"I want to pick *points* this player and *points* that pl— oh wait, that's just a mannequin in similar clothes."

Mannequin (Outsider): Once per night, when a player chooses a player, they might register as choosing you instead, if legal. You then learn the real chosen player.

The Mannequin quietly takes the place of one player in up to one choice each night.

• Resolving the affected ability happens between the two sentences of the Mannequin ability. Any effects the ability would have on the Mannequin are applied before they learn who they replaced. If they are no longer a living Mannequin when they would learn this, they don't.
• The change is momentaneous, not maintained: Once the choice has been misregistered, it remains changed for the purposes of anything that later checks what was chosen before, even if the Mannequin is dead or droisoned. The choice itself was recorded incorrectly, and the record isn't fixed by the Mannequin not having the ability to do that again.
• Players who think they have an ability but don't can still choose players. It might not affect anything through the ability they don't have, but the Mannequin still learns their real choice.
• A droisoned Mannequin can't redirect any choices while droisoned, but they can wake to learn an arbitrary name anyway. If they're droisoned by the ability they redirect, they can learn an incorrect name, or not wake at all.

Jinx

• Butler: If a player with the Butler ability has their choice changed by the Mannequin, they learn who the Mannequin is.

I don't know why you'd do this as an ST, but the Butler ability doesn't work unless the Butler knows who they're choosing and why, so it needs a jinx.

Examples

The Monk chooses to protect the Fortune Teller. The Mannequin is protected instead, and learns the Fortune Teller's name.
The Fortune Teller chooses the Imp and the Soldier. The Fortune Teller receives a no. The Mannequin wakes to learn the Imp's name.

If the picker chooses multiple players, the Mannequin only replaces one of them, and only learn the one they replaced.

The Vigormortis chooses to kill the Sage. The Mannequin dies instead, and does not learn the Sage's name.

The second part of the ability never resolves because the Mannequin lost the ability partway through.

The Alchemist Poisoner chooses to poison the No Dashii. The Mannequin is poisoned instead, and may or may not learn a player's name.

This poison does not undo the "choice" of the Mannequin instead of the No Dashii. The poison does however come into effect before the Mannequin would be told who was really picked, so they may learn the wrong player or nothing at all.

The Alchemist Devil's Advocate chooses the Poppy Grower. The Mannequin is protected from execution. The next night, the Alchemist Devil's Advocate chooses themself. The Mannequin cannot replace this, because the ADA would have chosen them two nights in a row. (The ADA could also legally have chosen the Poppy Grower.)

"if legal" prevents the Mannequin from being "chosen" by a character that shouldn't be able to choose them tonight.

The Lunatic chooses to "attack" the Ravenkeeper. The Mannequin learns the Ravenkeeper's name. The Lleech learns that the Lunatic chose the Mannequin. The Lleech follows suit and kills the Mannequin.

Why does it learn?

Even working only once per night, this seems like it would be a rather destructive form of misregistry, likely enough that most players with this ability would self-nominate day 1.
But I also want getting rid of the Mannequin to be a valid option for the good team, for the same reason. Thus, no "even if dead".
So how do we keep it from being unfun to stay alive longer than necessary?
The information part of the ability is a carrot for the Mannequin. If the Mannequin can work out who was affected, it can be used to reverse engineer how and why the ability was used, and facilitate some amount of confirmation between the Mannequin and players whose abilities were redirected.
It also acts as a balancing measure against STs using the ability in certain overly punishing ways.
For example, imagine you're the Mannequin in the Fortune Teller example above, and you manage to connect with the Fortune Teller. Hmmm, kind of interesting that the Storyteller used the ability to redirect an FT's pick away from the Imp player, isn't it? That's arguably more suspicious than an FT yes on its own, considering the existence of the red herring mechanic and the ambiguity of which of the two players is giving off the yes. But only if the FT and the Mannequin are able to trust each other.
This also makes it potentially useful for ST's to occasionally use the Mannequin ability even when it wouldn't actually change the result, for evil players to bluff having picked the player the Mannequin is claiming to have learned, or for Minions to bluff being the Mannequin (wouldn't recommend it for Demons without a backup life).
In short, I think the Mannequin learning who they replaced is far more interesting for everyone involved, including the Mannequin themself. It gives the Mannequin something to do while alive and a chance to mitigate or even utilize the damage their ability does without necessarily sacrificing an execution and a good player's democratic powers.

Interactions

Townsfolk

• Alchemist: Some Alchemist abilities are often avoided because the Alchemist might pick the Demon. The Mannequin could mitigate this a bit... while alive.
• Amnesiac: If you use this on an Amnesiac that hasn't bingo'd, you might be a jerk.
• Chambermaid: One of the reasons the Chambermaid is so strong is that most Demons wake every night. The Mannequin can give the Chambermaid a +0 instead of the Demon's +1, since any Mannequin that can still mess with Chambermaid info tonight necessarily has not woken yet. (The Mathematician has a jinx to account for it waking after the Chambermaid, but I see no reason to do the same favor for a Mannequin that is actively being used to mess with the Chambermaid.) The trade-off is of course that the Mannequin learns who they subbed in for, which could be devastating if it gets back to the Chambermaid.
• Dreamer: There's a really mean thing an ST could do here: Each night, the Dreamer picks a different player... and gets "Mannequin / [evil character]".
• Exorcist: Like in the DA example above, the Exorcist can't be Mannequin'd two nights in a row.
• Huntsman: If you use the Mannequin on a Huntsman who actually picked the Damsel for once, I become the Huntsman and hunt you down. I bet you added the Damsel on top of the Outsider count too.
• Lycanthrope: Usually when the Lycanthrope's kill doesn't land, it implies the target is evil or the Lycan droisoned. But the Mannequin can attract the Lycan kill to itself, saving the target while still preventing other deaths that night. This doesn't actually say anything about the Lycan target's alignment, but it's worth questioning why the ST would deny both the Lycan and the Demon their intended kills using an Outsider ability. If the target is evil, it offers deniability. If they're good, why were they saved? Is evil stomping? Are they another Outsider?
• Mathematician: I've been going back and forth on how exactly this works (specifically whether the Math reacts to the redirection if it has a different outcome, checks whether the outcome was correct with the Mannequin chosen, or both), but it boils down to "math makes headaches".
• Nightwatchman: "Hey, Andy, I got some mail addressed to you. It said Benny is the Nightwatchman."
• Professor: The Mannequin isn't a legal target for the Professor while alive, and so can't redirect the Professor's pick. Which is good since a Professor somehow picking a living Outsider would doubly fizzle.
• Ravenkeeper: As seen with the Dreamer, I think there's something extra funny about interactions where being Mannequin'd causes the picker to be shown the Mannequin token.
• Snake Charmer: The Mannequin is not the Demon (usually), so it can be used to prevent a charming (good for the Snake Charmer, bad for the good team). But if the Snake Charmer later comes out with who's definitely not the Demon and which nights they picked them, the Mannequin can recognize that they replaced a pick.
• (There is a possible but convoluted interaction where the Mannequin gets handed Lil' Monsta, fails to get themself executed the next day, then gets indirectly Snake Charmed. The Snake Charmer picks the Sailor, then gets told they're the Mannequin holding the baby. The Mannequin becomes the poisoned Snake Charmer; they don't learn the Sailor's name. Then later that night the Minions wake to move the Lil' Monsta, having no idea anything happened.)
• Village Idiot: Like the Dreamer bullying and bird violence earlier, it's entirely possible to use the Mannequin to show a sober VI good every night. Or just that one time they pick the Demon.

Outsiders

• Barber: The Mannequin can intercept a Barber swap, swapping characters with one of the real choices. They don't learn who was really chosen. This should be done sparingly since it's an Outsider messing up an evil player's use of another Outsider ability.
• Drunk: The Drunk's choices can be affected by the Mannequin; this only matters in that the Mannequin still learns the real choice, which ensures that your choices lining up with a Mannequin doesn't indicate you're not the Drunk.
• Goon: If a player chooses the Goon, but the Mannequin redirects the choice to themself, the picker never chose the Goon. The Goon does not flip and the picker is not drunked (but gets info on / affects the Mannequin instead).
• Klutz, Moonchild: Neither of these can be affected, because the Mannequin ability only works on choices made at night.
• Lunatic: The Demon can see the Mannequin as the Lunatic's choice. As in the example above, this might be worthwhile if the Demon is following the Lunatic's choices and the Lunatic chose someone the Demon shouldn't kill for their own sake (such as themself, a Minion or a landmine Townsfolk). Since this can also be a reason to redirect a real Demon kill, the Lunatic learning that the player who died was the Mannequin, and maybe that their target was a landmine Townsfolk, might still believe they're the Demon afterwards.
• Ogre: This is yet another nice thing about the Mannequin learning who they replaced. If not for that, Ogre/Mannequin would need a jinx similar to Ogre/Recluse or Ogre/Spy, for the same reason: It's unfun for the Ogre if their alignment isn't solvable at all. But because the Mannequin knows they replaced the Donkey in someone's choice on night 1, they'll be looking for someone who picked the Donkey, and can inform the Ogre that they're good even if the Donkey is evil. (That said, stopping the Ogre from turning evil is again using an Outsider ability to interfere with an Outsider ability to evil's heavy detriment.)

Minions
Many Minion interactions are more likely to be relevant to an Alchemist than to the actual Minion, because this is an Outsider and should ideally be used to interfere with good more than evil. As such, I will treat the Minions below alignment-agnostically unless otherwise noted, with good ones probably being Alchemists.

• Assassin: The Assassin's "even if for some reason they could not" clause does not prevent the Mannequin from jumping in front of the knife and dying in the target's place. The Mannequin doesn't interfere with the Assassin's ability trying to kill, say, the Sailor; it interferes with the Assassin player's choice of which player the ability should try to kill in the first place. Now, if the Mannequin can't die for some reason, the Assassin ability can still kill them.
• Cerenovus: Poor Cerenovus, wondering why the claims they ordered are coming from the wrong part of town...
• Fearmonger: Oh, this one's rude.
• Harpy: The Harpy might be even more confused than the Cerenovus, since the Mannequin could replace either the player who's supposed to be mad or the player they're supposed to be mad about.
• Marionette: See Drunk. Also, a Marionette thinking they're the Mannequin might wreak havoc on town's info, getting names that imply their ability was used on players who actually got exactly the info they asked for.
• Pit Hag: This works just like you'd expect it to. It is worth noting that the Mannequin-turned-something-else doesn't learn who the Pit Hag really picked, because the character change resolves in the middle of the Mannequin's ability.
• Summoner: Yes, the Summoner choice can be redirected to turn the Mannequin into the Demon. No, you probably shouldn't do it to an evil Summoner unless you want a rerack. Either way, the Mannequin-turned-Demon doesn't learn the real choice.
• Widow: The Mannequin can soak up Widow poison and be unable to proc later. The main benefit to doing this would be that the Mannequin can be told their ability was used on choices that were never made, confusing the Mannequin and making them look evil, or on choices that gave correct information, misleading other players. But the Widow can also see that the Mannequin is in play and decide whether they want to do this themself, so it might be a little rude.

Demons
Demons in general (with a couple exceptions) can have their kills redirected to the Mannequin. This is mostly useful if they were about to kill a landmine character.

• Al-Hadikhia: I imagine even with the carrot, most Mannequins would be okay with dying to prevent an Al-Had sweep. Unusual case of the Demon learning immediately that one of their choices was redirected to the Mannequin. If the Mannequin chooses to live and there isn't a sweep, the Mannequin learns who the Al-Had really picked.
• Fang Gu: Out of all Demons, the ability for the Demon kill to be redirected to the Mannequin is probably the most useful to the Fang Gu, which jumps if it hasn't already. The Mannequin ability becomes a safety hatch for the ST to drop the Demon through if necessary. The dead Fang Gu might want to be careful about outing to the player they targeted, though.
• Kazali: "You'll have the Mannequin player as your Minion and you'll damn well like it!" Better than letting the Kazali pick the Soldier, but otherwise probably best avoided.
• Lleech: Yes but don't: The Mannequin can become the Lleech host instead of whoever the Lleech chose. If it weren't bad enough for the Demon to not know the host is the wrong player, there's also the fact that Mannequins are likely to be okay with dying early.
• Pukka: The Mannequin being poisoned after a choice is redirected to them doesn't mean they weren't chosen.
• Vortox: Since the Mannequin is an Outsider, the information on who they replaced is not affected by the Vortox.
• Legion, Lil' Monsta, Yaggababble: Can't have their kills redirected because they don't make picks, but can kill the Mannequin at the ST's whim anyway because it's how they work in the first place.
• Leviathan, Riot: Can't have their kills redirected because they don't kill at night at all.
• Ojo: Can't have their kill redirected because they choose a character, not a player. There is an argument to be made that they choose a player via a character, like how the Courtier and Ojo can become Goon-drunk, but that's not how the Mannequin functions. The Mannequin replaces choices before they're filtered through the ability they're made for.

Travelers
Most Travelers can't be affected by the Mannequin because they either don't make picks or pick in the daytime.

• Barista: If the Mannequin gets a Barista 2, it might be time to call for exile.
• Bone Collector: The Bone Collector runs into the same issue as the Professor: The Mannequin is an illegal target for the Bone Collector while they have their ability, unless they've already been Bone Collected. A Bone Collected Mannequin can in fact redirect a Professor's ability, though they're not resurrected because they're not a Townsfolk.
• Bureaucrat: I think the paperwork that says this Mannequin should have three votes might be forged.
• Harlot: "Choose a player." "James." "Alright, one moment... ... ...Kate has accepted your invitation; you learn that she is the Mannequin."
• Thief: "If you have to steal people's votes, take mine instead."

i'm working on a novel and would like to know if anyone could tell me any improvements i could make to the first chapter and prologue
Prologue
The day had started the same way it had for the past two years. The only difference was that I was going home. The hallway was crowded with people walking to and from their classes. Everyone was crowded next to each other so the halls were making the area feel claustrophobic. All the people talking mixed with the summer heat made me feel like I was locked in a sauna. I walked with Preston to the last class we would ever have together and as usual he was smiling. I never got why he always smiled even in situations where people should be sad he still smiled. He knew what today meant for me and he tried to keep light of the situation. I kept my head down away from what was ahead of me. My mind was too clouded about returning to see my family to notice anything in front of me. I walked into another student. It felt like I had walked into a wall. I knew immediately I had walked into tree. I stumble onto the ground and the commotion around me slows down to make room for us. He turned his bulky body around and apologized profusely without saying a word even though I had walked into him. He helped me off of the ground before hurrying down the hall.
“Alexandria, are you doing okay?” Preston said he had tilted his body downward so I had to look down to look him in his eyes. The way he was standing made him look like an idiot but he didn't seem to care. The way he acted made me laugh, which caused his smile to widen.
“I'm doing fine, just got lost in my head.”
“Thinking about how you’ll leave soon,” he said
“Was it that obvious?” He was the only person I told about me being an exchange student. I came to spend high school in Newkinawa and he was the only person I ever hung out with.
“I see what you mean,” he said “Newkinawa is a beautiful place with beautiful people to live in it…myself included”
“You wish,” I say with a smile we continue walking through the hallway “I'm just not excited to go back yet”
After I say that his smile grows wider “So you will miss me after all”
“I wouldn't say that much” I responded whilst smiling.
We had made it to our last class only to see it closed with a sign labeled “Uma incident” Uma was a student known for messing with the chemistry lab and destroying school property in the process. I've never actually met her but Preston says “She's a little weird but still nice”
“Guess class is canceled for today,” Preston remarked with a smile “Wanna go out to the court till the bell rings.”
“Sure let's go” I respond
The place we ate every day was outside. It used to be a tennis court before I moved in. Now they put trees and flowers all over the place. Preston really liked the blue color of the flowers but it just never clicked for me. I look over at Preston and he's staring up at the sky. There are a number of clouds in almost enough to block the sun but it still pokes its rays through and lands on Preston's face. The clouds swim in front of the sun till they block out the sun's light. Preston faces towards me.
“I'm gonna miss you Alexandria” he says
“You know you can just call me Alex,” I replied. I start to smile again. “I'll miss you too!" He smiles toward me again as we get up to leave as the clouds start to clump together and rain slowly falls. As we're walking back to the school there's a loud tearing sound followed by screams as the ground shakes.
The ground tears itself apart as the dirt and stone erupt from the ground. The sky blackens and a pale blue light escapes the earth. Then creatures erupt from the ground in a violent ejection from the earth creating a white pillar diffusing as they reach higher in the air. Some are clawing their way out of the cracks like maggots out of a corpse. People are swept into the updraft screaming for their lives.
The creatures descend like a tidal wave and tear apart any people caught in their path. They storm out of the crack in hundreds as more cracks in the earth form. Me and Preston started running away as people were screaming behind us. A girl running next to us has her legs slashed by a creature. The monster begins to tear open her chest as she chokes on her own blood. The monster shovels her lungs and innards into its decrepit mouth. Me and Preston keep running until we're met at the entrance of the school and we catch the attention of a monster as it begins to savagely rush toward us. The monster resembles ghosts my father told me about. But this one looks monstrously horrific. It floats in the air and opens its mouth so wide it nearly replaces its entire torso; its jaws hold savage teeth each the same old gray color of its body. Its eyes glow a rotten yellow color through the dark. It stretches out its arms showing its giant hands and claws like fingers. It swipes at us leaving a giant claw mark on the door behind us but Preston ducks my body down to avoid the attack. We run around it as the monster swaps its focus to another bystander. Screaming past us. Me and Preston run into the parking lot as people scream around us. We hide next to a car.
“What the hell is happening!?” I yell to Preston. More of the creatures fly over us and swoop down to people like vultures on roadkill devouring the fleeing people.
Preston starts to breathe heavily ”we need to get out of here and someplace safer”. As we were talking one of the monster phases through the car we were hiding next to forcing us to run into the street.
“Lets go to your house till things cool down” i say to Preston through panted breaths
“Wait couldn't we head to your house instead” Preston says.
“Why would that matter your house is closer anyways” i respond
“But-” Preston is interrupted by two creatures swooping above us to grab another person. The two monsters begin to pull the person apart while he writhes in pain before having his flesh be torn in half and having his organs be devoured.
“Come on lets go!!” I say as I grab his hand and run even faster.
By the time we reach Preston's house any living person is gone. On the street are just corpses laying torn and mutilated on the roads and sidewalk. The air in the neighborhood feels cold despite the season being summer. When I walk down the street I can still hear the occasional horrific wail the monsters give off. We move closer to Preston's house and I can see him sweating. He looked more worried than before when the creatures were chasing us and he kept darting his eyes away from his home.
“Preston, are you feeling okay?” he doesn't respond to my question and keeps darting his eyes. He walks slowly behind me and as I reach for the door handle and when I touch it it feels nearly freezing. I wrap my hoodie around my hand and slowly open the door. The house is quiet so me and Preston creep further into his house. The inside is cold and damp as if we were locked in a freezer. The further we move into the house the louder a subtle chewing sound is heard.
“It sounds like rats are eating a dead cow over there” I whisper. Preston continues to stay silent behind me. We slowly walk closer towards the kitchen and the sound gets louder and louder and louder until we reach the room.
We're met with a rancid smell of vomit and blood. My blood starts to run cold and every instinct in my body is telling me to run. I can feel Preston breathing get heavier as we get closer. We turn the corner and see Preston's mom lying on the ground dead with one of the creatures hunched over slurping her intestines. The sight causes me to vomit alerting the monster to our presence. The creature turns around and its mouth turns into a mortifying grin as it flies into Preston's moms body. The corpse begins to rise and spur splashing blood over the kitchen. When the corpse stops spasming it picks itself up from the ground and with glazed over eyes it holds its intestines in its hand and gives us the same grin it did when it was outside her body. The possessed corpse lunges at me and starts to chase me around the kitchen. The body is running into the walls and cabinets spraying its blood and other loose organs around the area as I'm avoiding its assault. The corpse leans over and ejects one of its loose intestines towards me, wrapping me in it. It pulls me towards it so fast I'm flung towards the ground. The corpse limbers over to me and raises its free hand aiming for my head. The creature's deranged smile causes the corpse’s cheeks to tear apart. It places both of its bloodied and demented hands on my face and starts to press my skull into the ground. I struggle to breathe. The room starts to get dark and blood escapes my head.
Until Preston jumps on top of his mothers corpse with a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabs it in the head. The possessed body tries to shake him off but he keeps stabbing, blood gets in on his face and tears start to escape his eyes. The creature violently ejects from the corpse's mouth causing her head to nearly explode and Preston stops stabbing the body. The body falls over in a splash of blood and organs. The monster leaves phasing through the roof leaving Preston crying over his mother's body. As the blood mixes with the tears he collapses to his knees crying. I walk over and hug him as the air around us turns bitter and the chill of death leaves the room and us with it.
Chapter 1 Eclipse
It's been 2 months since the apocalypse started. We've kept ourselves alive by looting grocery stores and houses, we hide from the creatures as we have no way to fight back against them. Preston came up with the idea to call them glanter’s. He’s looking better since we left his family home but I can tell something is wrong with him that he's not telling me. Everytime I ask him about it he tells me it's no big deal. I asked him earlier today and he just told me
“don't worry about it, I'm over it” without even looking at me. Now we're walking through the street and I'm walking behind Preston, I can barely see his head past the giant bag we're both carrying on our backs we use to carry supplies. I look up at the sky and it's still pitch black except for the moon giving us any amount of light. Preston turns around to face me.
“Let's check out that house, it might have some cool stuff in it” he points to a white house to our right. The house is a two story building with steps leading to the front door. There's a generator poking out from the backyard. The driveway is empty save for a couple of dried blood stains and tire marks. It's similar to the other houses in the neighborhood except for a couple broken windows.
“Sure why not” We head over to the house and I see something shining on the side of the house in the corner of my eye. I turn my head to look at it closer but it quickly disappears before I can see it clearly.
“Probably squirrel or something” I mumble to myself. Preston walks up the stairs to the house and I walk up the steps behind him as a breeze blows past my face. Preston tries to turn the door knob but the door is locked. I start to pull out a lockpick I grabbed at the store earlier. I motion towards Preston to move out of the way as I kneel down to pick the lock. It takes me a couple of minutes to unlock the door so I walk inside the house and Preston follows behind me while closing and locking the door. The doorway of the house leads to a dark room so I take a flashlight out of my bag to illuminate the area. Were put into the living room and bookshelves are on the walls and a large TV sat in front of a large black couch with smaller chairs surrounding it. Dust is covering every surface of the room and spiderwebs litter the corners of the walls. The area smells like moth balls and there's a lack of blood anywhere nearby.
“Guess the owners got out before the Glanter’s got in, '' I say to Preston. When he doesn't respond I turn around and he's already looking further into the house. When I find him he's managed to find a flight of stairs that lead to a lower portion of the house.
“I'll check on him later,” I think to myself as I headed towards the kitchen to see if we could restock on food. I walk past a bedroom and remark on how childish it looked. The walls were painted with blue and green stripes and a bunk bed sat on the right wall. There's a chest at the foot of the bed so I walk over and lift the top off of it. The box is layered with children's toys, a multitude of dolls, bears, and figures all jut out of the box. I notice a small robot toy and inspect it in my hands.
The cold metal makes my hand shiver and the sharp body shape makes the robot bigger than my hand. There's red lining around the robot's buttons surrounded by the cold gray of the robot's “skin”. It reminds me of a toy my little brother had. My heart feels heavy as I worry about what happened to my family. If they're alive, dead, or worse…possessed. The thoughts send a chill down my spine but I push them aside for now. I put the toy in my bag and exit the bedroom.
I can see the kitchen is down the hallway so I walk down the hall and enter. The kitchen is pretty clean except for a couple of dishes in the sink and the dust. There's a table seated for 3 people in the center of the room. I start opening the cabinets in search for any food or water. There's boxes of cereal leftover on top of shelves and a mix of chip bags and cookies in neat boxes stationed in the cabinets.
“Score,” I say to myself as I begin to put the snacks into my bag. When the cabinets are empty I look inside the fridge. The inside of the fridge ran out of power so most of the food inside is rotted. There are a couple of bottles of water in the front so I shove those in my bag. There's also a bag of oranges that still seem to be healthy in the back. I grab them and toss them on the table. There's rotten sandwich meat hidden in the drawer of the fridge.it smells like a dumpster outside of a butcher shop. I wrinkle my nose at the smell. I look around the kitchen for any bread with no luck.
I continue to look through the fridge until I hear Preston scream from another room. Immediately I bolt out of the kitchen leaving my bag behind and run towards the lower part of the house. I run down the stairs and nearly trip on the steps. The stairs lead to a big room. There are posters to tv shows and movies I don't recognize. The walls are painted black and there's a bear skin rug on the floor. I notice Preston standing next to a really big TV hyperventilating. I walk over to him and ask him.
“Are you ok? What happened?”
He talks through deep breaths “I… saw a… spider.”
“What?!” I respond in confusion.
“It was really big and I had jumped at my face”
“Sure it was.” I say while laughing “Let's go upstairs there's some food in the fridge we can eat”
“Wait, I think you should check this out.” He says while pointing towards one of the walls. I grab Preston's flashlight off the floor and face it towards the wall. Hanging halfway off the wall is a large map labeled Newkiwana scavenger hunt of 76.
“I think we should take it,” Preston says “You can read a map right?”
“A little but I'm not the best at it,” I say to him “can you read a map?”
“it shouldn’t be too hard it’s mainly pictures any way I'm sure I can figure it out”
I walk over to the wall where the map is hung there are trophies covering tables and shelved in their own personal cases one of them reads “1st place 100-meter swimming competition for 1986 Zack Hemmingway” and another one reads “2nd place 100-meter swimming competition for 1989 Zack Hemmingway”
“Guess this guy really liked swimming,” Preston remarks while staring at a wall of newspaper clippings. All of them are about the same person in swimming competitions. All labeled different things like “a new record for Zack “the dolphin” Hemmingway”,
‘Zach Hemmingway our star plans for the future” all the newspapers are about this kind he has paler skin and a bulky enough build to swim pretty well. Most of the pictures have him coming out of the water in a pool, his long black hair soaked and sitting at his shoulders. Another one has him sitting at a desk over a pile of books and his hair in a knot , “vicious wipeout ends the Dolphins career”, and “ex-swim champ Zack Hemmingway found in a drunken stupor outside strip club.
“Everyone has their own hobbies I guess,” I say as I take the map off of the wall and fold it up. “Sucks what happened to Zack though” I walked over to Preston’s bag and put the rolled map in one of the pockets. I walk back up the stairs and Preston grabs his bag and follows behind me.
We make our way towards the kitchen and Preston starts looking through the fridge for anything to eat. I grab an orange from the table and throw it at his head. The fruit bounces off his head and rolls on the floor. He turns around and grabs the fruit from the floor
“Why did you throw an orange at me?”
“It's the only food we have unless you plan on eating spoiled a sandwich“ He starts to peel it while walking towards the table. We both take a seat and start to eat the oranges from the bag. He plants his feet on top of the table and bites into the fully peeled orange. I grab a water bottle from a bag and start to drink from it as Preston says.
“I saw a dvd player in that man cave downstairs we could watch a movie if it still has power”
“Sure it could be fun.” Me and Preston spend the rest of our time eating until the bag of oranges is emptied and we head back downstairs. Preston grabs the DVD player from under the table and blows the dust off the top of it; he plugs it into the wall as I plop myself onto the couch. He plugs the DVD player into the TV and sits on the recliner next to me. He presses a few buttons on the remote and the TV lights up. I squint my eyes at how bright it is. It's the most amount of light I've seen that didn't come from a flashlight. I notice there's a box filled with DVDs. I pull the box over towards me. I ruffle through the box and see movies like Silence of the Lambs, Terminator 2, and Home alone.
“Dude some of these came out just before the world turned inside out” I say to him.
“Really? Let's play one.” He responds. I toss him Terminator 2 and he puts it into the DVD player.
We spend the next couple hours watching movies and laughing together. It's some of our only moments of peace we’ve had since the end of the world and to me it's the most fun I've had yet. We're putting in the next DVD when there's a loud crash outside and the TV shuts off. Preston goes behind it to see if it's still plugged in.
“I think the generator outside is busted” i say
“It seems that way” Preston replies while backing away from the tv” i'm gonna go check it out”
“Don't worry I got it” I say as I hop out of my chair. Preston waves goodbye as I head up the stairs. I make my way back through the hallway leading to the living room and front door. I reach the door and start to turn the knob. I open the door wide as a car speeds down the street. I step out of the door to see what had happened when I hear the screech of a glanter. It cuts through the sky like an unholy opera singer. A group of them fly by and chase the car as I rush back inside the house. I slam the door shut and look through the window as I see a couple of smaller glanters grab and shake the car violently looking for the driver. They tear at it, ripping off doors and breaking the windows. The driver screams as the seats cover with blood and he's ripped out of the car as multiple smaller glanters tear and bite off parts of his body like piranha's until his body is completely devoured. I run back to the man cave to warn Preston about what had happened. I spot him laying in his chair spinning a DVD disc on his finger.
“It's not safe outside right now”
“Why not?
“There's glanter's outside, they just ate a dude in his car”
“Did they see you come inside?”
“I don't think so , they flew off before I went inside.”
“well we're not dead so I'm gonna say they didn't see you. But let's stay here for a couple more hours just to be safe”
“Sounds good i'm gonna go find the master bedroom.” I start to walk back up the stairs to the house
“ Hold on why do you get the master bedroom” Preston says while walking after me.
“Because I'm gonna find it first” I say as I start to run to find the bedroom. He chases after me in pursuit of the bedroom. Me and Preston run around the house looking for the master bedroom. We look through room after room finding closets, the garage, a bathroom and a door leading to a balcony in the back of the house. I manage to run into the bedroom and yell out to Preston.``Found it!!”
He comes walking into the room breathing heavily from the running. We both check out the room. The walls are painted a cream yellow and the bed takes up most of the room's center. The bed has burgundy sheets poking out from its bottom and a quilt with multi-colored floral designs lay sprawled out on top of it. There's a wardrobe built into the wall and a black leather couch sits comfortably on the left wall.
“Dibs on the bed” I say as I jump on top of it. I stretch out on top of the quilt and search for a comfortable part to sleep in.
“Where am I supposed to sleep then?” Preston complains
“You can sleep on the couch it looks soft enough” I respond while pointing towards the couch “I saw some spare blankets in one of the closets”
“Alright i’ll be right back” he mumbles to himself “why do i always get the couch”
“ I'll be right here if you need me,” i call after him. I sit up on the bed and start to look around the room more. I notice the entrance to the wardrobe is cracked open slightly. I hop out of the bed and grab a flashlight from my bag as I walk into the wardrobe. I turn on my flashlight and stare in awe at how many clothes are in there. The room is only half as big as the bedroom but it's still bigger than any closet I've ever had. The wardrobe is full of shirts, dresses, pants, and shoes for men and women. I immediately start to look through the shoes to see if any fit my size. I throw a pair of black high heels behind me as Preston finds me in the wardrobe. He looks around before asking me.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding a new pair of clothes to wear cause I've been wearing the same pair of jeans for waaaaay too long”
“Fair enough. Is there any guy stuff in there?”
“Yeah right there” I hook my thumb behind me to point to the other end of the closet.
“I'm sure they won't mind if we take a couple of things…they're probably dead by now anyways,” Preston says with a slight grin on his face. The way he said made me spin my head to look at him but he was already on the opposite end of the wardrobe looking at suits.
I shake away the thought and continue looking for any pair of sneakers in my size. 40 minutes pass before I walk out of the wardrobe holding a new pair of jeans and a black guns-N-roses t-shirt. I toss the clothes on top of the bed and check to see if the shower in the bathroom still works. I turn the dial and wait for a moment. The shower head chokes a little before water comes pouring out. I reach my hand under the showerhead to feel the water. The water is cold, it causes my hand to shiver when I take it out. I shake the water off and say to myself.
“Good enough” as I start to take off my old clothes and get in the shower. The cold water bounces off my skin, it sends shivers down my spine but I still get the old dirt from the last few months off of me. I step out and see a couple of dry towels hanging off of the door. I grab one and dry my body off and grab another to wrap around my head and dry my hair. I step out of the bathroom and Preston is still inside the wardrobe. I put on my new clothes while his back is turned and walk over towards him when I'm finished.
“Still haven't found anything,” I ask him
He turns around “Nothing yet, the only thing interesting was this coat.” He holds a leather coat up to me. The coat is made of black leather and has a skull covered with blue flames on the back. There's a black shirt inside the coat with a skeleton hand making a thumbs-up embroidered on the front.
“ That's pretty cool, it's better than what you're wearing right now at least” he's outfitted in a blue hoodie with holes on the chest and tears at the sleeves. He also has a shirt with a faded picture of a blue flower printed on it.
“I guess you're right” he gets up from the floor and exits the wardrobe. He lays the clothes on the couch along next to the blanket and pillow he brought into the room.
“The shower works so you can get yourself clean In there,” I say to him
“You know, a shower sounds really good right now.” He gets up from the floor and grabs a pair of pajama pants that were laying next to him. He leaves the wardrobe and enters the bathroom, closing the door behind him. After a moment the water turns on and I hop on the bed to get ready to sleep. I squirm myself into the quilt and rest my head against one of the pillows. I shut my eyes and fall asleep listening to the passive sound of the shower like rain on a car.
I'm in a void. It feels like I'm standing in a puddle of water that reaches to my knees. I wade my way forward looking around for anything in the darkness. In the distance I can see 3 figures l. I moved closer to them and their silhouettes get clearer. I realize they are my dad and brothers. I start to run towards them kicking up water behind me until something grabs my leg. It pulls down violently forcing me under the water without a breath of air. I kick at the thing grabbing me until something grabs my other leg. I look down and see two glanter's each with a monstrous smile on their faces. They stare back at me and one of them tugs my leg harder than before and tears it off of my body. The water around me turns red as the glanter laugh's. The other smiles wider as it starts to fling me around the water forcing any air left in my lungs to be forced out as I scream in pain. The glanter throws me away and I can see my family slowly fade into the distance as I'm flown away.
I struggle to swim back to where I was, one of my legs is missing and the other is broken. The glanter's find me again and I try to get to the surface to escape them. I'm flapping my arms in any attempt to escape as one of the glanter's flies in front of me and grabs my arm. I look at the monster with tears in my eyes as it bites my arm and tears my body away from it. It flings my body away and with my remaining arm I clutch the wound as the water floods into my body leaving me in the void I started in. I look around and the glanter's seem to have left. I turn behind me and see my family again, this time I'm closer than before.
I grit my teeth and drag my body towards them slowly as I leave a trail of blood and tears behind me. I finally reach my family and grab one of my father's shoes. I stare up and he looks at me. His stare causes me to feel cold as a grotesque smile grows on his face. I stare in shock as my brothers each have the same look as my father.
I shoot up from my sleep panting heavily in a cold sweat.
“It was just a dream..just a dream…just a dream” I look at my hands as tears fall into them. I look around the room and see Preston sleeping peacefully on the couch. The room feels frozen in place as a chill runs down my spine. I get out of the bed and walk out of the bedroom. I make my way through the dark hallway and find the entrance to the balcony I saw earlier. I creak open the screen door and head outside. The Balcony is pretty large, about the size of the kitchen in the house. There are some chairs knocked over next to a table and I pick one up to sit on it. I look out into the expanse of the neighborhood, houses lined up next to each other, dozens broken apart by roads, and dead bodies scattered across the roads.
I look up in the sky and sit back in the chair. The sky looks empty except for the moon giving this world its only source of light. Without the moon, we’d be left in darkness. It hangs in the sky alone, no stars, no clouds, nothing but itself, and the void of the sky. I think back about the dream I had. My dad and my brother's all dead and possessed and then they kill me. I start to tear up thinking about it. I try to wipe away the tears but it’s no use. I'm too scared for my family. I don't know where they are if they're alive if they're worried about me I don't know anything! I start to quietly cry into my hands. I don't know how long I'm sitting there until I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn my head to face it and I see Preston. He was smiling and looking at me. I turn away to wipe my tears and he walks next to me.
“I heard you sneaking out of the bedroom so I followed you to see where you were going.” he says “but that's not my question.” he pauses and looks at me “my question is what’s got you feeling so down?” he leans over the railing of the balcony
“It's nothing, I just came out here to clear my head.” I say as more tears escape from my eyes in big slow drops that ride down the sides of my face.
“if you don't feel like telling me you don't have to but i'll be here if you ever change your mind”. He looks up at the moon before turning to face me and his smile widens “I'll always be here with you…trust me I'm not going anywhere”
I stare up at him and wipe away my tears as a smile grows on my face to match his. I get up and stare over the balcony with him. “So where are we heading next?” I say to him, Preston pulls the map we got from the man cave downstairs out from his pocket.
“After I got out of the shower I decided to take a look at the map for anything interesting we could see.”
“Ok did you find anything?” i ask
“I did,” he points at a spot on the right of the map. “We should head to the museum”
“I didn't want to go to a museum before the apocalypse why would i want to go now?'' I ask him.
“Well the best part of museums is the cool stuff right”
“Yeah what about it”
“The only problem is that you could only look at the fossils and armor but you could never take them.”
“So you want to rob a museum?” Prestons eyes light up at the question
“Exactly they might have a really cool sword I could use, or I could sharpen a dinosaur tooth and use that as a weapon, there might be a cursed shield that can summon the dead to fight for you. This opportunity is too good to pass up. We need to go!”
“That does seem pretty cool but wouldn't carrying that stuff weigh us down. What if a glanter is chasing us and we can't run fast enough because of the stuff we took from the museum.”
“We’ll only take things that are light. Even then I could just block the glanter with my newly acquired 2000 year old shield.”
“Fair enough we can go in a couple hours” I yawn and stretch out my arms. “Cause I'm feeling way too tired to walk all the way over there right now.”
“Alright i'm heading back to my couch and THEN we’ll head out to the museum” he leaves the balcony and heads back to the master bedroom leaving me alone on the balcony.
“Thanks Preston I'm not leaving either” I say into the sky. I turn around and walk back inside the house, closing the balcony door behind me. I walk back into the bedroom and Preston is hunched over and holding a flashlight looking at the map. He’s drawing lines through roads and marking X’s in different areas.
“What are the X’s for?” i ask him
“They’re places that glanter’s usually stay around. I'm marking them off so we remember not to go through them, or at least be more cautious.”
“Cool. Did you find where we are right now?” He points to an area where the lines all converge out of.
“Right around here is where the neighborhood ends. So if we follow this path we can make it to the museum in one piece” I pat him on the back and take the map from his hands.
“Get some sleep Preston, we have a full day tomorrow” he grins to himself before laying down on the couch. I put the map back into my bag and hop on the bed to get to sleep. I cover my body in the quilt and roll over facing away from Preston as he falls asleep. I nestle myself into the bed and slowly fall asleep to get ready for the next day.
I'm awoken by Preston shaking the bed I'm sleeping on. My eyes open and the room is foggy, I wipe away the sleep from my eyes and focus my attention towards Preston. He's practically jumping out of his skin with excitement, he's already fully dressed for the trip and shaking the bed with a wide smile on his face.
“Ok ok i'm up the air feels heavy as a groggy feeling fills my body. I wipe my eyes and the room starts to clear up. I turn to face Preston. He's still shaking my bed to wake me up, he’s already fully dressed and nearly jumping out of his skin in excitement.
“Ok ok, i'm up you can stop shaking the bed” i say
“Then get up we’ve got a long walk ahead of us” he says as he stops shaking the mattress. He grabs the map from my bag and points to one of the red lines.
“We're gonna follow this way to the museum. We’ll move past the hotel around the ice skating rink and around the park. We’ll mainly stick to walking through the streets, we might have to go rooftop hopping to avoid any glanter’s if we see them but i'm sure we won’t reach that point.” he explains
“Wait, wait, wait, why are avoiding the skating rink and the park” i ask
“ everytime we go near the park there's weird noises and light coming out of it”
“And why can't we go to the ice skating rink?”
“I didn't think it would be important”
“It couldn't hurt to check it out at least”
“Fine we could make a detour”
“Ok and how do you plan on getting on top of roofs?”
“I'm sure we'll figure it out when we get to it”
“Ok man as long as you’re sure '' I yawn and step out of the bed. Preston starts to put the map in his bag. I walk into the bathroom with my clothes and change out of my pajamas. Minutes later I walk out and see Preston sitting on the couch twiddling his thumbs.
“Finally you're out” he smiles at me before handing me my bag and slinging it over his shoulder. We took a last look inside the kitchen to see if we missed anything. Afterwards we leave for the outside. The cold air bites at my face but Preston walks down the stairs, his face buried in the map. I jog to catch up to him as we both head into the street.
“Hey Preston, could I see the map?”
“Sure” he hands over the map and continues walking. I look at the map and the numerous lines drawn on roads. I look at the corner of the map and notice a small map key with numerous symbols for different areas like a library, school, hospital, and more. There's even a way to tell how far away each location is. The text reads “1 inch=5 miles” I quickly count how far we are from the museum.
“Dude this museum is like 100 miles away.”
“Yep it'll be a long walk, it'll take us a while to get there”
“Did you plan on us walking there the whole time?”
“We might find bikes or something.” he pauses “well i did think we would walk the whole way”
“This is gonna take us weeks to get there!”
“Did you have anything else planned?”
“Well…i guess not but we should still try to find some bikes or something”
“Ok if we see any way to travel faster we’ll take it”
“Alright cool” I hand him the map back and he folds it back up and puts it in his bag. We walk further until we leave the gated neighborhood we started in. Preston takes the map back out and looks at it before he turns right and continues walking. I follow him staring forward at the expanse of the road. The outside of the neighborhood is surrounded by roads all leading to different parts of Newkinawa. We walk past a sign that reads “Coretown 20 miles ahead” I nudge Preston towards the sign and he checks the map again.
“Yep, the museum’s in Coretown. Would you believe the residents were pretty proud of it. Should be a fun place to explore” he says
“Yeah but it’ll take us a million years to get there.” i complain
“Lighten up, I'm sure it will be worth it”. We continue walking down the road slowly making our way to Coretown.

Number One: My Brother
There were plenty of times when I was growing up that my older brother would try to scare me. When I was really young, he was somewhat successful with it. But of course, when someone tries scaring you over and over again, you normally get used to it. Then it doesn’t scare you very much.
As we all got older, things changed quite a bit. He wasn’t getting the reactions from me that he previously had been, so he wasn’t scaring me as much. It was kind of a good feeling, you know, feeling that you have defeated your older brother when he was just trying to torment you. But also, I soon began forgetting that he was ever doing things like that to me.
When he was 17, he stopped hanging out at home very often. We assumed he was just out with his friends all the time. But he really had grown distant from everyone else in the family. He would rarely show up for meals. If he did, he would take his food and eat it away from everyone else.
My parents didn’t really think much of the change in my brother’s behavior. They insisted that teenagers all go through things like that. So I took them at their word and didn’t assume that they had anything to worry about.
I was home once after school and I was the only one there. My parents both worked a lot of hours and this was pretty common. My brother wasn’t home either so it was only me there. So, I set about trying to decide what I was going to have for dinner.
I remember this day for many reasons, but the first being that it was very windy outside. So I was hearing a lot of noises from outside. Also, the house was pretty old so it was making a lot of creaking noises.
What bugged me the most though was how sometimes our screen door in the kitchen would become unlatched on those windy days. When that happened, the win would cause the door to bang open and bang closed. And unless you went and put the hook lock onto it, it would keep doing this.
So, I went and made sure that the screen door was secured after hearing it bang several times in the wind. And then I went and I tried to finish making myself something to eat. Once I was done, I went into the living room and I tried to watch some television while I ate.
It wasn’t long until I heard what sounded like the door had gotten loose again. Since I used the hook lock, I wasn’t sure what it could have been. But if the door got torn of its hinges, it would have made things a lot worse. So I got up and went back in the kitchen, annoyed, to go and secure the door once again.
However, the door wasn’t open. My older brother was at the back door. And he was banging on the screen door for some reason. He was complaining about the door being locked and told me that I had to open it for him.
I asked him why he didn’t just come in through the front door like everyone did. The question seemed to just make him angry, however. He began pounding on the door harder and telling me to just open the damn door.
I went over to open the door, but the look on his face got me to stop. I wasn’t sure what it was, but there was just something in his eyes that I didn’t recognize. I am not sure how else to put it, but it didn’t seem like I was looking at my brother. There was some vacant, other person behind those eyes.
My pause made my brother pound on the door harder and I could tell that he was really pissed off. I thought he was trying to scare me for only a second because I wasn’t sure what to think about what was going on. He began then pulling the screen out of the screen door in order to get to the lock I couldn’t imagine he would ever be stupid enough to deliberately destroy part of the house; my parents would have killed him.
He started yelling at me, threatening all sorts of things to do to me once he got into the house. I was about to run off, but I didn’t because part of me still thought he was just trying to scare me, albeit that part was really small.
When he got through the door, though, he didn’t stop anything. He went right over to a knife block and that was when I turned and ran. I went quickly up to my stairs and into my bedroom, locking the door behind me.
We lived in an old house with some good, solid doors. There was no way my brother was going to break through them. However, he did pound on the door and yell and scream at me for a while, demanding that I open the door. However, a while later, he gave up and everything went quiet.
I didn’t come out of my room until my parents got home. They had found my brother, sitting in the bathtub upstairs, shivering; the kitchen knife beside him. He claimed to not really know what was going on and my parents were confused. I relayed the whole story to them and he seemed to sincerely have no memory of what happened.
So, it seemed my brother had a psychotic break down or a fugue state or something like that. I believe the last one is what the doctor said. But to this day, he denies that he ever faked what happened as a practical joke. He had admitted to every joke beforehand so I have no reason not to believe him. I have no idea what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten to my room.

Number Two: Bullies
I moved around a whole lot when I was growing up. I have lived in the city, in the country and the suburbs. I moved so much that I really didn’t get to know a lot of kids my age very well while I was growing up. And after having this be the case for a long period of time, I stopped trying to make friends when I reached a certain age. It didn’t seem worth it if my family would just pack up and move a few months after I had made a friend.
There was a period of time where we moved out to this house out in the country. It was a poorer area, I guess, where the only houses you came across were mobile homes. I never tried to make any friends with the kids who might have lived there, though. I also didn’t really make friends at school.
I don’t know what it was about this area, but for some reason it was the only time in my life where I was bullied. I think it might have been because I kept to myself and did well in school, instead of playing football during recess. But whatever it was, the bullies were real jackasses and caused me a lot of Hell for the year when we were there. Weekends and school vacations were my favorite times because it was the only times I could get away from the bullies at school and the teachers never did anything to make the bullying stop either.
This happened during a weekend in the fall. I remember because I was out wearing a jacket and taking a walk. I tried to go out for walks whenever I could on days home, because it felt good to get out of the house for a while. So, I was heading down a gravel road, just strolling along and lost in my own thoughts.
It was after a while, I heard some sounds coming off ahead of me and to the side of the road. I was curious to see what was going on, so I walked up to the area and noticed that there was a fenced off field in that area. It sounded like there were some people off doing something and I began to wonder why. However, I wasn’t curious enough to try and find out.
It was pretty suddenly though that someone approached me on the side of the road. I was surprised to have seen it, because I hadn’t noticed anyone else out there. Plus, I was really afraid to see it was a kid name John, who was one of the bullies who bugged me at school.
John made some comments at me but none of them were mean. In fact, he had heard the noises out in the field too and was wondering what they were. John asked me if I was curious and wanted to go see what was going on.
I wasn’t sure how to feel. I mean, part of me thought that this bully might have been warming up to me. But another part of me definitely didn’t want to go with him walking in a field.
In the end, I decided to go with him because I was mostly afraid that he might beat me up if I didn’t go with him.
After walking for a while, we finally noticed a few other guys up in front of us. It didn’t take long for me to recognize them also for school. I was a bit scared when I noticed that they were guys who normally hung out with John and tormented me. That probably meant that he had known they were out there all along and was meeting up with them.
I wanted to turn around and go back to the road, but I couldn’t force myself to do it. Besides, if those four kids wanted to catch me, they easily could and beat the crap out of me. I didn’t want that so I just decided to try to not seem scared. Perhaps they would respect me that way and let me take part in what they were doing.
But as we got closer to them, I realized that they had rifles and were shooting at things. At first I assumed they were pellet guns, but they were actually rifles. And I found myself even more wanted to get away as quickly as I could.
John asked me if I wanted to fire one of the rifles. I definitely did not and told him that was okay. I didn’t want to take any of their fun away from them. So, I would just watch them if that was all right.
“Oh I have a better idea,” John laughed with his friends. “How about we use you for the target? Now that would be really fun.”
Of course those words scared the hell out of me. These were bullies that I knew were not scared to get physical with someone. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were willing to shoot me either.
There were only two rifles amongst the four boys and they both pointed them at me. I tried to tell myself that they wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and shoot me. If they did, they would get into a lot of trouble. But I had no idea whether that was true or not.
“Well that’s not what I thought would be fun,” John told his friends. “I mean we could just shoot at anything you know. We could shoot at trees, bushes, rocks. But what would be really fun would be a moving target.”
All the boys laughed and I just got even more scared. Now, I didn’t want to run because that would give the boys what they wanted. But I didn’t want to stand there either. I am probably pretty lucky that I didn’t wet myself at some point.”
“Well run,” John urged me. “It would be a lot harder to shoot you if you’re running that if you’re just standing there like a dumbass.”
I still didn’t move. I was too terrified to do anything.
“Run!” John yelled and he sort of lunged at me.
That was enough to scare me enough to get me running. So, I took off and began running. I began telling myself again that they were just trying to scare me. But no sooner did I think that then I heard a gunshot.
I was so startled by the gunshot that I tripped and fell on the ground. I hadn’t been hit by anything, but that didn’t mean that they hadn’t been trying to hit me. So, I got back and began running again. It wasn’t too long before I heard another gunshot. It was followed by another and another and each time, I kept expecting the gunshot to hit me. I couldn’t even be relieved when they didn’t hit me because I was too terrified.
I made it to the fence and I jumped back over it. Getting on the gravel road, I kept running and I didn’t stop running until I got home. I was out of breath and in pain, but I hadn’t been shot and I was glad about that.
Here is the part that might get you though. I didn’t tell anyone about what happened right away. I was too scared about what the bullies might do to me if I got them in trouble. So I kept it to myself and didn’t tell anyone until years after we moved away from there.
I really don’t know how much trouble they would have gotten into anyway. They would have just denied it and I have found the parents of bullies rarely discipline their children for bullying.

Number Three: The Tunnel
I can’t say that I was bullied much when I was growing up. Rather than being unpopular, I was just the sort of kid that everyone ignored. If people talked about me or had any strange impressions of me, I definitely never knew about it. I spent a lot of time by myself.
However, I wasn’t one of those people who liked spending a lot of time by themselves. I would often try to insert myself into a conversation or to join up on a ball game if extra players were needed. I wanted to get along with people and to have those interactions, but it was normally always a bust. I just had a problem making friends. But that didn’t keep me from trying to.
So one day I was walking home from school. I had a pretty long walk as I lived out of town but still close enough that the district did not provide a bus for me. I didn’t mind the walk, though, as I had been doing it all of my life and it gave me time to think.
When I was walking by a field, I noticed a bunch of kids from high school that I knew walking off in the field. So, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided I would follow them to see what they were doing. This might seem strange to you and it certainly does to me now, but recall that this was something that I did very often.
The kids all had a pretty big start on me so it would take me a while to catch up with them. However, when I did eventually catch with them, they were hanging out and smoking pot. They noticed me and actually invited me over. They didn’t seem worried that I would narc on them or anything and even offered me to smoke with them. I had never done that before but I wanted them to like me so I did. Of course as many first time pot smokers out there will tell you, the first time can be the roughest. Much to the amusement of the other guys, I was coughing my lungs out for quite a while afterward.
After hanging out for a little while-and I hadn’t done much talking really, just listening- one of the guys told us that he had an idea. There was an old tunnel under an old road that had been closed down for years and they thought it would be cool to check it out.
I was all for it and I walked with the guys for a while until we came to this tunnel. It wasn’t long and I am sure you have seen this sort of things before. I could definitely see to the other side of it. Still, it had a sort of creepy vibe to it. You couldn’t see the dirt road that ran over the tunnel anymore because it had completely grown over. Plus there were tons of trees and bushes grown up over everything.
One of the boys noticed something. It looked like, on the far end, that there was a human body laying in the tunnel. After he pointed it out, I noticed it too. However, I didn’t get a bit curious about it like the other guys did. It freaked me out and I wanted to just get away from it, but there was no way that I could tell them that.
The guys then began daring me to go and check it out. This scared me, of course, because I really didn’t want to do it. But I also wanted them to like me so after they prodded me for a little while, I decided to go ahead and do it.
The tunnel seemed kind of dank, but it wasn’t wet or anything. It was just unpleasant walking in it, especially knowing that I might be approaching a dead body. I walked as slowly as I could, trying to draw this out as long as possible. Seems silly in retrospect, I know. Most people would want to get it over with as quickly as possible.
As I got closer to the figure in the tunnel, I could see him a lot better. It didn’t look like he was breathing either. This scared me but I also kept thinking about how cool the guys would think I was if I had approached a dead body. So I kept creeping closer.
Right when I had gotten next to the body, I heard this loud clanging, echoing noise ring out across the tunnel. I turned behind to look and see what it was but my attention was drawn back to the body when it tried to grab me.
I stumbled backwards and fell over. I watched the body get up to my horror. I could hear the guys laughing but I wasn’t concentrated on that. I was concentrated on the scary figure in front of me that was suddenly yelling at me and coming toward me.
I got up and began running out of the tunnel. I couldn’t even tell you what the figure was yelling at me as I ran out. I just knew that he sounded very angry and I was terrified.
The guys were running back to the area that they had originally been in and I followed them. I checked behind me at one point and did not see the figure from tunnel following me. However, the guys were all laughing their asses off.
They explained to me that the guy in the tunnel was a homeless guy who had been living in that tunnel for who knows how long. He always hates it when people come along and go into the tunnel. So, that clanging sound I heard was one of the guys throwing a rock into the wall of the tunnel to wake the guy up and scare the hell out of me.
The guys were all laughing but I didn’t find it very funny. However, I began to laugh too because I wanted them to like me. So they seemed to accept me and I was invited to keep smoking with them and hanging out.
So, I had finally made some friends, some who I continued to know until long after high school was over. And all it took was for them to scare me so bad I nearly shit my pants.

Hey! I need advice on how to go about opening retro carded figures and if anyone has attempted opening them in different ways other than the ruler method. Let me explain, so i'm both an in box and out box collector, so usually figures i love i try and get twice so i can both keep the cards which look amazing but also have fun posing my figures, however, some of the older figures i own (which are going for absurd amounts right now) i'm unable to buy a copy of, so i'm trying to find the best way of both being able to pose the figures and keep them in their box. I'm aware, the exacto knife opening at the bottom is pretty good, and the ruler method is also pretty popular but i really dont want to damage the windows or the cards themselves since, i've tried them both and have had some less than desirable outcomes with them, has anyone tried any other methods and A) do they leave any damage on the boxes and B) are they easy to do? Apparently some people have:
1) frozen their cards and just "peeled off" the glue off the cards. If anyone has tried this, how do the cards look after freezing? Wouldnt the water from the freezer seep into the figure and damage the card?
2) used heat to have the glue "unstick" from the card then peel it away. If anyone has tried this, does a blow dryer work? And does the heat damage the window or the cards? And do i need to use heat on the whole card or only the window?
3) used acetone to "break down" the glue so they can just unstick the card and take it all apart. If anyone has tried this, how is the card not damaged from the acetone? Does this leave any leftover residue on the cards in the future when it dries? This seems sketchy
4) similar to the previous point, people have used rubbing alcohol instead and used it to "break down" the glue. If true, does this also leave any future damages on the card? And how does it work?
If anyone has any recommendations i would really appreciate them, or even better, if anyone has any videos showcasing any of these methods i would really appreciate it!!! And i know "the best way to open a box is just ripping it open" or "you csn always purchase a second one to open" but genuinely with the prices things are going for now a days its been extremely difficult to collect doubles unless i had purchased them double from day one, thank you for any and all advice!!!

[<< First] [< Previous] [Next >] [Patreon] [Discord]
Synopsis:
Juliette Contzen is a lazy, good-for-nothing princess. Overshadowed by her siblings, she's left with little to do but nap, read … and occasionally cut the falling raindrops with her sword. Spotted one day by an astonished adventurer, he insists on grading Juliette's swordsmanship, then promptly has a mental breakdown at the result.
Soon after, Juliette is given the news that her kingdom is on the brink of bankruptcy. At threat of being married off, the lazy princess vows to do whatever it takes to maintain her current lifestyle, and taking matters into her own hands, escapes in the middle of the night in order to restore her kingdom's finances.
Tags: Comedy, Adventure, Action, Fantasy, Copious Ohohohohos.
Chapter 245: A Clockwork Wish
The quiet streets of Hartzwiese stood in contrast to the lights of the many inns, bars and taverns.
Despite its modest size, the town boasted as many drinking establishments as there were adventurers somehow drunk enough to be booted from the guild hall. And yet for all the bright lanterns singing from the windows, they paled in comparison to the moonlight as it graced the steps before me. A white carpet ushering me towards a tavern Apple was now using as a stables, and where I could enjoy a complementary room, courtesy of the fact I now owned it.
But before I could put my day’s labours behind me, there was still an important task I had to do.
The most important.
Rewarding my loyal handmaiden, who throughout these arduous days had remained firm and true as much as the sword by my side.
Indeed, no ill deed went unpunished, and no good service went unrewarded.
Why … she even knew the same.
Stopping before a large fountain in the centre of the town square, Coppelia held her palm out towards me as she eyed the faintly glittering surface.
“Gimme change,” she said brightly.
“Change?”
“I want to toss a coin into the fountain~”
My mouth opened wide.
“E-Excuse me! I know very well you possess coins of your own! Furthermore, I’ll not give you money from our hard earned hazelnut croissant fund merely to quite literally toss it away!”
“It’s not throwing it away. It’s making a wish.”
“A wish?”
“Mmh~ drop a coin into a fountain. Get a wish. An absolute bargain. Haven’t you tried it before?”
“Coppelia, I’ve no need to drop coins into fountains. I ring a bell. That’s how my wishes come true.”
“Well, do you have the bell with you?”
I paused.
“... No.”
“There you go, then! Until you get your bell back, you’ll need to toss away coins for your wishes.”
She beamed with childish expectation, palm still outstretched, fully expecting me to humour her request.
Well, sadly for Coppelia, I was not so easily moved!
Our personal finances went into maintaining a minimal standard of living! And that meant every coin we had to spare went into purchasing premium apples and cinnamon rolls! It would be unconscionable of me to allow it to be spent so frivolously!
“Staaaaaaaaaaaare~”
I rolled my eyes.
“... Fine, one copper crown,” I said, rummaging through my bottomless pouch. “Really now, this is hardly a djinn you’re bribing. I’m surprised you wish to add to the fountain and not merely scoop up what’s there.”
“Hey! I have standards! … I don’t like copper, it’s less shiny than silver and gold and gets in the way when I rummage through my ill-gotten gains.”
I offered Coppelia a sigh along with the small coin.
She accepted it with a giggle. As she turned to the fountain, the stars twinkled from her eyes more than the surface of the clear water.
Plop.
It vanished into the depths.
A small proof of our hardship, now given to the fountain to judge and a magpie to steal come the morning.
“And what wish do you hope to acquire through a less shiny copper crown?”
Coppelia merely smiled.
No word left her lips as her turquoise eyes gazed at the fountain’s disturbed surface. She herself was motionless but for the soft wind tugging at the ends of her fluffy golden hair.
And then–she twirled on the spot.
Arms spinning around, she raised them out and stopped like a melodramatic ballerina.
“World domination! I shall subjugate all squishy life under my cute, clockwork heel!”
“Please pick a different wish,” I replied, waving her declaration away as I would a plain chouquette. “World domination has already been chosen by half the world’s rulers. There’s not enough wishes in any fountain to accommodate them all.”
“... Got it! I’ll take an apple strudel!”
“You can wish for something that isn’t already in our possession.”
“In that case, I’ll take an apple strudel from every bakery in the world!”
I nodded. Better. Especially as I was far more dependable than any wishing fountain.
Indeed, as soon as I returned to the Royal Villa, I’d order a squire to go fetch an apple strudel from every bakery in the world as part of some inane quest!
“But what about you?” she asked, never knowing the suffering and hardship her casual request had just caused somebody not me. “Don’t you have any wishes for the totally legitimate wishing fountain?”
I held a hand to my chest, scoffing with a princess’s dignity.
“Ohohoho … for the fountain? No. I’ve no need for a fountain to make my wishes come true, for I have my own strength of purpose. And that is enough to grant all I desire. The prosperity of my kingdom. The health of my family. And the loyalty of my subjects.”
Coppelia leaned towards me, her smile appraising my own.
“Reeaaaally?”
I reacted with the indignation such scepticism deserved … and also a quick glance around me as I eyed for witnesses.
“... W-Well, if I could maybe have one thing, it would be an opportunity to finish reading my current novels. I have been stuck on the same pages for far too long.”
“That really annoys you, huh?”
“I-It’s terrible, Coppelia! At this rate, I’ll need to re-read some of them … and frankly, it’s enough of a strike against my fragile heart to do so once! There is only so much research a princess can take!”
My loyal handmaiden giggled. She wouldn’t if she knew the dangers that overexposure to the world of bestselling adventure romances could cause. I’d seen noblewomen collapsing at court more often with a copy of Scandals Of The Incorrigible Viscount in hand than any knife to the back.
A moment later–
Plop.
A second copper crown was casually tossed into the fountain.
“Done~” said Coppelia with a satisfied clap. “I’ve made your wish for you!”
My mouth widened as I stared between the fresh ripples and her mischievous smile.
“E-Excuse me! Didn’t you say you had no copper crowns?”
“I only said I didn’t like them. I never said I didn’t have just the one lying around. Isn’t that great? Now it means we both get our wishes! Apple strudels and scandalous books galore!”
“C-Coppelia! That is an entirely unnecessary waste of a copper crown … and more besides, I could have wished for a dragon’s hoard!”
“I mean, you could. But if you thought people were a problem before, wait until they know you’re even richer than a normal princess. You’d have burglars breaking into your vault even while you’re still busy swimming around in the pile of gold.”
“Please. That happens regardless of whether or not a dragon’s hoard is involved. And if it ever became a true issue, well … I’d simply solve it by hiring a dragon.”
“You’d hire a dragon to guard a dragon’s hoard?”
“Why not? There’s clearly no better proven warden.”
“Yep, that’s true. They’d even guard it against you. How would you get the treasure back?”
“I wouldn’t. It’d simply exist to slowly erase the population of burglars from my kingdom. That would be its true value.”
Coppelia looked up in thought.
“Huh. That sounds suspiciously like something which could work.”
I smiled with quiet pride. But not too quiet. I had my pride, after all.
“Ohohoh … naturally, I’m not only a princess. I’m a genius … but since I’m mostly a princess, this also means ensuring my retainers are rewarded for their service, and bribed concerning any slovenly faces I may have made.”
“Now that’s the level of subtlety I like. Negative numbers.”
“Well, negative numbers is also how I value most fae trinkets. But perhaps you can find worth in it.”
Coppelia clapped her hands together and beamed.
“Ooooh~! I smell souvenirs! Did you steal toiletries on the way out of the Fae Realm?”
“I did not steal toiletries! … although if I’d seen any, I possibly may have!”
“So you stole something else? Like cutlery?”
“Coppelia! I do not steal things whenever I visit a different plane of existence!”
“Why not? Everyone else does.”
“I am not ‘everyone’. Even when abducted, I’m still required to display the regal bearing of my station, representing always my kingdom and my family … and there was no cutlery, either.”
“Wow. You must have had an awful time.”
I gave a grim nod.
No toiletries. No cutlery. Not even a branded napkin.
The next time I was indiscriminately abducted to the Fae Realm, I’d ensure I would wander lost until a stack of towels accidentally fell into my arms.
“It was dire. But while I didn’t return empty handed, it was with nothing drawn from a dragon’s hoard or edible like a mound of apple strudels. Regardless, here is a gift acquired from the Spring Queen to add to your collection of trinkets and doodads I have no wish to know about.”
Thus, I reached into my bottomless bag, sweated as I fished for a slender object, and then retrieved a small ring of jade.
Unlike the crystal ring gifted to me by the Winter Queen and now embellished by her sister, the jade ring was adorned only with a pattern of crystalline vines upon the band, lacking any jewel set upon it.
Even so, Coppelia’s eyes lit up like a twin pair of moons.
She pointed at herself.
“Wait, is that for me?”
“Indeed, it is. You may have it.”
“Eh … ehhh?! It actually looks expensive, though! I was expecting something like a postcard!”
I raised a brow.
“If you’d prefer a postcard, I’m sure I could ask for one instead.”
Coppelia appeared speechless. Something so impossible not even a fountain could grant it.
Blinking in disbelief, she reached out and accepted the ring. Without putting it on, she held it against the moonlight, studying its finish.
“Ooooh~ it’s so shiny! … Will I blow up if I wear it?”
“No.” I paused. “At least, I don’t think so.”
Coppelia stopped as the ring met her finger.
“There’s no need to fear,” I added as I took a step away. “It’s a ring gifted by the Spring Queen, and so is imbued also by her magic.”
“I’m not hearing anything which says I won’t blow up.”
“You won’t blow up. Probably. After all, this thing is still little more than a child’s trinket. It contains a single favoured plaything from her court of dreams. The very swing she sat upon during our meeting.”
“The swing?”
“The swing. I believe it functions similarly to the bed. Why not try summoning it in the same manner?”
Deciding she’d paid enough tribute to caution, Coppelia popped the ring on.
She studied herself to ensure she hadn’t melted, before raising her hand in curiosity.
“Sooooo … do I just need to say [Summon Swing] and–woooaahh!!”
Poof.
The moment the words left her lips, she was lifted from the ground as a swing of crystalline leaves and vines appeared where she stood, seating her automatically in the process. Against the dour backdrop of Hartzwiese’s decidedly human streets, it shone with as much vividness as the Spring Queen’s mirror-like wings.
Coppelia blinked, her eyes wide as she wrapped her hands around the ropes of crystallised vines.
And then–
She began to swing.
With only the rustling of her clothes and the fluttering of her hair to disturb the quiet scenery, she proceeded to test the Spring Queen’s plaything, wasting little time before she began to swing like a pendulum, backwards and forwards at greater speeds.
She did not say a word, nor voice any thoughts, and although she wore a smile upon her face, it was no different to one she regularly affixed upon herself.
A moment of doubt struck me.
“N-Naturally, it’s rather unorthodox as a gift. It is no great heirloom or weapon, and rather impractical so far as useful function is concerned. But I imagine the ring itself is worth some value. If you do not want it, I’m certain some curio collector would pay for its novelty value. Regardless, please consider it as a bonus.”
Suddenly, Coppelia leapt off the swing in mid-flight. She skipped a few steps owing to the momentum, yet still pirouetted effortlessly on one foot as she twisted around to face me.
Her widening smile was the only warning I received.
“–Hiieeee?!”
Because the next moment …
I experienced the sensation of being hoisted off my feet.
Oh no.
“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!”
Wrapping her arms around my waist, she easily lifted me up.
A feeling I’d experienced once before. And one I had not forgotten. Terror mixed with only the tiniest drop of excitement met me as I was promptly swung like an errant pillow.
“C-Coooppeeeliaaaa!! M-My priiiinnceess imaaggee!!”
With a girlish smile, Coppelia paid no heed to my meek and delicate cry as she twirled on the spot.
Around and around, my hair billowed behind me as all the town became a blur which helped to hide the many holes and cracks in the walls and windows, until somehow, the other side of my hair became known to the opposite side of my face.
“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~”
Just as I felt the world beginning to take on entirely new colours, she came to a stop.
She placed me down, continuing to smile as I waved away her supporting hands. I stumbled as I chased equilibrium, all the while blowing the many strands of my dark hair away from my mouth. My fingers instinctively went into emergency combing mode.
“I-It seems … uughh … you enjoy … the gift … uuuh … I’m … I’m pleased …”
Coppelia stepped back, arms behind her back as she gave another twirl, this time mercifully without me attached. Like a maiden in a meadow, she lightly skipped around her new magically summoned fae swing, examining its fine spring motifs and crystalline details, before finally turning to me once again.
I leaned away, not least because there were now several versions of her before me.
“Thankies~” she said brightly. “I like this a lot!”
I held my tummy, making sure nothing terrible was about to happen before I replied.
“You’re … uugh … you’re welcome …”
She gave a giggle of amusement at my expense, then seated herself on her new swing once again.
For my part, I rather desperately eyed the direction of my kingdom’s latest acquisition. A tavern which possessed very helpful walls. Even if I had no intention on using the beds within them.
After all–
It wasn’t only Coppelia who had reason to smile tonight.
Indeed … I also had a new and improved bed to enjoy!
Now that my minor detour to this corner of my countryside was complete, my only remaining task was to thoroughly and objectively test the Spring Queen’s magic for myself.
Yes … it was time to indulge my face in the Winter Queen’s pillow once again! To hug a silken duvet now gifted with the scent of an eternal meadow! A moment to thoroughly reward myself as I purposefully shoved any and all dangerous thoughts of tomorrow to the wayside!
And nothing, I knew, could disturb me from my slumber!
That ominous feeling I’d forgotten something important?
Why … I barely even felt it!
[<< First] [< Previous] [Next >] [Patreon] [Discord]

I (F18) need advice or possibly even assistance with moving out.
I've been suicidal and depressed since I was 10. That was around the same time when my mother started abusing me. It's TEXTBOOK emotional abuse. It never stopped when I turned eighteen... she even did it ON MY EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY.
I've lived alone with my mom since I was 15 or 16. Not only does she emotionally abuse me, but she neglects my needs as a disabled person. I have autism and it greatly affects most aspects of my life. She denies that I'm autistic or struggling AT ALL (often finishing off with the good old "I'm the one who's struggling" line).
Any time I come forward that I'm suffering and need help, she always finds a way to make it about herself. She'll SCREAM at me, call me names like "bitch" (which she's been doing since I was a child,) guilt-trip me, etc., then turn around and showers me with praise and gentleness a few minutes later. I just recently learned this an abusive behavior called lovebombing.
Whether it is my disability, my depression, my sexuality, my religion, my lifestyle choices, or using my father (her ex-husband) against me... she finds ANY WAY to tear into me. She has also been physically violent in the past, but not too many times. However, I digress.
I need help on how to move out. I can no longer deal with this life, and I'm putting enough faith in God not to kill myself.
I have recently graduated high school and am unemployed, struggling to find suitable work considering my experience and disability. I also do not have a driver's license, and this is because of two reasons: I am terrified of driving and I do not have enough documents that the DMV will accept.
I have difficulty caring for myself (eating, brushing my teeth, cleaning, etc.) because of my disability and depression. I think I would literally deteriorate if I lived alone. Although, I guess I'll take this risk over being abused any longer. This is where having a roommate would save my life... but, my only friend nearby is not available for that. I also fear acquiring a terrible or overbearing roommate.
I've been talking to a financial manager to open an account with some thousands of dollars my father set for me. I'll use it for its intended purposes; paying for college, buying a car, etc. but the financial manager has not responded to me in a little over two months.
I would try to move in with my father and stepmom, but they have four people in their house already... and they have struggles of their own. Plus, my mother will actually go fucking ballistic.
So, if anyone could offer advice or anything, I would appreciate it. Thank you so much.

I (F18) need advice or possibly even assistance with moving out.
I've been suicidal and depressed since I was 10. That was around the same time when my mother started abusing me. It's TEXTBOOK emotional abuse. It never stopped when I turned eighteen... she even did it ON MY EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY.
I've lived alone with my mom since I was 15 or 16. Not only does she emotionally abuse me, but she neglects my needs as a disabled person. I have autism and it greatly affects most aspects of my life. She denies that I'm autistic or struggling AT ALL (often finishing off with the good old "I'm the one who's struggling" line).
Any time I come forward that I'm suffering and need help, she always finds a way to make it about herself. She'll SCREAM at me, call me names like "bitch" (which she's been doing since I was a child,) guilt-trip me, etc., then turn around and showers me with praise and gentleness a few minutes later. I just recently learned this an abusive behavior called lovebombing.
Whether it is my disability, my depression, my sexuality, my religion, my lifestyle choices, or using my father (her ex-husband) against me... she finds ANY WAY to tear into me. She has also been physically violent in the past, but not too many times. However, I digress.
I need help on how to move out. I can no longer deal with this life, and I'm putting enough faith in God not to kill myself.
I have recently graduated high school and am unemployed, struggling to find suitable work considering my experience and disability. I also do not have a driver's license, and this is because of two reasons: I am terrified of driving and I do not have enough documents that the DMV will accept.
I have difficulty caring for myself (eating, brushing my teeth, cleaning, etc.) because of my disability and depression. I think I would literally deteriorate if I lived alone. Although, I guess I'll take this risk over being abused any longer. This is where having a roommate would save my life... but, my only friend nearby is not available for that. I also fear acquiring a terrible or overbearing roommate.
I've been talking to a financial manager to open an account with some thousands of dollars my father set for me. I'll use it for its intended purposes; paying for college, buying a car, etc. but the financial manager has not responded to me in a little over two months.
I would try to move in with my father and stepmom, but they have four people in their house already... and they have struggles of their own. Plus, my mother will actually go fucking ballistic.
So, if anyone could offer advice or anything, I would appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Not finished yet but nearly done just need to know if it's decent.
Spider-Man VS The Punisher
A man walking his footsteps sounds like mini explosions as a row of computers with people typing on them. The man stops upon a window looking down to a glass cage with yellow electricity emerging from it.
“He's here, he's taking us all out. We need back up. Noooo.” The man looks at one of the scientists saying “wait for him to get here.” The man cleans up his suit and tightens his tie.
“Ohhh you're getting dressed up just for me. I shoulda brought flowers.” The man looks up where he sees a man in a red and blue webbed suit. “I should have killed you years ago. Well after today you will be.” “We both know that's not going to happen Willy. I'll arrest you and you'll escape, Rinse and repeat, it's always been like that.” The man grinds his teeth and grips his hands. “Unleash him.” the scientist looks at him and then at the computer pressing a button.
“Unleash him Fisk are you cheating on me with another hero.” as he says this a bolt of lightning strikes through the glass levitating in front of him. “You must be Spiderman. I'm electro, the man that's been tasked to kill you.” Spider-Man whispers to himself. “This guy's making my spider sense go crazy. I don't think this will go well.” he coughs then says. “Shouldn't you be at the circus.” Electro looks at Fisk and says “Leave Mister Fisk now.” Fisk and the scientists walk out into an elevator. “Don't disappoint me Max.” The elevator goes up with Spider-Man and Electro looking at each other “So electricity man are we gonna start.” He looks down to his hands where they start to glow brighter with electricity shooting out. BANG electricity shoots out his hand Spider-Man just dodging it. BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG Spider-Man narrowly dodges the bolts. He creates a continuous line of lightning towards Spider-Man. Cracking Peter tries to dodge it but fails on the ground Peter feels his muscles shut down. Electro walks over to him, shocking him again. “Ahhhhhhh.” He stops Spider-Man trying to crawl away BANG “AHHHHHH.” An alarm goes off as sprinklers also go off hitting Electro causing him to grunt.
Spider-Man using this crawls up a wall into a vent leaving the building Spider-Man takes off his mask feeling the rain hit his face. He hears Fisk talking to Electro below. “Is the job done.” “No, he escaped. The sprinklers set off burning my skin.” “You let him escape. I gave you one job and failed me." Electro looks at him sternly saying “Mister Fisk you gave me these powers and you want me to kill Peter I will. You know where he lives, I can go over there and kill him and his family.” “You will do no such thing. He will not try to kill us if we just go after him he won't understand.” Electro nods and walks away with an umbrella.
Spider-Man looks at his web shooters. “Great, they're gonna have to get the train. May's gonna kill me when I get back.”
Brooklyn, New York, 21:32
“PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T DO IT. I HAVE A FAMILY LOOK. PLEASE I'LL DO ANYTHING. WHAT DO YOU WANT MONEY, POWER.” A man shouts breaking down in fear of whoever is trying to kill him. “I want to know why you do it. Why commit crime when there's hundreds of heroes. I think I know why though. They won't kill, they won't just take the godam leap and end you scumbags. So I chose to do it myself.” The man says in a deep voice wrapping a cord around his neck. He picks him up, showing him a fifteen floor drop. “No, no, please don't do this.” He starts to cry as looks at him blankly, throwing off the building with him screaming for about three seconds till the man hears a snap. “Good Riddens.”
Queen's, New York, 9:29 pm
Walking into a house a teenager walks in “Peter where have y- My god what happened to you?” Peter looks at his aunt and says “Some people tried to rob me, it's alright May.” “Did they take anything? Did you call the police.?” “No and no May I'm fine May.” He looks at May. “I'll call the police.” “DON'T. I never saw what they really looked like, you'll just waste their time.” She looks at him saying “From now on you'll be back before it gets dark.” Peter nods “Now Peter time for your cake Happy Eighteenth Peter.” Peter looks at a cake with candles on it. He blows them out “Thanks May I'm just gonna go to my room I've had a ruff day.” May looks at him. “Are you sure you don't want some cake I've made? It's your favourite.” “I'll have some tomorrow really.” Peter walks up to his room turning on the TV playing the daily bugle. “Today Spider-Man failed to capture this so-called Lizard. I think he's just too lazy to put in any work. When the police lose a suspect their back on the streets trying to find him but Spider-Man swip swap swoops his way down and destroys peoples properties.” Peter looks at it in a rage “People would have died if i wasn't there yet I don't get thanked but hated. Why do I do this?” He looks at the picture next to his bed of him and uncle Ben. The time when he didn't worry if Aunt May would see him tomorrow. If she'll be targeted by villains. “Ben would call me stupid for doing something like this. Even more stupid I was responsible for his death. I couldn't just tell him where I was, I just had to storm out. He goes looking for me and ends up getting shot. I'm sorry Ben.”
Manhattan, New York, 06:34
“What will it be?” “Coffee, milk and two sugars.” She turns around and the man looks at his watch as he checks the time. “06:36 still have seven.” “It's ready. Have an amazing day.” he hands her a ten and leaves. He walks to an old burned building. Walking in he goes up five floors and goes towards a sniper pointing out a window. He takes a sip of his coffee checking his watch. “06:42 one minute.” A minute later a limousine drives up to a small building. A man dressed in a white and gold suit walks. “Gotcha.” BANG, a single bullet from the sniper shoots the man in the head obliterating the back of his head. He walks away with screams of people running and people shouting. “It's him, Punisher, he's here.” Pointing their pistols in the air looking where the shot came from.
Queen's, New York, 7:45 am
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BE-. Bang Peter hits his alarm destroying it. “Uhh, great way to start the day.” Peter goes to the bathroom brushing his teeth. He leaves the bathroom getting changed into his new clothes then goes to check on his web shooters. “Thank god for the science lab.” Checking his costume he sees it burnt and destroyed. He messages MJ to ask her to bring his spare costume she's working on. He gets his bag and web shooters going downstairs. “Hey Aunt May I'm off to school.” “Not so fast, I've got some cake for you to take.” Petter goes up to May and takes it. “Thanks May love ya bye.” Peter walks out to the school bus.
On the bus he sits next to his girlfriend Mary Jane. “My god Pete what happened to you. Also you suits in my bag.” Peter looks at her saying “New villain in town calls himself Electro.” “You've got to stop doing this Peter really you're going to kill yourself. How many villains do you have?” Peter looks down and says “Well Theirs the lizard, Shocker, Electro, Fisk, Otto Octavius and sin eater. Don't forget about the small time.” She looks at him saying “God why do I put up with you.” “Because I'm irresistible.” She smirks.
A couple hours later Peter only had two lessons left. Peter in the back of his English class looked at his web shooters making sure they still aren't broken and that he fixed them during science. Peter looks at his phone where he sees a notification from the daily bugle saying that sandman is robbing a bank. “Can I go to the bathroom?” Peter shouts. “Sure Mister Parker uh just take the pass.” Peter takes it and leaves. He goes to the janitor's closet putting on his Spidey suit and web shooters jumping out of the window. He looks at his phone while swinging. “Sometimes I wish I had a GPS in my suit instead of needing to use Oscorpe maps.” He swings wondering why sandman is robbing a bank. “He's stupid but not this stupid to rob a bank, especially during the day.” He swings across Queensboro into Manhattan.
When he arrives the swat team surrounds the area with Captain Stacey on standby. Spider-Man drops down in front of him. “Hey.” Looking up Captain Stacey talks to Spider-Man. “Spider-Man good thing you're here we need your help. Sandman has taken over the bank and he has three hostages.” Spider-Man looks at him saying. “Guess you can say things are getting out of sand.” “Sure just when you go in don't destroy much will you.” “I won't captain you know me, just get your officer's to sand back.” Spider-Man does finger guns at Captain Stacey swinging in. “Everyone shut up. I'm gonna pay it off with this score.” Spider-Man slowly swings down “It's ironic that you're named Flint. You know because flint and steel create fire and fire turns you into glass.” “WHAT.” Spider-Man sighs as he launches a kick towards him. He kicks him with Spider-Man going straight through him as this happens he webs his feet and pulls causing him to fall. He goes to punch sandman but punches him through the glass into a police car. CRASH, the police start firing at him but they do nothing. “SPIDER-MAN GET UP.” Captain Stacey shouts at spider-man. Spider-man jumps in slingshotting himself into sandman. He goes straight through him knocking sandman back as well. “Stop this Flint, think of all the good you've done.” He jumps onto the wall looking at a fire hydrant. “Like you've no that won't cut it. Ok you haven't done anything good but that doesn't mean I have to kick your ass again.” Sandman gets up. “You think you can kick my ass again. Not happening.” Spider-Man sighs. “Ok.” Spider-Man jumps down and grabs the fire hydrant and pulls. CRACK, the fire hydrant breaks splashing water all over sandman. “I told you Flint, I always win.” Flint starts to turn into a pile of wet sand. Spider-Man webs the hydrant to stop the water then walks over to Flint. Barely able to keep your normal form. “Screw you.” Spider-Man looks over at the captain. “He's all your captain enjoy.” Spider-Man jumps onto the side of a swat van. “Where do you go when you finish?” “School, besides I'm only missing one class.” Peter says this jumping and swinging away. “About ten minutes getting there. HEY I'M SWINGING HERE. Five minutes there and ten back is enough to miss english.”
Last lesson goes pretty boring for Peter. He's thinking about the lizard and how he escaped yesterday.
Bronx, New York, 15:45
“Nah he'll be here soon. The boss says after today's shipment the police are going to leave the Bronx alone.” An unknown man, clearly a gangster in a suit, is talking to another man in a suit. “Yeah, isn't he worried, though I mean what happened yesterday? You know Freddy.” One of them says “Nah, his new guy almost killed Spider-Man yesterday. He was talking about how he was crawling to escape only got away because of the sprinklers.”
BANG, BANG, The Punisher walks into a restaurant with seven men in suits in it. “HEY WHO LET THIS GUY IN.” The Punisher grabs his M4 and start to spray into a crowd killing three of them. Two of them pull out micro uzi's shooting at him. The Punisher grabs a grenade and throws it at the bar. BANG, The grenade goes and kills the two of them. The other two put their hands up and surrendered. Frank drops his AR. BANG, BANG, He shoots them with his pistol. He walks upstairs where five line a wall of AK's. The Punisher pulls out a stun grenade throwing it at them. BANG, they all drop their guns blind and staggering The Punisher walks in picking up one of their guns firing on them all. He walks to a door with the dead piled up next to it. He kicks it open to see a man in a suit. “I wondered how long it would take for you to find me, Frank. Now I have some you want and in return you'll let me go, unde-.” BANG, “No deal.” Frank starts to pack a duffel bag with money. Once he's done he lights the office on fire and leaves.
He walks to a van getting into the driver's seat. He drives for about thirty minutes to a small house. Walking in he puts the money in the pantree where about fifteen of the same bags are. He puts on the TV playing the news and works on making bullets. “Spider-Man today was responsible for the destruction of one bank. One I go to, when i wanted to go there today I realised I COULDN'T BECAUSE SPIDER-MAN HELPED SANDMAN DESTROY IT AND WHEN THE COPS SHOWED UP HE THREW HIM UNDER AND PRETENDED TO BE THE HERO. Now why do I have to pay for it? Why doesn't he? We know who Captain America is and he destroys a bank because he's civilised and not a maniac.” Frank looks at the TV turning it off and continues working.
Manhattan, New York, 4:21
“PARKER, PARKER, these photos are blurry I'll give you fifty.” Peter looks at him “Mister Jamerson I need a hundred and twenty.” “I need better pictures.” A man walks in “We need pictures Jonah.” He looks at Peter. “Ok one twenty.” He sighs a check giving it to Peter.
Peter leaves and goes to the woman working at the desk in front. “Hey Betty.” Peter gives Betty the check to Betty who gives him the money. “Thanks.” Peter leaves the daily bugle checking phone. He sees that he's missed a call from Captain Stacey. He calls him. “ you at the station up town.” “Ok but which one?” He runs into the alley next to the bugle changing into his costume swinging away. “So which one.” “You won't miss it kid really.” The call ends. “Ok, quite weird but he didn't even say why he needed me.” It takes him about thirty seconds to realise what he's about. In the distance he sees a giant ball of electricity. “Oh no.”
“Where is it?” CRACK, BANG, Electro kills three police officers. Captain Stacey tells all the police officer's to get into the building. “YOU CAN'T HIDE.” Spider-Man swings down checking the pulse of one of the dead police officers. “no. SURRENDER NOW.” Electro flies in front of him. “Or what. At least I'll get to kill you now. Peter.” Peter feels nervous looking around and Captain Stacey shouts for him to get in. “STAY INSIDE CAPTAIN.” The captain goes to one of his men. “Is it ready?” “yeah” Electro shoots electricity at spider-man. BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG. Spider-Man webs a man hole throwing it at him. Electro catches it, Spider-Man using this moment slingshots himself punching Electro multiple times. “I'M DONE PLAYING. YOU KILLED COPS I'M NOT GOING EASY.” Electro smirks at Peter creating an emp knocking Peter down. Electro drops to the ground, shocking him. “AHHHHHHH. BANG, AHHHHHHHH. BANG, AHHHHHHHH.” Electro walks up to Spider-Man who is crawling away. “Poor little Peter Parker. Once I'm done with you I'll deal with the ones you love. Rest in piece Peter Parker.” Electro charges his hands then. BANG.
Manhattan, New York, 16:23
Punisher loads his sniper talking to himself. “Really, they would kill me immediately. At least I'll kill this freak.” He toggles with the scope. “SURRENDER NOW.” “He won't do that kid” he waits for a clear shot. “YOU KILLED COPS I'M NOT GOING EASY.” he waits for his moment. Bang “AHHHHHHH.” Electros hands start to charge he lifts them. “bang.” BANG. A single bullet goes through the chest of Electro. Frank picks up his sniper and walks downstairs.
Walking down he sees Electro holding his chest on the ground and Spider-Man next to him barely alive. The Punisher walks up to Electro with a knife. “No please d-dont do this.” He gets close to Electro as tries to crawl away. The Punisher grabs him and turns him around. Fear in Electros eye's “Once I'm done with you I'll deal with your loved one's.” “No please.” The Punisher stabs him in the throat, killing him. “You know kid stay away from fisk for the next couple of days you understand. Deal with that giant lizard terrorising the city. Got me Parker.” Peter just looks as he starts to lose consciousness. “Good.” Gorge Stacey and his men leave the building telling The Punisher to surrender. He walks away as no one dares goes to arrest him. Gorge gets his men to help Peter.
Manhattan, New York, 7:32 pm
“You've got to take it easy kid. The doctors said you could have died.” Peter listens to Captain Stacey saying. “I know but with this guy out there, bloods gonna spill in the streets.” The Captain sighs. “So what are you going to do.” Peter coughs “I'm going to try and find the lizard first.” “Stay safe kid.” Peter jumps of the empire state building swinging through the city calling MJ to tell May he's staying at hers tonight.
Thirty minutes Later Peter hears on the police radio that a giant lizard is destroying Oscorpe. Swinging over he feels the stitches in him starting to rip.
When he arrives he sees a fire and a chunk of the side of the building gone. He swings in where fire and dead security guards are. “W-who is he?.” He hears a continuous clicking sound. “There aren't any alien space hunters down there, ha ha.” He laughs nervously. Suddenly a human sized lizard runs towards him trying to eat him. He dodges jumping on a wall “Hey I'm from the zoo, they said a lizard needed to be put down. That doesn't make sense. I don't kill. Hey no bitey.” He sees on the lab coat he's wearing it says Dr Connors. Still dodging “Connor's wait Curt Connors how did you. AHHH.” The Lizard scratches Spider-Man across the chest leaving a claw mark. Spider-Man looks up and sees him jumping to bite him. Spider-Man cartwheels backwards into a jump webbing his head and face planting him. “If you chill out I'll give you a box of insects to eat.” The Lizard gets up. “AHHHHHHHH.” Spider-Man looks at him. “Uh I don't know what to say to that. Raw maybe." As Spider-Man gets ready to attack, the Lizard's left arm starts to turn grey. It looks at it and runs away. Spider-Man swings after him through the streets of Manhattan “YOU MIGHT UGLY BUT I'M FINE WITH IT YOU DON'T HAVE TO RUN.” As he swings the lizard throws a hotdog stand at him. He webs it to a wall and keeps swinging. “SERIOUSLY A HOTDOG STAND IF YOU DON'T STOP I'LL TURN YOU INTO A LIZARD DOG. WELL I THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY.” The lizard goes into an alley into a sewer. Spider-Man follows him slingshotting himself in shouting. “YEAAAAH.”
Inside of the sewers Peter looks around and sees only one way forwards. He crawls ol the walls seeIng the destruction Connor's did. “UH MISTER CONNOR'S, CURT, LIZARD, ANYONE. AM I JUST TALKING TO MYSELF, YES, why did I shout that.” He keeps crawling till he hears shouting. “PLEASE I DIDN'T HAVE CONTROL PLEASE DON'T DO THIS.”
Manhattan, Sewers, New York, 19:28
“Where is this freak? This vermin to society.” The Punisher walks through the sewers trying to find the rat killing innocent people. “HISSSS.” He hears a hiss and feels something watching him. “SHOW YOURSELF YOU FREAK OF NATURE.” A black figure crawls out from the shadow. “Tries to hurt me, hurt Edward. AHHHH.” He hisses and screams at him. He goes to attack him but The Punisher unloads bullets from his M4. Vermin shouts in pain “AHHHHHHHH.” Frank slowly followed him. “YOU CAN'T RUN VERMIN. I'LL KILL YOU MATTER WHAT. I'LL DO WHATEVER, YOU'RE COWARD THAT PREY ON THE WEAK.” “Vermin doesn't prey on the weak. I DON'T HAVE CONTROL, AHHHH. Vermin needs to eat, Edward needs to live.” he scurries away. After a minute of walking he arrived in a circular area where Vermin threw him in. “AHHHHH. Vermin will kill you now.” Frank picks his M4 up again, shooting him. He screams crawling up the wall. The Punisher pulls the trigger when vermin is above it and doesn't do anything. He checks the mag to see it's empty. Vermin drops down Scratching Frank across the face. He pulls out his pistol shooting him in the eye. “AHHHHHH, AHHHHH.” Frank goes up and shoots him on the head, killing him.
He hears a scream further down. Going down the tunnel he sees lab equipment and a lizard transforming into a person. “The Lizard, perfect timing.” Limping, he goes over to The Lizard waiting for him to transform. “AHHHHH, AHHHHHHHHH, HELP PLEASE, AHHHHHHH.” Frank just stands there till he transforms. He pulls his pistol out and points it at Connor's. “You're the lizard. What's your name? WHAT YOUR NAME?” “Connor's. Dr Curtis Connors.” Frank starts to pull the triggers. “PLEASE I DIDN'T HAVE CONTROL PLEASE DON'T DO THIS.”
Peter drops down in front of him webbing his pistol. “We don't kill people, understand.” The Punisher grits his teeth “Back off kid really.” “So you can kill him. Like you did Electro. You told me you were going against Fisk, why are you going for The Lizard.” The Punisher smirks at Peter, making nervous. “I wasn't here for him. It's just a coincidence.” Peter stands there wondering what's next. The Punisher runs towards him Peter jumps over him kicking him in the back. The Punisher hits his head knocking him to the ground Peter uses this to web him up.
“Ok we need to get outta here understand.” Connor's nods and starts to pack his stuff. “I won't kill you kid.” Peter looks at him. “Good because neither will I.” “I'm ready Spider-Man.” Curt says to Peter “Alright let's get outta here.” Peter swings Curt Connors out of the sewers
Manhattan, New York, 8:53 pm
“Ok you need a cure. Uhh, I've got it. I'll take you to the Baxter building. Reed can help you.” Connors thinks. “What if he finds me?” Peter sighs. “It's probably got more security than the raft and it's got four of the best heroes in the world in there.” Connors agrees and Peter swings him there.
When he gets there they walk in. Peter shouts. “REED YOU HERE. REED RICHARDS.” “Peter.” They turn around to see Sue. “Hey Miss Richard's I need your help.” She looks at Peter then at Connor's “What's wrong Peter are you in trouble.” Peter looks at her then Connors. “Not me. Have you ever heard of The Punisher?” She looks confused. “Uhh no why.” “He's trying to kill him. He needs a secure place to stay. And he needs a cure to stop him from turning into a lizard.” She looks. “What about you? Will he kill you?” He sighs “No he won't. He just wants to kill villains.” She looks at Connors saying “Reed is out but he'll be back soon he can make you a cure. Be safe Peter this stuff doesn't end well.” Connor's looks at Peter “Thanks Parker I would never expect you to be a superhero. Miss Richards, can you get my family?”
Peter leaves, going to the top of the Baxter building for some peace. “I'm too tired. I just want to go home but I need to find Fisk.” He checks the wound Connor's left. “I'm losing too much blood. My costume is destroyed and I helped the guy escape death. How am I going to explain this to May my wounds? I can't believe it. First day as an adult and I might not live to see the second. Uncle Ben must think I'm stupid.” He shakes his head. “I've got to go to Fisk tower and warn him.” Peter swings to Fisk tower.
Manhattan, New York, 9:01pm
Spider-Man arrives feeling light headed. He swings up to the office where Fisk and his men are sitting. He opens the door, his men immediately pointing their guns at him. “DROP YOU WEAPONS.” Fisk tells his men. Reluctantly they do Peter Limping towards him. “I need to warn you. A guy, a guy is uh is uh going to kill you.” His voice started to slur and he was barely able to keep his eyes open.” Fisk walks towards him. “You two get the medics now.” Peter falls unconscious.
Waking up Peter wonder's where he is looking around and he sees medical equipment. He gets up and walks through a pair of doors into a room full of men and Fisk working at a desk. “You're awake. You've been out for nine hours.” Peter realises that his face is exposed and Fisk notices this. “We all know who you are, Parker.” Peter walks up to him. “Why did you save me? You're goon tried to kill me yesterday.” Fisk calmly got up saying. “Yesterday you came to warn me. I knew why because of the Punisher. When you came here you were close to death. I saved you because. I need you to defeat the Punisher. I've asked every mercenary in this city and it's the same answer. No before Punisher was a myth but now after the men he's killed. The only one who can defeat him is you.” Peter looks at him. “Who's to say I'll stop him.” “Because yesterday you came here to warn me. The only one who wants me dead that can do anything is him.” Peter looks at him. “Where's my stuff.” Fisk clicks his Fingers and one of his men comes over to Peter giving him his phone, suit and web shooters. Putting them on Peter goes to the window telling Fisk. “Thanks Fisk. You really should leave the city.” Peter swings away.
Queen's New York, 6:09 pm
Peter swings through Queens arriving at his girlfriend's house. He goes to her window knocking on it. She wakes up opening it. When Peter enters he takes off his mask. “I can't do it anymore Peter last night you never showed up. I thought you were dead. This Electro almost killed you and the lizard. Peter I ju- AHH.” She screams seeing Peter's face covered in stitches. “I'm not that ugly.” Peter jokes but MJ says. “What happened yesterday.” Peter sits down “It's a long story.”
Manhattan, New York, Sewers, Time Unknown
“DOWN HERE, THERE'S A LAB.” Two police officers walk down the sewers seeing a lab. They both walk into Connor's lab looking around. “What the hey Chris, what is this place? Chris.” Click the police officer feels a gun to the back of his head. “I'm going to take your gun and handcuffs. And Chris is alright just incapacitated.” Frank takes the cop's gun and handcuffs him to a metal pole.
Leaving the sewers Frank feels the cold air on his face. Checking his watch he realises it is broken. He goes to his van and drives off to his house.
When he gets inside he goes to the kitchen checking the clock. “Wasn't down there for long.” He puts on the TV while he makes shotgun shells. “Breaking news this morning we have word that Spider-Man and the Lizard destroyed Oscorpe hours ago, fleeing in the sewers. They also found the cannibal serial killer known as Vermin dead. They say it's a man dressed in black wearing a white skull on his chest. Now I don't condone murder but I want to personally thank this heroe for dealing with someone Spider-Man probably thinks isn't worth his time.” Punisher looks at the TV and at his shotgun loading. “That's all for now J, Jonah, Jamerson signing off.”
Frank goes into his pantree grabbing a bag of cash. He looks in it seeing about hundred and fifty grand. He takes it to his van with him driving off.
Manhattan, New York, 04:41
Frank walks into a small café and enters. “Mister Castle, quite a busy night was it.” Frank walks up giving him the bag of money. “Do you have the thing?” the man clears his throat. “Yes, your coffee is ready. Hot, two sugars and no milk. That'll be one dollar fifty cents.” Frank looks at the bag and at the device he's buying. He picks it up and leaves. “Keep the change.”

First / Previous / Royal Road / Patreon (Read 12 Chapters Ahead)

When the sun had finally fully set, Pale put her plan into motion. She took one last glance out at the checkpoint ahead of them, then turned to Kayla.
"Lie down on the ground and cover your ears."
"What?" Kayla asked. "What does that mean? What are you planning to do?"
"You'll see. Just do it."
Kayla pursed her lips, but didn't argue, instead following Pale's directions to the letter. Once she was situated, Pale turned her attention back to the checkpoint. She'd done some thinking about this, and ultimately decided that the most efficient and least destructive way to get through would be to sacrifice a pod. This was a bit of a problem, as she only had a few pods to begin with, but it was better than using heavy ordinance in order to punch a hole clean through.
"You ready?" Pale asked.
"What?" Kayla said, looking to her in confusion with her hands still clamped over her ears. "What'd you just say?"
Pale took that as her cue to act. She snapped her fingers, and a few seconds later, a flaming piece of metal came hurtling down from the sky, embedding itself directly in the center of the berserkers' checkpoint. From inside, she heard panicked shouts escape from the occupants, as well as a few pained moans; clearly, the impact had incapacitated a few of them.
Then the pod exploded.
The log walls to the checkpoint buckled under the shockwave, rolling across the ground before coming to a rest a short ways away. Through the ringing in her ears, Pale heard the men from inside the fort screaming in terror and agony. Several spells were being launched blindly in the night, their casters unable to hit anything thanks to being disoriented from the blast and blinded from the resulting cloud of smoke and dust.
Pale grabbed Kayla and thrust her to her feet, then charged in towards the camp, shotgun in hand. The smoke had begun to clear just as she got there, revealing the full extent of the destruction. Mutilated bodies lay littered across the field, scattered around a large crater dug deeply into the center of the area. From the looks of things, most of the bandits had been killed outright by either the impact of the pod or the explosion, and the few survivors had been completely deafened by it and were riddled with injuries. Many of them looked like they could barely stand, and several were only being kept alive thanks to that same red magical aura from earlier.
Pale didn't waste any time. She shouldered her weapon, then took aim at the nearest bandit and fired, reducing his head to little more than a fine pink mist. Pumping her shotgun, she transitioned to her next target, putting him down just as easily. Next to her, Kayla opened up with some of her lightning, sending streaks of it arcing through the night and towards the nearest survivor.
That seemed to be too much for the few who were still left. Rather than stand and fight, they turned and tried to run away, sprinting off into the night. Kayla immediately stopped engaging; Pale, meanwhile, took aim and continued to fire until her weapon ran dry, riddling each fleeing man with a shell full of buckshot straight to the back.
And just like that, it was over. A heavy silence fell over the camp, the only noise that interrupted it being the nearby waves lapping at the shore. Pale began to thumb loose shells into her weapon, then motioned for Kayla to follow after her.
"Come on," she urged. "I think I see some boats over on the shoreline."
Kayla tore her gaze away from the carnage around them, looking back to her. Pale half-expected her to say something about how she'd just shot fleeing men, but Kayla stayed silent, instead simply nodding, stone-faced. Together, they made their way over to the shore, and sure enough, there were several boats lined up on the sand.
"Do you know how to work one of these things?" Kayla asked. "I've never been on one before…"
"We'll figure it out," Pale said. "Take that small one, it looks like it has room for three people."
Kayla looked at her, surprised. "Only three? What about the others?"
"If there are any others, they'll have to fend for themselves."
"We can't just leave freed slaves there!"
"And we won't," Pale assured her. "Slavery is a taboo even among my creators, and they made sure to pass their hatred of it on to me as well, but our first priority is getting your father back safely. Once we've done that, we can start going back for others. And as much as a large boat would help us with that right now, it's simply not feasible with just the two of us here to operate it. Understand?"
Reluctantly, Kayla nodded. "...I suppose so. Alright, let's go get him."
–
As it turned out, the northern isles weren't too far from their current location – as dawn broke, Pale realized they were actually visible in the distance through the steady morning mist that had descended upon their boat.
Unfortunately, the boat they'd commandeered was little more than a small sailboat with some oars attached in case the wind was unfavorable, which it had been since they'd first stepped into the water. For the past few hours, her and Kayla had been forced to row, even through the night. Only now, as the sun began to rise, did the wind shift and start to blow from behind them, allowing them both to rest for a time.
It was still going despite that, however. Logic dictated that they ought to have taken turns sleeping or otherwise resting up during this time, but somehow, Pale couldn't bring herself to do it, and neither could Kayla.
"Nervous?" Kayla asked.
Pale shrugged. "Eager, more like. This entire quest has taken the better part of a week, by my estimation. In that time, I have killed several people, nearly been killed myself multiple times, and have apparently been inducted into someone's family, whatever that means. Frankly, I am ready for this to be over so I can resume finding a way back to my home system."
Kayla hesitated for a moment. "About that… what made you think I was able to assist in the first place? I-I mean… not that I'm ungrateful for your help or anything, quite the opposite, but… I'm so… normal. I don't know anything about space travel, and hells, I barely know anything about the world outside my small little village. And yet, you seemed to think I was capable of helping you when we first met. Why was that?"
Pale shrugged. "I ascertained that this was uncharted territory for anyone from my system pretty much the moment I arrived here. From that point on, I knew I was going to need someone who could not only lead me around, but that I could learn the language from and trust to watch my back. Serendipity did the rest."
"Ah… what does that-"
"It means you were in the right place at the right time for both of us," Pale specified. "You need help, I needed help, and now we're helping each other."
"And… you don't regret doing this?"
Pale shook her head. "I have no reason to regret anything so far. This quest has only taken about a week, which is nothing for me in the grand scheme of things. Plus, you have been very reliable so far, particularly in combat. You have kept your cool in a way that suggests some kind of training."
"Oh… um, I'm not really trained." Kayla brought a hand up to rub at the back of her head. "I-I mean… I'm my father's apprentice, of course, but I don't have any kind of combat training. All the offensive spells I know, I only know because he insisted that a young woman like me should know how to defend herself if she's going to be heading off on her own."
That got Pale's attention. She sat up a bit straighter in the boat, focusing on Kayla. "You were planning to go your own way?"
"Mhm," Kayla confirmed with a nod. "There's a very prestigious magic academy down south, I was hoping to take their entrance exam sometime soon, before… well, all this happened. I don't really know what I would do after that – being a fire mage restricts me in a lot of ways; I'd basically be forced into a combat role for something, whether that was as a professional soldier or as a bodyguard or something along those lines – but all I know is I really want to study magic more in-depth. My father is an excellent teacher, but he doesn't have the same resources the Luminarium does."
"There's something I've been wondering," Pale admitted. "No offense, but you're… meek, to say the least. You don't like to fight or hurt people, and yet you use fire magic. Why is that? Did something make you pick it in particular?"
"Pick?" Kayla asked, tilting her head. "I didn't pick my affinity. Very few people can. Really, your affinity is determined when you unlock your sjel – and before you ask, generally speaking, that happens when you come of age, which for most people is around fifteen years old, maybe a bit younger or older depending on who they are. To put it briefly, when your sjel is unlocked, an Archmage – basically a very accomplished caster who has dedicated their life to the study of magic – can serve as a witness, and somehow determine the type of magic you will have an affinity with. Generally, it's not something you choose; the vast majority of people just are naturally more tuned to one type of magic. Nobody knows why, but that's just how it's always been. Occasionally, you get someone who has multiple affinities, but that kind of thing is very rare. Come to think of it, it really only ever happens with the royal families…"
Pale scowled at the implications of that, but said nothing. Instead, she watched as Kayla shook her head.
"Anyway, that was my plan for after we rescue my father," she said. "What about you? How were you hoping to get back to your people?"
"Truthfully, I do not know," Pale replied. "The technology of this world is far too primitive to be of any help to me. I was hoping a magical solution existed somehow, but if not, then I will have to take matters into my own hands, and essentially kickstart my own industrial revolution."
Kayla gave her a panicked expression, but Pale held up a hand, calming her.
"It's different than an actual, violent revolution," she assured Kayla. "Ideally, there would be no bloodshed involved."
"Ideally…? What would you be doing?"
"Using the knowledge gifted to me by my creators to rapidly improve the technology of this world to the point where it would actually be useful to me," Pale specified. "I would go more into detail, but that would likely be premature. All you need to know at this point is that, should no other solution present itself, I will begin pushing the technology of this world forward at an incredibly rapid pace."
"How rapid?"
Pale thought for a moment. "By my estimations? Basic space flight within twenty-five years, off-world colonies and terraforming within forty, faster-than-light travel within fifty."
Kayla began to sputter. "Y-you…! Are you serious?!"
"Deathly so, yes. I know exactly what is needed in order to get there, the problem is obtaining and refining the materials for it all. But give me time, and I can have you all looking at colonizing other planets within four decades." Pale suddenly peered behind Kayla, a deep scowl crossing her face. "But this conversation will have to wait, I'm afraid."
Kayla went deathly white. Slowly, she turned to look behind herself, and began to tremble when she saw land fast approaching.
"We're here," was all Pale had to say.

Special thanks to my good friend and co-writer, Ickbard for the help with writing this story.

Well kids, another conquest is in the books and it’s time to reflect on what we’ve all learned. Or, rather, it’s time for me to tell you what I think you should know so that you can benefit from my frequent and sometimes hilarious mistakes. Like my kid. He’s sometimes hilarious.
Moving on…
People often ask me, “Kahzgul, why are you such a douche-canoe?” To which my only real response is “That’s hurtful, mom.” But people also often ask me which characters they should focus on first in order to succeed in Hard conquest. And this post is going to be my attempt to answer at least one of those questions in a meaningful way.
——
First though, why should you even care about conquest? People on this sub complain about it constantly, it feels like a grind, it’s really hard, and it requires a lot of teams or characters you don’t even have! Sound accurate?
Well, The fact is that conquest is the single most cost-effective way to acquire a brand new, often very powerful character (or in the case of Bane, GL-level powerful). If you follow my guides (which I put out for every conquest, always linked in the pinned post at the top of my profile page), you’ll never be spending more than 6,300 crystals over the course of 2 weeks to fully 7-star a brand new character on the first possible day. More likely, you’ll be spending less than 3,000 crystals thanks to efficient play (I unlocked Queen Amidala for roughly 2,700c, for example). You will also get this character a full year before anyone who doesn’t acquire them through conquest can even start farming shards. This is an insane value compared to every other character release method in this game. Heck, even after conquest characters hit the Proving Grounds a year after release, it costs 2,000c to refresh their farming node for a scant 20 shards. Compare: 330 shards for 2700c and some elbow grease vs. 2000c for 20 shards. Which sounds better to you?
And on top of the character unlocks, conquest is also the cheapest way to acquire datacons and their related materials. I hate datacons, but they are part of the game and can be a powerful force to bolster your roster when they apply. And we should all play the game we actually have, not the game we wish it was.
——
Second, let’s talk about what tier of conquestador you might be:
The First-timer: How do you know when it’s time to tackle a Hard difficulty conquest? Well, if you think you can get the first box (100 burritos), you should do Hard. That reward crate is better than the very best Normal crate. And since you need to have cleared normal mode just to unlock hard mode (as well as having 4M+ GP), you’re very likely ready for the big leagues!
The Youngling: CG recommends 5M+ GP for conquestadors, and that’s you. At this range, you’re happy to be getting better rewards than Normaloids, and you’re building your roster in order to eventually start unlocking conquest characters without all that messing about in Proving Grounds a year or so later. You’re who this guide is really for.
The Journeyman: Frustratingly close to the gold crate, but never quite able to get it, CG is counting on your money to keep the lights on as you shell out for conquest pass after conquest pass in order to juuuust barely eke out a few shards of a character you’ll still need to acquire from proving grounds later. This guide should help you, and help you save money!
The Veteran: Gold crate is well within your grasp, and you’re working on that final push to Red. Very likely you already know what teams you need to improve upon, but maybe there may be a pearl of wisdom for you in here all the same.
The Expert: You get Red Crate every time. Why are you even reading this???
——
Conquest basics:

• I strongly suggest doing conquest twice a day, once in the morning, and once in the evening. You can do two combats per team per session, which will keep your stamina high and make your battles predictable and reliable, while allowing 4 combats per team towards feat progress as you go. Remember that your stats scale with stamina, so a character at 80% stamina is only 80% effective.
• Personally, I will do every 50c energy refresh each day as I progress my conquest (there are 3 of them). I am 90% sure it is impossible to red crate without doing any refreshes.
• For data discs, you want to identify the power combos and draft discs aggressively towards those combos. There are two main slates of available discs which alternate every time the conquest character changes: Slate 1 is the Zealous Ambition (ZA) slate, where you want 1-3 ZA discs, a Stacking Offense (SO), and several discs that grant buffs to boost that SO disc. Slate 2 (the one coming up next) is the Volatile Accelerator + Amplify Agony slate (which I generally consider to be easier to abuse). In slate 2, you want the best quality VA disc you can get and then 2-3 AA discs. I do not recommend thermal exhaust or caustic emissions discs as they tend to kill your enemies which can deny you progress towards feats which require kills.
• I play the conquest in two distinct phases. This is not the only way to play conquest, but it is a very efficient way. Phase 1: Assault. During this phase I’m pushing to clear the conquest sectors as quickly as possible. My team comps focus on “wins with X” type feats and if I can squeeze in other feats I will, but the wins are the main focus. If I beat a node, even with only 1 star, I will not repeat it. There are 22 combat nodes in each sector and my goal is to finish the conquest in 110 total combats. That means the assault phase lasts, ideally, through Day 5, at which point I should have enough energy for 5 combats left over after clearing sector 5. My goal is to also have finished every feat of the format “win with X.” Typically 14 wins per sector, one or two sets of 40 wins globally, and two sets of 20 wins globally. If you think this doesn’t add up, you’re correct. So you want to overlap as much as possible. If you have a global feat for Galactic Republic wins, for example, and the sector wants wins without attackers, you can get credit towards both with attentive team building. During this phase you’re also acquiring data discs that will enable any cheese teams you may need to clean up feats later. Which leads nicely to… Phase 2: Cleanup. First I’ll go back and get 3 stars on every node I dropped stars on as I ran through phase 1. Then I’ll get any boss node feats that require winning which I didn’t get the first time around (very often the boss nodes have two feats for winning which are mutually exclusive, so they require cleanup). Then I’ll re-do my data discs to be more geared towards survival and the various cheeses I plan on employing. At this point, I’m no longer trying to win; in fact most cheese involves losing so that your characters stay at maximum stamina and you don’t expend any charges of boosts you may have activated. Cleanup can be extremely quick or take a little time. If there are any “win with X” feats I have not yet finished, I’ll be sure to use them on the bonus datacon nodes at the end of each sector if possible so I still get a reward for doing the combat.
• The “why” for all of this is pretty straightforward: The more efficient you are at conquest, the less time you have to spend grinding it and the more datacon rewards you can get (if you’re into that sort of thing). Towards that goal, you want to spend as little energy as possible swapping discs around, so doing all of the required “actual winning” first, before you switch to more tricky feats that often require surviving for a long time without killing the enemy makes a lot of sense (I hope).

——
Now let’s discuss the two types of teams you want to build for conquest: Hard Counters and Cheese teams.
Hard Counters are teams that take down specific conquest enemy teams with ease.
Cheese Teams are teams that make earning specific feats a breeze. A… cheese breeze. If you will. Which, you know… you probably shouldn’t.
Some teams overlap into both categories, and those are the teams you want to build up first. One last note: There are two main “types” of conquest, which seem to alternate, and those can greatly affect your team success rates. The Volatile Accelerator + Amplify Agony conquests heavily favor teams that dish out debuffs and run turn meter trains. The Zealous Ambition conquests favor defensive teams, especially ones with lots of support and healer type characters. Again, you want to ideally focus on teams that are strong in both types of conquest.
——
Here are the teams I use in pretty much every conquest, in order of general priority:
CLS / Chewbacca / C3PO / 3PAC / Han Solo

• Hard counter to Bad Batch and Inquisitorus teams.
• Cheese team for blind, evasion down, critical chance up, confuse, and translation feats (fight vs. Phoenix or First Order to drag the fights out forever allowing maximum debuffing / buffing as needed)
• Great in VA+AA, does not get added benefits from ZA disc meta but still works.
• Relatively easy to acquire. Also qualifies for “no tanks” and “rebel” win feats. Swap in R2D2 to cheese “gain stealth” or “inflict burning” feats.

JKL / Wat / JML

• Hard counter to almost any team.
• Cheese team for any “win with X and Y surviving” type feat. There have been one or more feats like this in every single conquest.
• Viable in both conquest disc metas.
• Wat is also needed for many other cheese teams.

GG / B1 / B2 / Droideka / Magnaguard

• Hard counter for nothing
• Cheese team for nothing
• Viable in either disc meta, but somewhat overpowered in the ZA meta if you get the Fortified + Soresu Form combo (some kind of broken interaction with GG makes him hit super hard).
• Strong team for ‘win without force users’ feats. Also gets droid kills and separatist wins.
• Easy to acquire.

Padme / GK / GMY / R2D2 / Shaak

• Hard counter to nothing. Swap in CAT for R2D2 to hard counter GAS teams. Swap in GAS and CAT for R2D2 and GMY to hard counter Sith Empire teams.
• Cheese team for nothing.
• Overpowered in ZA disc meta, where it can kill pretty much any team.
• Has no attackers by default. Can replace GK with QGJ or Aayla to qualify for “no tanks” at the same time.
• Also counts for Galactic Republic wins, Droid kills, gain stealth, gain offense up, and inflict evasion down feats.

JMK / CAT / GAS / Ahsoka / GK

• Hard counter for everything (especially Starkiller, GAS, and Padme teams)
• Cheese team for nothing
• Viable in any disc meta.
• Can get armor shreds, Galactic Republic wins. Swap GK for GMY for “no tanks” feats.

Grand inquisitor / 5th brother / 7th sister / 8th brother / 9th sister

• Hard counter to Jedi and Geonosian teams.
• Cheese team for nothing
• Very strong in both disc metas. Can be super OP in VA+AA meta.
• Pain in the butt to acquire, but needed for Reva shards so… yeah. Good for apply purge and apply torture feats, as well as - obviously - win with inks.

BAM / Dash / CAT / Kuiil / Han Solo

• Hard counter to nothing.
• Cheese team for nothing.
• In the VA+AA meta this team is known as the “dash nuke” team and will destroy any squad with ease. In the ZA meta, swap Han Solo for Boushh. Can also swap CAT for Boushh (VA+AA meta) or IG-11 (ZA meta) if you don’t have her.
• Relatively easy to acquire, aside from CAT.

AdRad / Cassian / Jyn / Bistan / K2 or SRP

• Hard counter to Imperial Troopers and EP and Thrawn lead teams.
• Cheese team for dazes (vs the above teams)
• Very effective in ZA disc meta (with 3x ZA AdRad can one-shot most teams).
• Easy to acquire and most are needed for Profundity.

Tusken Chief / The other tuskens

• Hard Counter for Imp Troopers
• Cheese team for “gain momentum” feats.
• Viable in the either meta when used vs. Imps.
• Easy to acquire and does not require a lot of gear to be effective. This team is very niche but excels within that niche (beating imp troopers, getting Tusken win feats and gaining momentum), both of which are fairly common feats.

EP / Wat / 2nd sister / 7th sister / 9th sister

• Hard counter for nothing
• Cheese team for “apply purge” feats
• Viable in VA+AA meta (don’t bring AA though). Less viable in ZA meta, but still semi functional.
• If you don’t have a full squad of inks, or your inks are low gear, this is the cheese team for apply purge feats. Works with low gear units. Easy to acquire, aside from wat. Needs Initial Frenzy Tech for the cheese to work.

Veers / Piett / Range / Starck / Moff Gideon

• Hard counter to nothing
• Cheese team for nothing
• Nasty in both metas.
• Easy to acquire and good for Empire wins, Imperial Trooper wins/kills, no attackers, and no tanks feats. Gideon is good for armor shreds. Swap in Dark Trooper in place of Range or Starck for droid kills (but it’s an attacker so it’ll void that feat while in the party).

Individual unit farming priority:

• Wat. He’s needed for a bunch of cheese teams and is all-around great. You should be going after him hard if you don’t have him yet.
• CLS’s team (CLS / Han Solo / Chewbacca / C3PO / 3PAC). This is the swiss army knife of conquest and can single-teamedly carry you to that first crate. If you’re not in Hard mode yet, the CLS team is an exceptionally strong team that can help you clear your current difficulty.
• GAS is extremely useful and his unique ability to reduce enemy max health enables a lot of “kills with X” type feats, especially when X is a brand new, low star and gear character.
• Malak was not mentioned above, but he’s the best tank in the game when paired with a Voluntary Vanguard data disc. Helpful, if not strictly required, on lots of cheese teams.
• GMY applies several rare debuffs and is useful for any “gain X buff” type feats. Notably, he can steal enemy buffs, so if your roster can't generate a particular buff, but an enemy team can, GMY can steal that buff and spread it around. Very easy to acquire.
• Padme’s team (Padme / GMY / GK / Shaak / R2D2) is extremely flexible and surprisingly strong in conquest.
• Dash Rendar is incredibly strong in both disc metas, especially with the helper units from the nuke team.
• GG’s team (GG / B1 / B2 / Droideka (or STAP) / Magnaguard) can beat a lot of tricky squads, and is especially adept at “win without force users” feats.
• Darth Traya is useful for some cheese strategies, usually involving abusing Mon Mothma enemy teams to generate a lot of kills for weaker (or just dark side) units.

GL Farming Priority:

• JML is the best conquest GL. The combination of JKL (lead) / JML / Wat is critical to lots of cheese and beats almost every team. Great overlap with the CLS team (and GL Leia).
• Rey is very good for “keep X alive” feats when X is a light side unit. She enables some cheese teams like Rey + low gear Jawa scavenger + 3 other low gear jawas for “apply thermal detonators” feats, and her squad is very strong for countering Padme etc.
• JMK is the best overall generic combat GL. He’s more expensive than the previous two GLs, but since conquestadors want to be farming Wat and GAS anyway…
• SLKR can be useful in some feats such as the recent “kill 600 B1s” due to how quickly his offense ramps up. Also a strong counter to GAS teams.
• LV absolutely smokes during the VA + AA conquest cycles (this is the upcoming cycle).
• Jabba is great for “win without a jedi” feats as well as applying thermals. He is insanely strong in the upcoming VA+AA cycle.
• Leia also can win without a jedi, and is good for “no attackers” or “no supports” feats, depending on comp. If you have JML, you have a lot of Leia’s requirements already completed, too.
• SEE isn’t worthless, but there are better options. If you have Bane (unlikely, if you need this guide), SEE becomes extremely powerful.

——
I hope this conquest starter guide has helped answer some common conquest questions you may have, pointed you in the direction of some fruitful farms to benefit your future conquest runs, and addressed a lot of stuff that I typically address in my full guides to each conquest, so that I can stop bumping up against Reddit’s character limit with my posts.
Much love, and feel free to ask questions here, or find me on u/Egnards discord server. As always, you can find this or any of my past ramblings in my index. Cheers!

Chapter 1
Scene 1
Sunlight streamed through the windows of my modern apartment as I meticulously folded clothes and packed my bags, the anticipation of an upcoming trip tingling in the air. The day seemed ordinary enough until the doorbell shattered the tranquility.

Startled, I hurried to answer it, only to find Elena bursting into the house with her usual exuberance. She was a whirlwind of energy, her long chestnut hair tied back in a messy ponytail, her bright blue eyes sparkling with excitement. Her olive skin glowed with vitality, and her infectious smile lit up the room.

"Peter, what took you so long to answer?" she exclaimed, her voice carrying a mix of impatience and amusement as she took in the array of luggage before me.

I shrugged, avoiding her gaze. "Just packing for a trip."

Elena scoffed, her voice laced with sarcasm. "Immigrating, are we?" She scanned the room before turning her attention back to me. "Seriously, though, what's with all the luggage?"

I chuckled at her bluntness. "You know me, always overpacking."

She rolled her eyes, reaching for her phone and cranking up the volume on her favorite song. The heavy riff of "Passenger" by Deftones filled the room, adding a pulsating rhythm to our conversation.

Taking a seat at the cluttered kitchen table, Elena flashed me a mischievous grin. "I came to hang out with my friend. Is that a crime?"

I raised an eyebrow, eyeing her suspiciously.

Elena's laughter filled the room, unapologetic. "Okay, you caught me. I need your help." Despite my curiosity, apprehension flickered, yet her sparkling eyes drew me in. "Come on, Peter," she urged. "I promise it'll be worth your while."

"What do you need me for?" I asked, unable to resist her infectious enthusiasm.

Elena's brows furrowed, and she leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I was hired by a family in Silverlake to find their missing daughter, Emily. She disappeared without a trace, and I've been investigating this case for weeks. But I have zero leads."

I frowned. "And you think I can help?"

Elena nodded eagerly. "You're one of the best investigative journalists I know, Peter. Your skills are exactly what we need to crack this case wide open."

"I promised my mom I'd spend a vacation with her. I leave in 2 days. I'm sorry, I cannot help you," I said firmly, my resolve wavering in the face of Elena's determination.

"In 2 DAYS AND YOU'RE PACKING FROM NOW?!" Elena exclaimed incredulously.

"Well, I've got to be well prepared," I defended with a shrug, trying to downplay the urgency of the situation.

"This will be over in less than 2 days. All I need from you is to help me identify her last known location when she disappeared and any digital data you could find linked to her disappearance. Do that for me, and you can continue with your plan," Elena bargained, her eyes pleading with urgency.

I hesitated, torn between my obligations to my family and the pressing need to help Elena solve this mystery.

"Well, you could get that from CCTV cameras and her social media, what do you need me for?" I asked, raising my voice slightly to be heard over the blaring chorus of "Passenger."

The heavy guitars and pounding drums filled the room, drowning out Elena's next words as she searched my face for a response. "Well, don't you think I tried that?" she retorted, frustration evident in her voice. "I couldn't get access to CCTV footage, and her social media revealed nothing. I need a deeper search into the digital landscape, and you're the one I trust the most with this."

"One thing is never enough for you, though. You have a way of always pulling me with you, and I really need this. My mother needs me right now. I haven't seen her since the funeral, and I cannot let her down," I said, my voice cracking with emotion.

Elena's expression softened, her eyes reflecting understanding. She reached out and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. "I get it, Peter. Family comes first. But think about it, helping me could bring closure to another family who's desperate for answers."

Her words struck a chord within me, igniting a sense of duty and purpose that I couldn't ignore.

Taking a deep breath, I nodded slowly.

I grabbed a notebook and a pen, my determination solidifying as I focused on the task at hand. "I'll do it for the girl's family."

A flicker of relief crossed Elena's face, her shoulders sagging slightly as she realized I was onboard. "Thank you, Peter," she said, her voice tinged with gratitude.

"The town of Silverlake, where Emily had disappeared, was 140 miles away. It was a daunting distance, but one that felt insignificant in the face of the urgency of the situation. Little did I know, Emily wasn't the only one missing. There was a series of disappearances in Silverlake that had gone unnoticed until now."

With a shared glance, Elena and I made an unspoken agreement. We would go to Silverlake, together, to start investigating immediately.

Scene 2
As Elena and I approached the reception desk, the polished tiles of the lobby floor echoed softly beneath our steps, carrying an air of anticipation. The lobby itself exuded a quiet elegance, bathed in the soft glow of the afternoon sunlight streaming through the expansive windows. A gentle hum of activity filled the space, punctuated by the occasional rustle of papers.

The receptionist, a woman with an air of indifference, glanced up from her notebook as we approached. Her eyes, cool and assessing, swept over us before settling on Elena with a hint of curiosity. "How can I help you, dear?" she asked, her voice monotone yet tinged with a subtle edge of detachment.

Elena, undeterred by the receptionist's demeanor, greeted her with a warm smile that illuminated her features. "We're in need of a room for my friend here," she said, gesturing towards me with a nod of her head. "He'll be staying with us."

The receptionist's expression remained unchanged as she reached for another key, her movements precise and methodical. Retrieving the key, she handed it to me with a detached air. "Room 204, second floor, fourth room on the right," she repeated mechanically, her attention already drifting back to her notebook as if our presence was of little consequence.

As I accepted the key, my gaze was drawn to a striking symbol adorning the wall beside the reception desk – the Eye of Horus. Etched in gold against a backdrop of deep blue, its intricate design seemed to watch over the lobby with an enigmatic presence, casting a subtle aura of mystery over the space.

"it's all over the place in here they believe it protects them from evil" Elena shrugged, noticing my gaze lingering on the Eye of Horus.

I nodded thoughtfully, intrigued by the symbolism woven into the fabric of the hotel. "Interesting," I murmured.

With the key in hand, I turned to follow Elena as she led the way towards the staircase, the soft echo of our footsteps mingling with the hushed whispers of the hotel's guests. As we ascended the stairs.

As Elena entered the room, she immediately shed her coat and rushed to the counter, grabbing her phone. Without pause, the familiar strains of Metallica's "Master of Puppets" filled the room, blasting at an ear-splitting volume.

I couldn't help but roll my eyes at Elena's predictable ritual.

"Okay, Mr. P, we have no time to waste," Elena declared over the blaring music, oblivious to my annoyance. "Grab your notebook and let's start with the case."

"Emily's disappearance was the initial focus of my investigation," Elena began, her eyes reflecting the seriousness of the matter. "According to her family, Emily was extremely close to her mother. Her life seemed to be on track, with a successful career in marketing and a new boyfriend. However, her parents didn't approve of her relationship with Matthew, citing him as a point of contention."

She paused, her gaze drifting as if searching for the right words to convey the complexity of the situation. "The police initially dismissed Emily's disappearance as a case of a young woman running away, especially since Matthew was also missing."

Elena's voice wavered slightly, betraying the weight of the uncertainty surrounding Emily's fate. "For a while, I entertained the possibility that Emily had indeed chosen to leave her life behind. But then, three days ago, another woman disappeared under similar circumstances."
"And where is Matthew?" I interjected, my mind grappling with the complexities of the case. "His friends and family filed a missing persons report on him as well. He disappeared one day before Emily. But there's no reason to think of him as a suspect, is there?"

Elena's expression darkened, mirroring the shadow of uncertainty that clouded my thoughts. "That's the perplexing part," she replied, her voice tinged with frustration. "All three people disappeared without a trace. One moment they were there, and the next... poof, disappeared as if they've been captured by ghosts."

Her words sent a chill down my spine, and I couldn't shake off the sense of foreboding that gripped me. It was as if we were peering into the abyss of the unknown, where answers remained elusive and danger lurked in the shadows.

As my mind raced, struggling to contain the torrent of thoughts swirling within, I sought desperately for patterns amidst the chaos. With furrowed brow, I turned to Elena, my voice trembling with urgency.

"Is there any connection between the third woman who disappeared and Emily or Matthew?" I inquired, grasping at straws in the hopes of unraveling the enigma before us.

Elena shook her head solemnly, her eyes reflecting the gravity of the situation. "No," she replied, her voice tinged with frustration. "The third woman is a 50-year-old, last seen exiting her workplace at the quaint bistro, La Petite Cuisine, and heading home."

The revelation sent a shiver down my spine, the realization sinking in that the disappearances were not isolated incidents but part of a larger, more sinister web of mystery. As I pondered the implications, a sense of unease settled over me, the unknown looming ominously on the horizon like a gathering storm.

"Listen, P," Elena's urgency resonated in her voice as she spoke, her words cutting through the tension in the room like a knife. "I acquired CCTV footage of Emily's last sighting, and that's what I need you for."

Without a moment's hesitation, she raced to retrieve her laptop, returning with it clutched tightly in her grasp. With a sense of urgency, she opened the device, revealing the footage of Emily walking down a seemingly ordinary square, her demeanor betraying no hint of the impending turmoil.

But then, like a sudden storm on a clear day, a police patrol car flashed across the screen, casting a shadow of doubt over the otherwise mundane scene. "That means the police have more information on Emily's last movements," I realized, a knot forming in the pit of my stomach.

In a voice tinged with frustration, Elena explained her futile attempts to obtain a statement from the police, leaving us stranded in a sea of uncertainty. It was a crucial piece of the puzzle that remained tantalizingly out of reach, teasing us with its elusiveness.

Turning to me with pleading eyes, Elena's hand reached out to grasp my arm, her wide eyes locking with mine in an unspoken plea. "I need you to secure an interview with the chief of police or any detective working the case," she implored, her voice soft but desperate. "You could still go on your awaited vacation with your mum afterward."

Her touch sparked a fire within me, "alright el I'll think of a plan but I need some rest first, maybe we could meet at the lobby after 2 hours?"

"Thank you, Peter, for real," Elena's gratitude washed over me, momentarily easing the weight of the task ahead. "Also, two hours sharp, don't be late, ey?"

I offered her a reassuring smile, my resolve firm. "I am always on time," I assured her, though a flicker of uncertainty danced behind my eyes.

"Yeah, right," Elena retorted sarcastically, her skepticism evident as she exited the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

As the door clicked shut behind her, a sense of apprehension settled over me like a heavy shroud. Contemplation mingled with reservation, and a hint of fear gnawed at the edges of my mind.
Scene 3
As Elena departed, I surveyed the room. It bore the marks of neglect, with faded wallpaper peeling at the edges and worn furniture showing signs of age. The bed, positioned against one wall, appeared tired and weathered, its mattress sagging in the middle and the sheets bearing wrinkles. Above the bed, an out-of-place symbol caught my attention once again - the Eye of Horus, its intricate design etched into a wooden plaque and mounted on the wall.

Feeling the weight of exhaustion settle upon me, I sank onto the bed, craving a moment of respite. Before I could even settle in, the insistent ring of my phone shattered the silence. With a resigned sigh, I reached for the device, noting the caller ID - it was my mother, FaceTiming me.

I answered her call, greeted by the warm glow of her smile radiating through the screen. Our exchange of greetings was laced with the gentle familiarity of mother and son.

"Hello, dear," she chimed, "So, you finally found some time to visit your old mum, did you? How kind of you."

I swallowed the lump in my throat, accustomed to the underlying reproach that often accompanied her affectionate words. "Yes, Mom," I replied, trying to mask the unease in my voice with forced cheerfulness. "I'm looking forward to spending some time with you."

Her smile widened. "Well, I'll believe it when I see it," she quipped, her words laden with a veiled challenge. "Don't keep me waiting too long now. You know how precious my time is."

"Are you calling me just to do that?" I interjected, a hint of frustration creeping into my voice.

Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Do what, dear?" she inquired innocently.

I hesitated, the words catching in my throat as I grappled with the swirling emotions inside me. "Never mind, Mom," I murmured, a wave of guilt washing over me for even entertaining the notion of confronting her.

But before I could retract my statement, her expression softened, and her voice took on a tone of vulnerability that caught me off guard. "Listen, Peter, I'm sorry," she began, her words tinged with a hint of sadness. "I just miss you. You don't call enough, and it feels like there's nothing for us to talk about. I just..."

Her voice trailed off, leaving the weight of her unspoken words hanging heavy in the air between us. In that moment, I felt a pang of sympathy for the woman on the other end of the line, grappling with her own insecurities and yearning for connection in the only way she knew how.

"I understand," I replied softly, feeling a surge of empathy. "I've been too caught up in my work, but that's why I decided to take this vacation. I've missed you too, Mom, and I really am looking forward to spending more time with you."

A genuine smile spread across my mother's face, her eyes lighting up with warmth and relief. "Oh, Peter, that's wonderful to hear!" she exclaimed, her voice filled with genuine happiness. "I've missed you more than you know, dear. It's been too long since we've had a chance to catch up properly."

Before we could delve further into our conversation, my mother couldn't resist injecting a bit of her trademark humor. "Well, now that you're finally taking a break from work, maybe you'll have some time to find yourself a nice, not-at-all-crazy wife," she teased, a mischievous twinkle dancing in her eye.

Her playful jab elicited a hearty chuckle from me, knowing full well it was all in good fun. "We'll see, Mom," I replied with a laugh, shaking my head affectionately. "But for now, I think I'll focus on spending time with my favorite woman - you."

With a heartwarming laugh, my mother waved goodbye, her parting words carrying a hint of playful insistence. "Don't forget to keep your eyes open, Peter! You never know when Mrs. Right might come along," she quipped before ending the call, leaving me smiling at her enduring humor and unwavering love.

As she hung up, the old bed's worn embrace felt oddly inviting. I sank into its tired folds, finding unexpected comfort in its familiarity, and drifted into a well-deserved sleep.

scene 4

The sound of my alarm rang, and I half-opened my eyes, seeing only in black and white. I hit snooze and repeated the process five times until I finally woke up. I hoped Elena wouldn’t get mad at me for being late. The bed squeaked as I got up, and I hastily washed my face. As I turned on the water tap, I noticed water droplets leaking from the sides.

"Jeez, this place needs serious renovations," I muttered to myself.

I walked to the lobby, only to meet Elena.

"Hi, El," I said, bracing myself for Elena to scold me for my lateness.

"Hello, Peter," she replied in a low voice. She seemed to be staring at a void behind me, her face expressionless and still. I took a step closer to her.

"El, you okay? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, all is good. Uhm, weren't you supposed to leave for a trip to see your mom?"

"Well, yeah, in two days. I'll help you with this thi—" I began, confusion visible on my face, but Elena interrupted me. Her voice was firm, yet she avoided making eye contact.

"No, Peter, it's fine. I've thought about it, and I don't need your help anymore. You can go."

"I am not your toy, Elena. You can't just make me travel with you and then ask me to leave before I even get the chance to do anything," I snapped, my anger blinding me to the obvious. There was something Elena was hiding, and I needed to be calm to understand what was going on.

I tried to salvage the situation by apologizing and reassuring her that I was by her side, but it was too late. Elena's eyes welled up with tears. "I'm sorry, but please, Peter, leave. Go on your trip," she said, storming out of the lobby.

As she left, I noticed a necklace with the Eye of Horus dangling around her neck. Why does Elena wear this, and why is this place filled with an ancient Egyptian symbol? I froze, unsure of what to do. As I ran after Elena, desperation gnawed at my insides. She wasn't in front of the lobby anymore. I hopped into my car and started scouring the streets, telling myself she couldn't have gone too far.

I drove down every street, checked every alley, but Elena was nowhere to be found. Panic rose within me, and my breath quickened as I frantically tried to contact her, only to find her phone out of service.

Finally, I parked in front of an old bar. It was midnight by now, and the place was bustling with people. As I entered, I was greeted by a middle-aged man with a full beard. "Hey, newcomer, welcome to the Allure Bar," he slurred, his breath heavy with alcohol. He introduced himself as Michael Convivial, the owner of the bar, and offered me a shot on the house since it was my first time there.

"I didn't come here for the drinks," I said, the song 'What Am I to You' playing softly in the background. I showed him a photo of Elena, and he instantly recognized her, laughing as he muttered something I couldn't quite catch.

"That crazy girl who still hopes," he said, his speech slurred. He mentioned that he last saw her two days ago.

As I stepped out of the bar and headed towards my car, a ping from my phone startled me. It was a message from an unknown ID, accompanied by a chilling photo. In it, Elena lay unconscious, her Eye of Horus necklace smashed beside her. The caption sent shivers down my spine: "Listen to Elena, outsider. Get out of Silverlake and don't get involved in a fight you've got nothing to do with."

Dread washed over me as I stared at the image, my mind racing with questions.

As my fingers moved almost of their own accord, typing out a message, my mind raced with a mixture of fear and determination.

"I don't know who you are, but I will soon, and I will make you pay," I wrote, my fingers trembling slightly as I pressed send. "You've made it personal by kidnapping Elena, and I won't let you hurt her even more, you hear me?!"

Tears welled up in my eyes as I stared at the screen. I never knew I cared for Elena this deeply until this moment. The thought of her in danger filled me with a sense of fierce protectiveness, driving me to do whatever it takes to bring her back safely.

This is going to be a very long post. To give some context:
I (20m and homeschooled) live with my three younger siblings and our parents. I'm a full-time college student taking all my classes online (so fun), and I'm projected to graduate Fall 2025 with a bachelor's in business administration. My mother (the bread winner) works essentially 24/7 at some investment bank making 6 figures, and my dad is obsessed with renovating old houses and real estate and "homeschools" the kids (all he really does is slap some videos up on the computers and lets us handle our own educations :/)
My parents have a "family vision" for my mom to quit her job and all of us working together flipping house and doing all kinds of stuff in the real estate market so we can all retire early and do whatever entrepreneurial endeavors our hearts desire.
Sounds fine-ish. But it isn't. It's literally a prison, and I'm tired of it.
My mother and father are the textbook definition of helicopter parents. We stay home 90% of the time, with most of my "going out" being our trips to restaurants, grocery stores, and Lowes. I have one friend I sometimes see once a month, but the rest are all online. Our schedule is hectic and we're always making trips, which makes it almost impossible for me to go to see people, go to church regularly, or hold down a regular job.
All of us "kids" (20m 19m, 16f, and 14f) are also being constantly monitored. They have Alexa's in almost every room and out of sight so it's impossible to tell if they're silently listening in (which has happened at least once, to my knowledge). They've installed Family Link on all our phones and can disable any of our devices at will for any reason. He can access my google account and see any and all emails and texts I send out (which he has actually done, several times), meaning that I can't say anything too incriminating to others without him knowing. They also has some sort of IP or Web blocking app that can tell him who's on what website and can block anyone on the home's WIFI network from accessing certain sites. He's deleted all web Browers except for Microsoft Edge off our computers so we can't use incognito or make guest accounts on Google Chrome either. The only reason I'm able to sometimes access the internet is through my cell data or running to the library like I'm doing right now, but my cell data is limited, and he can still see what apps I use on my phone, hence the library.
My parents are also extremely narcissistic, aggressive, and petty, but my father is the worst. He wants me and my brother (who is socially and mentally challenged) to work with him to renovate homes, but his constant bullying, picking, angry outbursts, and yelling at us (but especially my brother) has driven me insane. I have no desire to work on homes. I absolutely hate it, not because of the physical labor (though I'm not too fond of it), but simply working with my dad in such a toxic environment has tried every ounce of patience I have. He ridicules me and calls me "Low-T" if I say no to anything he wants me to do and loves to make mountains out of mole hills by taking away our privileges or launching into long lectures or "discussion" where he talks at us for over an hour.
Finally, I just had enough. At one of our family meetings, I brought up how I felt we were all overly coddled, and that now it has severely affected me mentally. I actively avoid confrontation and am extremely unmotivated to do anything as a result of feeling trapped by an unstoppable force, which has led me to become very depressed and antisocial. I also feel very codependent and unable to function as an adult. I have no driver's license and have never had a real job either as a result of this. I said I hated working on the house and went out of my way to avoid it at times, and that my father was a bully for the way he treated all of us every day. He'd throw things on the floor when he was pissed and yells all the time, but he thinks that's fine. They think they're perfect, but they're not. About a month ago my sister actually called the police for a domestic disturbance when my parents had too much to drink and got into a huge fight (whether it was physical or not, I still don't know). Of course, they tried to gaslight us into thinking that the amount of wine they drank (2 and half bottles between the two of them) was not enough to make them drunk, and that we were in the wrong for bring the police into it and for thinking that our Dad would actually attack our mother.
I told them that while they pulled my brother out of kindergarten so he wouldn't be bullied for being mentally challenged, they themselves ended up becoming the bullies in his life by treating him like crap every day, to the point where I think I will have to take care of him for the rest of my life, due to the damage that they've done to him.
Obviously, they went ballistic.
I've never been called so many names in my life. They said I was acting like "the children of Israel trying to go back to Egypt" that I was immature, selfish, self-righteous, disrespectful, and an ass. I didn't say anything back so I wouldn't make stuff worse and pretty much disappeared to my room (which I share with my three other siblings). I didn't talk to them for three whole days after that, until yesterday when they finally decided to grace me with their presence.
My parents said that they were going to give me what I want, and that they were going to remove all their "goodness" from my life.
What this meant was that I was expected to find a job and a car within the next two weeks, and that I needed to pay for my own car insurance and take care of my own transportation since they wouldn't be helping me. They also wanted me to get my own laptop to do my school on (which I think they will probably monitor, since it uses their wifi). They would not charge me rent to live with them, and they would provide food for me when they were in town. They also said they still had health insurance on me, but they made it clear that at the moment they wanted to keep their contact with me to a minimum for the time being while I was living with them, and that when they were out of town or when I was at work, I was on my own.
So now I come to you, people of reddit. What do I do?
I have $5K in cash I can spend. No debt (never owned a credit card). I don't have a license, but they still want me to buy a car and get it insured, even if it rots in the driveway until I can get a license (which they said they wouldn't help me with getting, and that I would have to pay for my own lessons and fees). They also said something about Title fees that I've never heard of before. I don't feel like I should push them on letting me just not get the car and bike to work instead, since they said, "If you show your ass again, you're paying rent." This limits where I can work and what I can do a lot, I know. But I live in a small town, and there's some grocery stores (A Food Lion & Kroger), some fast-food places (Pizza Hut, Wendy's, and other common ones), and some other stores within walking/biking distance and hiring. I have a resume that I needed to make to get into business school, but I've pretty much never worked for another person outside of my dad for my entire life.
I probably need a part time job, since I still am doing college full-time until Fall 2025. I've found a few cheap cars under $4k, and to insure them would be around $170-$210 a month. Keep in mind I also need money for a laptop, and some money left over to cover food at some point. I don't have any subscriptions monthly fees to anything at the moment. I also don't have a bank or credit account/credit score, so I probably will need those.
As for my relationship with my parents, I don't want to go back to working for them, but I still want to repair our relationship despite them saying "time won't heal it" and that "You ruined our plans for the future." I feel like even if I did go back to them, I would be under their thumb for the rest of my life. I still love them and want to have a relationship with them, but at the same time I want to be independent and LIVE gosh darn it, and until we have some boundaries, or they have a major personality change, I don't see that happening.
Due to the internet restrictions, I probably won't be able to check up on this sub till I can sneak away to the library again, but when I do, I will try to comment and reply. Thanks in advance

This is going to be a very long post. To give some context:
I (20m and homeschooled) live with my three younger siblings and our parents. I'm a full-time college student taking all my classes online (so fun), and I'm projected to graduate Fall 2025 with a bachelor's in business administration. My mother (the bread winner) works essentially 24/7 at some investment bank making 6 figures, and my dad is obsessed with renovating old houses and real estate and "homeschools" the kids (all he really does is slap some videos up on the computers and lets us handle our own educations :/)
My parents have a "family vision" for my mom to quit her job and all of us working together flipping house and doing all kinds of stuff in the real estate market so we can all retire early and do whatever entrepreneurial endeavors our hearts desire.
Sounds fine-ish. But it isn't. It's literally a prison, and I'm tired of it.
My mother and father are the textbook definition of helicopter parents. We stay home 90% of the time, with most of my "going out" being our trips to restaurants, grocery stores, and Lowes. I have one friend I sometimes see once a month, but the rest are all online. Our schedule is hectic and we're always making trips, which makes it almost impossible for me to go to see people, go to church regularly, or hold down a regular job.
All of us "kids" (20m 19m, 16f, and 14f) are also being constantly monitored. They have Alexa's in almost every room and out of sight so it's impossible to tell if they're silently listening in (which has happened at least once, to my knowledge). They've installed Family Link on all our phones and can disable any of our devices at will for any reason. He can access my google account and see any and all emails and texts I send out (which he has actually done, several times), meaning that I can't say anything too incriminating to others without him knowing. They also has some sort of IP or Web blocking app that can tell him who's on what website and can block anyone on the home's WIFI network from accessing certain sites. He's deleted all web Browers except for Microsoft Edge off our computers so we can't use incognito or make guest accounts on Google Chrome either. The only reason I'm able to sometimes access the internet is through my cell data or running to the library like I'm doing right now, but my cell data is limited, and he can still see what apps I use on my phone, hence the library.
My parents are also extremely narcissistic, aggressive, and petty, but my father is the worst. He wants me and my brother (who is socially and mentally challenged) to work with him to renovate homes, but his constant bullying, picking, angry outbursts, and yelling at us (but especially my brother) has driven me insane. I have no desire to work on homes. I absolutely hate it, not because of the physical labor (though I'm not too fond of it), but simply working with my dad in such a toxic environment has tried every ounce of patience I have. He ridicules me and calls me "Low-T" if I say no to anything he wants me to do and loves to make mountains out of mole hills by taking away our privileges or launching into long lectures or "discussion" where he talks at us for over an hour.
Finally, I just had enough. At one of our family meetings, I brought up how I felt we were all overly coddled, and that now it has severely affected me mentally. I actively avoid confrontation and am extremely unmotivated to do anything as a result of feeling trapped by an unstoppable force, which has led me to become very depressed and antisocial. I also feel very codependent and unable to function as an adult. I have no driver's license and have never had a real job either as a result of this. I said I hated working on the house and went out of my way to avoid it at times, and that my father was a bully for the way he treated all of us every day. He'd throw things on the floor when he was pissed and yells all the time, but he thinks that's fine. They think they're perfect, but they're not. About a month ago my sister actually called the police for a domestic disturbance when my parents had too much to drink and got into a huge fight (whether it was physical or not, I still don't know). Of course, they tried to gaslight us into thinking that the amount of wine they drank (2 and half bottles between the two of them) was not enough to make them drunk, and that we were in the wrong for bring the police into it and for thinking that our Dad would actually attack our mother.
I told them that while they pulled my brother out of kindergarten so he wouldn't be bullied for being mentally challenged, they themselves ended up becoming the bullies in his life by treating him like crap every day, to the point where I think I will have to take care of him for the rest of my life, due to the damage that they've done to him.
Obviously, they went ballistic.
I've never been called so many names in my life. They said I was acting like "the children of Israel trying to go back to Egypt" that I was immature, selfish, self-righteous, disrespectful, and an ass. I didn't say anything back so I wouldn't make stuff worse and pretty much disappeared to my room (which I share with my three other siblings). I didn't talk to them for three whole days after that, until yesterday when they finally decided to grace me with their presence.
My parents said that they were going to give me what I want, and that they were going to remove all their "goodness" from my life.
What this meant was that I was expected to find a job and a car within the next two weeks, and that I needed to pay for my own car insurance and take care of my own transportation since they wouldn't be helping me. They also wanted me to get my own laptop to do my school on (which I think they will probably monitor, since it uses their wifi). They would not charge me rent to live with them, and they would provide food for me when they were in town. They also said they still had health insurance on me, but they made it clear that at the moment they wanted to keep their contact with me to a minimum for the time being while I was living with them, and that when they were out of town or when I was at work, I was on my own.
So now I come to you, people of reddit. What do I do?
I have $5K in cash I can spend. No debt (never owned a credit card). I don't have a license, but they still want me to buy a car and get it insured, even if it rots in the driveway until I can get a license (which they said they wouldn't help me with getting, and that I would have to pay for my own lessons and fees). They also said something about Title fees that I've never heard of before. I don't feel like I should push them on letting me just not get the car and bike to work instead, since they said, "If you show your ass again, you're paying rent." This limits where I can work and what I can do a lot, I know. But I live in a small town, and there's some grocery stores (A Food Lion & Kroger), some fast-food places (Pizza Hut, Wendy's, and other common ones), and some other stores within walking/biking distance and hiring. I have a resume that I needed to make to get into business school, but I've pretty much never worked for another person outside of my dad for my entire life.
I probably need a part time job, since I still am doing college full-time until Fall 2025. I've found a few cheap cars under $4k, and to insure them would be around $170-$210 a month. Keep in mind I also need money for a laptop, and some money left over to cover food at some point. I don't have any subscriptions monthly fees to anything at the moment. I also don't have a bank or credit account/credit score, so I probably will need those.
As for my relationship with my parents, I don't want to go back to working for them, but I still want to repair our relationship despite them saying "time won't heal it" and that "You ruined our plans for the future." I feel like even if I did go back to them, I would be under their thumb for the rest of my life. I still love them and want to have a relationship with them, but at the same time I want to be independent and LIVE gosh darn it, and until we have some boundaries, or they have a major personality change, I don't see that happening.
Due to the internet restrictions, I probably won't be able to check up on this sub till I can sneak away to the library again, but when I do, I will try to comment and reply. Thanks in advance

Bells rung out over Nocturne. For it was the day that their lives changed forever. First it was the day that Hestia fell from the sky, second it was the day the emperor came and brought them to the stars
And so the people celebrate. Crowds filling the streets, vendors shouting their wares, couples falling in love, others breaking up as they catch eyes for another. And some take the chance to ask the question to their lover.
As in all it was a normal holiday where a large gathering of people was the norm. You stand above it, on a balcony waving to the crowd below. Though the figure next to you is the one they are waving at
Hestia. All eleven feet of her stand, clad in her green armor, flames inlays flickering in the lamp light. One of her hands is laid on the balcony, supporting her as she half hangs over it, waving to everyone below.
You gently grip her armor, trying to pull her back over the balcony “Babe, please I dont want you to fall”
“I am not worried over such a little fall” she answers. Causing you to raise an eyebrow at the “little” fall, a good 50 or so feet to the ground below. As the bell tolls the 8th hour she relents and leans back
“Unfortunately that's our scheduled time” she calls to the masses below, waving to a few children causing them to cheer as they squabble over who she actually waved to
Turning with a deep laugh she takes your hand and pulls you along back into your bedroom, armor clanking as she moves over to the servitor to have it removed, pulling a cover to give her privacy
“Want to go out on the town?” You ask, only seeing her head over the privacy screen “that would be wonderful, let's have some fun” you see her head duck down and hear rustling cloth
She pushes the screen aside and steps out in a tank top and short shorts. Thick thigh and shredded midriff on display as she laughs at you hanging jaw
“With how little I wear around you id expect you'd be used to this by now” she uses a finger to close your mouth, leaning in and pressing a kiss on your lips
“I still marvel at the sunrise everyday” you call out as you marvel at her retreating form
“Then let's go before you can admire that too” she calls over her shoulder with a wink
Shaking your head you follow her out. Jogging lightly to catch up with her. An arm pulling you into her side as you walk out the gate. Crowd respectfully parting to allow you to pass
Looking to the vendors you tour through the art on display. The two of you are in a booth selling finely crafted salamander models.
You find one made in your favorite colors, a gasp escapes your lips as you rush over, eyes wide as you lift it up. “Can I keep him?” You turn to see a smiling Hestia
She makes a show of patting for her purse “ill get it for you. But you'll need to pay me back” she pulls her wallet out, metal changing hands as the shopkeeper almost refuses charging her. She insists, refusing to leave a debt unpaid.
Behind her you find the stepstool, holding it up with a tilted head you receive a nod of confirmation. Setting it up and climbing up you manage to leap upon Hestia's back, arms wrapped around her neck as you plant a kiss on her cheek
Feeling the rush of warmth as she answers “and I think thats payment enough” she reaches back and grabs you and holds you in front of her. Dangling there like a kitten by the scruff of its neck, salamander figure in your hands. She plucks the figure and hands it to the shopkeeper.
“Have that delivered to the palace” she instructs, tossing you over her shoulder “I've got my hands full” she says as she cups your ass
You blush and beat on her back as she walks into the streets, still holding you. You wiggle as she kneads your butt, her hand fitting perfectly. You manage to bring yourself around, a bitter of help from her, and sit yourself on her shoulder
You lean down and kiss her forehead. “Meanie” you call her, ruffling her ash white hair. “nothing wrong with showing my love” She retorts. You fake pout as she keeps walking
Spotting a restaurant you wanted to try, you point it out. “Can we go there? I made sure to make reservations” she beams at you “well if you made reservations it would be rude to miss them”
“More so because I already made the deposit” thr joke causing a deep laugh. Startling some of the people around you with its sound. “Then let us go little flame”
She leads you over to the restaurant, pausing only at the door to sling you under her arm. Opening the door the entire restaurant turns to the doors flying open. Seeing Hestia standing there, you slung under her arm
Looking at the host. “We have a reservation. Under the name Hestia” the host pointing you to the sole table on the balcony, a primarch size cushion you had delivered earlier rests on the floor.
She carries you over and places you in your chair, ruffling your hair as she takes her own seat. Blushing as she realizes that you made it so your at eye level with her
Handing her a menu before opening yours you hear a gasp as her eyes are draw to what you pressured she would be ordering “they have the planets spicest Chilli here?” She looks up at you with tears in her eyes “I've been wanting to try that for a while now”
“Only the best for my Volcano” a blush errupting on her face at the complement. You wave the waiter over as you close your menu “ill have the steak, medium please”
“Chilli, as spicy as you can serve” she orders after you, grabbing your menu and passing them over. You grab the bottle on the table, boring both of you a glass of wine as you look over the balcony over the festivities below
“It's a nice night Wyrmheart. Great place you've chosen here” as she places her hand on the table. Taking it and placing a kiss on it you let your actions speak for you
She laughs as the waiter brings your order over. The spice of her Chilli causing your eyes to water from across the table.
You both dig in, the food is delicious. She offers you a bite of her chilli. “I think I can see the spoon melting” a laugh from both of you as a whisp of steam comes off the Chilli as you say it.
You reach under the table, grabbing a package you left there. “I got you something” you say as you pass the package over the table
“Is this one fine to open in public?” She teases as you blush. She's already opening the package before you can answer. Opening the box reveals a elegant knife, forged for someone of her size, beautifully crafted and inlayed with gold and red wire
“It's the first thing I forged by myself” you proudly say. Receiving gasps in response. Both from Hestia and the waiters. The former covering her mouth. Knife falling from her hands. The later running off
“What? Wrong place?” You look around confused st why the entire restaurant has just gone quiet and staring at you
“My love, on Nocturne we are a planet of smiths” Hestia begins “everyone can smith, if not everyone does. And one of the most intimate things you can share is the first thing you ever made”
Waiters come back with champagne, popping it in time as fireworks start in the square below
Hestia looks at you with love in her eyes as she takes your hand “and to show someone your first forged item is sign of serious trust, and to offer it as a gift is often a sign of proposal”
“And I accept”
Check out my other works here

Session 0: https://www.reddit.com/DeltaGreenRPG/comments/1d0l92x/impossible_landscapes_session_0/
(Okay, these will be long. Five players, lmao. Hadn't quite accounted for that)
Operation ALICE, New York, 1995
The Roster (Player/Character)
Lea (she/her): Jules Gradkowska - Agent MIRANDA. Journalist - research and human intelligence.
Iain (he/him): Ralph Bevis - Agent MILHOUSE. Academic - history and occult specialist.
Quinn (he/him): Richard Delapore - Agent MAVERICK. FBI Special Agent - criminal and forensic expert and the official 'face' of the investigation.
Phil (he/him): Jean Duvall - Agent MAIN. US Navy Master Chief Petty Officer - operational security specialist.
Duncan (he/him): Jake Little - Agent MALATESTA. Civilian contractor - computer and electronic specialist with a side line in hacking.
Rob_sothoth (he/him) - Handler. The arbiter of the world: the good, the bad and that which cannot and should not be named.
Background: The Agents of M-Cell are tasked with investigating the apartment of Abigail Wright. Missing since June, Delta Green has reason to suspect para-natural involvement. Their orders are simple: catalogue the apartment and remove anything deemed suspect for destruction.
Despite heavy changes made, full spoiler warning for Impossible Landscapes.

### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ###

Session 1 "The Apartment" (May 24th, 2024)
New York: Tuesday, August 8th, 1995
1:45pm - 3:32pm, EST
Entering the lobby of the Macallistar building in Kips Bay, NYC, the Agents first make a sweep of Abigail's mailbox. Agent MARCUS (M-Cell Case Officer) provided them with a complete set of keys, not to be copied. The mailbox is stuffed full with bills, junk mail, catalogues and offers; mail still being delivered by people who have no idea Abigail is missing. MAVERICK gathers it in a bag and they make their way to Abigail's apartment (Ground floor).
The Macallistar echoes an earlier age. Faded purple carpeting and design from the turn of the century. Opposite Abigail's front door is an old-fashioned telephone nook, complete with bench and curtain for comfort and privacy when phone-lines in individual apartment was an expense few could afford.
M-Cell enters the apartment, finding it somewhere between a hoarder's dream and crime-scene technician's nightmare. The small hallway leads to a living-room (the apartment's largest space), an adjoining bedroom and a kitchen and bathroom opposite each other. Aside from the hallway, on first inspection the only other uncluttered space is the kitchen, which doesn't really look as if it's been used much. MAVERICK ear-marks that as something he wants to check himself as the team begin taking stock.
The NYPD has left a box with copies of their files, including a list of tenants they interviewed, many, many evidence collection bags and a box of latex gloves.
The apartment is filled with various items, with almost no floor visible beneath the collection. CDs and CD cases are stuck or glued to the wall, along with mannequin parts, sketches and assorted pieces that might be ceramic or plastic arranged in odd patterns without reason or rhyme. Stacks of phone books, stretches of dyed fabrics stitched together, an antique claw-footed lamp. Bags, bundles of pictures (drawings and photographs) of seeming nonsense. No furniture is immediately visible in the chaotic mess.
MAIN finds the same result in the bedroom as the first Search rolls are called for. Something catches his eye in the anarchy of the bedroom.
MALATESTA begins sorting through the pile of mail. MILHOUSE at first begins helping, but seeing the scale of the cataloguing, volunteers to make a coffee and food run. MIRANDA begins photographing, while MAVERICK gloves up and asks for things to be passed to him such as brushes, anything with a handle really or something more likely to have fingerprints on it. He wants to see if he can grab a set of Abigail's prints, if that's possible.
It doesn't take MALATESTA long to work out Abigail stopped paying her rent and bills in or around March before disappearing in June. Money was coming in up to a certain point, apparently from a showing Abigail had at the Mercury Gallery in Greenwich Village in November the previous year. There's even a letter from the gallery owner asking about another possible showing; from the way it's written, it might not have been the first time he spoke to Abigail before she vanished. Then, the only money coming in appears to be from her father, though she doesn't appear to have used it to cover the rent. He also gets the building management company, Art Life and their address.
As the Agents work, with MAIN carefully picking his way through the bedroom towards whatever caught his eye and MAVERICK uncovers a battery-powered hi-fi under all the trash, MILHOUSE returns from his coffee run and bumps into someone else entering the Macallistar at the same time he is. After an awkward hesitation on the threshold, MILHOUSE spends a little chatting to Lewis Post, one of Abigail's neighbours. MILHOUSE passes a HUMINT roll and I ruled that having spent most of his time in academics and his fellow PhDs, he can spot signs of some kind of social anxiety. I felt that was a fair get for a good success.
Lewis is hesitant but forthcoming as MILHOUSE works that high charisma score, knowing what to say to diffuse any potential tension. As far as Lewis knows, he is FBI of some kind after all.
MILHOUSE: "Did she ever mention a boyfriend? Girlfriend?"
Lewis: "Our relationship wasn't really like that. We had coffee sometimes. Talked about art. The process." He thinks. "She might have mentioned someone, but not a name, only what they did. A salesman, but I couldn't tell you what they sold."
MILHOUSE: "Talk about anything else?"
Lewis begins heading upstairs "She mentioned moving, but not before she was ready."
Back in the apartment, MAIN voices what others were thinking. "Where was she staying?" No bed, no signs of habitation except for the assorted hoard of crap. MAIN finds a hand grenade nestled in some papers and art supplies near the bedroom's walk-in closet.
In the living room, MAVERICK finds a single cassette tape in the uncovered hi-fi and flips it on, finding the batteries still live. Everyone hears MAVERICK's conversation with his significant other, Natalie from the previous evening. MAVERICK realises it's cut up and out of order, rewinds it and then flips it over. He thinks the entire conversation has been split between A & B sides of the tape.
MALATESTA and MAVERICK both consider phone-tapping, but MAIN, grenade temporarily forgotten, asks how it ended up here?
SAN check for MAVERICK. Pocketing the cassette tape, MAVERICK closes down a bit and prepares to go over the kitchen with a fine tooth comb; perhaps this is how he copes?
Before MAIN can mention the grenade he's worried about, MIRANDA, MALATESTA, MILHOUSE & MAVERICK notice something on the wall behind where the hi-fi was previously buried under junk. Fixed to the wall, maybe with some kind of glue is a piece of brown packing-paper with some kind of symbol drawn on it. Everyone focuses on it.

### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ###

3:41pm to 5:22pm, EST
MALATESTA: "That certainly looks like what we're supposed to be worried about."
MIRANDA snaps a polaroid. MILHOUSE tries to examine it, but his Occult check can only give him the vague thought it's connected to demonology, but little else beyond that. MAVERICK is cautious, but more concerned about getting to work on the unusually spotless kitchen.
Carefully, MIRANDA removes it and a blaring sounds like something between a horn blast and explosion almost deafens the Agents. It seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, from right next to them and outside at the same time.
Everyone passes a CONx5 check and the subsequent SAN check. Through the living room's window, MIRANDA, MILHOUSE and MAIN see a yellow-cab in the street outside. The cabbie appears to have leaned on the horn as someone crosses the street. They appear heavily dressed for summer, possibly homeless.
Is that a snake draped across their shoulders?
MIRANDA takes a polaroid while MILHOUSE and MAIN head outside to investigate. The picture reveals in sharp clarity, the cabbie staring down the barrel as she snapped the shot directly at her. MAVERICK gets to work in the kitchen and MALATESTA picks over things in the living room and bedroom respectively.
Search rolls for those in the apartment.
Outside, the cab has turned the corner and the pedestrian has carried on, though MAIN and MILHOUSE are able to work out where they went. MILHOUSE heads to cut off the other side of the alley, while MAIN approaches from behind, getting the pedestrian's attention. It's the height of summer in NYC, the air reeks of gasoline, rotting garbage and baking, soiled concrete and asphalt.
MAIN finds a nondescript, seemingly homeless man by the state of his clothes, but with a python draped over his shoulders. MAIN strikes up conversation, lighting a Gitane cigarette and pointing to the snake. From the other end of the alley, MILHOUSE makes his way towards the pair.
MAIN fails an alertness check.
Is this guy sweating? It's hot and he's bundled up like it's winter. Is he sweating? Why isn't he sweating?
Back in the apartment, MAVERICK tests the kitchen for blood and body fluids, breaking out the spray bottle and UV light. There's no cutlery, glassware or dishware anywhere in the room, but as he's lifting what could be a print, finds a mechanical diagram drawn on a napkin taped above the inside of an otherwise empty drawer. MALATESTA & MIRANDA continue their search of the living and bedroom, with MALATESTA finding a card printed with the following:
"For a good time Call D - 999-202-9989"
On the reverse are a series of what appear to be street corner addresses in Brooklyn. Could be a sex-line, could be a way to see Red Band underground film screenings, could be something online related. MALATESTA drifts between a few circles and he pockets it out of curiosity. When MIRANDA locates the grenade in the bedroom, she is careful to give it a wide berth and locates what MAIN missed: a backpack radio in the bedroom's walk-in closet. She calls MALATESTA over.
Back in the alleyway, MILHOUSE rolls under 10% and passes his disguise check. Dressed casually and a college athlete to boot, he fits the general chad look in his New York Knicks shirt despite his academic leanings. Being loud and obnoxious like he's drunk, he barrels into the homeless guy with the snake who stonewalled MAIN.
Instead he hits MAIN as the man with the snake is there and gone in the space between blinks. One moment MAIN is looking at him and then MILHOUSE knocks him flat on his ass. Like a film edit. Just gone. MAIN crit fails his SAN check and takes 4 SAN loss without projecting. Instead, as he scrambles up begins kicking over trash cans and searching the alley while MILHOUSE tries to calm him down and get a handle on things.
As MILHOUSE is talking MAIN out of tearing the alley apart, MIRANDA and MALATESTA check out the radio. As it comes to life, they listen and hear the following:
"Exeter. India. One. Thirteen. Sierra. Twenty. Twenty. Forty-nine."
MAVERICK meanwhile, finding the kitchen bare oddly finds the refrigerator stocked. There isn't much inside, some milk unopened and a pack of cheese and deli meat. Expiration is months ago, but through the plastic and glass of the bottle it looks fresh. Curious, he opens the milk and finds it smells as fresh as the day it was bought. Months ago.
Passes his SAN check. Given what he heard on the tape, it's not the strangest thing today.
MAIN and MILHOUSE detour to grab some more coffees, more to calm MAIN down and give him a (successful CHAx5 check) to flirt with the coffeeshop waitress. On their return, MAIN heads into the bedroom, pulls the pin on the grenade and activates the firing lever.
Nothing happens. His "hunch" was correct. Despite failing to properly identify it, something about the shape of it didn't match modern ordnance. Like the radio, it's vintage and either deactivated or else rendered inert by time and age.
I gave MAIN a SAN point back, because why not?
As things begin winding down, MILHOUSE and MAVERICK puzzle over the weird fridge, with MILHOUSE sacrificing his green tea and MAVERICK a donut to see how "fresh" they are come morning between the fridge and not.

### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ###

After 6pm, EST
Between them, M-Cell take the rest of the evening to take care of home-scenes or any unfinished business they can get done with their resources at hand. They also divide the Operational evidence from the Case evidence, with MIRANDA taking the symbol, MALATESTA the backpack radio & phone number, MAVERICK the cassette tape (for obvious reasons) and MAIN the mechanical sketch on the napkin.
MIRANDA and MILHOUSE, using the former's academic credentials both stay on the case, with MIRANDA leaving her photos from the park to develop in her bathroom. While she fails her roll, she does help MILHOUSE identify the demon the symbol refers to and book-related lead. She hits up a criminal contact named Hugo to put out feelers for weird items she may be interested in. He agrees for a fee, which she negotiates in her favour.
Returning to her apartment, MIRANDA finds her photos of the dancing clown and watching crowd have developed. In every photograph, the clown is turned away from her, but the faces in the crowd are looking at her. That's not how she remembers it. Fails a SAN check. Projects on to her editor, knowing she's going to be taking a "personal day" tomorrow, and this after she agreed to go to the grill.
This will have consequences.
MAIN, unnerved by the day's events, not the least of which was being knocked on his ass by a fitter, younger man, heads out. He returns to the coffeeshop he and MILHOUSE visited and takes the waitress he hit on out on a date. After a romantic interlude, MAIN has a new bond. Her name's Marsha, she's 27 and very nice.
Breaking Operational Security, MAVERICK asks MALATESTA to come back to his apartment and check for possible surveillance. Despite suffering comparatively little SAN loss overall, MAVERICK is letting the day's events impact his behaviour.
It's trivially easy for MALATESTA to confirm there are no bugs in place, which really does narrow the options for how the conversation could have been recorded. Thankful, he asks MALATESTA to keep this to himself for now, to which the grunge-kid agrees. MAVERICK drops MALATESTA near his home and leaves, putting the tape in the player of his car as he pulls away.
MALATESTA lives near the Village and diverts to check out the Mercury Gallery. Though closed, it seems legit and he makes a note of it for later. Back at home, he breaks open the backpack radio and examines it. The battery is not connected to the radio itself, the wires having been stripped out, yet he and MIRANDA both heard a voice on the end of its phone-mic. He passes his SAN check and finds in place of one of the transistors a small, black stone which does not feel like stone at all and feels like it's body temperature. MALATESTA leaves it on his desk, covered in a cloth.
Alone in his apartment, MAVERICK watches his phone. The time comes and he does not call Natalie. A moment later, his phone rings.
Alone in the apartment, MAVERICK does not answer.

### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ###

Post-Mortem
We ended up playing for a touch longer than I intended, but I knew that would happen by the time the cab sounded its horn. Despite some tiredness and some drinking, we ended up with a really strong session in retrospect, which has set the overall tone of the campaign for me as GM going forward. Between the five players, two have been through one Delta Green campaign, one has experience with Pulp Cthulhu and two have varying levels of exposure. They all roleplayed the f##k out of their characters and while I was worried about just how weird I wanted things to get out the gate, it feels like the balance is correct and I've given enough avenues for further investigation they may want to pursue.
I got a far better sense, as did the players, as to what drives and motivates their characters and how they cope or don't cope with Delta Green work.
MILHOUSE is definitely setting himself up as the curious academic, Iain playing his interest as forever drawn towards what's there "to discover," he said in character. Perhaps a fool and his sanity are easily parted?
MAVERICK is the "all-American", Agent Cooper adjacent FBI Agent who butts up against the para-natural and is seemingly rocked by it, revealing a complicated and perhaps conflicted depth. In his previous operation with MIRANDA, MAVERICK killed one person, but something about this has gotten under his skin. I wonder what Natalie thinks about their missed call?
A hacker by trade, MALATESTA likes a puzzle as much as he does not like the "weird shit." He talks a good talk when it's about something he knows, but is much too shy to chat up his co-worker. He and MAVERICK had some friction in Session 0 when MAVERICK wanted to call him Mal, to which the younger man pushed back against. Yet, he now knows where MAVERICK lives. Maybe he can learn more? What will he do with that? Does he even want to?
As much as MILHOUSE, MIRANDA is likewise driven by curiosity and a need to know, but first and foremost to keep herself safe. She and him are not the same. There's a scar above her hip from a knife, and it still twinges from time to time. She's also the first to directly or indirectly involve a Bond in the investigation. I wonder what Hugo will or won't find? I wonder what those photos mean. MIRANDA wondered aloud whether the crowd or the clown was the "entity." What does that mean?
Despite being built like Jack Reacher (albeit in a sailor suit), MAIN projects a tough air but is clearly a man at the crossroads. He turns 40 before 1995 ends; middle age. When hit with a problem or something he can't otherwise work out, his behaviour swings from one extreme to the other. To date, he's coped with the case by: lashing out at trash cans in an alley. Chatting up a waitress and forming a romantic bond with her. Pulling the pin on a grenade he "thought" could be fake. It's day one. I'm here for it.
Our next session is scheduled for June 7th, 2024.
Until then, be seeing you.

AEW Collision, Mar 1, 2025:
Kurt Angle's TNT Championship Open Challenge
[Kurt Angle decides that to celebrate his Title win, he will be giving one unlucky soul a chance to be battered, broken, and rendered unable to keep competing. Whoever accepts this challenge is in store for a career ending slaughter, where Doc Samson will force them to retire.
Kurt waits in intense arrogance before a series of tranquil chords hit in quick succession, a sinister appetizer for what's to come, the words KATSUYORI SHIBATA fill the screen, and The Wrestler himself stomps to the ring.
Shibata - Angle, face to face.
Commentary is keen to mention Shibata is one person who definitely wouldn't feel any fear in the face of a threat like that.
"Katsuyori Shibata, well this is better than I imagined it would be. Now I get to finish what God couldn't and retire you for good."
And with those words, a declaration of war has been written and signed.
Shibata is able to match Angle for grappling early, keeping Kurt guessing with a series of holds. He gets hold of Kurt's arm at one point and is able to do some fair damage with an armbar. Kurt gets frustrated with Shibata who smiles at Kurt after avoiding his umpteenth submission attempt.
Angle slaps Shibata across the face, Shibata's head goes down, his eyes go cold. He throws a boot that rocks Angle in the face, Kurt goes to the corner where Shibata meets him with repeated forearms to the mouth. Shibata runs to the opposite corner, Angle meets him there with a charging shoulder thrust to the ribs.
Angle to the opposite corner, Shibata meets him with a pump kick, Shibata to the opposite corner, Angle charges in for a rolling axe kick, Shibata moves, Angle hits the turnbuckles, Angle upside down in the corner, Shibata to the other side of the ring, Katsuyori takes a moment to compose himself, focusing his energy before charging in for a corner dropkick crushing Angle into the turnbuckles.
Shibata pulls Angle up and gets a stiff forearm, Angle returns but his dominant arm is weak from the early attack by Shibata. The two begin to trade forearms, Shibata always seeming to strike quite a bit harder.
Angle gets a flurry of right and left forearms backing Shibata up, Angle runs the ropes and Shibata gets a spin kick to the midsection before kicking at the back of Angle's knee. Shibata begins to target the not fully healed knee of Kurt now, locking figure fours and bow and arrow submissions.
Angle is reeling on the ropes after the onslaught, Shibata runs the ropes and looks for a big boot to send Angle out, Angle catches the leg, hooks around the neck and suplexes Shibata to the floor. Angle dives off the apron crushing Shibata at ringside before hitting a belly to belly suplex into the barricade.
Angle shoves Shibata back in and attempts a Moonsault, Katsuyori avoids and Angle backs into the corner where Shibata gets a big boot. He grabs Angle by the back of his neck, sprinting to the opposite side of the ring and connecting with another big boot once he plants Angle there.
He grips Angle by the back of his neck and gets sixteen forearms to the ear and jaw area, he gets a running start to the other corner before circling back with another corner dropkick.
Angle rolls to the apron to create distance and Shibata follows him there. A flurry of forearms connect yet again before Shibata backs up and gets a running dropkick to the downed Angle against the steel post!
Shibata sends Kurt back in and gets a two count, Angle pulls himself up on the ropes and Shibata looks for a German, Angle grips onto the ropes for dear life, Shibata lands a straight axe kick to the targeted arm and Angle recoils, Shibata runs the ropes and Kurt gets a rolling axe kick. Angle looks into the camera, beads of sweat running down, a frenzied look in the face, black mouth-piece in.
He grabs Shibata up and gets a big belly to belly, he's on all fours at this point, stalking, waiting for his next opening. German Suplex, yet again, completes the trio by throwing Shibata onto his head. Shibata clutches at his neck, but Kurt won't stop. Fallaway Slam by Angle, bodyslam by Angle. Kurt climbs and lands a moonsault to the upper body and face of Shibata, crushing his skull against the canvas.
Shibata is able to answer the count, so Angle stalks a dazed Shibata. Angle Slam, Katsuyori on his feet, STO by Shibata. As Angle recovers from the STO, Shibata is able to get some breathing room from the series of throws he took. Both men get to their knees, head to head, eye to eye. They begin exchanging forearms once more, but this time Angle has a more even playing field due to the headache beginning to start for Shibata.
Angle begins mixing in uppercuts with his forearms, Shibata catches him on one of these with a backslide, Angle kicks out and Shibata greets him with a chop across the neck, spinning backfist, a trio of forearms. Angle stops reacting, and stares up at Shibata, he lets out a shout and Shibata goes for a fourth forearm. Angle ducks and pushes Shibata into the corner before dragging him out with a Rolling German Suplex planting Shibata on his head.
Shibata on his hands and knees, trying to catch his bearings and make sense of the fog in his vision. Kurt climbs and gets a picture perfect moonsault to the kneeling Shibata. Katsuyori barely gets the shoulder up, Angle stares in disbelief at the ref, leaving himself still pinned over Shibata.
Shibata latches onto the arm getting a Kimura applied on the wounded Angle. Angle writhes until he finally grasps the bottom rope to force separation. Shibata drags Angle into the center of the ring. He tees off on the shoulder blade with kicks, he slaps Angle in the back of the skull sending a cloud of perspiration flying.
Shibata calmly crosses his legs, sitting down across from the crawling Angle. Angle gets to his knees, the two begin chopping each other in the face. Shibata gets a knife edge chop to the ear of Angle, and Kurt gets enraged. He stands up and begins another forearm exchange with Shibata. Angle wins this time backing Shibata into the corner, repeated shoulder thrusts to the ribs follow, Shibata taking a seat.
Angle with a corner running dropkick of his own! Angle goes for it again, Shibata rises and looks for a pump kick, Angle catches him, hugs Shibata in and gets a fallaway belly to belly. Angle beckons Katsuyori up and runs the ropes, Shibata stops him with a leg lariat.
Angle crawls into the corner and Shibata starts repeatedly stepping on his head. Angle tries to crawl out of the ring, but gets paintbrushed with the boot of Shibata. He drowns Angle with scrapes of his boot, stomps and kicks. The referee eventually backs up Shibata.
Shibata brings Angle out of the corner with a snapmare takedown followed by a soccer kick to the spine. He runs the ropes for a penalty kick, which Kurt catches and turns into an Ankle Lock, with the leg trapped he pulls Shibata into a German Suplex.
Shibata on his hands and knees, Angle begins a waistlock and tries to bear hug Shibata on the canvas, Shibata crosses his legs in this position. Angle rolls Shibata, but he lands crossed legged again. This continues until Angle gets frustrated, Shibata begins elbowing Angle in the side of the face and Kurt releases his grip. He runs the ropes and Shibata gets him with a big boot followed by a German Suplex of his own.
Angle pops up and Shibata turns around into a rolling axe kick, Shibata doesn't fall, pump kick by Shibata. Shibata from the corner to a stunned Angle, big boot, Angle avoids, German Suplex by Kurt. He maintains waist control and pulls Shibata up, Shibata begins elbowing Angle to force release. Angle grips the wrist to prevent Shibata from creating distance.
Shibata kicks him in his bad arm, and Angle lets go. He oblique kicks him in his knee before kicking away at the head of Angle. Angle desperately headbutts Shibata in the chest, igniting something in Katsuyori. Shibata turns around, takes a deep breath, turns to Angle and refuses to do what he desperately wants to, thinking of his health.
He forearms Angle down to the mat and gets an octopus hold applied, Angle scrambles to the ropes, fighting out. Penalty Kick by Shibata. Angle kicks out and Shibata locks a sleeper. A focused trance look on the face of Katsuyori as he strangles Angle.
Kurt grips the ropes to force the break, Shibata clubs the arms away, grips back on, sleeper suplex. Shibata with a spinning backfist, Angle catches the wrist, he grips the other wrist, backslide, Shibata rolls through, clothesline by Angle, ducked, Shibata ties him up in position. He spins Angle out, he readies his hand, he connects.
BitchMaker to Angle.
Kurt collapses and Shibata takes his time to catch his breath and focus up, all that focus goes into repeated, poised strikes to the shoulder, underarm and elbow of the damaged Angle. Angle grips onto the wrist to try and drag his way up, Shibata kicks his grip away. Shibata goes to run the ropes, but Angle grips onto the wrist again, avoids a clothesline attempt, traps both arms. Straight-Jacket Suplex on Shibata.
All of the weight coming down on his head and neck. Angle pulls up Shibata, German Suplex #1, Shibata begins elbowing Angle in the ear, German Suplex #2, Shibata still driving his elbow into the ear of Angle, Release German Suplex. Shibata lays motionless, blood begins trickling out of the ear of Angle, physical evidence of the desperation Shibata felt.
Angle brushes off the doctor's attempts to check on him, Kurt with an Angle Slam, but Shibata digging into the wound on the ear, Angle loses his balance, Shibata on his feet. Shibata hooks on from behind, trapping Angle's arm.
するか死ぬか
He spins Angle out, rainmaker style and closes the gap with a sickening headbutt to Kurt. Kurt collapses, but so does Shibata. He lays exhausted, head throbbing. Finally after over a minute, he musters the strength to crawl to the cover.
One, Two, Kurt kicks out. Kurt rises before Shibata who is kneeling, clutching his head. Angle pulls him up for a German, but Shibata refuses to go, clutching the back of his head and shaking his head. It's not an act of defiance or resilience, this is a man trying to stay alive.
Angle, despite having animalistic tendencies, has respect for Shibata after tonight and he shows mercy. He sends Shibata into the ropes chest first and when Katsuyori rebounds, he's caught with an Angle Slam. A cover by Kurt over the defenseless Shibata leads to one simple phrase, but one that intensifies the fullness in Shibata's head.
'And Still.']
Kurt Angle (c) def Katsuyori Shibata to retain the TNT Championship
AEW Big Business Dynamite, Mar 19, 2025:
Kota Ibushi vs Kurt Angle (c), TNT Championship
[Shortly after defeating Shibata in the hardest hitting match of Angle's career, he begins to lash out at the company that gave him his first big break. New Japan.
He states that he can work circles around any NJPW darling that think they're special because they had a few flashy matches in a company nobody watches.
This summons Kota Ibushi, vignettes have been airing teasing his return, but he finally appears coming face to face with Angle. The following week is Big Business and the bout is on.
Ibushi's fluid striking is able to pause Angle, Kurt attempts to make up for the strike deficit with suplexes, but Kota is incredibly spry and able to land safely on most everything Angle throws at him.
Ibushi with a series of strikes ending in a roundhouse, Angle ducks, German Suplex, Ibushi lands on his feet. Dropkick by Kota sends Kurt to the floor. Ibushi with a Triangle Moonsault to ringside, leveling Kurt.
Ibushi sends Kurt back in and goes for a Last Ride, Angle escapes and lands a German Suplex to Ibushi. Kurt begins to climb the turnbuckles, but Ibushi gets up and powerbombs Kurt from the middle turnbuckle, Angle kicks out, and Ibushi flips him onto his knees for a Kamigoye!
Angle catches the knee, and gets an Ankle Lock applied. Ibushi rolls free and sends Angle into the corner. Knee blast in the corner by Kota. He runs the ropes and Angle catches him with a belly to belly over the top rope.
Kurt climbs for a Moonsault to ringside, Ibushi avoids. Ibushi charges into the ring, Triangle Moon- Angle leaps onto the apron and German Suplexes Kota on to the apron, Ibushi's neck bouncing as he cadcades to the floor.
Angle quickly gets Kota back in, and attacks the ankle, Kota struggles, half conscious. He finally makes it to the ropes and is able to get back to his feet. He unloads with palm strikes and a slap to the face of Angle. Kurt looks for a clothesline, Kota ducks and gets a Pele Kick.
Ibushi pulls Kurt up for a Phoenix-Plex, Angle lands on his feet, not allowing Kota to drive his neck into the canvas. Angle Slam connects, and with that, Kurt has vanquished another NJPW legend.]
Kurt Angle (c) def Kota Ibushi to retain the TNT Championship
[Kurt grabs a microphone and begins berating Ibushi. He says this proves it, all those New Japan darlings that these marks worship, they're old, they're broken down, and they are no match for a Wrestling Machine.
Angle looks to target Ibushi again, getting a chair in hand, when all of a sudden Battle Cry hits. Kenny Omega storms the ring, avoiding a chair shot before hitting a V-Trigger sending the chair into Angle's face. Kurt retreats as Omega helps Ibushi up and Kurt's next challenge becomes increasingly clear, arguably the greatest NJPW wrestler of all time, Kenny Omega.]
AEW Dynasty, Apr 12, 2025:
Kenny Omega vs Kurt Angle (c), TNT Championship
[In the weeks leading up to Dynasty, we get some good build for this match including Angle and Hobbs vs Golden Lovers in which Omega pinned Hobbs for his team, as well as a segment in which Kenny and Kurt come face to face.
Kenny in full Terminator gear, he tells Kurt that he's been a big fish in a small pond until now, and that he should be careful not to forget who the original wrestling machine is.
When it comes bell time, Angle quickly recognizes Omega as the most pure athlete he's faced to date. The speed, the intensity, the pressure. Omega brings all of it in his first title match since returning late last year to combat The New Elite.
Kenny comes charging for a corner clothesline, but is caught by Angle who looks for a T-Bone Suplex into the turnbuckles, Omega with a DDT reversal. Angle rolls out and Omega begins drumming up the Terminator rhythm. Tope Con Hilo clears Angle at ringside.
Omega goes to send Kurt back in, but stops on the apron, joining Kurt there. The margin for error is thin as Omega locks the arms and gets a Snap Dragon Suplex across the thinly padded steel.
Kurt's neck issues start to become apparent here as he clutches at it. Omega goes to Irish Whip Angle into the barricade, but the momentum is reversed and Kenny is sent rocketing towards it. He promptly hops onto it and executes a Moonsault from the barricade.
Angle catches him and delivers him into the steel post, face first. Kurt proceeds to climb to the middle turnbuckle and hit a Moonsault to the downed Omega at ringside. Angle sends Kenny back in and begins his repeated German Suplexes, on the third, Omega lands on his feet and boots Angle into the turnbuckles harshly, Kurt exploding against the corner.
Kenny gets Kurt up now for One Winged Angel, Kurt rolls forward into a pinfall, Kenny kicks out and Kurt comes in with a standing 450 knee drop across the surgically repaired abdomen of Omega. Kurt now focuses up and goes after the leg, applying an Ankle Lock. Omega kicks free and slips behind Angle for a Kotaro Krusher.
Angle kicks out and Omega is left gripping his ribs as he pulls Angle up. He gets Angle on his shoulders, wincing as he does so. Rolling driver followed by a Springboard Moonsault on Angle. Kenny holds his midsection before getting Kurt up in OWA position once more.
Kurt struggles so Omega shifts him to a German Suplex, but Angle rolls into a pinfall. Omega kicks out, however, and Kurt is hot on his trail. A crossbody by Kurt takes both men to the outside.
Kurt pulls Kenny up for an Angle Slam against the steel post. Omega writhes in pain as Angle lets out a dominant cry. Kurt sets Kenny up top, but Omega fights back with wristbone strikes, sending Angle to the canvas. Kurt fires up, springing to the top turnbuckle for an Avalanche Belly To Belly, he follows through, but Omega lands on his feet!
Angle didn't see it and gets up to gloat, believing the cheers are for him. Omega gets a frenzied look in the eyes and scales to the top rope. Missile Dropkick to the back of Angle's skull.
Angel crawls to the ropes, drool leaking from his lax jaw. Omega runs the ropes for a V-Trigger against the ropes. He then exits the ring breaking out a steel chair, the ref attempts to stop him but Omega brushes him off. He opens it and sets it in the center of the ring.
Step-Stool V-Trigger! Omega covers for a near fall, and goes into the corner, talking to himself and trying to figure out how to put Angle down. Kurt recovers and tries to charge in, Omega rolls off the back and attempts a rana as Kurt comes over. Kurt with an abrupt sit-out powerbomb reversal before shoving Omega out of the ring.
Angle from the apron with a Somersault Plancha. Kurt sends Omega back in and tries for the Angle Slam, Omega with an arm drag reversal before sliding behind Kurt for a Snap Dragon into the turnbuckles. Omega runs into the opposite corner and closes in with a V-Trigger against the turnbuckles.
He pulls Angle up out of the corner and sticks a Poisonrana. Angle is able to barely survive the count. Omega in disbelief takes Angle to the top, he's thinking Avalanche OWA. Angle scrambles out and lands an Avalanche Angle Slam!
Omega somehow kicks out, and Kurt is beside himself. He goes to the top rope, a rare Frog-Splash from Angle, Omega moves, Kurt kisses the mat. V-Trigger to the back of the head, Omega pulls Kurt up, One Winged Angel connects.
Omega has ended the TNT Title reign of Kurt Angle, avenged the good name of NJPW and become a Grand Slam Champion in AEW.]
Kenny Omega def Kurt Angle (c) to win the TNT Championship
Kurt disappears for a while after this, but when vignettes begin airing detailing Angle's journey back, he's spotted being coached by one man in particular. One of the greatest technical wrestlers of all time, in Dean Malenko.
AEW Double Or Nothing, May 24, 2025:
Kurt Angle w/ Dean Malenko vs PAC
[Angle's first match back takes place two weeks prior to this one when he and Hobbs take on The Lucha Brothers. A victory for Angle and Hobbs isn't enough as Kurt attacks Fénix after the bell, refusing to release the Ankle Lock. Malenko eggs him on, telling him to break Fénix's leg.
This brings out PAC, who comes to the rescue of his long time friend and stablemate. He gets in Angle's face and shows no intimidation as he backs Kurt up. With Double Or Nothing around the corner, Angle believes PAC will make for an excellent first victim on his way to the top of the food chain.
Angle focuses more on his submission work under the advice of Malenko, he targets the legs making it hard for PAC to execute his aerial maneuvers. PAC is able to trap Angle in the Rings Of Saturn late, but Angle finds his way out, and gets a grip on the ankle. Moments later, PAC is tapping out.]
Kurt Angle def PAC
AEW Fight For The Fallen, Jun 28, 2025
Kurt Angle w/ Dean Malenko vs Will Ospreay (c), AEW World Heavyweight Championship
[Following his dominant victory over PAC, Angle sets his sights on the top of the mountain and the man standing at the peak of it. Ospreay has become unanimously agreed upon as probably the best wrestler on the planet. Angle looks to disprove this theory, and take care of another NJPW castaway.
Ospreay has Angle vulnerable and closes in for Essex Destroyer, Angle reverses with a Northern Lights and rolls through scooping Ospreay up for a deadlift powerbomb. Ospreay lands a rana reversal for a two count, before looking for Os-Cutter, Angle catches him and hits a Lawn Dart, vaulting Ospreay into the middle turnbuckle.
He begins his trio of Germans, Ospreay landing on his feet from the third and getting a superkick on Kurt. An Os-Cutter follows for a near-fall. Ospreay goes to the far corner, and charges in for Hidden Blade. Angle ducks and gets his third German Suplex.
He sets up for an Angle Slam, but Ospreay snags an arm drag reversal. Vertical dropkick by Ospreay who lands on his feet, enziguri connects, Ospreay with a handspring but caught by Angle with a German.
Ospreay goes to the outside and Kurt goes up top for a Moonsault to the floor, swing and a miss and Ospreay climbs. Corkscrew Moonsault by Ospreay, he sends Angle back in. Os-Cutter catches Angle flush. Ospreay from across the ring now, Hidden Blade connects!
Three seconds later, and Angle's dreams of being a World Heavyweight Champion are dashed by the best in the world...for now.]
Will Ospreay (c) def Kurt Angle to retain the AEW World Heavyweight Championship
AEW All In, Aug 23, 2025:
Adam Copeland & Christian Cage (c) vs Kurt Angle & Powerhouse Hobbs w/ Dean Malenko, AEW Tag Team Championships
[Following a devastating loss to Ospreay, Angle refocuses his tag team efforts alongside Hobbs. With Copeland and Christian having made amends and gone on to capture the AEW Tag Team Titles, Angle and Hobbs are eager to knock the legendary tag team off the throne.
Copeland has Angle in position for a Spear after a prolonged period of control when Kurt reverses it into an inside cradle for a near fall. Angle creates distance and tags out to Hobbs who attempts to overpower the historic duo, but the tag team experience is too much for Hobbs and as he is inevitably defeated, Angle experiences yet another setback.]
Adam Copeland & Christian Cage (c) def Kurt Angle & Powerhouse Hobbs to retain the AEW Tag Team Championships
AEW All Out, Sep 6, 2025:
Bryan Danielson vs Kurt Angle w/ Dean Malenko
[Just two weeks removed from a victory over long time rival, Nigel McGuiness, Danielson is riding high and wants the most intense competition possible for All Out.
Naturally, this attracts Kurt Angle, a man who has never been submitted, yet has an incredible string of submission victories. He challenges Danielson's claims to be the best technical wrestler in the world, and promises to tap out The Dragon.
Throughout the dream contest, Angle targets and does significant damage to the knee and ankle of Bryan. Bryan attempts to apply similar limb targeting to the previously injured arm of Angle. With both men's history of neck issues, there's plenty of nasty envelope pushes in that department as well.
Bryan looks for a Busaiku Knee late when Angle catches him and gets a powerbomb reversal, he then applies a Boston Crab, squeezing the Achilles Tendon of Danielson. Bryan is able to edge to his back and roll Angle into a pin.
Kurt kicks out, and Danielson lands a roundhouse to a kneeling Angle, leaving him lamenting himself after he feels the effect on his leg. He pulls Angle up for a Dragon Suplex, but Angle breaks the grip and gets a Snapmare Takedown.
Bryan lands on his feet and begins blistering Angle with repeated kicks to the chest, wincing after every one. He finally backs up and tries for the roundhouse, but Kurt catches him in an Ankle Lock.
Kurt twists away at the squirming Danielson, who is able to turn just enough to start landing up-kicks to the bad shoulder of Angle. Danielson then gets a Triangle, pulling Angle in to the submission.
He traps the bad arm and begins striking away at the shoulder socket with elbows. Angle powers up, lifting Danielson before dumping him into the turnbuckles, crumpling Bryan into the corner.
Angle whips Bryan into the corner and he performs a Springboard Moonsault, landing on his bad ankle. Kurt slithers in and cinches an Ankle Lock in yet again. Bryan rolls out and gets a LeBell Lock applied, the bad arm of Angle angled awkwardly. Kurt makes the ropes and Bryan fires up into the corner.
He beckons Kurt up and closes the distance with a Busaiku Knee, Angle ducks, Bryan's bad knee hits the top turnbuckle! Angle Slam connects!
Kurt covers and in doing so obtains the single biggest victory of his career so far. An incredible effort from both men, and an incredible step forward for Kurt Angle.]
Kurt Angle def Bryan Danielson
AEW WrestleDream, Oct 11, 2025:
Bryan Danielson vs Kurt Angle w/ Dean Malenko vs Zack Sabre Jr., Ultimate Submission
[A victory over Bryan Danielson should have Kurt on cloud nine, but he can't help feel disappointed that he didn't deliver on his promise. He didn't tap Bryan out. He challenges Danielson, one more match, a thirty minute timer, no pinfalls, most submissions wins.
Rather than Danielson, it's NJPW's resident technical wizard, Zack Sabre Jr. who answers the call. He states that him and Angle have unfinished business. In the G1 Climax last year, Zack had Angle on the brink of submission but just as Kurt was about to give in, his body gave out and he passed out instead.
Zack has kept that goal in the back of his head since, to make the unsubmittable Kurt Angle tap out. Kurt says that he has great respect for Sabre Jr. but right now he is focused on Danielson.
Bryan enters and states a solution, a triple threat match, under Angle's proposed rules of course, to finally determine who the best technical wrestler in the world is.
Match time arrives and all three men feel the pressure in the air. Three of the most technically gifted pro wrestlers of all time engaged in a war for a chance to finally be crowned the undisputed king of tapping people out.
Twenty five minutes of pure grappling glory elapse, and despite some close calls, none of the three competitors have submitted. With five minutes remaining, all three men are volatile in their pursuit to finally get a point.
Bryan looks for a diving knee strike, when Kurt catches him and cinches an Ankle Lock. Danielson rolls forward and Zack leaps onto the shoulders of Kurt, ranas him to the canvas and locks a mounting triangle.
Bryan with a roundhouse to Zack, pulling him off of Kurt, Bryan proceeds to lock Cattle Mutilation on Sabre who kicks and struggles to survive the maneuver.
Kurt out of nowhere with a Moonsault to Danielson! The grip on Sabre Jr. released, Zack rolls out of the ring. Kurt focuses on Danielson, landing his trio of German Suplexes, Bryan on his feet during the third attempt.
Busaiku Knee, Kurt ducks just enough to catch Bryan across his shoulders. Torture Rack applied on Danielson, bending Bryan over his shoulders. Bryan shifts off the shoulders and locks a Guillotine on Angle, trying to cut off blood flow to the brain.
Angle attempts to reverse with a Northern Lights, but Bryan lands on his feet and maintains grip, forming a bridging guillotine. Zack slithers in, kicking Bryan in the knee and causing Danielson to kneel while keeping the Guillotine applied.
Zack gets a Triangle on Bryan while Bryan has a reverse Guillotine on Kurt, after a few moments, Bryan has to cut his losses with Kurt and try to escape Sabre's grip.
He inches free of the Triangle, getting grip on the legs for a Boston Crab. He tucks the legs and bridges back for a modified Muta Lock. He gives up and applies a seated Guillotine. No matter what Bryan does, Sabre fights on, less than a minute remains when Bryan locks the LeBell Lock.
He drives his knuckles into the nose of Sabre, eventually garnering color, as the crimson begins to leak into his mouth. Danielson covers the mouth and nose with his hands, seconds remain when Kurt rushes in to save the match.
Zack Sabre Jr. is drowning in his own blood.
Three, Two, Sabre Jr. taps!
With one second on the clock, Danielson forces a submission, Kurt was fingertips away from saving the match-up. Sabre Jr. is released and inhales big, gulping breathe, bile and blood leaking from his mouth. Angle gets to his feet and approaches Danielson.
A handshake follows as Bryan Danielson is acknowledged as the Ultimate Submission Master in one of the greatest displays of technical wrestling ever.]
Bryan Danielson def Kurt Angle & Zack Sabre Jr. in Ultimate Submission
What isn't made clear at the time is that this actually serves as Kurt Angle's AEW farewell. He bids farewell to Malenko, telling him to watch over Hobbs for him and vice versa with Hobbs. Less than a month later, his contract expires and he opts not to resign. Questions begin to flare up about where Kurt Angle may turn up next, rumors even begin to circulate that he may be done with professional wrestling for the foreseeable future.
Remember that thing about death and taxes?
WWE Royal Rumble, Jan 31, 2026:
[The Royal Rumble arrives, and as with any given Rumble, who knows what surprises may be in store?
The Men's Rumble match is occuring when entry number twenty-seven is about to be revealed. Medal sounds and the roof comes off of Kaseya Center as the words KURT ANGLE pan across the titantron. The Olympic Hero has arrived.
Angle racks up a couple of eliminations, tossing Johnny Gargano after a fun sequence and Shinsuke Nakamura after an exchange of strikes. Angle comes face to face with AJ Styles who engages in a staredown with The Wrestling Machine.
Before they can lock up, both men are ambushed by other participants, delaying the dream match. Kurt makes it to the final six, but runs into a brick wall when he attempts to eliminate Bron Breakker.
A back and forth of control ends with Breakker on top, landing a belly to belly over the top rope to eliminate Kurt Angle.]
SmackDown, Feb 6, 2026:
John Cena's Open Challenge
[Cena, entering the twilight of his career, goes back to his old open challenge routine, wanting to face as many young superstars as he can before he calls it a career.
His first of these challenges is answered by Kurt Angle himself, who comes face to face with the established Cena. In just his second WWE match, Angle wants to lock up with the GOAT.
Cena, perplexed and expecting a talent on the roster that he was familiar with to appear, poses a reasonable question.
"Who in the hell are you?"
'I'm Kurt Angle'
"Kurt Angle, huh? Tell me, what is the one quality that you possess that makes you think you can come out here and challenge the very best?"
Angle pauses, somehow, he knows exactly what to say.
'Ruthless Aggression.'
Angle clocks Cena and the bell rings, Angle's WWE debut and he has a chance to show that ruthless aggression against one of the most reputable names in wrestling history.
Cena starts out the contest believing Angle will be an easy foe and taking time to pander to the audience. It doesn't take long though for Kurt to gain his respect with a surprise German Suplex while Cena is standing on the middle turnbuckle.
Angle begins to unload with a variety of kick variations and suplexes, wobbling Cena. Cena avoids a Moonsault and lands a Code Red for a near fall.
He beckons Angle up for an Attitude Adjustment, and Angle shifts off the shoulders to begin his trio of German Suplexes. He bridge pins on the third and Cena muscles out.
Angle looks for an Ankle Lock, but Cena rolls free. Attitude Adjustment positioning, Angle lands on his feet. Another German Suplex connects and Angle rolls through, lifting Cena into an emphatic Angle Slam.
Cena narrowly manages to kick out. Angle sizes Cena up for one more Angle Slam, Cena escapes to his feet, Attitude Adjustment, Angle shifts into a roll-up on Cena.
Three seconds later, and Angle has defeated the 16x World Champion in his WWE debut. A shocked Cena watches as Angle takes his place as a hot commodity in WWE.]
Kurt Angle def John Cena
It's not long after this that Kurt finds himself some teammates. During a bout with Akira Tozawa and Apollo Crews of WorldWide, the team of Cedric Alexander and Damon Kemp receive some unexpected assistance from Kurt Angle.
Following the bout, Angle approaches Alexander and Kemp, shortly thereafter, forming Team Angle.
WWE WrestleMania 42 - Night 1, Apr 11, 2026:
AJ Styles vs Kurt Angle
[Ever since their unsatisfying face off at the Royal Rumble, fans and these two alike have been eager to get a proper match made. Angle wants a legacy fight for WrestleMania, another name to engrave on his record.
AJ Styles refuses to be viewed as someone to be put out to pasture and tells Angle to bring his intensity, bring his intelligence, bring his integrity and then come to terms with the fact that it still won't be enough.
Angle tries for an Angle Slam after Styles misses a Springboard 450, Styles maneuvers his way over and into Styles Clash position only for Angle to grip the ankle and turn it into an Ankle Lock.
Styles writhes and tries to make the ropes, but Angle drags him back into the center of the ring and sits down into a knee bar - ankle lock fusion forcing Styles to submit to The Wrestling Machine.]
Kurt Angle def AJ Styles
WWE Backlash, May 23, 2026:
Cody Rhodes vs Kurt Angle
[Following his massive victory over AJ Styles at WrestleMania, Angle and his posse set their sights on another established vet, Cody Rhodes.
Angle tells Rhodes that Kurt is everything Cody has claimed to be, at Backlash he'll expose Cody as a fraud and show him who the true American Nightmare is.
It's a hotly contested affair with Cody, less than a year removed from his World Title run, putting Kurt to the test. Cody is in the driver's seat when a ref bump leads Cedric and Kemp to interfere, Kemp is neutralized before Cedric inadvertently lays Angle out.
Cross Rhodes to Cedric, and another one to Kurt and Rhodes has pinned The Olympic Hero.]
Cody Rhodes def Kurt Angle
WWE King & Queen Of The Ring, Jun 27, 2026:
Damian Priest vs Kurt Angle
[Kurt enters into the King Of The Ring tournament following his loss to Rhodes, but not before kicking Cedric out of Team Angle. He's replaced by a man Angle knows well, the debuting Josh Alexander.
While Josh and Kemp pick up the tag team titles, Angle focuses in on the tournament. He is able to defeat Rey Mysterio in the first round, Dragon Lee in the second, Pete Dunne in the quarters, and Cedric in the semis.
Damian, meanwhile wins the RAW bracket and the finals are set. The Punisher vs The Wrestling Machine.
In a vein very similar to what an Angle/Undertaker match looks like, Priest muscles around Angle, only for Kurt to surprise him with his own strength. Angle works on the leg, rendering Priest's kicking ability useless and kneading him for the eventual Ankle Lock.
Damian looks for Razor's Edge, powering through the pain in his leg. As he chucks Angle, Kurt reverses with a huracanrana taking Priest off guard. Angle begins his trio of Germans, on the third attempt, Priest maneuvers free and gets a Thunder Clap on Angle.
He sets up for The Reckoning, but Angle hits a Southern Lights Suplex, sending Priest forward to the canvas. Angle gets an Angle Slam for a near-fall.
A Moonsault follows, but Priest gets a grip across the throat as Kurt comes down. He lands South Of Heaven for a close two count. Damian sizes up Kurt from across the ring.
Tornado Kick, intercepted, Kurt locks onto the ankle! Priest tries to roll out, kick Kurt away, but Angle is relentless and vice grips around the ankle, torturing Damian.
Priest eventually passes out from the pain, giving Angle a victory, albeit one he's only slightly satisfied with. Regardless of how, Kurt has won King Of The Ring and will now main event SummerSlam for the World Heavyweight Championship.]
Kurt Angle def Damian Priest
WWE Battleground, Jul 25, 2026:
Brock Lesnar vs Kurt Angle
[Brock, having returned in the Royal Rumble earlier in the year and announcing a retirement tour, culminating at SummerSlam in his hometown, sets his sights on Kurt Angle.
Kurt, one month away from main eventing SummerSlam, accepts Brock's challenge, dubbing him one more legend Kurt can send packing.
The match is evidently very intense with Brock showing his trademark dominance and Angle impressing with bursts of strength and out-grappling Lesnar.
Towards the climax of the match, both men begin exchanging German Suplexes. Brock eventually decides to do the continuous trio ala Kurt. Angle lands on his feet on the third attempt and rolls Brock into a deadlift German Suplex.
Kurt scales for a Moonsault, but Brock catches him in mid-air for an F-5, Kurt scrambles free and gets an Ankle Lock applied. Brock is able to fight out, applying a Kimura Lock. Kurt makes it to the ropes and Brock gets fed up.
Lesnar goes to the top turnbuckle for the first time in decades and attempts a Shooting Star Press. Kurt moves and Lesnar eats canvas, Angle immediately jumps onto the leg of Brock applying an agonizing Ankle Lock.
After minutes of Kurt's snake-like refusal to release his grip, he does what few have ever been able to do and makes The Beast tap out. After the bout, Brock shakes the hand of Kurt Angle and Kurt looks ahead to his titanic Heavyweight Title opportunity.]
Kurt Angle def Brock Lesnar
As Angle approaches war at SummerSlam, he decides that Team Angle needs an advisor. Someone that can guide them to their ultimate goal of every member holding gold. He says for three of the best technical wrestlers in the world, their advisor must be of a similar status.
He enlists none other than The Excellence Of Execution, The Hitman is in Team Angle. Bret coaches Kurt in the lead-up to SummerSlam, giving him tips and reviewing old tapes showing how he won his Titles.
CONT. In Comments

So I purchased an 11 inch Italian stiletto switch blade off of Grindworx. It was a good experience and good customer service (in case anyone was wondering).
My question is; the knife came completely dull. Almost no edge on it whatsoever. I have experience with sharpening and honing knives that already have some sort of edge on them but this is completely new to me. I use the Work Sharp field sharpener which has a 600 grit and 400 grit bench stone as well as a fine and corse honing block on it. I’m having trouble getting this edge razor sharp though. How do I get the edge of the dagger sharp enough to cut clean through paper? Any method suggestions? And product suggestions? Does it just take weeks of running it through the sharpening stones to get as sharp as I want it?

A couple of months ago in March, a 37-year-old man named Crosetti Brand was released on parole in the state of Illinois. He had been locked up on a charge of home invasion and sentenced to more than a decade in prison. But the state’s prisoner review board decided to let him out early with electronic monitoring, and what happened next was predictable. Just a day after he got out of prison, Chicago police say that Crosetti attacked a pregnant woman and her 11-year-old boy, killing the child and critically injuring his mother. According to court documents, the last time he was on parole, Crosetti had threatened the same woman by texts and showed up at her home, but none of Crosetti’s criminal history, including his alleged threats, were enough to keep him in prison. And now authorities say that a child is dead as a result.
Now, this is clearly a massive failure of the judicial system in Illinois, which, particularly post-BLM, has focused more on “rehabilitation” instead of punishment - it’s the kind of episode that you’d hope would spur lawmakers in Illinois to pass new laws to rein in their approach of “restorative justice,” but the Illinois government has opted for a very different response. Instead of doing something to prevent violent criminals from getting out of prison, state lawmakers have decided on a course of action that’s ripped straight from a Babylon Bee article.
A new bill that was just passed by both houses of the Illinois legislature—and which is expected to be signed by the governor—will modify state law so that the term “offender” becomes replaced by the term “justice-impacted individual.” The Department of Corrections and a bunch of other government agencies will be required to use that term from now on. So the plan is not to do anything about the criminals who are getting out of prison. It’s to use a nicer word to describe these criminals. Don’t call them “offenders,” call them “justice-impacted individuals.”
Now, I had to check several times to make sure this wasn’t satire because it is quite literally beyond parody - actually, if the Babylon Bee had come up with this idea, I wouldn’t find it funny because it would be too on the nose. But this is reality now in Illinois. This is their cutting-edge approach to criminal justice.

MALE REPORTER: “Lawmakers have passed a bill that, if signed into law by governor Pritzker, will change the term ‘offender’ in state law to ‘justice impacted individual.’”
FEMALE REPORTER 1: “WGN’s Jewell Hillary here to explain, Jewel.”
FEMALE REPORTER 2: “Hi, Mike and Brady, so this legislation has passed both the state, house, and senate, and to be very clear, the potential language change would only apply to about 1,800 offenders across the state. [voiceover] On Tuesday, Bill 4409 passed in the state senate 34-20.”
POLITICIAN: “Question is, your house bill 4409 pass, all those in favor, vote ‘I’, oppose, ‘nay’, the voting is open.” [ding]
FEMALE REPORTER 2: “The proposed legislation would remove the term ‘offender’ and replace it with ‘justice impacted individual’ for individuals in the state’s Adult Redeploy Illinois program, commonly referred to as ARI. According to the Illinois Criminal Justice information authority, ARI is an initiative that offenders from prisons to programs to help rehabilitate them to success. Republicans say the language change portrays a lack of empathy for victims and lack of concern for public safety.”
REPUBLICAN: “Change this, change that. The only thing that you don’t want to change is the behavior of criminals.”

Now, before the fact-checkers jump down my throat, I’ll emphasize one thing, which is that this rebrand doesn’t apply to everyone who commits crimes in the state of Illinois - instead, this new term applies to men and women in the state’s “Adult Redeploy Illinois” program, or ARI as you heard; according to the government of McLean County, Illinois, the ARI program provides for “comprehensive daily supervision” of dozens of “high-risk adult felons as an alternative to costly penitentiary commitment.”
So they’re not rebranding EVERY criminal as a “justice-impacted individual.” They’re only rebranding SOME of the “high-risk adult felons” who otherwise would be in prison. So if you’re living in Chicago, hopefully you can rest easy tonight with that distinction in mind.
Now, the point of the word game here is the same as always. First, it removes agency from the individual by making terminology as passive as possible - an offender is not an offender anymore because offending is something that a person actively does—it puts the onus on the individual, you have gone out and offended, you have committed an offense—and instead they’re saying, “well, they’re justice impacted.” They were impacted by justice, it’s not their fault. Justice came alone and impacted them. They’re the victims here, if anything. And second, on top of making everything and removing agency, it also helps identify the people in your club, because they’re the ones who know about these lingo changes and follow the rules. So it’s not much different from a child who sets up a pillow fort and won’t let you inside the fort unless you know the password, which changes randomly and on a whim, it’s like that kind of idea.
Now, if you go looking online for the term “justice-impacted individual,” you’ll find that it’s popular among Harvard podcasters, billionaire Left-wing activists, giant Silicon Valley corporations like Google; these are people and organizations that, conveniently enough, have distanced themselves as much as possible from communities where crime is high. So they don’t want anything to do with the “justice-impacted individuals,” but they want YOU to have to live near them and treat them with respect and even refer to them in a way that would not be alienating or otherizing for them.
Of course, nobody in the real world uses terms like “justice-impacted individuals,” which is precisely the point. If you go around saying the words “justice-impacted individual,” then you’re instantly communicating where you stand on the political spectrum. And perhaps more importantly, people who don’t use these new terms are instantly identifiable as outcasts, as racists and terrible people. Every so often, wealthy elites and academics come up with new ways to provide these kinds of signals, and then they inevitably filter down to activists and government bureaucrats, which is what’s happening right now in Illinois. Which is also why, by the way, this may be the first time you’re hearing of “justice impacted individual” - give it like a year, or six months, and you’ll be hearing it everywhere. That’s the way this always goes.
Now, there was an episode during the Canadian trucker convoy a couple of years ago that illustrates how this strategy works in practice: the truckers who gathered in the Canadian capital city of Ottawa were exactly the kind of blue-collar workers that liberals pretend to care about, but in this case, the blue-collar workers were protesting for freedom, so they had to be crushed. It was vitally important for liberals to smear these truckers as racist, and one of the ways the liberals did that was by criticizing the truckers for using the wrong lingo.
This is a clip from a Fox interview that Leftists mocked relentlessly during the convoy, and listen to it and see if you can spot what they considered the problem to be:

*“It was only one guy, so we are not racists - I have all types of friends: colored friends, Spanish, Chinese, you know? They are great people… there is no racism here.”

So this is a Romanian trucker who clearly speaks English as a second language, and he’s explaining on primetime television that he’s not racist because he has a bunch of “colored friends.”
Now, logically, there’s no difference whatsoever between saying “I have colored friends” and “I have friends who are people of color”—it’s just a slight grammatical difference that means absolutely nothing, it’s all semantics - if anything, the latter sentence is unnecessarily wordy—otherwise, they’re the same. If a person can be “of color” then it is accurate to say that the person is “colored.” A person of color is a colored person. But your intellectual superiors have decided for reasons that cannot be explained that “people of color” is the only phrase you’re allowed to use. If you say “colored people”—unless you’re the NAACP—you’re a bigot. So they vilified this trucker all over social media, both here and in Canada, and on top of that, too, not only did he use the wrong lingo, but he also tried to disprove accusations of racism by saying he has black friends, and we’re also told by our betters that that doesn’t prove anything. But of course, it absolutely does - like if you have friends of a particular race, it’s a pretty good indication that you’re not racist against that race.
But this is one of the main reasons that cutting-edge P.C. lingo exists - it’s why you’re supposed to say “people experiencing homelessness,” instead of “homeless drug addict.” It’s why you’re supposed to say “minor attracted person” instead of “pedophile.” And it’s why, if at all possible, you’re supposed to employ clever euphemisms to describe criminals who happen to be, really, any race but white.
The New York Post is particularly adept at this last trick to the point that it’s become a running joke online (and presumably, in the Post’s newsroom) - among the euphemisms that the New York Post has come up with to describe black suspects are: “cold-hearted teens,” “knife-wielding sicko,” “misogynistic maniac,” and my personal favorite, “Lunchtime rowdies.”
Now, just in case there was any doubt that the Post is doing this deliberately, here’s a passage from that article on the “lunchtime rowdies.” See if you can count all the euphemisms. Here it is, and this is totally real: “A band of foul-mouthed, toy gun-waving, pot-puffing high school hooligans are keeping residents of West 13th off 6th Avenue hostage in their own tony homes. … For at least a year while school is in session, the roughnecks roam from stoop to stoop every day at lunchtime, rolling blunts, getting high, acting out and taunting anyone who gets in their way.”
Now, with terms like “hooligans,” “roughnecks,” “lunchtime rowdies,” you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is an article from a small town newspaper somewhere out in the wild west in the year 1873 - my only hope is that in the next Post article they can work in the terms “ruffian” and “scoundrel.” But in any case, you read the whole article, and you won’t find any mention in the text about the ethnicity of these “lunchtime rowdies” and “pot-puffing hooligans.” But if a white person is causing problems, the Post will generally put the race in the headline - for example, one recent headline in the Post read, “Video shows black NYC partiers scatter for cover as white neighbor douses them with garden hose.”
Now, there was no euphemism for the white guy. He wasn’t a “hose-toting scoundrel” or anything like that. He was just a “white neighbor.” And for what it’s worth, not all of the people he hit with the water were black - the Post went out of its way to mention the race of the white guy even when it was misleading to do so. Of course.
This isn’t specific to the New York Post, it’s the approach of most major media outlets - as the account DataHazard found, the race of white murderers is made clear in more than 90% of news articles, but with black murderers, race is only mentioned in 30% of the article, and when it does appear, it’s usually much lower down in the text of the article.
So this is obviously a very intentional thing that they’re doing, and journalists do this in part to signal that they’re true believers in principles of “restorative justice.” And in the process, they’re denying the agency of black offenders by holding them to a completely different standard. These criminals get additional protections in the media, even when they commit heinous crimes, solely on the basis of their skin color. And now the state of Illinois is doing the same thing. It’s almost as if they hired the New York Post euphemism guy to write their legislation.
Now, to give the Left some credit, they understand the role of language in shaping policy, and shaping opinions and the views of the public. In order to normalize crime and pedophilia, they first need to change the way people REFER to crime and pedophilia. And that effort is now underway in Illinois, which means many more “justice-impacted individuals” will soon be out on the streets. It also means that many more innocent people—including children and pregnant women—will be impacted by these “justice-impacted individuals.” Because one euphemism at a time, in Democrat-run cities all over the country, it’s pretty clear that that’s the point.