Previous Part
Morning eventually came, banishing the eyes that seemed to peer at me through the night. It was strange how suddenly the feeling left me, making me think that someone really was watching me. The whole thing was really doing wonders for my paranoia. Despite the rough morning and sleepless night, I still found myself waiting outside Bianca’s house bright and early that morning. The air was cool but not chilly, one of those perfect days that’s cold enough you’ll never start sweating unless you really try, but warm enough that a T-shirt will get you through without too much trouble.
I only had to knock once before Bianca threw open the door.
“Where you just waiting there for me?”
I asked, cracking a smile and raising an eyebrow.
“You’ll never know” she added playfully, “Are we ready to go then?”
Bianca had made some preparations for the trip, she didn’t have a backpack ready to go but she definitely made an effort to dress the part… sort of. She was wearing an old grey combat jacket that I imagine she pulled out of Stein’s closet. The jacket was way to big for her but she made it work. Her combat boots matched the jacket, looking old and well worn. What didn’t match was the bright red yoga pants she was wearing, but I wasn’t about to complain. Besides, I had packed each of us a spare set of clothes just in case.
“Oh! So I had an idea, its a long walk, not crazy but I’d rather not just walk the whole way if we can help it. Frank and Stein used to have some bicycles when we first came here so I asked them about it and well.”
Bianca chirped, as she led me around the back of the house and pulled a tarp off two abysmal looking bicycles. The bikes were both red at one point but that was a long time ago. Now they were covered in a layer of rust and I could barely make out the branding that may have once read, “Shwinn”.
“Um… Bianca I think I might get tetanus if I sit on that thing.”
“Oh come on! Aren’t you tired of walking everywhere? Lets just give the bikes a shot, if they crumble to dust we can leave them.”
“And get me a tetanus shot.”
I added quickly
“Fine, and get you a tetanus shot.”
Bianca shot back, she feigned annoyance but she couldn’t hide the smile that crossed her face.
Laughing to ourselves, we got on the bikes and took off North, out of town and onto a dirt path leading to the woods. Bianca didn’t say much on the way out but I could tell she was having a good time. This may have been her first time out of the house for something other than supervising Frank and Stein. She tried to hide it by riding fast and staying out in front of me, but I could still catch her eyes literally glowing with happiness every now and then. I thought back to what Frank had said about her eyes glowing when she experiences strong emotion. I hoped that was the case and she wasn’t just trying really hard to influence me, which he had also said would make her eyes glow.
As we neared the end of the path, the forest’s edge came into view. we let the bikes roll to a stop then got off and let them fall over onto the dirt. I half expected them to explode into a puff of rusty brown dust the second they touched the ground but to my surprise, neither bike did. I could’ve swore I heard Bianca sniffle almost like she’d been crying. I opened my mouth to say something and then thought better of it, if she wanted to tell me what was going on she would. Well, that or she’d just manipulate me away from the question. Wait, was she doing that now? It’s hard to tell, maybe that’s how everyone around her feels. The more I thought about it the more I realized how difficult it must be for her just to have friends or form relationships with people at all. If she told them the truth they’d never know if what they were feeling around her at any given moment was real. All they’d have to go on would be her word, could they really trust that, could I? If she kept her secret she’d know that at any moment she could just change how they felt about her, manipulate them into anything she wanted. Could she resist that kind of power over them and still look someone in the eyes and say she was their friend. Not to mention how hard it would be to keep that secret over years of knowing someone.
“So Keith, were exactly are we headed? You do have some Idea where this mine you’re looking for is right?”
Bianca asked skeptically, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“Well about that…. I just know its out here in the forest somewhere. That’s pretty much all I have to go on from Frank, Stein, and that massive bartender in town.”
I told her sheepishly.
“Well that explains why you over-packed so much then. Seriously? How long do you think we we’re going to be out here, you’re packed like some kind of survivalist.”
She mocked, picking through the pack I’d made for her. After she finished rooting through the pack I made for her like some kind of giant squirrel and, chastised me yet again for not doing more research on the mine, we set off.
The forest felt imposing as we walked into the woods through a manicured patch of trees. Someone had gone to great lengths to braid a few trees over this little path before the forest turned back into its natural wild state. It gave off the feeling that civilization ended with this path and something else entirely began. As we got off the path our light faded quickly, chocked out by the limbs of massive pine trees. All this cover meant there was very little foliage on the ground which was covered in a blanket of needles. The though occurred to me that we were looking for a mine in a valley. That’s weird because what exactly would be in a valley that warranted the creation of a mine? Usually you’ll find them in mountains so what exactly was one doing out here.
“Bianca I just had a thought, Why would they build a mine out here? I mean what’s the point, is there even anything valuable out here to mine?”
“Yeah, come to think of it your right. What other reason would there be to have a mine out here?”
“Unless they were just mining from a cave but that still doesn’t answer the question of what they were…”
Bianca cut me off
“What was that first thing you said?”
“Um… mining from a cave?”
A lightbulb went off over her head as she exclaimed,
“That’s it! There’s caves under the town, I’ve heard Frank talk about them before! Maybe they didn’t have a real mine so they were just mining something out of the caves.”
“Not to burst your bubble Bianca, but that still doesn’t get us any closer to these caves or mines or whatever it is.”
I responded cautiously, trying not to sound to critical of her revelation.
“Well not exactly, Frank said they were in the East of the forest somewhere so all we have to do is head East till we run into them.”
Bianca said, full of confidence. Then something occurred to me, we had no real way of getting back to the bikes other than retracing our steps. Now that was easy enough now, if we went deeper into the woods we would get lost pretty quickly.
“One more thing Bianca, Maybe we should come up with a way to find our way out? I really don’t want to end up lost out here.”
I asked nervously, fidgeting with my hands.
“Way ahead of you on that one, I left my phone back by the bikes. Here give me yours and I’ll put my number in so you can track it and find our way back.”
She said, taking my phone, putting her number into it, and turning it to me to show she’d tracked her own phones location with it, giving us a path back to the bikes.
As we turned East and headed even deeper into the forest the terrain started to change. Instead of the pine needle coating we started to see rocks and the ground was more rugged. Here and there we’d even pass a boulder or two. I decided to break the silence of our search.
“So are you ever going to tell me how you met Frank and Stein?”
Bianca sighed before responding.
“I suppose you deserve to know if your sticking around. You probably guessed I wasn’t always living with them. Lets just say before that I was with someone who I though meant the world to me but I never meant the same to him. It was all a game to him and eventually I noticed that. Then, a little while afterwards I realized I wasn’t exactly powerless anymore and I did some things that I’m not exactly proud of to survive on my own.”
I could tell talking about this hurt her but I needed more.
“That’s not exactly telling me a whole lot Bianca.”
I pressed, maybe a little to hard.
“I found out I had powers and I used them ok! I got myself out of a situation where I was pulled so many way I didn’t know which direction was up! The second I found out I could do the same thing to people myself, I did! You’re the first person to actually seem to give a shit that wasn’t some crazy doctor that tolerates my existence or someone I just manipulated into caring! Maybe I even did that with you! I JUST DON’T KNOW ANYMORE!”
Bianca screamed at me, getting in my face with tears beginning to run down her own. Her eyes were glowing electric blue again and I knew I’d crossed a line.
“Hey I’m sorry I didn’t mean to hurt you. I… I didn’t know.”
“No.. you didn’t but I guess you should”
Bianca sniffled out, trying desperately to pull herself back together and keep up the act the everything was ok. Bianca went silent for a while as we kept walking along, crying to herself before she finally took a deep breath and said,
“You know, this is the first time someone’s asked me to come along and do something outside the house in years. I spend so much time cooped up in there just helping with experiments and looking after Rocco. It’s actually nice to get out and talk for once.”
Her voice still a lifts hoarse from screaming at me before.
“Look if you want to talk about it we’ve got nothing but time out here. I’d like to know a bit more about you anyways.”
I said taking her hand and trying to sound comforting.
“Yeah maybe I should get some of it off my chest. Here it goes I guess.”
Bianca said, taking a deep breath and tightening her grip on my hand. Her eyes still glowed faintly as she told me her story as we ventured deeper into the forest.
I’ll give you the shorter version of it here, mostly cause I’m not sure how she’d feel about me spoiling all her secrets.. She ran away from her family and her college education for a guy, his name was Brooke. Brooke was from money and had a job lined up by his family at a law firm so Bianca thought she was set for life with him. Bianca was madly in love with him at the time but as days grew into months and years, Brooke became a monster. He cheated on her and told her she wasn’t enough, that her shortcomings drove him to do it over and over again and somehow it was all her fault every time. He became abusive not long after the cheating started, flying into fits of hysteric apology afterwards only further convincing Bianca she was somehow at fault. After three years of this she eventually got up the courage to leave and never looked back. On the road she discovered her powers of manipulation, letting her play with people’s emotions and she only got better at it with time. Unfortunately her abilities got her into a very specific form of getting money out of people, prostitution. One day she tried to solicit Stein and he saw straight through her. Stein took her with him to the hotel he and Frank were staying at and they took her in on the spot. The trio traveled together ever since, Bianca becoming a kind of daughter to them.
I was in shock once she finished her story, it sounded like she’d really been through the ringer.“I don’t know what to say, that’s awful, all of it.”
“It was, I lived it. But I made it through, doesn’t matter how at the end of the day. I’ve got Frank and Stein and that’s enough, they let me into their home and I recovered in my own way, I’m still here so I’ll take what I can get right?”
Bianca stated with a cold loom of determination on her face. It was painfully obvious to me that despite the masquerade of being fine she was barley holding it together underneath. Like just talking about it with me was driving a finger into old wounds.
“At least you’ll never have to go through something like that again. With your abilities you never have to get pushed around like that.”
I said with completely no tact whatsoever. Bianca stopped suddenly as I said this and whirled around to face me. The fire I’d seen in her eyes earlier reigniting in seconds.
“Do you really think that’s all this is?! I’m no better than him, even you don’t know what you really think when you look at me! Admit ti!”
Bianca growled at me, hysterical once again.
“No, Bianca I…”
“Look I know your trying to help but just leave it, ok? I’m done talking about this”
She cut me off, pulling herself back together and signaling very clearly we were done with that particular conversation.
“Besides look over there, That hole in the rock see it? That might be what we’re looking for.”
Bianca said, gesturing to the stone wall that now jutted out of the ground beside us.
The rock wall she pointed out was chipped near the middle in a way that couldn’t have been natural. Straight lines don’t really exist in nature and this hole was cut squarely into this rock wall. As we got closer I could see that it wasn’t just an entrance either. The hole opened into the rock wall but then suddenly dropped, like whoever carved it had hit a point where the ground just fell out from under them. From where Bianca and I were looking into the hole we couldn’t quite see the bottom.
“Well we found what we were looking for, is this bringing back any memories from those dreams you had?”
Bianca asked, sounding a little short tempered still as I searched through my bag.
“What are you looking for in there?”
“Rope, I’ve got to see what’s in there and I’m hoping I brought enough to climb down there.”
I replied hurriedly, still tearing apart my bag to get to the rope I had packed underneath everything else.
“Rope? you’re not seriously going to climb down that pit are you? I can barely see down there.”
Bianca complained, sounding exasperated.
“Here, this should help you see down there.”
I said, tossing her one of the two head mounted flashlights I brought along.
“ME? I never said we were going down there!”
Bianca panicked momentarily.
“Look, you can stay up here and wait for me if you really don’t want to go down there. But I would appreciate having you to watch my back.”
I added trying to soften her up. Bianca opened her mouth like she was going to say something but stopped, instead dropping her own pack to the ground and searching through it.
“Look if I’m going down there I’m going to need something better than yoga pants on and…. You actually packed a change of clothes in here. Geez you really did think of everything.”
As Bianca took the jeans I packed and went off to find somewhere to change I finally found the rope. It was about 50 feet of strong climbing rope that I kept for an occasion just like this. Now that’s not to say I was a professional climber by any means but a 20 or 30 foot rappel I should be able to do. I was hoping that the descent wasn’t much further than that. I anchored the rope to a tree a little ways away from the hole in the rock face and tossed the rope down the hole. It hit the bottom with a satisfying thud just as Bianca got back from changing. The jeans I had packed were a little big on her but she’d manage. She looked like a mess in her ancient combat boot and jacket, all of which were too big for her. I tried to open my mouth to tell her she looked nice, I swear I really did but what came out was hyena-like laughter at her appearance.
“I…. Oh god I’m…. It’s just”
I struggled to get out, laughing all the while.
“Well I’m glad you like it at least, ok seriously come on, stop laughing.”
Bianca scolded as she began giggling herself. Soon enough we were both laughing, Bianca’s earlier storminess cleared up by the absurdity of the situation.
Here we were, a succubus and a guy with a strange mark out in the woods getting ready to rappel into a hole in the ground that apparently didn’t exist. All this was almost starting to feel… I’m not really sure how to put it, not normal but not so strange. Honestly I finally felt like I’d found some kind of purpose again out here. As weird as it all was I was starting to enjoy… this, this whole odd situation I’d found myself in. Bianca and I finally got ahold of the laughter and stood back up from our place on the ground.
“Do I really look that bad?”
She asked
“I’ve never heard you complain about your looks before. But no, with those jeans on you look like maybe, just maybe you prepared a little bit for coming out here.”
I teased, getting a little wry grin out of her.
“Come on, lets get going. Hopefully we can be in and out of there pretty quickly.”
I said, handing Bianca her pack and shouldering my own.
Rappelling in wasn’t actually all that hard, really dangerous without safety equipment sure, but neither of us had any trouble descending the maybe 20 foot drop. At the bottom I saw something that shocked me, this place wasn’t abandoned. I saw lighting set up, not on but very clearly set up recently. Bits of old mining equipment were scattered around the… cave? Mine? Im not really sure what to call it anymore. What concerned me more than anything was the light I saw at the far end of the cave (I’m settling on calling it a cave). The light came from a massive bonfire and I could just make out the shadows of several people sitting around it. I have no idea how we didn’t see the smoke on our way in. It wasn’t filling the cave but it also wasn’t coming out from anywhere I saw on the way here.
“Bianca get down!”
I whisper shouted at her, turning off my headlamp and falling flat to the ground myself. Bianca dropped to the ground as she heard me with unexpected grace. I didn’t know if those figures by the fire had seen us but I certainly wasn’t taking chances.
“Ok, I’m going to creep up and see if I can hear them talking or something. Can you just stay here and watch my back? I don’t want you getting any closer than you have to.”
I instructed Bianca who answered with a quick nod and reached into the inner pocket of her jacket. She withdrew a jeweled golden dagger from it.
“I sorry, what’s this now?”
I asked, confused and thrown off guard by the weapon. It was a really beautiful blade, the hilt was silver with several purple gems inlaid in it. The blade was golden save for the razor sharp edge which was some kind of strange blue material that was roughly the same color Blanca’s eyes glowed.
“I had a life before this you know.”
Bianca responded.
“Yeah we talked about it but you didn’t really tell me much about this part apparently. Doesn’t matter I guess just surprised you have Jeff Bezos’s butter knife in your jacket pocket.”
I whispered, pointing at the dagger in her hand.
“Well we can talk more about how I ended up with this later, not really the time now. Just be careful ok.”
I got up as she said this, realizing she was right. Now really wasn’t the time to be asking about strange daggers, I had more pressing issues.
I crouched down and started creeping towards the figures by the bonfire, careful to avoid the rusty machinery bits scattered across the ground. As I got closer I saw a passage I had missed in the dark. I dared to turn my headlamp on for just a second, trying to block out most of the light with my hand. What I saw through the dim light and shadows of my finger left me awestruck. Inside the passage a coliseum had been constructed, with seats carved into the stone. The structure itself was made up of the rusted metal pieces that littered the room, collected and smelted together to form the walls of the structure. What frightened me the most was the symbol clearly and meticulously drawn on the dirt floor, the same symbol that adorned my back, the symbol of the thunderbird. Moving on, more shaken than ever I crept closer still to the roaring bonfire. I could just about make out the words the figures were saying. When I got close enough to make out the word “tests” the fire suddenly went out with a gust of wind.The room temperature must have dropped 10 degrees immediately and I could swear I heard the sounds of heavy rain above us. But the sudden lack of light isn’t what rooted me in place, cowering on the cave floor. What did that was the two illuminated grey eyes that pierced through the darkness like lightning in a storm, eyes I would never forget, the eyes of the woman from Imalone.
This time I clearly heard the voices of the figures from around the bonfire as they all dropped to their knees.
“Shaoni! We weren’t expecting you till later, Stormcaller.”
The figures all said some variation of in unison. Their tone sounding almost as though they were begging for forgiveness. In a voice that hissed like rain on pavement the woman apparently named Shaoni spoke.
“I’ve come to oversee the start of the trials, is everything prepared?”
In one bone chilling moment her eyes locked on mine and she said the one thing I’d hoped she wouldn’t.
“You didn’t tell me we had guests.”
The moment the words left her lips I turned back to where Bianca was waiting, her now glowing eyes cutting through the darkness of the cave. Giving up any form of subtly, I bolted for the rope behind Bianca. I just wanted to be out of this cave, whatever I might learn from searching around was far outweighed by the fact that Shaoni was here. I’d seen the kind of destruction she’d left in her wake in Imalone and I had no desire to see it happen again here. I banged my ankle on several of the little bits of rusty metal on the floor as I ran, sending sparks of pain up my leg. I didn’t hear anything behind me at all which was almost more unnerving than the footsteps I expected to hear. I closed in on Bianca and saw she hadn’t moved at all, her eyes fixed on something behind me. I dared to take a quick glance back over my shoulder and saw Shaoni taking her first step away from the extinguished bonfire. Lightning crackled around her like one of those novelty plasma globes. In the flashes of light I could see her face. There was no smile or frown, no emotion at all. She simply stared straight ahead towards me and took slow calm steps, inching ever closer.
“Bianca we’ve got to go… NOW!”
I shouted, snapping her to attention. She nodded and turned on her heels, back toward the rope we’d thrown in earlier. Only, when we got to the rope and gave it a tug, it came falling back toward us.
“There’s no way. I…I anchored it to that tree, it should’ve held!”
I cried in disbelief. Bianca and I starred up at the now stormy sky through the hole we would’ve escaped from. Two men walked into view on either side of the hole, glowering down at us. I notice a marking on one of the men’s hands in a flash of lightning from the storm. I could only assume if I was able to make it out I would’ve seen a marking just like the one on my back. Just as soon as the men had appeared a shape flew in from the left with a low growl, taking both men along with it.
“Ok, new plan! There’s something else up there and I really don’t want to get involved with… whatever that was either. I didn’t see any footprints near the entrance so I’m assuming those guys we saw by the bonfire got in another way. We’re just going to have to find where that was and get out that way.”
I instructed Bianca, gesturing to the men in toe with Shaoni and trying not to sound as afraid as I was.
“Ok, I’m with you but lets get moving, I don’t want to any closer to her than I have to be.”
Bianca answered, putting her hand on my shoulder. I suddenly felt a wave of calm rush over me and for the second time I was grateful for Bianca’s ability to simply turn off my fear response.
Shaoni now stood about 50 feet from us with four men following behind her. In the light she gave off I could see the men were all dressed like normal people. I kind of figured they would be more of those canvas wrapped weirdos from Imalone but no. There stood four men in jeans and flannels standing there. Shaoni looked like she could’ve stepped right out of a painting of Pocahontas. She wore an animal hide dress with frills along the bottom and arms. Her head was adorned with a leather band containing several hawk feathers. In short she looked like she’d stepped out of a different time. But I had no time to look over the finer details of her clothing as Bianca and I rushed towards her. Once we got within striking distance I pulled Bianca to the left, towards the passage I had seen earlier. Shaoni never made a move towards us, she just simply looked at me, the ghost of a smile briefly crossing her lips. One of the men with her grabbed at Bianca though, pulling her out of my grasp momentarily. That was a mistake because she was on him immediately with the ornate dagger I’d seen before. As the man grabbed her Bianca lashed out with the dagger, sticking him in the gut with the blade. He screamed in anguish and let go of her but Bianca wasn’t done yet. She followed up by stabbing the man in the back of the neck as he bent over, grabbing at the hole in his abdomen. The other three men were so taken aback by the sudden ferocity she displayed that they didn’t come any closer. As time stood still for a second the men all looked toward Shaoni, awaiting instructions but hesitant to get any closer to Bianca. Using the brief moment of disbelief Bianca had caused, we ran down the side passage towards the coliseum.
“What was that?”
I asked, still shocked by how suddenly Bianca had acted.
“He tried to grab me, I don’t like when they try to grab me”
Bianca responded, distant and… scared? I got the sense she was still in shock at what she had done too. But I couldn’t worry about that right now, we still had to get out of here. Luckily the men didn’t seem to be following us. Wether Shaoni called them off or they stopped to care for their friend I didn’t know, and frankly I didn’t care.
Rushing through the rusty coliseum was haunting. I expected something to jump out of every shadow in the imposing structure. As we slowed to a jog in the middle of the coliseum, right where that eagle symbol was, we stopped to look around. We had come into this arena through an open arch but the only other exit I could see was a similar but barred archway. The coliseum was huge for something constructed in a cave, probably 400 feet across. I had no idea how this thing could’ve been made without anybody finding out.
“Bianca are you seeing anyway out of here? Bianca!”
I asked, then shouted as I turned to see her standing still as a statue in the middle of the Eagle symbol. She was staring at the dagger she had stabbed that man with. Blood still stained the blade and dripped from it intermittently.
“Bianca are you alright?”
I questioned as I walked over to her. She still had this look in her eyes, like she was miles away.
“Bianca? Come on talk to me. Look, you did what you had to do back there, sure it wasn’t exactly pretty but it had to be done.”
I tried to comfort her with my words but the truth is, my heart just wasn’t in it. I was a little scared of what I saw from her in those few moments. She just lashed out and attacked him, not that he didn’t deserve it but going back for more was too much. But what would’ve happened if she didn’t act? It’s not something I could really dwell on now and I’m not sure it really mattered. I just wasn’t feeling all that great about the fact we may have killed someone.
“I don’t like it when they grab me.”
Bianca finally repeated, still appearing catatonic. I leaned down to her level, putting my face right in-front of her’s and putting her head in between my hands.
“Bianca I know enough to know that whole situation may have dug up some memories for you but nows really not the time. We have to keep moving, we have to find a way out of here, and I can’t do that without you right now.”
Bianca tensed up as I spoke to her, but I could feel her relax as I finished. A single tear fell from her eye as she gave me a nod and followed behind me as I walked toward the barred off archway.
Before I made it to the archway there was a massive crash as something tore the rusty bars from their mountings and fell into the room.
“Tuck?!”
I exclaimed, recognizing his colossal figure on the floor immediately. His shirt and pants were torn to shreds though, Like he’d flexed too hard and burst out of his clothes. Bianca and I rushed over to check on him but apparently he was fine. Before we even started walking towards him he was already back up on his feet and lumbering towards us.
“Tuck what are you doing here? Actually never mind, are you ok?”
I asked, concern in my voice.
“It’s going to take more than this to stop me son. I figured you might go looking for that old mine I mentioned the other night so I came to find you. I feel real bad about ya run’in off the way ya did and I got to thinking. Maybe I could make it up to ya if I told ya about the mine. So I came out here and found some shady look’in fellas poking around and figured maybe ya needed help, looks like I was right.”
Tuck explained, dusting himself off and brushing away some of the tattered remains of his shirt. I didn’t buy his story for a second but I wasn’t going to argue with this bear of a man.
“So how did you get in anyway?”
“Used the old entrance from back when this place was still run’in, come on I’ll lead ya out.”
Tuck answered, already turning and walking back the way he came.
The walk out was long and none of us talked much so I just looked around. The further we walked down this little tunnel the more I noticed crushed equipment. The walls looked like they were made up of bits and pieces of crumbled rock that may have once been the ceiling of a much bigger tunnel here.
“There was a collapse, just like the report said only, whatever caused it wasn’t any fault of ours. It was that damn thunderbird waking up.”
Tuck piped up, answering one question and making me ask another.
“Wait you knew about her?!”
“All the miners did, some decided to follow her after she woke up and brought the walls down on us. Others wanted revenge for the brothers we lost, I’m one of the former. You see son, the reason I stayed around this town so long was because of that bird. I want a chance to return the favor.”
“But what about Robert? If you hate the thunderbird so much why’d you let him in? You had to see that tattoo on his hand.”
“I know he thinks that damned bird will “save” him or something but I don’t blame him. Everyone deals with things in their own way and it’s not my place to judge folk for it.”
Tuck lectured, as we made our way further down the passage. His words made sense to me but I didn’t understand how he could be so understanding. From what I understood the thunderbird had a part to play in the original mine’s collapse and the death of the workers there. Only for some of the survivors to revere this creature. If I were in Tuck’s shoes I don’t think I could forgive and forget.
Finally we saw light at the end of the tunnel. We emerged into the whispers of what I’m sure was a monster of a storm. But that’s not what drew my attention, what did were the boulders scattered around the hole we just came out of. It looked like they had been moved, and recently. The suspicious red stain just barley peaking out from the bottom of one of them only served to convince me further. Tuck’s story didn’t quite make sense and this entrance seemed like it should’ve been blocked up until very recently. I wasn’t about to question the guy who saved us though, so I let the issue rest.
Bianca’s idea of tracking her phone to find our way to the bikes worked like a charm. We followed the directions my phone spit at us and eventually found our way back to the bikes. Tuck’s old Ford Bronco sat behind our bikes leaving me to question if he followed us on our way here.
“Well do you kids want a ride back to town?”
Tuck asked, his voice bellowing across the forest. Seriously it was like the guy swallowed a loudspeaker at some point and just spoke through it now.
“No we’ll find our own way back.”
“Alrighty then, stay safe son.”
Tuck called back to me as he got into his truck and drove off. Bianca and I stood up our bikes and got ready to head back to town.
“Hey Keith?”
“Yeah what is it Bianca?”
“Next time you offer to bring me along somewhere can you warn me about the damn thunderbird that seems to just show up around you.”
I laughed at this, it was nice to see Bianca joking around again. After what happened in the caves she seemed like someone else, none of her usual cheeriness was there. Not that I knew if that was what she wanted me to see from her or how she actually presented herself but still. I trusted her enough at this point to assume she wasn’t using her abilities to mess with my head.
When we got back to Bianca’s house the sun was just beginning to set, washing the town in shades of purple, orange, and red. We walked the bikes around to their place behind the house and I walked Bianca back to the front door.
“Thanks for today Keith,I don’t… get out very much anymore and it was… nice… to do something other than sit around the house for once. You know, despite everything that happened it was actually fun.”
I was taken aback by her words at first. If it was me I’d immediately want nothing to do with this person who just put me in danger.
“You had fun? The thunderbird showed up again and we may have killed a guy and you had fun?”
I asked, raising and eyebrow suspiciously.
“Can we not talk about that right now? Anyways I don’t exactly have a high bar for what is and isn’t fun at this point. I’ll see you later Keith.”
Bianca said, cracking a smile and walking into her house.
I was about halfway back to my own house when I realized she never gave me my backpack back. Well, looks like I’d be seeing her again then because I need that stuff back. I wasn’t sure what to think about what I’d seen today. If the thunderbird was in those mines years ago why did she end up in Wisconsin? There was also a very real possibility some people in this town worshipped her so I’d have to keep an eye out for that. The really interesting thing to me was the Shaoni never seemed to want to hurt me in the cave today. She was terrifying as all hell sure, but I didn’t get the sense that she wanted to cause me any sort of harm. If she wanted to do that my gut told me she would’ve done it quickly and efficiently.
Thunder suddenly cracked outside, interrupting my train of thought. As I stood up to see what time it was a knock came from the front door. I froze, who exactly could it be? I doubt Bianca would come over, I don’t think she even knows where I live but maybe she came by to drop off the backpack she absconded with? The knock came again, more forcefully this time.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!”
I shouted, as I jogged to the door. My heart dropped as soon as I opened it, On the other side of the door stood Shaoni. She was dressed normally for once, wearing a long flowing white nightgown. Shaoni stepped into my house as she cooed in her usual misty voice.
“Good evening. Keith was it? We have much to discuss.”

Part two to a post I made five months ago
TL;DR: This week I felt like crap, should I bump the calories up, at least on days where I’m 1RM testing, or stay the course? Bad luck with dieting in the past, wherever I end up, I just want to keep the weight off for good this time.
Currently at 95kg BW @ 29%bf today, and I’m starting to seriously feel groggy. Theoretically, it’s a 500 cal deficit, but I felt like I was gassed out at work and during the workout on Friday. Gonna start week 8 of Waxman‘s beginner progression, when they start maxing out lifts. Lifting similar weights in a lighter weight class is an improvement, but naturally we all want to see the numbers on the bar go higher. I’m not in a rush to find my ideal weight class, but I would like to lose it as fast as reasonably possible so I can “move on with my life”.
I felt empty and hollow during my workouts these past two weeks, and I know that will get in the way of me maxing out, so I’ll probably eat more at least on the days of 1RM testing. Over the past five years I’ve been working out and losing weight on and off and I just want to make sure I keep the weight off this time. Even if I end up maintaining 27%bf, I would much rather be that and then where I was in November of last year.
Thanks for reading,

Hello! Thanks for stopping by on my post 🙏
I'm a 24M Latino, standing at 5'10, wears glasses and am a total nerd(-: I'm more than happy to share photos (SFW) and hope you are too !
I'm mostly looking for someone that shares some common interests with me, here are some of my biggest hobbies.

• going out and watching movies. I'm obsessed with the movie going experience and always make sure to catch a film whenever I can!
  
• going out to see live music. I listen mostly to post punk, Goth, Dark Wave, Neo-Folk, Industrial and more in that same vein. If you've always wanted to be a part of the goth subculture I could most definitely introduce you to your new favorite goth bands lol
  

-I also really enjoy pc gaming and building. If you're getting started into pc building I could definitely be of help! As I've built tons of pcs over the years (-:
Lastly, I really enjoy weight lifting. Though I've been lacking on doing cardio 💀
I'm not a very picky person at all, I'd love to hear from you regardless of who you are and where you come from, , I'm very attracted to kind and compassionate personalities <3
Hope this post finds you well, and hope to hear from you soon!!

TL;DR - did it take anyone several weeks feel appetite suppression at 10 mg or higher of Zepbound after switching from Ozempic?
First of all, community, I really appreciate all the support and resources I get from being a part of this group. 🫶 I'm the only person I know personally who is navigating this complicated journey, so this group has been a godsend.
Here is my timeline, including some confessions. Not looking for judgement, just others experiences!
-SW: 280, LW: 241, CW: 254
-Took Ozempic for 18 months, ended at the highest dose, lost about 40 lbs from just the appetite control, no exercise (I'm not proud of that, but I was going through some serious post-covid depression which this initial weight loss really helped to lift. And I do have a therapist :)
-Stalled on Ozempic and then started to gain.
-Began a months-long series of fights to 1) get switched to Zepbound 2) convince my insurance to cover it, and 3) actually find it. I know I don't have to explain to this group how long and hard these fights have been, especially #2!) I was lucky enough that my doctor agreed to let me start at 10mg since I had been on the highest Ozempic dose without a break.
-Just finished my 3rd week on Zep 10mg and I feel absolutely no appetite control. In fact, I am craving sugar like I cannot remember ever happening. On Ozempic (before the stall) I had so much appetite control that I'd be annoyed when my food came at a restaurant bc it interrupted the conversation for something I could take or leave. I know that Zep is different, but I guess I expected to be feeling some of those old Ozempic effects by now.
I know 3 weeks isn't long, but I think it feels SO long after my months long journey. I also know how incredibly fortunate I am to have insurance coverage for this medication and to actually have it in my fridge right now. But I'm also can't help worrying that this fight was for nothing, and that the hope I have been holding on to was false.
Can anyone offer encouragement?
Oh and I am back at the gym at least 3 days a week now! Plus my bloodwork is soooo much better, and for that and the weight I have lost I have real gratitude.

Thank you all for the advice on my last couple posts. I really feel like I am beginning to understand some things I really needed to, and the advice I’ve gotten has really helped.
Just wanted to update some things, so I am not getting advice and encouragement under false pretenses, and just to thank you all for helping me take the steps I needed to take.
My story is posted on here, but I lied to bp about the story at first as well as on here. It was an online affair, we never met in person, but it lasted around 7 days total over the course of a month or two (very on and off talking) I TT for the past month to my bp which I am very ashamed of, I was truly just a coward. No excuses. The whole truth is out to him now, and I want to be honest here as well.
Yesterday I spoke with AP. I wrote him a letter explaining everything, and met with him in person to make sure everything was deleted and to tell him I’m going to be telling his girlfriend in a week. I then blocked him again.
I sent bp photos of the letter, and an audio recording of the conversation. My mom went with me so there was no questions of what happened as well.
Bp is expressed to me how grateful he was for this, and that I made sure he could see and hear everything as well. He said “no matter what happens with us, that really healed a part of my soul”
Obviously was great to hear that I’m doing right by him, but even better is that it felt great for me to do for me. AP is and always has been a looming evil in my life, and it felt like a weight was lifted off my chest in bolting that door shut. Of course, I wish i would have done this sooner, but I am glad I have now.
I also sent him my Reddit profile so he could read these posts, he helped me realize that I lied even on here, and I don’t want to lie anymore in any regard. I don’t know if he is following up on these posts or not, but I’m okay with it either way. I’m just sharing my heart here, and that’s something I want him to see.
I’ve been making videos over the past month of me talking about everything I’ve learned and everything I’m feeling and I shared that album with him as well. He said the only reason he is still speaking to me is because he saw my honesty in those videos, and helped explain to me that that is the standard from here on out when I talk to him.
Absolutely everything is on the table now, and nothing is tethering me to the past anymore. Everything is out. I’m not sure what the future holds and that is still really scary, but I am confident that whatever happens will be right for both of us.
Thank you for everyone who helped me have the strength to do this, and help me truly understand why it was so important. Feeling very grateful. ❤️

Tw: Past abortion
I (Almost 32f) and my husband (29m) have been trying since January of this year. I have had 0 positives but was "late" by 8 days one cycle. Felt suspicious but can't categorize it for anything other than a random late ovulation.
2y 9m ago we tried once out of impulse. I panicked later that day thinking I'll never get where I want to be - took a Plan B - then tested positive 2 weeks after that. We decided to abort and I focused on my career.
I only state this because - I know I can get pregnant with my husband.
We aren't trying as hard as we could be (we have the problem of him taking a LONG time to "complete the task", and I just can't take 2 hours out of my day every other day to handle this even though he would love to lol.)
I track ovulation using the Garmin App and other than that one month where I was late, my cycle is on the dot 26 days.
We try to do the deed about 2 times within the ovulation period as well as a few days before and a few days after. My guess is this is part of the issue - not enough attempts during ovulation.
So my question is - what's next? More attempts? Get fertility testing for us both since I'm "older"?
Tia!
Edit: I wanted to add that we are both active, healthy weights. I run, weight lift, yoga, etc. I do consume about 200mg of caffeine a day (cut it down from higher about 3 months into ttc due to me reading that it can affect fertility. No nicotine. I don't drink but husband does - but not a crazy amount.)

DANCING WITH THE STARS: THE PROS' MOST ICONIC QUOTES ✨

Day	Pro Dancer	Quote
1	Karina Smirnoff	"Is there any reason why your head looks like a pigeon?"
2	Valentin Chmerkovskiy	"Bro, you're one big wrong already."
3	Witney Carson	"What do you need, a snack?"
4	Anna Trebunskaya	"Some people say I'm a tough teacher. And I am."
5	Brandon Armstrong	"I was born in '94..."
6	Cheryl Burke	"So the name of the song is 'Call Me Irresponsible', remind you of anybody? I think it's perfect for you!"
7	Edyta Śliwińska	"I'm wearing so much clothes that I got tangled in it!"
8	Artem Chigvintsev	"Fine! I watched 'Fifty Shades of Grey'!"
9	Corky Ballas	"Now we're doing the Mambo which originated in the '40s!"...
10	Chelsie Hightower	"South America speaks Spanish?"
11	Derek Hough	"I'm rough, I'm tough, I'm Derek Hough."
12	Charlotte Jørgensen	"Get your heel up on your back foot, or I'll kill you."
13	Allison Holker	"Team Rallison!!!"
14	Julianne Hough	"I felt like you just had to phone it in so you could get back with Meryl."
15	Alec Mazo	"Josie is deceptively unfit."
16	Alan Bersten	"It's a little shaky in here!"
17	Jenna Johnson	"ADAM! WE GOTTA QUICKSTEP!!!"
18	Ashly DelGrosso-Costa	"It needs to be equal teamwork, and I can't play a tug-of-war anymore."
19	Gleb Savchenko	"You look like a dancer when you're not moving."
20	Kym Johnson-Herjavec	"I should never have made us try that stupid lift..."
21	Maksim Chmerkovskiy	"With all due respect, this is my show, I help make it what it is."
22	Lacey Schwimmer	"STEVE!!! How am I supposed to be in love with you if you keep farting all the time?!?!"
23	Mark Ballas	“And you said habede habeduh de de. Daba da dip bah da be. That’s what you said when I asked you."
24	Lindsay Arnold	"That salsa will get ya-every time!"
25	Louis Van Amstel	"I was jealous of Mark on Season 5, but I got the girl now!"
26	Koko Iwasaki	"You're a real Jersey party boy, and I need you to be a suave English gentleman for Bond Night."
27	Keo Motsepe	"If Len gives a 10, I'm gonna run down and kiss him!"
28	Peta Murgatroyd	Her scream after finding out that she and Tommy Chong had made the semi-finals.
29	Pasha Pashkov	"You don't know who I am, but I've been praying I get you!"
30	Sasha Farber	"If you wanna dance, you know it would be my honour. My main worrybis your health."
31	Jonathan Roberts	"Let's take a commercial break."
32	Daniella Karagach	"YEAH! OH SHIT!!!"
33	Dmitry Chaplin	"I feel like I'm cheating on Jewel with another partner."
34	Sharna Burgess	"I got to do the Backstreet Boys' move next to a Backstreet Boy, and I think it's kinda awesome!"
35	Tristan MacManus	"And I got a 7. Hurt my feelins!"
36	Britt Stewart	"Daniel!"
37	Rylee Arnold	"Isn't that James Bond, not James Brown?"
38	Tony Dovolani	"I Quit."
39	Emma Slater	"We're dancing to 'Beefburgers in Paradise' by Jimmy Buffay!"

DANCING WITH THE STARS: THE PROS' MOST ICONIC QUOTES ✨

The last round was won by u/CoffeeAndCurls76 's suggestion!

A MASSIVE Thank You to the amazing u/Invader_holly who recommended I run this game! I always love hearing your ideas and we're all SO greatful that you're a part of this community! 💕🥰

VIDEO COMPILATION ON ITS WAY!!!

Hi everyone!
SO happy that I was approved for my bisalp in July! I have a few autoimmune diseases and I definitely don’t want to be pregnant, yet alone have kids. I am just having some normal pre-surgery anxiety I guess. I am scared that something will go wrong, I’ll die, bleed internally, chip a tooth, or one of the million other things that could go wrong. I’ve never really had surgery before other than extremely minor ones. When I had my wisdom teeth taken out in 2019, I had dry socket with debilitating pain for three weeks.
I’m getting it done at the hospital as opposed to the surgery center and my gyno has done this a million times before, but still. It’s just making me a bit scared. Does anyone have any tips that helped you with your anxiety? How did your healing go? I live at home so my mom will be taking care of me.
Lastly, I work in food service part time. How long should I take off of work? I could probably only afford to be without income for one pay cycle, so two weeks. I know there are restrictions with lifting for 6 weeks, but I wasn’t sure.
Thank you!

So I was inspired by the recent post of all the cleaning games out there to dig this one up and reinstall it. I had played it a couple years ago, before “Cozy Gaming” was “a thing,” and I bounced off it quickly. Maybe I should try it again now that I have more of a taste for it.
No, the game is still slow, choppy, frustrating, and not fun, at least in single player. I heard it’s better with other players but I prefer solo gaming.
The game puts you in the world of a First-Person Shooter, with levels based around research facilities, sewers, and other mainstays of the genre. But you’re there after the mayhem, with a mop and bucket to clean everything up and make it whole again.
It’s probably worth noting that VCD is almost ten years old. No doubt a lot of games have learned lessons from it and other cleaning games since then. But nonetheless, the game is riddled with decisions I don’t enjoy, and a lot of them feel deliberate. The game pokes fun at workplace safety, unions, and similar things. They make it clear your parent company hates you and doesn’t care at all about your safety and comfort. This comes across in text documents and mission briefings, but also in the gameplay.
For example, the layout of equipment. To aid in your job, you have dispensers for mop buckets, portable waste bins, lights and health kits, and each site also has a furnace for the disposal of trash and dirty mop water (I know). It would be nice if these were all in a central location, easily accessible from all the weird nooks and crannies. Or failing that, at least all bunched together so they’re close at hand.
But the sewer level I was working on had the furnace tucked away in a remote corner, and the bin dispenser across a bridge. It made trekking around a real pain, to say nothing of the bloody footprints I was leaving. And that all seems deliberate, as a joke about how faceless corporations care so little for their workers. But it’s a joke I have to live every time I fill up a bin and make the same long path. There are other ones, like how the scissor lift will occasionally catapult you or sometimes the mop bucket dispenser will instead dispense a bloody leg. Funny jokes maybe, but less so when you’re the butt of every one.
There’s a few other inconveniences. Like how you have to one-at-time every item you pick up, no matter how small. Five shotgun shells left in one location means picking one up, dropping it in the bin, then repeating four more times.
Meanwhile games have come so far since then. Hardspace Shipbreaker is my go-to for “blue collar work sim,” and while it also has a lot of “the company hates you” jokes, they’re mostly in the story and descriptions and seldom get involved in the gameplay. And it’s way more intuitive and less fiddly to play.
So I’ll leave it at that. If you are looking for a cleaning game, I’d start with some of the more recent titles that have more quality of life improvements and aren’t quite so pointedly making fun of you.

I lost about 25 pounds in 2022 as part of a deliberate diet leading up to my wedding. My weight has gone back up about 12 pounds since then though I’ve been weightlifting more often and believe a lot of this is muscle mass.
At the end of the day I’m trying to lose fat, but I believe my body probably wants to be about 20 pounds lighter than I currently am. I am really active (I currently aim for 4 cardio workouts and 3 weightlifting workouts per week) and the diet piece is harder for me but the goal at this point is just continuous sustainable lifestyle rather than short term exercise or diet.
But a couple weeks ago I did some travel and gained about 6 pounds. There’s no way I ate 6x3500 too many calories, so it occurred to me that I ended up in a proper “bulk”? I’ve never weight lifted or ate with bulking or cutting in mind, and am only vaguely familiar with the concept. But again my goal is really just to be healthier, lose fat and be more athletic, I don’t really want to bulk and cut to build muscle just because. Calorically im aiming at even or below for weight loss (though of course it doesn’t always happen)
So anyway my question is really, how might you recommend exercise (and diet I suppose) for someone like me? And what the heck happened with this trip were I’m 6 pounds heavier all of a sudden. Could this legitimately be mostly fat gain?
Currently my cardio days range from LISS, to more moderate cardio (HIIT or a jog), to actual peak cardio like playing a sport. Weightlifting is push/pull/legs, most lifts I do 3 sets of 8-10 reps and is usually max effort or nearly max for each lift. Is it as simple as abandoning this for more body weight focused exercises and high rep lower weight moves? How many reps and sets are appropriate in general?
Thanks in advance!

Sorry if this doesnt make much sense, im typing this quickly and over short periods because im not meant to have reddit.
This happened a few weeks ago and im still kind of stressed.
Some backstory on me, my mum left my dad when i was 3 and he died when i was 5, and that kinda caused me to be really anxious and i had to go to therapy because of my anxiety. Okay that was kinda off topic but i needed to say. But the main point id my mum has been raising me as a signle mother since then (I have been more raised by my grandparents than her but oh well.)
So i wanna know if im overreacting. I (13 F) had just gotten home from a sleepover, i was tired, i just wanted to get home, go to my room and have a nap. I got a lift from my bsf's parents so i was happy enough. i walk in the door, turn to my room and my mum has moved most of my stuff to one corner. So i said to her that i didnt like she did that, especially when i didnt know, and i was overwhelmed. She told methat it was supposed to make me tidy my room already (okay i know this part isnt great om my part but ive been busy with school, my social life and work so i didnt have time to, but she'd been telling me to tidy my room for a year.) but i had been tidying, just in small bits at a time and i told her that and that her doing that had messed it up. she just kept defending herself and not stopping to listen. i dont remember much after that other than it escalated to the point i was having a panic attack and couldnt breath, and all she said when i was coughing out and not breathing in was "If youre gonna be sick be sick in the toilet." and like 10 minutes later she left me home alone, mid panic attack so she could go on a walk for an hour.
Oh and she also said i had a month to completely clean my room which im still struggling at finding time to do and struggling to do.
Other than that ive kinda repressed it but what do you think? was i overreacting?

Location: Defense Line Husky, Datsot-3

POV: Motsotaer, Malgeir Federation Planetary Defense Force (Rank: Pack Member)
The shrieking whistle of incoming artillery shell was among the most terrifying noises known to living beings.
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew. Boom. Boom. Boom.
But it meant you were still alive.
Pack Member Motsotaer wondered if the poor pups in the forward trenches heard them coming as the enemy high explosive pounded into their lines.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
One of their anti-aircraft concrete bunkers took a direct hit; its roof collapsed on itself with a loud crumble.
Grass Eater artillery was voluminous, destructive, but scariest of all, it was incredibly precise. Their intelligence assets in orbit knew all, saw all. Their kill chains were short. Once they saw you, they would call it in, and the remainder of your life was measured in minutes and seconds.
There was nothing vegetarian about the efficient and bloodthirsty way the long-eared Grass Eaters fought, and the numerous intelligent predator species they’d exterminated on their way to Datsot… some of those tales gave even Motsotaer nightmares.
The defenders of Datsot had no choice. No choice but to defend their homes against the psychotic enemies pounding their lines to bits. And the ones who remained had learned the hard lessons of war, either through experience earned by blood or via the process of not-so-natural selection.
Motsotaer clutched his rifle against his chest as he laid in his own shallow hole, eyes closed. If the end was going to come for him, there was nothing else he could do but huddle in his freshly-dug grave.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The blasts continued walking across the defense lines, undoubtedly killing scores of his comrades. But he accompanied each shockwave with a sigh of relief; they let him know that he was still alive. Still breathing.
One final rumble. And then there was silence across the battlefield.
Motsotaer waited a minute before he peeked out — another lesson that smart defenders of Datsot had discovered the hard way. A couple brave medics were already on the move, their shouts left and right, pulling bodies and the groaning injured alike out of the rubble aftermath of the shelling.
With a grunt, he pulled himself out of his hole, rushing towards the neighboring anti-air bunker. The concrete roof had collapsed, but he could still hear cries from the dark. He squeezed through the cluttered entrance.
It was a mess on the inside. The lights were all gone. Scattered sandbags. It smelled like blood and death, and he pushed aside the still body of a Head Pack Leader he only knew of, only to find the corpse of yet another Pack Member, her limbs sprawled in an unnatural position.
“Anyone still alive in here?” he asked in the dark as his eyes adjusted. “Hello?”
There were a series of loud coughs. “I’m here. I’m here.”
“Pack Leader Nidvid!” he shouted as he recognized the familiar shrill voice. “Keep talking! Where are you?”
“Here. I’m here. Help me up.”
As she continued to cough, he had the sense to fish a flashlight out of his pocket, fumbling around until he found the on button. As the light activated, he could see Nidvid half-buried in the dirt, her lower limbs trapped beneath some sand from the broken sandbags.
“Pack Leader!” He got onto his front paws and started digging. “Are you injured?”
“I don’t think so,” she shook her head in the dim lighting as she experimentally wriggled her legs. “Here, I think I’m loose. Help me up.”
Motsotaer grasped her under her arms, and with a heavy grunt, pulled her out of the dirt.
“Whew,” she said, checking her body again for wounds. Nidvid looked around at the other bodies splayed in the bunker. “Oh no… Head Pack Leader…”
“That was a close one. I can’t believe you lived through that!”
“Yeah, me neither… Wait a second,” Nidvid said as she began rummaging through a pile of rubble near the Head Pack Leader’s body. “The radio…”
“What are you looking for?” he asked as he aimed his flashlight towards where she was looking.
“Oh no, no, no…” her voice trailed off as she picked up the device she’d been looking for. “Our hardline communicator…” It was clearly broken from the strike, its shell perforated with a hundred holes and its connection to the landline severed. In disgust, Nidvid threw it back to the ground.
“What uh— what did you need that for?” Motsotaer asked. “Were we supposed to tell them we were being attacked?”
“No… It was— before the strike, we got a high priority order.”
“A high priority order?”
Nidvid recalled, “There’s a special platoon in our salient… We were supposed to get an important message to them!”
“Special platoon?” Motsotaer asked. “Are you okay, Nidvid?”
“Yes, yes,” the Pack leader replied, visibly distraught. “They only had a physical line to us because they’re supposed to be keeping in the dark. Emissions control or something like that so they can activate the flying machine swarm in time. They said this was life and death and our whole defense line hinges on it!”
“Emissions control? Flying machines? Pack Leader, we should get you to a medic,” he said skeptically.
“No! Motsotaer, this is important. We need to get the message to them now. They’re only a couple kilometers south from our position. If we run over to their position now, it might not yet be—”
He looked up at her face in alarm. “Run to another position? Outside the trench line?”
“Yes! We have to go!” she said, as she peeked out of the concrete bunker towards the barren zone ahead of the trenches. “Now! Before they start their offensive.”
Motsotaer began to protest, “But that’s no creature’s land. If we get spotted by their troops, we’ll be hunted down by the Grass Eaters ships in orbit…”
She was insistent, “Pack Member Motsotaer, get it together. We still have a job to do. Are you with me or are you going to sit here and die like a coward to the long-ears?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, straightening up. Death or not, he was no coward. “I mean… I’m with you.”
“Good. Then let’s go.”
With a grunt, she leapt out of the trenches and jogged south, keeping to the defensive side of it for the modicum of cover it provided, and Motsotaer quickly followed. As they sprinted away from the tattered defenses, they ran into a thick tree line that hopefully provided them with some concealment from the Grass Eater ships above.
After a couple more minutes of running in the forest, Motsotaer started to tire and pant. He weighed his burning lung and how embarrassed he’d be if he complained. Luckily for his ego, Nidvid gestured for them to stop after another minute and tossed him her canteen. “Take a break before we get going.”
He chugged as much water as he could in a single swig, and returned the canteen to Nidvid. He gasped out, “How much further, Pack Leader?”
“About one more kilometer south,” she said, aiming her snout up at the treetops. “I recognize the smell of this area.”
“What’s this even about? The message… what was it?”
Nidvid exercised her limbs. “That Grass Eater artillery strike… it was to prepare for their offensive on our lines. They’ve gathered an armored division on the other side of that,” she pointed out into the barren fields beyond the trees. “We have an hour at most before they roll over us.”
“An armored division?!” Motsotaer squeaked. The enemy’s Longclaws — their armored vehicles — were legendary. They could kill from kilometers away. And their thick shells protected them against all but the most powerful artillery in the Federation’s arsenal. He’d never seen one of them personally. If he had, he suspected he wouldn’t be alive to tell anyone about it. “What can we do against a Grass Eater armored division?”
“That’s why we have to get to the special platoon,” Nidvid replied. She pointed in the southern direction, “You ready? Let’s go.”
They galloped for a few more minutes. Motsotaer’s limbs tired and his breaths shallowed as his lung burnt. As he was contemplating whether to ask for another break, Nidvid pointed at a shape in the distance. “There, that’s their position!”
He squinted at it. It was not easy to see, but buried in the tree line was what looked like a bunch of out-of-place branches and leaves over a small vehicle. Buoyed by the anticipation of the end of the marathon, he managed to keep up with Nidvid’s pace.
As they approached, there was a loud shout.
“Hi-yah! Stop!”
They halted their steps and looked for the source of the voice.
“Not one more paw step, deserter! This is a restricted area! Turn around or you’ll be shot!”
Motsotaer looked up at the voice hidden up in the branches. After a moment, with some help from his nose, he found the yeller. It was a short, stout middle-aged male with strange-looking green and brown paint smeared all over his fur and face. He had a rifle aimed squarely at the duo.
“Don’t shoot!” Nidvid yelled back. “We’re runners. We’ve got an important message! For your platoon commander.”
The male in the tree looked suspiciously at them as he leapt down. He lowered his rifle, but didn’t seem any less on guard. “A message?”
“Yes, we’ve got an urgent message for Special Platoon Commander Graunsa. Take us to him right now!”
He sized the two of them up. After a moment, he said slowly, “I am Graunsa. Why are you here, and what is the message?”
Nidvid recovered some of her breath and explained, “The Grass Eaters hit us hard with an artillery strike. Our Head Pack Leader is dead. Our landline is gone. We ran all the way over from our lines north of you.”
Graunsa nodded and gestured for her to continue.
“The Grass Eater armored offensive is about to start. They’re moving into position and ready to go, and there’s a special message embedded—”
“Wait a second,” Graunsa interrupted. “Give me the special message exactly, without omission or your own interpretations.”
“Yes, Platoon Commander,” Nidvid nodded. “The message is: bunny water carriers are in play, red-five-zero-eight; come out of the dark and introduce yourself. Authorization is three-three-greyhound.”
Graunsa looked thoughtful for a moment as he pondered it.
“What does the message mean?” Motsotaer whispered at Nidvid.
“I have no idea,” she shrugged, whispering back. “The Head Pack Leader just told me to memorize it.”
The platoon commander seemed to have made up his mind. “Alright, that seems legitimate. Thanks for the message.” He turned around to leave.
Motsotaer shouted behind him, “Wait, what are we supposed to do now?”
Graunsa turned around. “I don’t know. I’m not your commanding officer.” He paused for a moment. “I wouldn’t recommend going back to your lines though. Might not be there when you get back…”
“What?!”
“You can’t just leave us! Where else are we supposed to go?” Nidvid asked.
Graunsa seemed to contemplate the question for a few heartbeats and sighed, “You said you’re from the position up north?”
“Yup,” they replied in unison.
“And you’re a spotter, Pack Member?” he asked, looking at the rank and position patch on Motsotaer’s chest.
“Yes.”
Graunsa relented. “Fine. We might find a use for you. Get into the bunker… before the Grass Eaters in orbit see us dawdling out here.”
“What? Where?”
The officer pointed at a patch of dark green leaves on the forest floor. As they approached it, he grasped a latch and lifted it to reveal a ladder. The three of them descended into the darkness and Graunsa secured it behind them. With a quiet swoosh, a lamp mounted on the wall lit up to reveal a small hallway leading to a heavy-looking door.
Graunsa knocked on it twice. He turned around and looked at Motsotaer and Nidvid. “What you’re about to see in here is of the highest secrecy level of the Malgeir Federation. If you tell anyone what you see in here, you will be executed for treason. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Platoon Commander.”
“Swear it, on your honor.”
“We swear,” they replied in unison, their voices infused with growing excitement.
“Good enough for me.”
The heavy steel door swung open, showing a room that was vastly different from what its primitive exterior suggested. It resembled a command center far more than a field base, and Motsotaer felt a blast of cold air conditioning in his face as he passed the door threshold.
At the front, a main screen showed a map of the defensive lines in the sector. Facing it, two rows of sleek, new computer screens lit up the dark. Their operators worked busily at their controls, and only a couple faces looked their way in mild interest as they entered.
“What is this—” Motsotaer started to ask. Nidvid grasped his shoulder and shushed him.
Graunsa cleared his throat. Several faces looked towards him in anticipation. “Platoon, we just got the message. Activate the FTL handshake and authenticate us in the network.”
“Yes, sir.” A young-looking communication officer near the front operated a few controls on her console. “I’ve got the advisors on the line.”
Motsotaer read his nametag: Gassin. She was a Gamma Leader, much higher ranked than he, but she looked not a day over twenty. He noted that many of the people in the room sported high-ranking insignias despite their apparent youth.
“On screen,” Graunsa ordered.
A communication window appeared on the main screen, streaming video of someone in a jet-black EVA suit.
Motsotaer stiffened. It was obvious that the subject was alien; at around 1.7 or 1.8 meters, it was far too tall for being a Malgeir. Too small for a Granti. And from the side profile of the suit, it didn’t bulge nearly enough for the tails that the Malgeir’s Schpriss neighbors were known for. A strange new species of aliens.
From the blackened visor, it was obvious that whoever that was… it was the reason for all this tight secrecy.
“Special Platoon Commander Graunsa,” it transmitted in perfect Malgeirish. The alien was either a trained-from-birth Federation Channel One newscaster with a perfectly inoffensive accent, or its translator was far better than anything the Malgeir themselves had invented. “This call is encrypted, but the enemy Znosians in orbit are trying to find your location from the signals, so we’ll have to make it as quick as we can. Have your defensive lines completed your preparations?”
Graunsa stepped up to address the screen directly, “Yes, advisor. Our fire support platoon is ready for tasking.”
“Excellent. Transmitting the first batch of targets in your sector now.”
A series of symbols scrolled onto the screen, showing a number of coordinates.
“We’re getting the enemy positions now,” Gassin exclaimed.
Graunsa turned to her and nodded his appreciation, “Sixteen armored targets. Weapons free.”
“Yes, sir. Programming the sequence.”
A camera on the main screen activated, remotely showing a small hole with some machinery in it dug a few hundred meters away just at the edge of the tree line.
“Launching flying machine swarm!”
As Motsotaer watched, a thicket of metal erupted from the hole in a blur, roaring into the sky.
The main screen was replaced by a four-by-four of windows of black and white images. It took him a couple seconds to realize that he was looking at the battlefield from above. The Malgeir had rotary wing, airplanes, and jet — some were even armed, but they were usually much bigger. And their air assets had been grounded since the early days of the battle for Datsot when the enemy took the orbits.
Not these tiny devices though.
He focused on one of the sixteen windows.
The ground sped past below the camera’s vision, tree line after tree line, the flying machine seemed to know where it was going by itself: Motsotaer looked at the other occupants in the room. None of them seemed to be directly controlling it.
He stiffened.
Is this controlled by a thinking machine?
“We’re getting in range of the target coordinates, Platoon Commander,” Gassin updated the room a few minutes later.
As if on cue, the flying machines flew higher, and the trees on the ground grew smaller, as if further away. Until…
“Targets identified!” Gassin reported with excitement in her voice.
As an infantry spotter, Motsotaer had been trained — barely — to identify enemy armored vehicles. As in, he’d been given a cheatsheet containing the silhouettes of the different types of vehicles the enemy drove. But even he couldn’t tell at this distance what the white-hot smudges on the screen were.
The machine had no such issues though.
Several red boxes materialized on the screen, clearly marking several enemy vehicles in the thermal imagery and adorning them with detailed information.
The one Motsotaer was watching said:
Hostile vehicle, Longclaw MK4 (top armor: ~25mm), 4.2 km.
No hostile EW detected.
Without additional prompting, the flying machines raced in towards their targets, each recognizing a different one as its final destination. Afraid to blink, Motsotaer stared intently at one of the video streams.
A new line of text appeared at the top of the screen:
ETA 20 seconds.
It counted down the seconds, number by number.
The enemy Longclaw got larger and larger until… the screen went black, replaced by static. As he looked around, the other windows were similarly replaced with static one-by-one.
Motsotaer frowned, wondering where the videos had gone.
Then, it hit him. The flying machines were on one-way trips.
The sixteen windows disappeared, and another one appeared, showing the enemy assembly area from a much higher perspective. And instead of the vehicles he expected, he counted sixteen burning wrecks, the black smoke from their flames reaching up into the sky in columns.
“Targets destroyed, Commander,” Gassin said. Several of the officers in the room looked at each other excitedly, but their celebration was muted.
Graunsa nodded. “Call our advisors again.”
The alien appeared on the screen again. “Excellent work, Platoon Commander. We’re assessing the lines and getting the second batch of targets to you now.”
“Understood.”
As the new target coordinates scrolled onto the main screen, Gassin didn’t need additional prompting, “Launching flying machines!”
Another sixteen of them flashed out from the pre-dug position. Another sixteen windows appeared on the screen, replacing the odd-looking aliens’ video.
“Wait a minute,” the aliens’ voice cut into the quiet hum of the control room’s operation. “Switch back to the high-altitude drone. Something’s happening.”
The main screen’s image was replaced by the previous camera looking down at enemy lines. There was a flurry of activity in the enemy base area. Numerous dots representing the ground troops moved to-and-fro. And worryingly, the red squares that surrounded enemy armor began appearing en masse as enemy Longclaws drove out of their covered positions into the open.
Dozens of them.
Then, hundreds. And more appeared every second.
“What’s going on?” Graunsa asked, his voice reflecting Motsotaer’s worry.
The alien took a minute to get back to him, its black helmeted face filling up the screen again. “They’re attacking. They don’t know what hit them in the last strike. But they must have realized that they’re not safe in their assembly area, and they’re doing the only thing they can… We estimate they’ll get to your first lines in thirty minutes.”
“Can we stop them?” Graunsa asked. “We can—”
The alien looked directly into the video. “Not sixteen drones at a time. And if you launch the whole swarm at once, it’ll reflect enough signal for them to sniff out where you are with their counter-battery radars and take you out from orbit.”
Graunsa swallowed. “That’s— that’s— The machines can fly themselves without us, right?”
The alien didn’t say anything for a few heartbeats. “Theoretically, yes. But even if you evacuate your position now, your people won’t get out of range from the orbital strike they’ll call in.”
“I understand. Feed us the enemy targets.”
“Delta Leader, we can’t ask you to—”
“I said, feed us the enemy targets,” Graunsa insisted.
Quietly, hundreds of coordinate pairs filed onto the main screen. Graunsa looked at the faces of the young officers under his command. Dozens of them. He turned around to look at his two guests. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s the right choice,” Nidvid replied, shrugging.
Motsotaer nodded at him.
“I know,” Graunsa said, turning back to the main screen. “Just doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Sir, we’re ready to launch,” Gassin reported.
“Weapons free. Release everything.”
“Yes, sir.”
The ground shook and rumbled, hundreds of flying machines leaving their canisters for the sky. They were close enough to hear the outgoing buzzing as the munitions launched. This time, more and more windows filled up the screen with the visuals of the outgoing flying machines — hundreds of them, and Motsotaer was surprised that the computers could even handle it all.
The visage of the alien returned to their screen. It said calmly, “Enemy orbital launch spotted. Multiple launches. High yield. Missiles incoming to your location, ETA twelve minutes.”
“Understood, advisor.”
POV: Slurskoch, Znosian Dominion Marines (Rank: Five Whiskers)
“Scramble! Scramble! Scramble!”
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.
“What’s going on?” Longclaw Commander Slurskoch sat up in his turret cupola as the sirens rang loud through the hull.
“We’re under artillery attack!” his Controller yelled back at him through the roaring startup sequence of the turbine anti-grav engines. “The Lesser Predators… they’ve got some kind of new weapon! Took out a whole battalion’s worth of Longclaws in the 194!”
“But we’re not ready!” his Driver complained. “Our artillery is supposed to pound them for another hour before we—”
Slurskoch shook his head as he checked the friendly force tracker on his screen. “Doesn’t matter! If they’ve got some new weapon, we can’t sit still while we get pounded to bits by whatever they have. We gotta get out there. Hurry it up!”
It took them another two minutes to fully warm up the engines, and with a roar, the Longclaw burst out of its camouflaged emplacement, kicking up a curtain of dirt in front of it.
“Let’s go! Go! Go!” Slurskoch yelled as his lagging Longclaw joined the armored formation already on the move.
The Controller spoke with one of her ears in the radio, “Their artillery just launched… something at us. We’ve pinpointed their location, and orbital support is on its way.”
His Gunner whooped twice, and Slurskoch nodded silently in agreement. That’d flatten those carnivorous abominations where they stood. He drew a few symbols and circles on the digital battlemap as the Longclaws drove toward the enemy lines. “Gunner, watch those potential trench lines in front of us,” he instructed. “Their anti-armor may not look scary on paper, but their infantry can always get a lucky hit in.”
Slurskoch was taught in training that it was better to overestimate the enemy than underestimate them. Luckily, the predators usually fell below expectations, which was why the Dominion controlled the orbits of Datsot now and not them.
His Controller frowned at something in her radio, “They’re saying something about the enemy artillery… The engineers at the base assessed the strike aftermath. There’s something strange in the rubble. The attack was more precise than anything we’d ever seen.”
“What does that mean?” Slurskoch asked in confusion.
“The sensor officer in charge of the assembly area has taken full responsibility. They didn’t see the incoming at all. Higher ups are speculating that the Lesser Predators have a new weapon in their arsenal.”
“The predators made new weapons?” Slurskoch snorted. “Useful ones? That’ll be a first. Well, whatever it is, maybe our Design Bureau will get a good look at it when we finally cleanse this planet of their filth. Make our next battle a little easier when we have to take their home planet.”
His Gunner agreed, “And then, the Prophecy shall be fulfilled.”
A few kilometers into the charge across the open, the Gunner remarked with one eye on her targeting computer, “Looks like even the local winged predators know that there’s about to be a slaughter here.”
The Driver, in his open hatch, looked up at the cloud of them flying over the enemy lines. “Looks like it. A nice juicy feast for them in the coming battle. The irony of the barbaric carnivores being eaten by themselves.”
A few thousand years ago, winged predators would have curdled the blood of any natural-born Znosian. On the original plains of Znos, they were one of the most dangerous threats a lone Znosian faced. Now, that fear had been completely bred out of the gene pool, replaced with contempt for predatory primitivism, the courage to face them in battle, and the drive to exterminate them all.
Curious, Slurskoch stared up into the cloud of winged predators with his Longclaw commander optics. He frowned.
One of them shimmered.
Shimmered.
He zoomed in.
Then, he saw a metallic glint. His whiskers tightened.
“That’s— those aren’t winged predators,” he barely made out in shock. “Incoming!”
“Huh?” his Driver asked, craning his head up to look at the dark shapes in the distance.
“Get inside! Secure the hatch!” Slurskoch shouted at him.
His Driver was not very good at thinking on his own, but he had been bred to follow direct orders without question. He ducked into his seat, quickly securing the hatch above him close with trained claws.
He barely secured the Longclaw as other commanders began yelling out similar instructions on their radios.
“Incoming!” his Controller advised, about ten seconds later than necessary. “Enemy… artillery?!”
“Gunner!” Slurskoch gestured in the general direction of the sky.
“I can’t get a shot on them. They’re too high up!” she screamed back at him.
A trio of air defense vehicles next to him opened up with their six barrels towards the sky, lines of bright tracers stabbing out at the dark swarm. He saw one of the… flying machines hit and fall out of the sky. Then another.
It wasn’t enough.
As Slurskoch’s optics tracked the incoming, he saw them dive. They were fast, and they flew erratic patterns, almost organically, like actual winged beasts. If he hadn’t had that specific fear bred out of his bloodline hundreds of years ago, he would have been frozen in shock. Instead, he yelled out, “Brace! Brace!”
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The world exploded around his Longclaw.
Through his friendly force tracker, Slurskoch watched an entire battalion disappear off the map on his right flank, and two Longclaws in his line of sight brewed up in massive fireballs, throwing their turrets into the sky as their plasma ammunition detonated. One of the anti-air vehicles brewed up next to his, splattering its parts against his hull.
His Driver drove for all he was worth, ducking and weaving in the open field. So did the other Longclaws. Some deployed curtains of smoke in front of them in desperation.
None of it seemed to help.
The shockwaves hit his Longclaw in quick succession, knocking him around the armored cabin and rattling his teeth.
Boom. Boom.
More Longclaws exploded. Many more. They were disappearing off his screen faster than the software could update the signals. He closed his eyes waiting for the end.
It didn’t come.
It was hard for Slurskoch to tell when the last Longclaw near them was hit. His hearing organs must have been damaged some time during the attack. His auditory senses ringed as they returned to normal, recovering when his Controller shook him with a paw on his shoulder. “—Five Whiskers! Five Whiskers!”
“What is it?” he snapped, keeping the quivering out of his voice.
“We’re alone in our company, and I can’t contact the six whiskers! And I’ve been trying to reach battalion without success!”
“Try the regiment commander!” he yelled out against the noise of the anti-grav engine.
“Can’t reach them either!”
“What about division headquarters?!”
“I think division’s gone, sir!”
“What?!”
“Nobody there has been responding. All I’ve got is a seven whiskers in the reserve infantry division behind us! They’re saying they see black smoke in the direction of our division field command!”
“What in the Prophecy? How is that possible?!”
“What do we do, Five Whiskers?”
Slurskoch had been trained for a wide variety of combat scenarios and contingencies, including losing his immediate superiors, losing most of his unit, and losing his communication link to command. But he’d never been trained for all of those combined at once. That was just not something predators were supposed to be able to do to you.
He fell back to the next best thing.
“What’s the combat computer say?” he asked.
His Controller operated the controls on her console, and after half a minute of querying, she replied, reading off the instructions, “Absent orders, continue the attack. Maybe we can push through.”
“What? Did it take our losses into account?” he protested as he checked the battlemap. Of the nearly five hundred Longclaws that had pushed out of the assembly area, only a quarter remained. At most. Some of the signals on the map were flagging themselves as mobility or mission killed.
She shrugged, “It did. That’s what it says.”
He squinted at her screen. That was indeed what it said.
Slurskoch thought for a moment, sighed, and bowed in prayer, “Our lives were forfeited the day we left our hatchling pools.”
The other crew members all did the same, lowering their heads to mutter the familiar mantra.
That ritual out of the way, he drew up to his full height of 1 meter and mustered all the confidence he could into his voice, “Attack! Attack! Attack!”
POV: Graunsa, Malgeir Federation Planetary Defense Force (Rank: Delta Leader)
The command center watched glumly as the hundred or so surviving Grass Eater Longclaws emerged from the wrecks of their comrades and slowly resumed their charge across the open toward the defense lines.
The flying machines had gotten a lot of them. Quite a few disabled too. And they were disorganized from the loss of their command. Yet they still charged. Diminished as their numbers were, they rolled towards the battered defensive lines with psychotic determination.
We’ve failed.
Graunsa sat down heavily into his chair. He brought up his communication console, connecting it to the advisor network.
The alien appeared on the screen, and though he couldn’t see its face, he could hear the sympathy in its translated voice, “You’ve done all you can, Special Platoon Commander.”
“It wasn’t enough,” he said, shaking his ears sadly. “They’re going to break through our line. Our infantry can’t stop them.”
It tilted its head. “I wouldn’t count them out completely, Delta Leader. They might. They might not. But your next defensive line certainly will hold them. The city behind you will be held.”
“Tracking enemy orbit-to-ground. ETA three minutes,” Gassin reported quietly from next to him.
Graunsa sighed. He looked at the alien, “I think I understand your people now, advisor.”
“You… do?”
“Yeah, at first, when we were picked for this mission, I wondered why your people were doing this.”
“Doing this?” the alien asked, seeming confused.
“Helping us. The weapons. The equipment. The training. The targeting. It was all in secret, but you didn’t have to do it. The other species around us didn’t do it. The Schpriss…” Graunsa snorted, “The long-tails can’t even find it in their spines to send us field rations. I thought your species… your people were just generous. Or perhaps you simply enjoyed the craft of war, being so adept at it.”
“Are we… not?”
“Those reasons may be part of it,” he conceded. “But more importantly, I think your people understand one thing the other species don’t… that we might stop the enemy here. Or we might not.”
“We didn’t set you up to fail, if that’s what you think—”
“But the next defensive line certainly will hold them,” Graunsa said, staring the alien in the eye. “You will hold them. Isn’t that right?”
It sighed. “I would be lying if that wasn’t part of the strategic equation. Our star systems are indeed next in line — sometime in the next decade or two, probably — if these bloodthirsty Buns conquered your Federation. That harsh astropolitical realism. But there’s something else too.”
“Is there?”
“Yes,” it nodded its head firmly in a familiar manner. “Yes, there is. We aren’t a particularly long-sighted species, Graunsa. We can plan, yes, but wars are fought by true believers. People don’t sign up to put their lives on the line for a hypothetical, potential invasion of our Republic twenty years in the future. They— we signed up for this because we truly believe what’s happening to your people… it shouldn’t happen to anyone, ever.”
Graunsa looked at the helmeted head for a while, then nodded. “I believe you, advisor.”
“I’m sorry this didn’t pan out, Graunsa. If I could, I’d be down there with you. We’d have made them pay for this.”
Graunsa smiled. “I believe you about that too. Thank you, advisor, whatever your name is.”
“You may call me Kara,” it said simply. A deft snap of its paws — he hadn’t noticed how soft its claws were before — and it released a latch on its helmet with a hiss. Lifting it from its head, it revealed a soft, smooth face without much fur except a bundle of long, brown strands on its scalp tied up in a neat spherical shape. Its hazel forward-facing eyes stared at him with the empathy that only other predators were capable of, filling him with mild relief. “Don’t tell anyone though,” it joked lightly, mirroring his smile back at him.
You’re not as ugly as I thought you’d be. Not nearly.
Graunsa’s grin widened at the thought. He put it out of his mind. “Ah. One last thing, advisor— Kara.”
“Yes?”
His mind drifted to his cubs at home. Perhaps they were still alive. He chose to believe that. “Our people’s clans and packs…”
“We’ll let them know,” she interrupted him softly. “And when the information quarantine is lifted, we’ll let your clans and packs know what you did here — everything.”
“Good. Thank you.”
Gassin sat down next to him, “Delta Leader, enemy missiles incoming. ETA thirty seconds, they’re entering—” She stopped her report and stared at the unmasked alien on his screen with equal parts wonder and sadness.
“Take a closer look, Gassin,” he ordered softly. “That… that is who will avenge us.”
On screen, the alien put its gloved paw up to its temple, forming a stiff triangle with its arm in a recognizable salute. “It was an honor, Graunsa.”
Graunsa returned it crisply, letting a primitive fire shine through his face. “Happy hunting, Kara.”

Location: Atlas Naval Command, Luna

POV: “Kara”, Terran Reconnaissance Office
Kara watched solemnly as the green signal blinked off the battlemap. She closed her eyes for a moment in silent prayer for the fallen.
Beep. Beep.
Another light on her console blinked urgently for her attention. Four thousand kilometers from the previous one. The war raged on — day and night — across four continents on the besieged planet. Fifty light years from the Republic, its defenders’ sweat, tears, and blood lined the fields and valleys of the beautiful blue sphere not so different from her own. Tens of millions of them: many who she knew would not see the end of this war.
They didn’t all know it, and some might not have cared, but fifty light years away, someone recorded their names, and someone felt a pang of loss for their sacrifice. In the cold, dark forest of the galaxy, somebody heard their trees fall.
Kara collected her thoughts, adjusted the bun in her hair, and lowered the tinted EVA helmet over her face once more.
She cleared her throat as she glanced at the screen and activated the microphone in her helmet, “Special Platoon Commander Treiriu. This call is encrypted, but the enemy Znosians in orbit are trying to find your location from the signals, so we’ll have to make it as quick as we can. Have your defensive lines completed your preparations?”

Meta

Thanks for reading my story! This is a standalone chapter in my Grass Eaters story, meant to be enjoyable all on its own. If you're interested in more of my writing, please do subscribe to the update waffle bot or check out the rest of the universe in Grass Eaters.
(Grass Eaters posts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We are closing in on the end of Book 1.)

!Possible spoilers!
Alright so, I was pretty disappointed in the journal scene at least the passage that Penelope read. I don't know if anyone feels the same. But in the books it's such a beautifully written (poetic) part. Yet in the series I feel as though they used Colin's 'fake' flirty personality in his journals... I understand they turned it into Paris and had to shorten it. I just feel that it could be a simple fix to write it even a little better.
So since I enjoy writing a bit myself, I tried to rewrite the journal part from the series to make it more like the books yet still accurate (hopefully) (i'm kinda scared to share this but hey, I hope y'all like it, or can at least agree with me on this thought <3)
As I’m walking along the Seine, with all its charming cafes, a warm summer breeze and cloudless sky. I cannot help but to be reminded about the aquamarine water in Greece, that is unimaginable in England or here in Paris. Bright blue with the glint of the sun, deep cobalt when the clouds take the sky. And it’s warmth, like a bath that was heated perhaps a half an hour earlier. It reminds me of Aphrodite as in Botticelli’s painting, rising from the ocean, perfectly balances on a giant shell, her long titian hair streaming around her. In the city of love would there not be someone, someone to fill the loneliness. I will not lie and say there are not beautiful women in Paris, however none could fill my emptiness, like Psyche does Eros’. At night, when the city is still and the sky brightens with stars, I am reminded that this is not my home, that I was born to live my life elsewhere. It brings longing to find the missing piece of my soul, the thing that brings me joy, gives me warmth, like the warm breeze along the Seine and the Sun and blue water in Greece.
-A few parts are directly taken out of the book (Romancing mr. Bridgerton pages 81-82) -A few parts are inspired by the part of the series (S3 ep. 2 19:15) -Psyche and Eros are mentioned later on and connects with Aphrodite of course -The missing piece of my soul, the thing that brings me joy, gives my warmth... etc. is inspired by Colin's apology in the series (S3 ep. 1 48:41) when he tells Penelope he seeks her out because she will lift his spirits, and she warm etc. (she's his missing piece, even though he doesn't know)

Does anyone have any good methods to farm specific random dungeons? I’m on console so no save guardian, and I have a high speed build on. Just getting tired of rerolling yaesha after running through it entirely and checking every side dungeon. I’ve been doing all three world variants for several hours and checking every side dungeon to no avail. Haven’t even had a lament pop up once surprisingly, although luckily I don’t need it.
To clarify, is there a specific yaesha variant (ravager, destroyer, lydusa) where it’s actually faster or easier to reach and check all the side dungeons available and/or what are the best methods you guys use to search for dungeons?
With Nerud it’s really easy because I can tell from halfway across the map whatever the dungeons are for the most part so it saves tons of time entering all of them using the lifts, I’m wondering as well if there’s any visual signs for the dungeon variants with the entrances that I’m not picking up the pattern on visually. Can’t find any videos that go over these though.
Even Losomn you can tell if you’re going to enter a burning dungeon variant because of the entrance covered with flames. Sorry this is long.

Instead of selling fruits and vegetables from a shelf, Walmart should bring trees into the building and allow customers to pick their own fruits and vegetables right from the tree.
Walmart could supply ladders up to a certain height and then customers can bring their own ladders, or they can pay to rent one of those scissor lifts that they can have delivered for their arrival to the store.
This business model would help farmers, Walmart and the heavy machinery businesses at the same time.
Customers can make appointments to pick fruit in store and they can have an associate assigned to every tree so that it all stays organized.
I am thinking about pitching this idea to the store manager at my local Walmart, so please don’t steal the idea before I get to share it with the company.
I just want to see what people think and if you would like to see this idea in your Walmart.

Hey. I need some general insight/thoughts and maybe some advice too about an interesting situation that I’m trying to process.
I went through a really hard and prolonged time years ago and in that time period I lost many of my (close) friends and acquaintances. If I’m being honest, it was traumatic for me because it involved so many friends being lost and created substantial self esteem/abandonment/trust issues. My issues involved a lot of mental health problems and some substance use. Recently, my life has started to really do a 180 and some of these friends have come back into my life, although with caution on their part (justifiable honestly) but what’s more surprising is the caution I’m now seeing on my part too.
For yearsssss I would text these friends to hang out. They would either bail on lunches at the last minute, straight up not respond, make excuses for their busyness and how they’d get back to me in xyz time (and didn’t of course), or in the case of a few just straight up told me they couldn’t be my friend (actually the best version). With the ones who led me on or bailed, I did take the hint but I hoped after enough tries between years they’d finally want to hang out. Eventually I gave up and just didn’t ask them to hang out again which was probably around 3 years ago. But then my life got better unrelated to them. My job got good. I started traveling. I looked great and lost weight etc. it was a 180. Some of these people started slowly liking my social media posts again but did not ask me to hang out. Over time I saw 2-3 and it was strange but we talked. We brought up what happened vaguely and shortly and it made it less awkward.
The one that I’m struggling with is the recent one. Katie (let’s call her) sometimes throws like various art or music type events and I had replied to a post of a painting art and said like “ooo looks amazing” and she said “you should come!” I was shocked. Long story short, I did. I showed up last minute (alone) trying not to panic in my car bc it had been like 8 years? it was awkward, the was shocked, but it was civil and nice. After that, I asked her to lunch and she bailed day before bc she was sick so we rescheduled and then I bailed bc I was sick! I went to a second one of her events and met some new people there. One of the people was a new close friend of hers (let’s call her Laura) I hadn’t met before. Long story short; the world is small and after hanging out with random Laura at this event I realized Laura’s BFF was a girl I was becoming close with from AA and saw on a regular basis. Now suddenly the most random small world triangle square was formed. My old friend (Katie), Laura, my new friend, and I. After the event I didn’t text Katie to try for lunch bc it felt desperate and it was better to leave it and proceed slowly.
Laura ended up introducing my friend Katie to this new girl I was becoming friends with weeks later, and during this hangout someone proposed we all 4 hangout. Katie apparently told them that she needed to get dinner with me 1:1 first as she hadn’t in forever.
So she texted me asking me for dinner. I was shocked. Fast forward - we go to dinner. I say super friendly like “omg it’s been forever! I literally don’t remember the last time we hung out.” And she got weird and looked away and quickly said “well we’re doing it now!” That felt weird, like guilt almost. In time I realized the 4 hung out and that’s why we were having dinner. It was fine but the dark past (with me) or why we drifted apart never got brought up except random comments like “you’re wild” when I brought up that I went to Coachella for a day. Until she’d hear me say “no it was fun but I don’t need to go again.” She looked confused. Maybe she had changed, but I had changed a lot more is what I realized and I think she started to realize too. It felt a bit fake, maybe the elephant in the room. Or maybe more like polite.
When I left I was confused. All I had wanted for like 6 years was to gain back my old friends but there was something odd about it. I went a 3rd event yesterday and the 4 of us were then there + soooo many old acquaintances I knew. When I left she gave me a hug and said “thank you for coming! I love you!” But in a general way how girls talk. Maybe she was cautious but I hadn’t expected I would be too, if not more. She’s not a bad girl but it’s weird what I’m experiencing.
Im aware that my downfall was and is just jarring for these friends who had always seen me so put together. There’s a reason they say like don’t hang out with people in dark places bc they can drag you down. I also understand that most people want to have friends that lift them up and that they can have a good/fun time when they get together. When I think of these things with that sense of radical acceptance and reality then I don’t necessarily blame them for dropping me. I can have compassion for that.
But it makes me think about the other old friends I still wish to connect with and haven’t yet. Do they feel guilt? And why does this feels so weird? Thoughts overall?

Walking my dog on a nice warm day.
Intermittently texting my friend about something. I pass by a man in a fluorescent yellow-green construction style jacket. He’s got a clipboard.
And a camo print ski mask.
It takes me a few more steps to realize that it’s highly unusual he’s wearing a ski mask. And in fact every inch of him is covered up vs me in flip flops and a T shirt.
I pretend to be busy on my phone and I spy him grabbing a box and some plastic-bagged item (yes, a la Amazon) from the row of townhomes, put them in his trunk (just a regular sedan).
I take a peek at his clipboard- it’s a blank sheet…
At this point I’m stopped at a mini park with benches 20-30 steps away so that it’s not obvious that I’ve stopped to observe him. I’m continuously pretending to be preoccupied with my phone by typing gibberish into the notes app. I wanted to catch a video of him just in case, but I was way too scared to lift/tilt my phone just-so to get identifiable info (eg. his license plate).
After he drives away I go to the apartment building that the townhouses are managed by to tell the guard. The guard is not present at the time so a female resident with an infant and an older looking fellow lets me in through the front door. They ask me why I need to talk to the guard. I tell them I saw something suspicious by the townhouses and described what I saw. I said maybe the guard would like to know this, in case they have cameras around there or at the least to inform the residents of those houses why their packages may be missing.
Turns out the old timer works in the building in some capacity and is real enthusiastic in informing me and the other lady that “they’re called porch pirates”. The other lady’s mind is blown by this, she looks at him like he’s a prophet and asks follow up questions. He doesn’t even ask specifically where I saw this happen before he exclaims that “they’ll never catch them, it’s pointless to tell anybody about it.”
I tell him I and my neighbors had multiple packages going missing when I lived in the very very big city just south of our county and even been broken into and we would all have appreciated people letting us know if it were likely a theft to at least avoid wasting time looking for them (or to encourage LL to up security eg. Cameras). Inform him I’m fine with waiting for the guard.
He goes, “look if you really want to, go ahead, but it’s a waste of time” and adds “That’s what they do for a living”. Me genuinely trying to understand, I ask “so are you saying that we should just leave them be?”.
I kinda cringed at this because it came off really passive aggressive, but that wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to parse out his motive for being seemingly adamant about discouraging me from talking to the guard- perhaps he did have the general belief that those less fortunate who resort to stealing to get by should be shown grace since their impact on the wealthy(er) is minimal? Like I was willing to have discourse, see his perspective, and be convinced. But both he and the lady were gasp aghast.
At this point I’m tired of this. From my perspective, I went out of my way to be potentially helpful to this community and this guy really made it seem like he had graciously condescended to speak with me.
I, smiling and very politely, tell him that I trust his wisdom on this so I’ll take his advice and get on with my day.
I dunno why but suddenly he shifts 180 and says I should wait for the guard. That, depending on where this is there may be cameras.
I’m like “ehhh, if it’s just to humor me and it won’t be helpful to anyone as you say. I’m alright.”
Walk back out with my dog. My parting greeting was “Good luck!”
Again, in retrospect that could be interpreted as sassy. In my defense, English isn’t my first language and even though I am fluent and can write well for academic and work purposes, sometimes I don’t have the best social phrases cued up…
Idk why that guy’s just bumming about in the lobby meddling with things. At least, as annoying as he was, since he works there I can tell myself that I informed an employee.