scenic railway (romancecar) back to Kyoto - this is great, try to sit on the right hand side if you can. Rushed up the hill to catch the sunset from Kiyomizu temple. There's a swanky hotel nearby with a rooftop bar that has a gorgeous view of Kyoto (expensive, don't eat here, not sure if it's meant for hotel guests only but nobody asked for a room number or tried to stop us).
Saturday 20th April - Hiroshima Bullet train to Hiroshima, then the ferry over to Miyajima island (ferry is kinda included in the JR pass but you have to pay a small amount of tax) for the floating torii gate. The island is nice to walk around and has lots of deer, we didn't bother with the cable car though as it was quite foggy. Took the ferry back across, then went to see the nuclear bomb dome and peace museum. The museum is quite small and most people would know the history of it but I found the artwork done by survivors to be particularly striking, as well as the eyewitness accounts. Had okonomiyaki in the evening - they uniquely make them with noodles in Hiroshima, great if you're a carb lover like me.
Sunday 21st April - Himeji/Osaka Stopped off at Himeji on the way back to Osaka. Himeji Castle is one of the few surviving castles in Japan (there are many that have been demolished and then replicas built). It is rather impressive in person, although there is nothing to see inside - audio guide is a must as there are no information signs either. Back in Osaka we had a guided food tour - kushikatsu (deep fried skewers), takoyaki (octopus balls), an izakaya (barestaurant that does a bit of everything) and finished with taiyaki (fish shaped pastry filled with red bean paste). The tour ended by dotonbori bridge where we then took a short river cruise up and down the street.
Monday 22nd April - Nara/Osaka Day trip to Nara! Starting in Nara Park, with all the deer that bow to you. Onto Kasuga-Taisha shrine, the one with loads of bronze lanterns. Probably one of the nicer shrines I saw, depending on how far along you are in your trip if you've seen enough it's skippable, much more important you visit Todai-ji temple, one of the largest wooden buildings in the world which houses a huge bronze Buddha statue. There is a hole the same size as the statue's nostril towards the back of the building which you can try to crawl through and is said to bring good fortune. Walk around Naramachi before heading back to Osaka.
Tuesday 23rd April - Tokyo Visited Senso-ji properly in the morning. Most of the day was spent on a walking tour (Tokyo Localised) from Akihabara to Ueno Park - this one wasn't as good as the one in Kyoto, a lot of it was spent sitting and listening rather than walking and the guy was quite pushy with tips. Had a bit of time to mooch around and get some shopping done, I picked up some matcha tea that my Aunt had asked for and some funky Kit-Kat flavours to bring back to housemates/colleagues/friends (liked all the fruity ones I tried except apple which was really bitter - best one was melon). We had dinner at a shabu shabu restaurant (Momo Paradise) and then spent the night in Shinjuku/Golden Gai.
Wednesday 24th April - Tokyo Began the day with a maid cafe experience - this is creepy af and should be avoided at all costs. Went to Harajuku, didn't actually see anybody dressed up but enjoyed the rainbow cheese toastie and giant candy floss all the same. Flying visit to Shibuya to cross the crossing (if you do go, maybe try one of the upper floor people watching cafes/restaurants that always get suggested for this area, it didn't feel worth it to go just to cross, it felt like a normal street crossing), then up Tokyo Tower to the viewing platform - this was nice, but we chose a day with really poor visibility.
Thursday 25th April - Tokyo Travel with the group ended here, a few with later flights came with me to Odaiba beach in the morning. This place is beautiful if it's clear and sunny, I think the tide was in but there were a few rocks we could climb on. Saw the Statue of Liberty and the robot statue. Then I had to head back to the city as I had a ticket for a baseball game (Tokyo Swallows v Hiroshima Carp). This was loads of fun - I work in sports data so had a rough idea of the rules but would suggest others having a quick read beforehand if you go. I caught a really good game, 9-8 to the home team with a home run in the final inning (and with 2 men already out) to win it, also saw a 'grand slam' (home run with a man already on each base for 4 runs). They bring umbrellas to the game and wave them up and down when they score!
Friday 26th April - Hakone This was my favourite day of the trip! I bought the Hakone freepass, which gets you free travel to, from and all around Hakone, plus a couple of discounts. You display the ticket on your phone so it's very easy to use. I've heard Hakone can get busy, and I'm sure it was much worse at the weekend, but I had no queues whatsoever! Started at Shinjuku station, usually the advice is to pay for an upgrade to take the romancecar, rather than sit on the Odakyu line for hours with a transfer at Odawara, but I was lucky that there was a super express train due when I got to the station that was almost as quick as the romancecar (quicker when factoring in the queue to buy the upgrade - I did take the upgrade on the way back though). I went straight to the open air museum which was absolutely stunning, I could've spent the whole day here. I also thought the Picasso exhibit was very good - I've seen more than enough of his paintings before, but this focused more on his sketches and ceramics work. I completed the rest of the loop, cable car up to the top to see the sulphur vents and the view of Mt Fuji, had an egg cooked in the sulphur, car down the other side to the lake, cruise over the lake (I actually got one of the last boats, keep an eye on departure times). Was too late to visit the shrine but could still go up to the torii by the lake, then bus back to the station to get to Tokyo. In the evening I went to a small local band showcase at a venue called Nine Spices.
Saturday 27th April - Tokyo My last day in Japan was left without a plan, so I could go back and finish off whatever I felt I'd missed. Started with a walk through Yoyogi Park to see Meiji Jingu shrine, then went on towards the Imperial Palace to see the gardens. Had a really nice curry at a restaurant called Sama in Harajuku - not sure it's particularly Japanese but it was very popular, I'd skipped breakfast so had a really early lunch and got straight in but the queue was out the door, down the stairs and along the street when I left. I really wanted to see some Japanese artwork (more so traditional stuff than anything modern) and had a hard time deciding which art gallery was best for this, eventually settling on Tokyo National Museum rather than a gallery, and I think I made the right choice. The main exhibition is mostly about the history of Japanese art, from during the isolation period where the focus was mainly on producing art as useful items - folding screen doors, tables, chairs, sword handles, samurai armour - through to the end of that period and the start of international trade, where the West rejected the idea of these items being classed as "fine art" and so lead to the development of the wood block (ukiyo-e) art style. The museum is laid out in a way that tells the story chronologically and is really interesting. The gift shop at the end is also the best place to get good quality souvenirs - I got some folding screen style prints (smaller, the right size to go on a shelf) and a paper fan (sensu). There's a few other buildings on the museum grounds with smaller exhibitions - I didn't see all of them as it was getting late, but I wasn't overly enthusiastic about what I did see, it's all about the main building in my opinion. I finished the day at the Pit Inn (jazz club, the band I saw was called the Suga Dairo Trio).
Sunday 28th April - checked out of hotel, went to airport, 1pm flight.
I'm very happy with my itinerary but there were a few places I didn't get to see. I didn't get to see much of Osaka, I also wish I'd tried harder to get Ghibli museum tickets. I'm not sure that I'd cut anything but with another few days I'd have built in an overnight stay in Kanazawa and a day trip or overnight stay in Nikko (or I might've considered a few nights in Seoul as I'm unlikely to be back in this part of the world anytime soon).
2024.05.27 23:31 Dumbidiot1323 One year in Japan - All good things come to an end. (April/May 2023 - Finale)
With plenty of delays and 12 reports later, we've arrived at the final report of my one year Japan adventures. I've returned from Japan exactly a year ago and I can't believe how fast the time went by. Feels like just yesterday when I stood at the airport, flying out to Japan, excited to spend a year there. I wonder if I ever get over it!
I will probably make one more post after this, a sort of retrospective where I go over my favourite places, foods, activities, regrets and what I would have done differently, but for the main travelling part - this is the last one! It'll cover my final few travels up to north Japan, including cities like Kakunodate, Morioka, Kitakami, Hakodate and my fourth (!) visit to Sapporo. Fair warning: I will probably be very sappy and sentimental in this report since there were a few goodbyes to be had in May 2023. Without further ado, let's finish this.
Prior reports can be found here:
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12
Tokyo
My mother and I checked out of the hotel we stayed at in Ueno, leaving our suitcases there because there were still a few hours left before my mom's flight. Since it was my mother's last day in Japan, I asked her if she wanted to eat anything special as her final meal and... she picked McDonald's. Don't judge me - I asked her several times but she said she had tried a lot of food and was good with just having McDonald's. So we went over there, ate some burgers before a final round in Ueno park and then we picked up her luggage and went onto the Skyliner to Narita. My mother got herself a Starbucks coffee and we talked a bit about her trip and if she was satisfied and she loved every second of it despite having been sick for a few days in the first week - which she never mentioned to me up until this point, tch. Either way, it was time to say goodbye to my mom and I took the train back into Tokyo. Now, this was when it finally hit me that this was "it". I only had 1 1/2 months left and there was no travel companion to look forward to anymore. There were still a few friends I've made on Discord coming to Japan on their own, separate travels and I would meet up with them for karaoke but aside that - my final countdown began. It felt really, really weird.
I spent the rest of the day in Akihabara, window shopping, then having a meal at my favourite Chinese restaurant before I had to take a somewhat longer trip from Tokyo to Hino, which was 1 1/2 hours out of central Tokyo and where my Airbnb was located. I only stayed there for 2 days and one of those I spent on taking care of laundry and just relaxing a bit after travelling about with my mother for 2 weeks. The area was quite nice, although a power outage in the entire city block took out my ability to take a shower for almost the entire day so some of my plans were foiled. On the second day, I met up with one of the aforementioned Discord friends. The weather was quite bad with heavy rain so we only window shopped around Ueno and then met up with another set of friends for a big karaoke session! This would also be my last karaoke session in Japan for the time being (still one of my favourite activities to do in Japan, especially if your with a group of dorks).
Morioka
I initially planned to travel from Tokyo to Morioka, checking out a few places nearby and then go further north in one go for the sakura but it was way too early to actually go to Hokkaido for them. Since Tokyo's hotel and airbnb prices were also getting more and more expensive in this period, I had to make some Frankenstein-esque itinerary. Which is why I'd go to Morioka, visit the spots I wanted to visit and then went back to Tokyo for a week before then venturing to Hokkaido... the last weeks were kind of messy in terms of planning, to be honest.
Either way, I hopped on the shinkansen and took a trip to Morioka, without any real plans aside wanting to take sidetrips to Kakunodate and Kitakami from there. As far as Morioka itself goes, there are some pretty sakura spots throughout the city, even if a lot of petals were starting to fall already. But it made for some pretty paths at least. I missed out on checking out the Hachimangu shrine, which I somewhat regret. Morioka is famous for their three different types of noodle dishes; wanko soba, reimen and jajamen. I've only tried out jajamen because I love the "original" Chinese dish a whole lot and found a small place with a very nice owner who told me how to eat the dish and what to do after finishing the noodles. Typically, you crack a raw egg into your plate and pour hot water in, mixing the remaining miso and raw egg in for an egg soup. It's incredibly delicious and I would've loved to go for another round but the place was closed throughout the remainder of my stay :(.
Now, Kitakami was of particular interest for me because from pictures I've seen online, the sakura "tunnel" there looked incredible. Unfortunately by the time I got there, a lot of sakura had already fallen off in that area. There were still some other sakura trees around the area and a few food stalls. I was a bit disappointed to not have caught the main attraction but it was still worth for like a half day. Had some gyudon at a very small place run by an older lady before heading back.
The next day, I'd go for a bit of a longer trip to Kakunodate. Another town famous for its sakura and the old samurai and merchant districts. The weather was once again rather shabby, but the town was still really beautiful! One thing I really started to appreciate was when there would be random sakura trees in between others up in the mountains/hills, which was the case here. The trees around the river were the highlight, though, even in this weather. It must look even better when the sun is out and you're here at peak bloom! But it's also definitely a well known spot and I was surprised that it was this busy last year already, even though borders weren't open for that long yet. Something that always goes down well in somewhat cold, rainy weather is a hot bowl of soba or udon. This was a thick duck broth and tastes absolutely fantastic, one of my favourite soba meals in Japan (here's the Google maps location). Something else to note: the shinkansen ride from Morioka to Kakunodate has incredible scenery. It's sort of like a sightseeing spot in itself to be honest. There was a point where I could see sakura trees for what felt like a solid minute of riding on the train there.
But that was all for this part of northern Japan. I only spent like 3 days up here but would say it's worth checking it out if you are planning a trip up north and want to see something on your way to Hokkaido, for example. With that being over, I headed back to Tokyo for a few days - remember, it was all a bit weirdly planned out here...
Tokyo, again
Back in Tokyo, I once again found myself in Kunitachi, where my extremely nice Airbnb host picked me up from the station to take me to the place itself - and I couldn't have thanked her enough because it was still pouring rain that week. I spent the next few days just wandering around the neighbourhood, doing "regular life" stuff like laundry and recharging my travel battery. But I also took advantage of the weather when it stopped raining for a day or two and headed to Showa Kinen Park!
Showa Kinen Park is a huge park in west Tokyo, with a large variety of flowers and plants all over the park grounds. I spent four hours here and I am not sure I even saw everything properly. It's very popular in Spring for its tulips, which are plenty colourful. There's also smaller gardens within the park, some of which exhibit bonsai trees. Very much recommend checking this place out. If you don't want to walk, you can also rent bikes at the entrance area IIRC and there's also other small "buses" going around the park so that you don't have to track back if needed.
After a few days, I once again packed my stuff for the actual final journey up north. First stop - Hakodate.
Hakodate
This was my third time in Hakodate, having been there in Summer, Winter and now Spring. The train journey takes around 4 hours and I arrived at around 4pm, took a taxi (with a very chatty driver!) to my accommodation Share Hotels Hakoba (very much recommended) and then immediately went out for some good old Hakodate shio ramen at Fukufukutei. I absolutely love the shio ramen they serve in Hakodate, it just feels so light yet flavourful and the chashu at this place was amazing. I ordered a half-sized fried rice to go with my ramen and was very satisfied with my meal.
Nothing better to follow that up by walking up the slopes of Hakodate. The Motomachi area is always great and the small park in the area had a bunch of sakura trees. And just looking over the harbor of Hakodate never gets boring. Don't get baited by the "famous" slope everybody takes pictures at, the entire hillside of Hakodate is amazing and there are a lot of small shrines - explore them all if you can, it's a great side-quest.
The second day was the "big" one because I had been looking forward to seeing Fort Goryokaku in Spring. Now, if you plan on visiting this place in sakura season, the fact that Hakodate is not a typical tourist destination won't save you from having to line up and wait to get tickets up the tower. I've not seen this many people anywhere in Hakodate but it makes sense because this is a very famous spot for sakura. However, the wait is most definitely worth it. I'll let the pictures do the talking here.
Once I had my fill of taking pictures from inside the tower, I went down and checked the park itself out and I honestly think in terms of just sheer volume of sakura, this place blew out any other I've visited out the water. I took SO many pictures here, I can't really post all of them but here's a selection. Do not miss out on this if you ever plan on visiting Hokkaido in Spring. I probably spent around 1 1/2 hours in total at Goryokaku before heading back and to Hakodate Park, which also sports a lot of sakura! And since it's practically right next to Hakodateyama, you can take pictures with it in the background from here too. This cat gang was lazing about there too and garnered some attention from the locals as well. It's also a fairly quiet part of Hakodate, there weren't many people here at all which made for a very relaxing stroll. Keep in mind though that even in late April, Hakodate gets somewhat chilly in the evening so bring at least a thin jacket if you play on exploring about in the evening.
Coincidentally, a friend I've not met in years was in Hakodate at the same time and we spontaneously met up for a quick ramen dinner which was once again incredible. I honestly can not recommend shio ramen in Hakodate enough. I've been to three different places and all three have been absolutely amazing. Shio ramen is still my favourite type and I'll never get tired of it. With that meal done, my short stay in Hakodate was over and I was 100% satisfied with going there one final time. Up next was my final stay in Sapporo...
Sapporo
Ah, Sapporo. One of the first major cities I've visited during my one year in Japan and it would also be the last one (not counting Tokyo because I "lived" there, most of the time) I'd visit on the trip. I stayed there for about 1 1/2 weeks with no real, clear goal in mind. I just wanted to check out what sakura Sapporo has to offer, meet up with my American friend again and be nostalgic.
Just like with Hakodate, Sapporo was unexpectedly cold around this time. If you've stayed in places that have constant 20-25°C going for like two months already, 10°C feel cold as hell and I had to layer up over there. I met up with my friend on my first full day and we did some anime merch shopping and had some burgers at J.S Burgers (burger was alright). My friend usually had work going on weekdays, so the next day, I did my own clothes shopping for a bit, making use of the ever downward trending yen and buying myself a few essentials at Uniqlo.
My plan then was to go to the place where I had made a ton of memories and acquaintances in August 2022 - the anime bar. Now, if you've not read my August report, I'll give you a TLDR: this was pretty much the first place I mustered up the courage to go to and socialise with Japanese people, even with my pretty terrible Japanese at the time and I ended up going there every single evening, meeting towns of different folks and it was an incredibly great time. I was looking forward to go there again on my final trip to Sapporo but when I walked closer and closer to the location, I realised something was off and as I arrived, I saw that the bar had practically shutdown. All the decorations in- and outside were gone, the sign was taken off. This might sound a bit dramatic but I was very sad at that moment. I probably stood there for a few minutes in disbelief. Just 6 months earlier in September, I had been there and now this place full of memories was gone. It sucked! But life goes on and I'll at least have cherished memories of this place forever.
Of course, I had to go to my favourite ramen place in all of Japan and got a big portion of their shio toripan tsukemen and it hit the spot just like it always did. If I could only eat one restaurant's ramen for the rest of my life, it'd probably be this. Maruyama-koen around the end of April had more sakura and also plum blossoms! As per usual, plenty of food stalls selling typical festival food around.
My Airbnb was located east of Toyohira river and relatively close to Nakajima-koen, making it so that I pretty much always had a nice walk back to my accommodation and Nakajima-koen is pretty every season I've been there. Also a bit nostalgic because it was one of the first places I visited on my first trip to Sapporo. The park itself had a few sakura trees along the "main" path and also just dotted about randomly within the premises. If you're into cosplay, you may run into a bunch of cosplayers here, it is a fairly popular spot for it.
I met up with my American friend another few times, having some relatively cheap and alright meal at Yakiniku like, shopping and spending some time around Odori park. Another throwback because on my first trip, I took a picture of the TV tower from roughly the same spot. We also checked out Round One, which is a big arcade center with lots of crane games and arcades. I'm kind of 50/50 on crane games at this point, especially in these huge buildings because it's just so incredibly loud and I get sensory overload sometimes. We also went for soup curry dinner at this place. Soup curry is also one of my absolute favourite dishes and one of the main reasons I think Hokkaido has the best cuisine in Japan. Keep in mind that this restaurant has gotten pretty popular since the last time I went there but if you manage to go there, do order the fried chicken on rice which is limited to a certain amount of servings per day!
This wouldn't be the last time I met with my friend, however, since she was going to go to Tokyo in May and we'd meet there for the last time!
Again, I omit the parts of my stay in Sapporo where I just bummed around and didn't do anything special. Had a few more soup curries, had some interesting roast beef near my Airbnb, bought more clothes, more merch and saw the last sakura of the year slowly falling on my last walk through Nakajima-koen. 3 months after seeing the first sakura in Kawazu, my own personal little sakura hunt had ended and on top of that, sakura season ending lined up almost perfectly with my 1 year in Japan ending... And even though I did get 3 months of seeing sakura here and there, I think staying in one place and see the sakura start blooming and then also falling within 1-2 weeks definitely made me realise why it is such a popular season. It's both beautiful and kind of sad, that fleeting feeling!
Random side-note: met up with some people from Hello Talk again and I didn't know that Torikizoku didn't exist in Hokkaido at all at the time! The very first one opened while I stayed there this time and both of the people I met up with were curious to check it out. If you ever wanted to see what a newly built Torikizoku store looks like, here's a peek.
Took some final pictures at Susukino and Toyohira river on my last day in the city before it was time to say goodbye to Sapporo as I took a flight back to Tokyo this time, not making the same mistake of booking a huge train ride back like I did in September 2022! Had to get myself some Hokkaido ice cream at the airport and then said farewell to Sapporo.
The Tokyo Finale
With less than 3 weeks left in Japan, I kind of fought the dreadful feeling of returning home every day while also trying to make the most of my time. And to be honest, making the most of my time for me meant to just enjoy the mundane. I'll get into this in the aforementioned retrospective post but I should have definitely appreciated the "boring", normal days more than I did at the time.
Once again, I had stayed east of Sumidagawa, taking regular walks along the river every day. Also discovered really unique ramen near Akihabara one day, which I'd recommend you to check out. The chashu here is incredible and the broth has a lot of spices in them. I kind of started to put less effort into finding hidden gem restaurants as I felt like I've done that the entire year and visited Sushiro more frequently in my final weeks in Tokyo - simply because it's cheap while still being better than most sushi I can get in my home country.
As mentioned earlier, my American friend was flying out to Tokyo for a few days because one of her friends from the US was coming over to Japan for the first time. But we had another 2 days before the latter arrived and because my friend didn't have many opportunities to go to Tokyo, she always made use of her time by getting her fill of all things anime merch (I'll expose her here by saying she was hunting down a whole lot of BL) and we spent hours in Ikebukuro looking through every store under the sun. Also, Kanda matsuri took place during this time, one of the biggest festivals in Tokyo with thousands of people marching through different neighbourhoods around Kanda, Nihonbashi, Otemachi and Akihabara. I didn't actually know what to expect but the streets around Akihabara were packed. But it's really cool to see the festivities, music and dances.
My final Airbnb was up in Uguisudani, a very quiet part of Tokyo north of Ueno. If you're into trains, I imagine this station would be cool because there are like 5 or 6 different tracks around and you can see them all from the bridge. Also comes with nice sunsets. My Airbnb host's wife brought freshly made sandwiches every morning and let me tell you, those konbini sandwiches got nothing on these. They felt like whole meals! There was also a pretty good tsukemen place nearby which I visited twice.
On one of these days, I had to do the painful journey over to city hall to effectively deregister myself as a resident. Since I had come over to Japan with the sponsoring of a company, I met a couple people who had just arrived in Tokyo for their own working holiday and had to do the opposite of me that day. Felt kind of envious because I knew they were about to have a fantastic year! Also a bit sad because I would have loved if they had been there when I first came over to have some friends to spend time with but at least I got to meet one of them late 2023 anyway!
At last, after spending a few days with my friend and her friend, taking them to a few food places, battling hordes of people at the Pokemon Center in Ikeburuo and have them experience Torikizoku and Sushiro as well, it was time to bid farewell to my friend, for a long time too probably. She was the first proper friend I had made in Japan and we spent a lot of time together whenever I was in Sapporo or she visited Tokyo, so this was extra sad. She would later leave Japan in September 2023, returning to the US after she spent 2 years as a JET. It really all felt like the end of an era at the time, especially because we don't know when we'll next meet. It was a fairly emotional goodbye as we both did our best to hold back tears (she probably thinks I didn't notice :P) but I am sure we'll see each other at some point and fortunately these days, staying in contact online is easy so we check on each other regularly.
I don't have a lot of interesting things to say for my final week in Japan. It kind of all became blurry towards the end. Most of the time I was just buying merch and taking walks around areas I had previously stayed at while also eating all the food that I could because soon enough all the variety I got to enjoy while living in Tokyo would be no more.
On one of the last few days, I messaged the Airbnb host of my June 2022 accommodation and asked him if he was up to meet for a CoCo ichi meal in Machida (both of us just freaking love curry and we had met there before) and he agreed! The last time I was there was in July 2022 and I have the fondest memories of my stay in Machida still. It was the place where the feeling of "Damn, I live in Japan right now" kicked in back when I arrived. We had a nice chat over our lunch, I gave him a little gift and then also said our goodbyes. I still keep in touch with him and hope to be able to stay at his place some time again - but it has been very popular lately haha.
The last day is still pretty vivid in my mind. I got jajamen at my favourite Chinese restaurant in Ueno, then had another long walk to Asakusa, taking the route back along Sumidagawa one last time, through Asakusabashi and then decided to end my journey at one of the places I first visited when I arrived almost a year earlier: Kanda Myojin. I sat down here for about an hour, just looking at the night sky. I got kind of overwhelmed by emotions and may have shed a tear or two as well, hoping that time would stand still and I could just continue staying there but unfortunately, time doesn't stop for anyone and eventually I had to get back up and walk back to my hotel, took a final relaxing bath and then went to sleep...
But! My flight back home wasn't until 4:45pm and it was from Haneda so I checked out of my hotel, left my suitcase there to pick it up later and went on a final stroll through Akihabara, taking this picture just to have a direct comparison to the one I had taken in June 2022. The difference was night and day. Just like with Kanda Myojin being the first and last place I visited, my final meal had to be the same as my first - another plate of curry at CoCo Ichi. If you've read my reports, you'll realise I went to CoCo ichi a whole lot and I am not ashamed to admit that this chain restaurant will always have a special place in my heart! But then, it was time to get my luggage and get on the train and eventually the monorail to Haneda airport. Here's my final 7-11 "haul" as I waited for the plane to get ready and boarding to begin.
And then it was time to say goodbye to Japan for real. Even a year later I get emotional looking at these silly pictures taken from inside the plane. After travelling all across Japan, meeting dozens of fantastic people, showing friends around, eating tons of curry, the best year of my life had come to an end.
Aaaand that is it. I apologise for the lack of pictures towards the end of the report when it all became a wall of text without much to show off in picture form. Still, I hope you enjoyed this final report even if it was a bit messy. If there's anyone who actually read all of my reports - thank you very much! As I said, there's going to be a retrospective post after this too but as far as the travelling part goes, this was it. It can't be overstated enough and I will bring this up in that thread too but quitting my job to take a year off in Japan was by far the best decision I've ever made in my life and even though I have already been back to Japan for a two week holiday in November 2023, this particular year in Japan I will never, ever forget.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll do my best answering them. Thanks again for reading!
submitted by Dumbidiot1323 to JapanTravel [link] [comments]
I will probably make one more post after this, a sort of retrospective where I go over my favourite places, foods, activities, regrets and what I would have done differently, but for the main travelling part - this is the last one! It'll cover my final few travels up to north Japan, including cities like Kakunodate, Morioka, Kitakami, Hakodate and my fourth (!) visit to Sapporo. Fair warning: I will probably be very sappy and sentimental in this report since there were a few goodbyes to be had in May 2023. Without further ado, let's finish this.
Prior reports can be found here:
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12
My mother and I checked out of the hotel we stayed at in Ueno, leaving our suitcases there because there were still a few hours left before my mom's flight. Since it was my mother's last day in Japan, I asked her if she wanted to eat anything special as her final meal and... she picked McDonald's. Don't judge me - I asked her several times but she said she had tried a lot of food and was good with just having McDonald's. So we went over there, ate some burgers before a final round in Ueno park and then we picked up her luggage and went onto the Skyliner to Narita. My mother got herself a Starbucks coffee and we talked a bit about her trip and if she was satisfied and she loved every second of it despite having been sick for a few days in the first week - which she never mentioned to me up until this point, tch. Either way, it was time to say goodbye to my mom and I took the train back into Tokyo. Now, this was when it finally hit me that this was "it". I only had 1 1/2 months left and there was no travel companion to look forward to anymore. There were still a few friends I've made on Discord coming to Japan on their own, separate travels and I would meet up with them for karaoke but aside that - my final countdown began. It felt really, really weird.
I spent the rest of the day in Akihabara, window shopping, then having a meal at my favourite Chinese restaurant before I had to take a somewhat longer trip from Tokyo to Hino, which was 1 1/2 hours out of central Tokyo and where my Airbnb was located. I only stayed there for 2 days and one of those I spent on taking care of laundry and just relaxing a bit after travelling about with my mother for 2 weeks. The area was quite nice, although a power outage in the entire city block took out my ability to take a shower for almost the entire day so some of my plans were foiled. On the second day, I met up with one of the aforementioned Discord friends. The weather was quite bad with heavy rain so we only window shopped around Ueno and then met up with another set of friends for a big karaoke session! This would also be my last karaoke session in Japan for the time being (still one of my favourite activities to do in Japan, especially if your with a group of dorks).
Morioka
I initially planned to travel from Tokyo to Morioka, checking out a few places nearby and then go further north in one go for the sakura but it was way too early to actually go to Hokkaido for them. Since Tokyo's hotel and airbnb prices were also getting more and more expensive in this period, I had to make some Frankenstein-esque itinerary. Which is why I'd go to Morioka, visit the spots I wanted to visit and then went back to Tokyo for a week before then venturing to Hokkaido... the last weeks were kind of messy in terms of planning, to be honest.
Either way, I hopped on the shinkansen and took a trip to Morioka, without any real plans aside wanting to take sidetrips to Kakunodate and Kitakami from there. As far as Morioka itself goes, there are some pretty sakura spots throughout the city, even if a lot of petals were starting to fall already. But it made for some pretty paths at least. I missed out on checking out the Hachimangu shrine, which I somewhat regret. Morioka is famous for their three different types of noodle dishes; wanko soba, reimen and jajamen. I've only tried out jajamen because I love the "original" Chinese dish a whole lot and found a small place with a very nice owner who told me how to eat the dish and what to do after finishing the noodles. Typically, you crack a raw egg into your plate and pour hot water in, mixing the remaining miso and raw egg in for an egg soup. It's incredibly delicious and I would've loved to go for another round but the place was closed throughout the remainder of my stay :(.
Now, Kitakami was of particular interest for me because from pictures I've seen online, the sakura "tunnel" there looked incredible. Unfortunately by the time I got there, a lot of sakura had already fallen off in that area. There were still some other sakura trees around the area and a few food stalls. I was a bit disappointed to not have caught the main attraction but it was still worth for like a half day. Had some gyudon at a very small place run by an older lady before heading back.
The next day, I'd go for a bit of a longer trip to Kakunodate. Another town famous for its sakura and the old samurai and merchant districts. The weather was once again rather shabby, but the town was still really beautiful! One thing I really started to appreciate was when there would be random sakura trees in between others up in the mountains/hills, which was the case here. The trees around the river were the highlight, though, even in this weather. It must look even better when the sun is out and you're here at peak bloom! But it's also definitely a well known spot and I was surprised that it was this busy last year already, even though borders weren't open for that long yet. Something that always goes down well in somewhat cold, rainy weather is a hot bowl of soba or udon. This was a thick duck broth and tastes absolutely fantastic, one of my favourite soba meals in Japan (here's the Google maps location). Something else to note: the shinkansen ride from Morioka to Kakunodate has incredible scenery. It's sort of like a sightseeing spot in itself to be honest. There was a point where I could see sakura trees for what felt like a solid minute of riding on the train there.
But that was all for this part of northern Japan. I only spent like 3 days up here but would say it's worth checking it out if you are planning a trip up north and want to see something on your way to Hokkaido, for example. With that being over, I headed back to Tokyo for a few days - remember, it was all a bit weirdly planned out here...
Tokyo, again
Back in Tokyo, I once again found myself in Kunitachi, where my extremely nice Airbnb host picked me up from the station to take me to the place itself - and I couldn't have thanked her enough because it was still pouring rain that week. I spent the next few days just wandering around the neighbourhood, doing "regular life" stuff like laundry and recharging my travel battery. But I also took advantage of the weather when it stopped raining for a day or two and headed to Showa Kinen Park!
Showa Kinen Park is a huge park in west Tokyo, with a large variety of flowers and plants all over the park grounds. I spent four hours here and I am not sure I even saw everything properly. It's very popular in Spring for its tulips, which are plenty colourful. There's also smaller gardens within the park, some of which exhibit bonsai trees. Very much recommend checking this place out. If you don't want to walk, you can also rent bikes at the entrance area IIRC and there's also other small "buses" going around the park so that you don't have to track back if needed.
After a few days, I once again packed my stuff for the actual final journey up north. First stop - Hakodate.
Hakodate
This was my third time in Hakodate, having been there in Summer, Winter and now Spring. The train journey takes around 4 hours and I arrived at around 4pm, took a taxi (with a very chatty driver!) to my accommodation Share Hotels Hakoba (very much recommended) and then immediately went out for some good old Hakodate shio ramen at Fukufukutei. I absolutely love the shio ramen they serve in Hakodate, it just feels so light yet flavourful and the chashu at this place was amazing. I ordered a half-sized fried rice to go with my ramen and was very satisfied with my meal.
Nothing better to follow that up by walking up the slopes of Hakodate. The Motomachi area is always great and the small park in the area had a bunch of sakura trees. And just looking over the harbor of Hakodate never gets boring. Don't get baited by the "famous" slope everybody takes pictures at, the entire hillside of Hakodate is amazing and there are a lot of small shrines - explore them all if you can, it's a great side-quest.
The second day was the "big" one because I had been looking forward to seeing Fort Goryokaku in Spring. Now, if you plan on visiting this place in sakura season, the fact that Hakodate is not a typical tourist destination won't save you from having to line up and wait to get tickets up the tower. I've not seen this many people anywhere in Hakodate but it makes sense because this is a very famous spot for sakura. However, the wait is most definitely worth it. I'll let the pictures do the talking here.
Once I had my fill of taking pictures from inside the tower, I went down and checked the park itself out and I honestly think in terms of just sheer volume of sakura, this place blew out any other I've visited out the water. I took SO many pictures here, I can't really post all of them but here's a selection. Do not miss out on this if you ever plan on visiting Hokkaido in Spring. I probably spent around 1 1/2 hours in total at Goryokaku before heading back and to Hakodate Park, which also sports a lot of sakura! And since it's practically right next to Hakodateyama, you can take pictures with it in the background from here too. This cat gang was lazing about there too and garnered some attention from the locals as well. It's also a fairly quiet part of Hakodate, there weren't many people here at all which made for a very relaxing stroll. Keep in mind though that even in late April, Hakodate gets somewhat chilly in the evening so bring at least a thin jacket if you play on exploring about in the evening.
Coincidentally, a friend I've not met in years was in Hakodate at the same time and we spontaneously met up for a quick ramen dinner which was once again incredible. I honestly can not recommend shio ramen in Hakodate enough. I've been to three different places and all three have been absolutely amazing. Shio ramen is still my favourite type and I'll never get tired of it. With that meal done, my short stay in Hakodate was over and I was 100% satisfied with going there one final time. Up next was my final stay in Sapporo...
Sapporo
Ah, Sapporo. One of the first major cities I've visited during my one year in Japan and it would also be the last one (not counting Tokyo because I "lived" there, most of the time) I'd visit on the trip. I stayed there for about 1 1/2 weeks with no real, clear goal in mind. I just wanted to check out what sakura Sapporo has to offer, meet up with my American friend again and be nostalgic.
Just like with Hakodate, Sapporo was unexpectedly cold around this time. If you've stayed in places that have constant 20-25°C going for like two months already, 10°C feel cold as hell and I had to layer up over there. I met up with my friend on my first full day and we did some anime merch shopping and had some burgers at J.S Burgers (burger was alright). My friend usually had work going on weekdays, so the next day, I did my own clothes shopping for a bit, making use of the ever downward trending yen and buying myself a few essentials at Uniqlo.
My plan then was to go to the place where I had made a ton of memories and acquaintances in August 2022 - the anime bar. Now, if you've not read my August report, I'll give you a TLDR: this was pretty much the first place I mustered up the courage to go to and socialise with Japanese people, even with my pretty terrible Japanese at the time and I ended up going there every single evening, meeting towns of different folks and it was an incredibly great time. I was looking forward to go there again on my final trip to Sapporo but when I walked closer and closer to the location, I realised something was off and as I arrived, I saw that the bar had practically shutdown. All the decorations in- and outside were gone, the sign was taken off. This might sound a bit dramatic but I was very sad at that moment. I probably stood there for a few minutes in disbelief. Just 6 months earlier in September, I had been there and now this place full of memories was gone. It sucked! But life goes on and I'll at least have cherished memories of this place forever.
Of course, I had to go to my favourite ramen place in all of Japan and got a big portion of their shio toripan tsukemen and it hit the spot just like it always did. If I could only eat one restaurant's ramen for the rest of my life, it'd probably be this. Maruyama-koen around the end of April had more sakura and also plum blossoms! As per usual, plenty of food stalls selling typical festival food around.
My Airbnb was located east of Toyohira river and relatively close to Nakajima-koen, making it so that I pretty much always had a nice walk back to my accommodation and Nakajima-koen is pretty every season I've been there. Also a bit nostalgic because it was one of the first places I visited on my first trip to Sapporo. The park itself had a few sakura trees along the "main" path and also just dotted about randomly within the premises. If you're into cosplay, you may run into a bunch of cosplayers here, it is a fairly popular spot for it.
I met up with my American friend another few times, having some relatively cheap and alright meal at Yakiniku like, shopping and spending some time around Odori park. Another throwback because on my first trip, I took a picture of the TV tower from roughly the same spot. We also checked out Round One, which is a big arcade center with lots of crane games and arcades. I'm kind of 50/50 on crane games at this point, especially in these huge buildings because it's just so incredibly loud and I get sensory overload sometimes. We also went for soup curry dinner at this place. Soup curry is also one of my absolute favourite dishes and one of the main reasons I think Hokkaido has the best cuisine in Japan. Keep in mind that this restaurant has gotten pretty popular since the last time I went there but if you manage to go there, do order the fried chicken on rice which is limited to a certain amount of servings per day!
This wouldn't be the last time I met with my friend, however, since she was going to go to Tokyo in May and we'd meet there for the last time!
Again, I omit the parts of my stay in Sapporo where I just bummed around and didn't do anything special. Had a few more soup curries, had some interesting roast beef near my Airbnb, bought more clothes, more merch and saw the last sakura of the year slowly falling on my last walk through Nakajima-koen. 3 months after seeing the first sakura in Kawazu, my own personal little sakura hunt had ended and on top of that, sakura season ending lined up almost perfectly with my 1 year in Japan ending... And even though I did get 3 months of seeing sakura here and there, I think staying in one place and see the sakura start blooming and then also falling within 1-2 weeks definitely made me realise why it is such a popular season. It's both beautiful and kind of sad, that fleeting feeling!
Random side-note: met up with some people from Hello Talk again and I didn't know that Torikizoku didn't exist in Hokkaido at all at the time! The very first one opened while I stayed there this time and both of the people I met up with were curious to check it out. If you ever wanted to see what a newly built Torikizoku store looks like, here's a peek.
Took some final pictures at Susukino and Toyohira river on my last day in the city before it was time to say goodbye to Sapporo as I took a flight back to Tokyo this time, not making the same mistake of booking a huge train ride back like I did in September 2022! Had to get myself some Hokkaido ice cream at the airport and then said farewell to Sapporo.
The Tokyo Finale
With less than 3 weeks left in Japan, I kind of fought the dreadful feeling of returning home every day while also trying to make the most of my time. And to be honest, making the most of my time for me meant to just enjoy the mundane. I'll get into this in the aforementioned retrospective post but I should have definitely appreciated the "boring", normal days more than I did at the time.
Once again, I had stayed east of Sumidagawa, taking regular walks along the river every day. Also discovered really unique ramen near Akihabara one day, which I'd recommend you to check out. The chashu here is incredible and the broth has a lot of spices in them. I kind of started to put less effort into finding hidden gem restaurants as I felt like I've done that the entire year and visited Sushiro more frequently in my final weeks in Tokyo - simply because it's cheap while still being better than most sushi I can get in my home country.
As mentioned earlier, my American friend was flying out to Tokyo for a few days because one of her friends from the US was coming over to Japan for the first time. But we had another 2 days before the latter arrived and because my friend didn't have many opportunities to go to Tokyo, she always made use of her time by getting her fill of all things anime merch (I'll expose her here by saying she was hunting down a whole lot of BL) and we spent hours in Ikebukuro looking through every store under the sun. Also, Kanda matsuri took place during this time, one of the biggest festivals in Tokyo with thousands of people marching through different neighbourhoods around Kanda, Nihonbashi, Otemachi and Akihabara. I didn't actually know what to expect but the streets around Akihabara were packed. But it's really cool to see the festivities, music and dances.
My final Airbnb was up in Uguisudani, a very quiet part of Tokyo north of Ueno. If you're into trains, I imagine this station would be cool because there are like 5 or 6 different tracks around and you can see them all from the bridge. Also comes with nice sunsets. My Airbnb host's wife brought freshly made sandwiches every morning and let me tell you, those konbini sandwiches got nothing on these. They felt like whole meals! There was also a pretty good tsukemen place nearby which I visited twice.
On one of these days, I had to do the painful journey over to city hall to effectively deregister myself as a resident. Since I had come over to Japan with the sponsoring of a company, I met a couple people who had just arrived in Tokyo for their own working holiday and had to do the opposite of me that day. Felt kind of envious because I knew they were about to have a fantastic year! Also a bit sad because I would have loved if they had been there when I first came over to have some friends to spend time with but at least I got to meet one of them late 2023 anyway!
At last, after spending a few days with my friend and her friend, taking them to a few food places, battling hordes of people at the Pokemon Center in Ikeburuo and have them experience Torikizoku and Sushiro as well, it was time to bid farewell to my friend, for a long time too probably. She was the first proper friend I had made in Japan and we spent a lot of time together whenever I was in Sapporo or she visited Tokyo, so this was extra sad. She would later leave Japan in September 2023, returning to the US after she spent 2 years as a JET. It really all felt like the end of an era at the time, especially because we don't know when we'll next meet. It was a fairly emotional goodbye as we both did our best to hold back tears (she probably thinks I didn't notice :P) but I am sure we'll see each other at some point and fortunately these days, staying in contact online is easy so we check on each other regularly.
I don't have a lot of interesting things to say for my final week in Japan. It kind of all became blurry towards the end. Most of the time I was just buying merch and taking walks around areas I had previously stayed at while also eating all the food that I could because soon enough all the variety I got to enjoy while living in Tokyo would be no more.
On one of the last few days, I messaged the Airbnb host of my June 2022 accommodation and asked him if he was up to meet for a CoCo ichi meal in Machida (both of us just freaking love curry and we had met there before) and he agreed! The last time I was there was in July 2022 and I have the fondest memories of my stay in Machida still. It was the place where the feeling of "Damn, I live in Japan right now" kicked in back when I arrived. We had a nice chat over our lunch, I gave him a little gift and then also said our goodbyes. I still keep in touch with him and hope to be able to stay at his place some time again - but it has been very popular lately haha.
The last day is still pretty vivid in my mind. I got jajamen at my favourite Chinese restaurant in Ueno, then had another long walk to Asakusa, taking the route back along Sumidagawa one last time, through Asakusabashi and then decided to end my journey at one of the places I first visited when I arrived almost a year earlier: Kanda Myojin. I sat down here for about an hour, just looking at the night sky. I got kind of overwhelmed by emotions and may have shed a tear or two as well, hoping that time would stand still and I could just continue staying there but unfortunately, time doesn't stop for anyone and eventually I had to get back up and walk back to my hotel, took a final relaxing bath and then went to sleep...
But! My flight back home wasn't until 4:45pm and it was from Haneda so I checked out of my hotel, left my suitcase there to pick it up later and went on a final stroll through Akihabara, taking this picture just to have a direct comparison to the one I had taken in June 2022. The difference was night and day. Just like with Kanda Myojin being the first and last place I visited, my final meal had to be the same as my first - another plate of curry at CoCo Ichi. If you've read my reports, you'll realise I went to CoCo ichi a whole lot and I am not ashamed to admit that this chain restaurant will always have a special place in my heart! But then, it was time to get my luggage and get on the train and eventually the monorail to Haneda airport. Here's my final 7-11 "haul" as I waited for the plane to get ready and boarding to begin.
And then it was time to say goodbye to Japan for real. Even a year later I get emotional looking at these silly pictures taken from inside the plane. After travelling all across Japan, meeting dozens of fantastic people, showing friends around, eating tons of curry, the best year of my life had come to an end.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll do my best answering them. Thanks again for reading!
2024.05.27 20:33 DiscoverDurham Things to do in Durham this week!
If you’d like to add an event to our calendar, submit an event here. Please check with the event organizers to see if events change due to weather. Have a great week!
Heron Rookery Tour at Pearl Mill Preserve
5 p.m.
Arts & Drafts at Fullsteam Brewery
6 p.m.
Mantis Falls Demo at Atomic Empire
Disc Golf Putting League at The Glass Jug in RTP
6:30 p.m.
Trivia Night at Ponysaurus Brewing Company
7 p.m.
Monday Night Skate at Durty Bull Brewing Brewing Company
Community Board Game Night at Moon Dog Meadery
OnlyUs Media Presents: The Bank at Rubies on Five Points
8:30 p.m.
Karaoke at The House
Queer Death Cafe at Arcana
Bring Your Own Vinyl with Jaffar at Rubies on Five Points
Women on the Wall at Triangle Rock Club - Durham
6:30 p.m.
Trivia at Durham Food Hall
7 p.m.
Trivia at Beer Study Durham
King Trivia Tuesdays at Boxcar Bar + Arcade
Not Rocket Science Trivia at DSSOLVR Durham
Tuesday Blues Jam at The Blue Note Grill
7:30 p.m.
North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra at Sharp 9 Gallery
8 p.m.
Jeremy 'Bean' Clemons Trio at Kingfisher
Julia Holter at Motorco Music Hall
8:30 p.m.
Karaoke at The House
Durham Farmers’ Market at Durham Central Park
Color Pencil Magic at The Scrap Exchange
4 p.m.
Whiskey Wednesdays at Alley Twenty Six
4:30 p.m.
Whiskey Omakase at Dashi
5 p.m.
Free Wednesday Wine Tasting at Beer Study Durham
6 p.m.
Tarot with Joy at Arcana
6:30 p.m.
Singles Mixer & Durham Meetup at The Glass Jug Beer Lab in Downtown Durham
Trivia Night with Pickle at The Glass Jug Beer Lab in RTP
7 p.m.
My Hero Academia TCG Girl Power Prerelease at Atomic Empire
Hammered Trivia at Hi-Wire Brewing
Karaoke Night at Mavericks Smokehouse
Music Bingo at Ponysaurus Brewing Company
Music in the Gardens: Ruckus Rock Revival at Sarah P. Duke Gardens
Brett Chambers Open Mic at The Blue Note Grill
8 p.m.
Air Hockey Tournament at Boxcar Bar + Arcade
Trivia Night at Bull McCabe's
The Devine Feminine Comedy Showcase at Devine's Restaurant and Bar
Old Havana Nights featuring Brevan Hampden at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
Karaoke at Moon Dog Meadery
The Coyotes / Stan and Denghy at The Pinhook
8:30 p.m.
Yot Club at Motorco Music Hall
Taking Back Thursday: Mysti Mayhem at Boxyard RTP
The Magnetic Fields Record Signing at Bull City Records
1:30 p.m.
Meeting Mastery One Session to Transform Your Meetings at Frontier RTP
3 p.m.
Guided Museum Tour at 21c Museum Hotels Durham
5 p.m.
Thirsty Thursdays at Dashi
5:30 p.m.
Walking Club with Bull City Strollers at The Glass Jug Beer Lab in Downtown Durham
6 p.m.
Mycelial Meet Up and Tarot with Emily at Arcana
Vinyl Night with DJ Deckades at Gizmo Brew Works
“Tango for Two” Dance Class at JB Duke Hotel
6:15 p.m.
Pony Run at Ponysaurus Brewing Company
6:30 p.m.
Line Dance Classes at Mystic Farm and Distillery
Boulders & Brews Meetup at Triangle Rock Club - Durham
7 p.m.
Trivia Night at Beer Tooth Taproom
Bring Your Own Vinyl Night at Congress Social Bar
Summer Jazz Jam (Curated by Al Strong) at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
Community Board Game Night at Moon Dog Meadery
7:30 p.m.
Trivia Night with Big Slow Tom at Clouds Brewing Brightleaf Square
8 p.m.
Weekly Single Mingle at Boxcar Bar + Arcade
Trivia at Fullsteam Brewery
Buck Meek (of Big Thief) at Motorco Music Hall
9 p.m.
Everybody Eats at The Pinhook
9:30 p.m.
Karaoke Night at The Tavern
Tasting at Ten at Counter Culture Coffee
Plant Propagation: Cuttings at Sarah P. Duke Gardens
12 p.m.
SFC 3 Mixed Martial Arts Pro Superheavyweight Bout at Durham Armory
Co-Working Social at The Glass Jug Beer Lab in Downtown Durham
5:30 p.m.
Friday Night Live: Emily Musolino at Boxyard RTP
6 p.m.
Dyke Night Pride Kickoff Party at Arcana
The Patio Dance Parties : Clueless Fridays at Unscripted Durham
6:30 p.m.
Ravnica Remastered: Two-Headed Giant Draft at Atomic Empire
Paint & Sip Pottery at Delores Pottery
Temple Grandin presents: Animals Make Us Human at Duke University Gross Hall
An Intimate Evening w/ Grammy Award Winner, Susan Carol at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
7 p.m.
Bird Trivia at Fullsteam Brewery
7:30 p.m.
BYOS (Bring Your Own Sketch) at Mettlesome
Michael Hawkins and the Brotherhood at Sharp 9 Gallery
8 p.m.
Stereo Reveries at DSSOLVR Durham
Karaoke! at Fullsteam Brewery
Small Town Murder Podcast 2024 Tour at The Carolina Theatre
9 p.m.
An Intimate Evening w/ Grammy Award Winner, Susan Carol at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
A Metal Show: Alpha Andromeda, Celaris, Hermaeous Mora and Dunktank at Moon Dog Meadery
Gimme Gimme Disco at Motorco Music Hall
Mall Rat in a Cage Goth Dance Party at Rubies on Five Points
Planet Rave at The Fruit
Sneaky Link Fridays at The House
Cars and Coffee at 5425 Page Rd
Durham Farmers' Market at Durham Central Park
parkrun Durham at Southern Boundaries Park
9 a.m.
Walk for the Animals at Duke East Campus
South Durham Farmers' Market at Greenwood Commons Shopping Center
Naturally Wild presents Birding for QTBIPOC at Sarah P. Duke Gardens
10 a.m.
Wellness Fair with Performance of "This is My Brain on Anxiety: The Detailed Experience of an Anxious, Black Woman" at Hayti Heritage Center
11 a.m.
5th Anniversary Block Party at Rumors Durham
11:30 a.m.
Barrels of Fun Brewery Tasting w/ Seth at Bull City Solera and Taproom
12 p.m.
Crafternoons at Gizmo Brew Works
2:30 p.m.
National Prostate Cancer Awareness Basketball Tournament and Health Fair at Community Family & Life Recreation Center at Lyon Park
4 p.m.
Reception for Constellations: Forty Years of Explorations within Sacred Geometry at Horse & Buggy Press and Friends
6 p.m.
Bardo Bloom and Tarot with Virginia at Arcana
6:30 p.m.
Collin Williams at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
7 p.m.
Triangle Gay Men's Chorus Concert at Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
Nobody's Business with Nantahala at Huron Stage Music Venue
Beaux Mondes: Swinging Speakeasy Jazz at Succotash Southern & Creole Kitchen
7:30 p.m.
Private Event: Shop Closed at Moon Dog Meadery
The Stinging Blades at The Blue Note Grill
"The Memories I'm Bound To" (Art + Live Music) at The Fruit
8 p.m.
Nolan Taylor at Motorco Music Hall
The Monti: In Too Deep at The Carolina Theatre
9 p.m.
Collin Williams at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
Blind Tigers: Live Karaoke at Rubies on Five Points
Jazz Brunch at Lula & Sadie's
10:30 a.m.
Al Strong Presents Jazz Brunch at Alley Twenty Six
12 p.m.
Sunday Dollar Bin Sale for Charity at Rumors Durham
Farmers Market at ZincHouse Winery & Brewery
12:15 p.m.
Public Tour at Duke Chapel
1 p.m.
Black Farmers' Market at Durham Tech
Rescues & Rainbows Pet Adoption & PRIDE Event at The Velvet Hippo Bar & Lounge
2 p.m.
Speed Puzzling Mini Tournament at Boxyard RTP
Soul Sunday w/ DJ Soul at Congress Social Bar
Hammered Trivia with Casey at Durty Bull Brewing Company
3 p.m.
World Hunger Day Durham at Durham Central Park
Brick Convention: LEGO® Fan Event at Durham Convention Center
6 p.m.
Omar Star's Extragalactic Birthday Bash at Arcana
6:30 p.m.
Open Mic Night at Moon Dog Meadery
7 p.m.
Desi Banks: The Purpose Chaser Tour at The Carolina Theatre
AZUL / Animal Prince / Elora Dash at The Pinhook
9 p.m.
Raggae Sundayz at The House
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Noteworthy Events
The Lion King at DPAC- Winner of six Tony Awards®, including Best Musical, this landmark musical event brings together one of the most imaginative creative teams on Broadway.
- Wed, May 15 - Sun, June 9
- $29.50+
- Featured Artists: Blue Cactus, Kym Register and Kamara Thomas
- Music in the Gardens concerts take place on the lawn behind the Doris Duke Center.
- Lawn chairs, picnics, and blankets are encouraged. Pets are not allowed. Outside food and beverages, including beer and wine, are permitted and will also be available for purchase on-site from The Palace International.
- Wed, May 29
- 7 p.m.
- Free admission
- A special mix of folly, pageantry and humor, contestants take on beaver personalities and compete for the title of Beaver Queen with their fashion, talent and personality.
- Sat, June 1
- Free admission, with donations to the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association encouraged.
- Featuring Sylvan Esso, Fleet Foxes, DEHD, Hippo Campus, Reyna Tropical, Truth Club, and more.
- Fri, May 31 - Sat, June 1
- Day passes are $72.95+
- Join us for a full day of music, markets, and more alongside your favorite Boxyard businesses. We are so proud to be a part of the Durham community, and today we’re celebrating YOU!
- Sat, June 1
- 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.
- Free admission
- They'll be serving cocktails benefitting HOPE Animal Rescue and the LGBTQ Center of Durham during this afternoon pet adoption event in honor of National Foster a Pet Month and National PRIDE Month!
- Sun, June 2
- 1-3 p.m.
- Free admission
- World Hunger Day Durham, NC, aims to raise awareness of food insecurity experienced in the community, as well as to highlight the amazing work being done to support residents and create a more fair and equitable food system.
- Sun, June 2
- 3-6 p.m.
- Free admission
Multi-Day Events
The Magnetic Fields – “69 Love Songs” 25th Anniversary Tour at The Carolina Theatre- In celebration of the 25th anniversary of its release, the Magnetic Fields will continue to perform “69 Love Songs”—the 3-disc masterwork that marked a significant breakthrough for the American band—in its entirety over the course of two nights, for the first time in over two decades.
- Wed, May 29 and Thu, May 30
- 8 p.m.
- $37+
- Fri, May 31 - Sat, June 1
- $8+
- Featuring Suzi Analogue and Made of Oak. Must be 21+.
- Fri, May 31 - Sat, June 1
- 11-11:30 p.m.
- $10
- This event will be open to all golfers who have an established USGA handicap of ten (10.0) or less by the registration deadline.
- Sat, June 1 - Sun, June 2
- $125+
- Attractions: lots to see and do including large scale displays, activities, traders selling loose bricks, new LEGO® sets, retired LEGO® sets, minifigures & accessories plus dedicated building areas.
- Sat, June 1 - Sun, June 2
- Session I: 11:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.
- Session II: 3 p.m. - 6 p.m.
- $15+
- Enjoy a look inside the historic McCown-Mangum House, Photography Museum, and Mill.
- Sat, June 1 and Sun, June 2
- 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
- Free admission
Monday, May 27
Events at The Glass Jug in Downtown Durham- 2-10 p.m. - Board Game Night
- 7:30-9:30 p.m. - Movie Mondays: Top Gun Maverick
Heron Rookery Tour at Pearl Mill Preserve
5 p.m.
Arts & Drafts at Fullsteam Brewery
6 p.m.
Mantis Falls Demo at Atomic Empire
Disc Golf Putting League at The Glass Jug in RTP
6:30 p.m.
Trivia Night at Ponysaurus Brewing Company
7 p.m.
Monday Night Skate at Durty Bull Brewing Brewing Company
Community Board Game Night at Moon Dog Meadery
OnlyUs Media Presents: The Bank at Rubies on Five Points
8:30 p.m.
Karaoke at The House
Tuesday, May 28
Events at Boxyard RTP- 5:30-6:30 p.m. - Boxyard Run Club
- 6-8 p.m. - Bark & Bond Social
- 12-8 p.m. - Food Truck: Mike's Vegan Cookout
- 7-9 p.m. - Bull City Beer Runners Run Club
- 5:45-6:30 p.m. - Community Zumba Classes
- 6-8 p.m. - Music Bingo
- 6-8 p.m. - The Glass Jog Run Club
- 6-9 p.m. - Stitch & Sip
Queer Death Cafe at Arcana
Bring Your Own Vinyl with Jaffar at Rubies on Five Points
Women on the Wall at Triangle Rock Club - Durham
6:30 p.m.
Trivia at Durham Food Hall
7 p.m.
Trivia at Beer Study Durham
King Trivia Tuesdays at Boxcar Bar + Arcade
Not Rocket Science Trivia at DSSOLVR Durham
Tuesday Blues Jam at The Blue Note Grill
7:30 p.m.
North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra at Sharp 9 Gallery
8 p.m.
Jeremy 'Bean' Clemons Trio at Kingfisher
Julia Holter at Motorco Music Hall
8:30 p.m.
Karaoke at The House
Wednesday, May 29
Events at Boxyard RTP- 12-2 p.m. - Hear & There: Daniel Delorenzo
- 5:30-8:30 p.m. - Game Night
- 7-8 p.m. - Signature Wine Tasting
- 7-8:30 p.m. - Laughs Comedy Night
Durham Farmers’ Market at Durham Central Park
Color Pencil Magic at The Scrap Exchange
4 p.m.
Whiskey Wednesdays at Alley Twenty Six
4:30 p.m.
Whiskey Omakase at Dashi
5 p.m.
Free Wednesday Wine Tasting at Beer Study Durham
6 p.m.
Tarot with Joy at Arcana
6:30 p.m.
Singles Mixer & Durham Meetup at The Glass Jug Beer Lab in Downtown Durham
Trivia Night with Pickle at The Glass Jug Beer Lab in RTP
7 p.m.
My Hero Academia TCG Girl Power Prerelease at Atomic Empire
Hammered Trivia at Hi-Wire Brewing
Karaoke Night at Mavericks Smokehouse
Music Bingo at Ponysaurus Brewing Company
Music in the Gardens: Ruckus Rock Revival at Sarah P. Duke Gardens
Brett Chambers Open Mic at The Blue Note Grill
8 p.m.
Air Hockey Tournament at Boxcar Bar + Arcade
Trivia Night at Bull McCabe's
The Devine Feminine Comedy Showcase at Devine's Restaurant and Bar
Old Havana Nights featuring Brevan Hampden at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
Karaoke at Moon Dog Meadery
The Coyotes / Stan and Denghy at The Pinhook
8:30 p.m.
Yot Club at Motorco Music Hall
Thursday, May 30
Events at Durty Bull Brewing Brewing Company- 12-8 p.m. -Food Truck: Mike's Vegan Cookout
- 7-9 p.m. - Thursday Trivia with Nick
Taking Back Thursday: Mysti Mayhem at Boxyard RTP
The Magnetic Fields Record Signing at Bull City Records
1:30 p.m.
Meeting Mastery One Session to Transform Your Meetings at Frontier RTP
3 p.m.
Guided Museum Tour at 21c Museum Hotels Durham
5 p.m.
Thirsty Thursdays at Dashi
5:30 p.m.
Walking Club with Bull City Strollers at The Glass Jug Beer Lab in Downtown Durham
6 p.m.
Mycelial Meet Up and Tarot with Emily at Arcana
Vinyl Night with DJ Deckades at Gizmo Brew Works
“Tango for Two” Dance Class at JB Duke Hotel
6:15 p.m.
Pony Run at Ponysaurus Brewing Company
6:30 p.m.
Line Dance Classes at Mystic Farm and Distillery
Boulders & Brews Meetup at Triangle Rock Club - Durham
7 p.m.
Trivia Night at Beer Tooth Taproom
Bring Your Own Vinyl Night at Congress Social Bar
Summer Jazz Jam (Curated by Al Strong) at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
Community Board Game Night at Moon Dog Meadery
7:30 p.m.
Trivia Night with Big Slow Tom at Clouds Brewing Brightleaf Square
8 p.m.
Weekly Single Mingle at Boxcar Bar + Arcade
Trivia at Fullsteam Brewery
Buck Meek (of Big Thief) at Motorco Music Hall
9 p.m.
Everybody Eats at The Pinhook
9:30 p.m.
Karaoke Night at The Tavern
Friday, May 31
Events at Durty Bull Brewing Company- 5-9 p.m. - Food Truck: La Republica Taco Truck
- 8-11 p.m. - Open Mic Stand-up Comedy
- 6-8 p.m. - The Duke Street Dogs
- 9:15 p.m. - Electric Carnival
- 5-8 p.m. - Food Truck Friday
- 6-9 p.m. - Tom Neuhauser Music
- 7 p.m. - Rusty is 40: Jenny Besetzt / Opin / Riggings
- 10:30 p.m. - Night of 1000 Divas!
Tasting at Ten at Counter Culture Coffee
Plant Propagation: Cuttings at Sarah P. Duke Gardens
12 p.m.
SFC 3 Mixed Martial Arts Pro Superheavyweight Bout at Durham Armory
Co-Working Social at The Glass Jug Beer Lab in Downtown Durham
5:30 p.m.
Friday Night Live: Emily Musolino at Boxyard RTP
6 p.m.
Dyke Night Pride Kickoff Party at Arcana
The Patio Dance Parties : Clueless Fridays at Unscripted Durham
6:30 p.m.
Ravnica Remastered: Two-Headed Giant Draft at Atomic Empire
Paint & Sip Pottery at Delores Pottery
Temple Grandin presents: Animals Make Us Human at Duke University Gross Hall
An Intimate Evening w/ Grammy Award Winner, Susan Carol at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
7 p.m.
Bird Trivia at Fullsteam Brewery
7:30 p.m.
BYOS (Bring Your Own Sketch) at Mettlesome
Michael Hawkins and the Brotherhood at Sharp 9 Gallery
8 p.m.
Stereo Reveries at DSSOLVR Durham
Karaoke! at Fullsteam Brewery
Small Town Murder Podcast 2024 Tour at The Carolina Theatre
9 p.m.
An Intimate Evening w/ Grammy Award Winner, Susan Carol at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
A Metal Show: Alpha Andromeda, Celaris, Hermaeous Mora and Dunktank at Moon Dog Meadery
Gimme Gimme Disco at Motorco Music Hall
Mall Rat in a Cage Goth Dance Party at Rubies on Five Points
Planet Rave at The Fruit
Sneaky Link Fridays at The House
Saturday, June 1
Events at Atomic Empire- 11 a.m. - TopDeck Championship Series Invitational Qualifier
- 11 a.m. - Lorcana Draft: Ursula’s Return
- 11 a.m. - Kill Team Tournament
- 9:30-10:30 a.m. - Fitness Pop-up: Yoga
- 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. - Boxyard Birthday: Celebrating 3 Years!
- 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. - Boxyard Birthday Market
- 11:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. - Saturdaze: DJ Baptiste
- 12-3 p.m. - Jewelry Crafting
- 1-2 p.m. - Cupcake Decorating
- 5-8 p.m. - Peter Lamb Presents
- 1-8 p.m. - Food Truck: Death By Taco
- 1-7 p.m. - Triangle Vintage Market
- 4-6 p.m. - Live Music: Lake Chamberlain
- 7-9 p.m. - Back Porch Films Documentary Screening
- 1-3 p.m. - Sip and Solder Stained Glass Workshop
- 2-3 p.m. - Durham "Bullpen" Treasure Hunt
- Every Saturday, 10-10:30 a.m. and 11-11:30 a.m.
- 7:30-8:30 p.m. - House Party
- 8:30-9:30 p.m. - Harold Night: Grand Finale
- 7 p.m. - Slater / Tony Velour
- 10:30 p.m. - Crank Dat Dance Party!
- 2 p.m. - Downtown Durham Walking Tour
- 4 p.m. - Durham African American History Tour
- 6 p.m. - Downtown Durham True Crime Tour
Cars and Coffee at 5425 Page Rd
Durham Farmers' Market at Durham Central Park
parkrun Durham at Southern Boundaries Park
9 a.m.
Walk for the Animals at Duke East Campus
South Durham Farmers' Market at Greenwood Commons Shopping Center
Naturally Wild presents Birding for QTBIPOC at Sarah P. Duke Gardens
10 a.m.
Wellness Fair with Performance of "This is My Brain on Anxiety: The Detailed Experience of an Anxious, Black Woman" at Hayti Heritage Center
11 a.m.
5th Anniversary Block Party at Rumors Durham
11:30 a.m.
Barrels of Fun Brewery Tasting w/ Seth at Bull City Solera and Taproom
12 p.m.
Crafternoons at Gizmo Brew Works
2:30 p.m.
National Prostate Cancer Awareness Basketball Tournament and Health Fair at Community Family & Life Recreation Center at Lyon Park
4 p.m.
Reception for Constellations: Forty Years of Explorations within Sacred Geometry at Horse & Buggy Press and Friends
6 p.m.
Bardo Bloom and Tarot with Virginia at Arcana
6:30 p.m.
Collin Williams at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
7 p.m.
Triangle Gay Men's Chorus Concert at Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
Nobody's Business with Nantahala at Huron Stage Music Venue
Beaux Mondes: Swinging Speakeasy Jazz at Succotash Southern & Creole Kitchen
7:30 p.m.
Private Event: Shop Closed at Moon Dog Meadery
The Stinging Blades at The Blue Note Grill
"The Memories I'm Bound To" (Art + Live Music) at The Fruit
8 p.m.
Nolan Taylor at Motorco Music Hall
The Monti: In Too Deep at The Carolina Theatre
9 p.m.
Collin Williams at Missy Lane's Assembly Room
Blind Tigers: Live Karaoke at Rubies on Five Points
Sunday, June 2
Events at Atomic Empire- 11:30 a.m. - Digimon TCG: Evolution Cup
- 12 p.m. - Pokemon TCG Tournament
Jazz Brunch at Lula & Sadie's
10:30 a.m.
Al Strong Presents Jazz Brunch at Alley Twenty Six
12 p.m.
Sunday Dollar Bin Sale for Charity at Rumors Durham
Farmers Market at ZincHouse Winery & Brewery
12:15 p.m.
Public Tour at Duke Chapel
1 p.m.
Black Farmers' Market at Durham Tech
Rescues & Rainbows Pet Adoption & PRIDE Event at The Velvet Hippo Bar & Lounge
2 p.m.
Speed Puzzling Mini Tournament at Boxyard RTP
Soul Sunday w/ DJ Soul at Congress Social Bar
Hammered Trivia with Casey at Durty Bull Brewing Company
3 p.m.
World Hunger Day Durham at Durham Central Park
Brick Convention: LEGO® Fan Event at Durham Convention Center
6 p.m.
Omar Star's Extragalactic Birthday Bash at Arcana
6:30 p.m.
Open Mic Night at Moon Dog Meadery
7 p.m.
Desi Banks: The Purpose Chaser Tour at The Carolina Theatre
AZUL / Animal Prince / Elora Dash at The Pinhook
9 p.m.
Raggae Sundayz at The House
Running Art Exhibits
Constellations: 40 Years of Explorations within Sacred Geometry by Steven Ferlauto at Horse & Buggy Press and Friends- Sacred Geometry is an ancient field of physics whose equations are expressed through shape. Shape is a way to explore the universal fabric of our existence.
- Sat, May 4 - Sat, June 1
- Free admission
- The Divine Nine Legacy Memoir delves deep into the history of the National Panhellenic Council (NPHC) or "Divine Nine," a collective of nine Greek Letter organizations founded on May 10th, 1930.
- These organizations were born out of the necessity to provide a voice for Black American students within the collegiate space. United by principles of service, community, brotherhood, and sisterhood, the Divine Nine work collectively to uplift society through acts of service to underserved areas across the nation.
- Fri, Apr 19 - Sat, June 1
- Free admission
- It Ain’t All Black and White is a photography exhibition that encourages us to consider emotions such as serenity, apprehension, yearning, and more.
- Captured by 11 dynamic photographers dedicated to documenting the fullness and complexity of Black life, this exhibition offers each of us an opportunity to see ourselves with renewed attention.
- Thu, Apr 25 - Sun, June 2
- María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold is a monographic exhibition of a visionary voice in photography, immersive installation, painting and performance.
- Thu, Feb 15 - Sun, Jun 9
- Every week, Tue-Sat 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun 12-5 p.m.
- Free admission
- 5 Points Gallery in downtown Durham invites you to appreciate Chapel Hill artist Ley Killeya's engaging exhibition featuring vibrant and thought-provoking paintings, exploring themes of identity, belonging, vulnerability, and acceptance, particularly for people from marginalized communities.
- Fri, May 17 - Sat, June 15
- Free admission
- Counterpoints is a curated showcase of local AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) artists, delving into the convergence of AAPI identity and mental health. Inspired by the intricate layers of musical counterpoint, its purpose is to weave together diverse narratives and confront the stigma surrounding mental health within our communities.
- Wed, May 1 - Sun, June 16
- Mon - Fri, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
- This exhibit, curated by the artist's brother Roger Haile, includes over 60 artworks archived for the past 26 years.
- Sat, May 25 - Sat, July 13
- Free admission
2024.05.27 16:38 msm-unify 7 Top Summer Internships Abroad for 2024
 | As the academic world gets more competitive, the search for internships abroad for Indian students is more exciting in 2024 than ever. With exposure to the world becoming increasingly essential, summer internships offer an exceptional opportunity to build professional networks, acquire invaluable expertise, and boost portfolios. Whether advised by abroad education advisers or exploring on your own, the perfect internship can pave the way for a successful international career. Let's look at the top seven international summer internships that aim to transform Indian students' lives in 2024. submitted by msm-unify to u/msm-unify [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/wnlnq0z2dz2d1.jpg?width=275&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5a22c7a970a45fd28d55355dbc739cd948969a9 List of internships abroad for Indian students Adaptive learning environments, mentor support, diverse work opportunities, cross-cultural learning, and more are some factors that encourage Indian students to pursue international internships. Most students find it challenging to identify internship opportunities, and this is where overseas education consultants, such as MSM Unify, come into play. Some of the summer internship programs across the world with the recent deadlines are mentioned below: 1. The Humboldt Research Fellowships The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany offers Humboldt Research Fellowships all year round. Postdoctoral and qualified researchers interested in undertaking research in Germany are eligible to apply for this fellowship program. Fellowships are offered for a wide range of study topics.
Dubbed as a city-state, Singapore offers remarkable internship opportunities. With a long history of international trade and a rapidly growing economy, Singapore's advancements in technology, finance, sustainability, healthcare, and tourism will bring you a wealth of practical knowledge. Singapore is a popular study destination as well as for Internships abroad for Indian students. Explore the city's innovative architecture, beautiful parks, the well-known Singapore Zoo and Cloud Forest, the local food and art scene, and much more.
Currently ranked third in the European Union (EU) for wealth, Prague is an excellent example of post-communist Eastern and Central Europe, home to internationally renowned companies, a thriving startup scene, a robust arts industry, and charitable organizations. Prague offers a multicultural experience when it comes to internships abroad for Indian students. Applicants must have a minimum 2.5 GPA to be eligible for this internship opportunity.
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) based in Saudi Arabia offers the VSRP internship program. Applying for the internship requires a minimum 3.5 CGPA according to the university. Students get access to more than 200 research projects to choose from. The student must be enrolled in a master's program or be in their third year of undergraduate study to be eligible for this internship. Candidates must at least have a 3.5 GPA and an IELTS score of 6.5.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, is a global organization that offers full-time student internships in areas relevant to the organization. Students should be able to work in a multicultural environment. French or English language proficiency is required to apply for the OECD internship.
The University of Sydney offers the program to students studying in Australian universities. Students in the program can acquire expertise in project management research, computer science, and engineering. The program opens twice a year, in the winter and summer.
This internship program is offered by the United Nations University. United Nations University offers the Visiting Ph.D. fellowship internship. As the name implies, Ph.D. students are eligible for this internship. The internship allows doctoral students to benefit from UNU-WIDER's resources for completing their thesis on developing economies. The fellowship is extremely competitive; just 1% of applicants are accepted.
Securing an internship abroad for Indian students is a strategic move to hone both academic and professional skills. With professional guidance from overseas education consultants, you can easily find suitable internship opportunities in your dream country. As the academic world gets more competitive, the search for internships abroad for Indian students is more exciting in 2024 than ever. With exposure to the world becoming increasingly essential, summer internships offer an exceptional opportunity to build professional networks, acquire invaluable expertise, and boost portfolios. Whether advised by abroad education advisers or exploring on your own, the perfect internship can pave the way for a successful international career. Let's look at the top seven international summer internships that aim to transform Indian students' lives in 2024. |