Among his many accomplishments, John E Hales Jr. (Jack) was instrumental to the introduction of the PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) designation as well as identifying and forecasting low level moisture surges from the Gulf of California during the Southwest Monsoon, early in his career.

1) The contract situation: If we get Saros we're most likely signing him to an extension. I can't see the Leafs trading him at the deadline nor can I see them just letting him walk at the end of the year for nothing. This likely means we're looking at a contract between 6-8 years north of 8 million. This is problematic for a number of reasons:
a) Goalies tend not to age very well. Even generational/hall of fame goalies such as Brodeur, Price and Lundqvist to name a few have trouble playing past 35 whilst being elite and living up to their contract. Signing Saros to a long term contract would mean we're primarily paying him when he's past his prime. This is a big concern.
b) We've been developing Woll for 8 years, and signing Saros to a fat extension pretty much means we've relegated Woll as a secondary option or a trade piece. For someone whose shown so much potential and come up big in key moments, this just doesn't make a lot of sense. Granted, Wolls injury concerns are totally valid but it still doesn't mean we have to give up on him as a Starter entirely.
2) Saros' track record: There's no denying that Saros is a high end goalie, but I think he's being slightly overrated. He's started more than 40 games 3 times in his career, 2 of which were very respectable (but not other worldly) and this past season which was below average. This is in conjunction with a playoff record where he's been below average: -1.2 GSAA and of his 16 playoff starts only half of them have been qualified as a quality start. Playing Goalie in Toronto is extremely challenging and so far in his career Saros just hasn't shown he can carry a team in the playoffs.
3) The benefits of getting Askarov: I've seen people say Nashville would never trade Askarov but they were shopping him last year, and they're looking for a high end forward, so I think it's very realistic they trade him. There would be a lot of benefits if we traded for him instead of Saros:
a) He's on an entry level contract for the next few years which means we'll have 30M this offseason to reshape the team. That would allow us to sign 2 top 4 RD and a 2C like Lindholm and still have 10M to play with to fill out the rest of the team.
b) You can let him and Woll share the net and see who emerges as the true starter. Woll has shown he can make huge saves and play in big moments so having him go 50/50 with Askarov in the regular season and then take the net in the playoffs would be a great short term plan while Askarov gets more experience.
c) If Askarov flourishes and wants a bigger role we own his RFA rights so there's a lot more flexibility in terms of what we can do with him. With Saros, we'd be signing him long term, relegating Woll to a backup and hoping Saros works out. With Askarov, if he outgrows his role we have a good problem with two capable goalies and can flip one for other assets. The flexibility here can't be understated.
4) You dont need a bonafide top 5 goalie to win the cup: This isn't to say having one is bad, just that it's not necessary. With Goaltending, its about getting hot at the right time. Vegas won the cup recently with what was originally a 3rd stringer. Binnington came out of nowhere and carried the Blues in '19, likewise with Matt Murray in 16/17 for the Pens. In his short time here Woll has shown a tendency to just come up huge and make big saves. I remember there was a point this year where he'd stopped like 18-20 shots in a row in 3v3 over multiple games which is impressive when you consider those are all essentially high danger chances. Take that in conjunction with how he played in the playoffs and you can see my point about how you just need someone to make big saves and get hot at the right time, Woll can do that.
Having Askarov and Woll as a tandem would allow for a cheap, flexible option in goal that allows us to spend on other parts of our roster. We don't need either of them to be Vezina winners to have success, just to make key saves and not let a shitty soft goal in. The amount of cap room we would have by taking on Askarov and dumping Marner would allow us to fill every hole we've been talking about for years. We would also likely get other pieces back with Askarov which would help us out even more. If you get a player like Luke Evangelista you've suddenly replaced 45 of Marner's 95 points for 800k.
From Nashville's perspective, they're trying to win a cup and given they can add one of the best RW in the league without moving any contracts out, or removing a player from their roster that finished with nearly 100 points is exactly the kind of trade they'd make. They've wanted a high end forward for years and now they can finally get one, and they'd be trading from a position of strength to make it happen.
For Marner, he can go to one of the most beloved markets for players, get paid as much as he wants, have a low profile and still be on a competitive team.

I just got phase one part of the physical done, and my blood work is showing a high neutrophil (83%), white blood cell (14.5) and low lymphocyte (9.5%). I’m not feeling sick or anything like that..
Will this affect my ability to pass the physical?
edit: i quit smoking the day before the labs, so I don’t know if that has anything to do with it

I see a lot of comments complaining about certain m+ Affixes being "Healer Affixes", as in an affix that disproportionately affects a Healeis completed by the healer. A good example is Afflicted and Necrotic.
The reality is every afflix is an everyone affix. We're all in it together. However, I have an unpopular opinion: We need MORE healer focuses afflixes.
If you look at every Dragonflight season, particularly MDI people are constantly trying to remove the healer from the composion. This is not OK. It's a terrible message to give players that their role is only useful when people make mistakes.
There needs to be consistent reasons to bring a healer. The idea of running without one should be impossible.
I'm all for innovation. Truly. But there is a mould in place that allows for all types of players to excel in. There is enough diversity within specs to allow for a breadth of innovation without having to break that mould.
I'm sure that some people enjoy playing without a healer for the danger. Personally feels wrong to see from me and imo shows a greater problem in self-healing tanks. Could you imagine damage being so low that a tank wasn't required? That DPS with enough stops could handle it. It would be hotfixed within the week. Why is it different for healers?
Unless they want to fundamentally change specific tank classes, then there needs to be more reasons to bring a healer. Phases/Trash that are impossible without them. My brain goes to the Waylight mob(?) in Maw of Souls that would AoE rip your party apart repeatedly. It was a DPS check so your healer didn't run out of CDs and a Healer check because the HPS requirement was so high. More of this please.
What does everyone else think? Is it hard enough for healers already? Are tanks the real crux of the issue? Would anyone else welcome more healer-required checks?

My fellow gamers, for too long has our community suffered the indignation of an intolerable culture that has denigrated, besmirched, exploited, and has outright demonized our culture of unique individuals with a genuine love of a hobby that they see as profitable and progressive. They have taken beloved IP’s (Intellectual Properties) and twisted them into their own personal ideological crusade of undermining and humiliating the core aspects of characters they deemed as “Toxic” or “White Supremacy”. Through the guise and protection of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity) & ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) they have used our influence in the entertainment industry to push their narratives and agendas that have stigmatized our culture with numerous anti-consumer practices that they call “being progressive”. But the truth of the matter is they were never really looking to be a part of our community, they simply wanted to use our community as a tool of activism and propaganda in the entertainment industry as it was extremely profitable, and they wanted inclusion in that division. Ever since GamerGate & Female Frequency, we have had to endure the incursion of forced ideologies, xenophobic behaviors and inferior overpriced products that have never been in our best interest and have been flat out disgraceful towards foreign media.
Before Gaming had become a major source of entertainment, we were often categorized as anti-social or societies rejects where because we found more enjoyment in playing fictional characters and not spending as much time out and about, we never fully assimilated in society (which is a good thing if you ask me). From 1998 to 2007, at the height of innovation, creativity and production, Gaming had reached a golden age in which it had revolutionized society. Hollywood Execs who had ruined the movie industry turned their attention to video games as a source of income since video games had outperformed movies in terms of profit. No one was concerned about gaming, much less diversity or inclusivity until it became profitable. This makes people like SBI look extremely disingenuous as they were not interested in gamers as a community with its own culture. They simply wanted to use it as another weapon in identity politics.
Microtransactions; the hidden enemy to gamer progress and inducer to mental laziness of our community. Microtransactions have been around for a long time; however, it has never been more potent and apparent than in recent years. It has aided in the dismantling and segregation of players on the ideology of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and has created another sub-culture of gamers who have no real drive to be better outside of how much money they put into the game. This has degraded our culture as well as we have become “fat” off transactional gaming but at the same time we have been “starved” of purposeful gaming where our achievements were our sustenance. I am not saying that microtransactions are bad, but when they are exploitative and predatorial like they have been and don’t give gamers room to grow, we become lethargic and unwilling to improve ourselves as gamers. Oversaturated microtransactional games are one of the many reasons why we have become complacent and unwilling to fight against the exploitative tactics used by big brand game companies such EA, Ubisoft, ActivisionBlizzard, NaughtyDog and so many other western business model companies. Western style games were not like this in the past, they had much more depth and actual effort put into them with the gamer in mind. This has not been the case for over a decade and our connection to western developers has been whittled down to just being transactional. That is one of the reasons why you see so many remasters and remakes in today’s gamer community. They have lost their willingness to improve as developers of games and simply accept corporate/share holder rules.
Game journalists also do not have any real integrity or purpose outside of being funded for their involvement in promoting IPG (Identity Political Games) in a positive light to the public whether it’s positively received or not. They are not interested in what we have to say, they all support the same agenda and that is why they are a dying breed. Within the next couple of years, they will be out of the job and more than likely they will not be able to stay in the industry giving how they have responded to past articles that have clearly been scripted on the premise of diversity and racism. Not only that, but most of them are also extremely hostile to the community as they stereotype and defame the individuals that are a part of the community they are supposed to serve. We have been mentally liberated from their lies and coercive tactics as we tend to laugh at their obvious attempt at virtue signaling while hiding their misdoings so that they can play the victim.
My gamer brothers & sisters, I would not suggest the following action that we must take now without good cause. I have weighed our options and the best option for us now is this…...CULTURAL SECESSION. Naturally this is a form of segregation where they would more than likely claim they are being segregated by the dominant culture of the gaming community but that is incorrect. For years now we have been the ones who are often marginalized and ostracized for the smaller portion of our community. And when we aren’t, we’re exploited for more funds so that these companies can stay in business only to subject us to low quality products that coincide with the “WOKE Agenda” that are often huge expenses to these big brands i.e. AAA/AAAA games that will eventually flop for its obvious forced diversity and bug infested product which will undoubtedly piss off the consumer to the point of wanting a refund. Losing copious amounts of capital and stock in the process, not to mention their reputation is permanently marred.
We must separate on every cultural level in terms of entertainment and ideology. We must reject everything from the west that promotes toxic western beliefs, practices, and exclusion from other cultures (i.e. Southeastern Countries such as Japan and Korea). Japan & Korea have been the targets of unjust discrimination from Western Developers, Western Journalists, Western Localizers (The Wokelizers) and Western Society Prejudice regarding their sense of aesthetics as Westerners hate the aesthetic sense of these countries. The reason why they resort to such base tactics isn’t just because it weaponizes the ideal female form but it’s also because they have deep-seated insecurities about their own looks so when they see attractive female characters, they use terms such as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized” to establish the moral high ground. But the truth is, they want to feel superior to that which is ideal, so they insult and dehumanize this figure that portrays natural female beauty because they see it as an insult to their own social superiority in what they believe is a hierarchy of them being at the top of all other women. Because of this and so many contributing factors, their movies flop harder than the Fat Chocobo landing on a group of enemies and their games seismically fail just as much if not more. We must sever our connection to Western Developers, Publishers, and ALL Western-Centric Entertainment for they seek to mentally enslave us to their Xenophobic ideology.
Let’s define Western Culture and its traits. Western Culture/Society is composed of more than several different ideologies that work in unison with one another to facilitate dominance over multiple aspects of society. Business, Social, Political, Technological, and sometimes even Global Affairs are affected by these ideologies that portray a specific mindset of Western beliefs. What are those ideologies you ask?

• Perpetual Victimhood: By weaponizing the fact that they are marginalized and of a small portion of western society, they can push their agenda to absurd standards that ultimately ostracize the main demographic. And when companies don’t capitulate, they are labeled as anti-progressive/misogynist’s or cohorts of White Supremacy. They use this to cancel their targets and silence them through societal defamation to keep the public on their side. They also use this mindset to justify their own lack of self-agency as they tend to throw companies who do adhere to their demands but miserably fail to turn a profit under the bus so that they can maintain face in front of the public while denying their actual involvement. They will never accept “Sense of Agency” when it’s negative but will gladly accept it when a positive outcome shines on them as if they are entitled to it.

Official Wiki GamerGate Page)
​

• Societal Terrorism: This is another form of ideology weaponization that they use in order to make companies “toe-the-line” with their agenda. By weaponizing cancel culture, they exert dominance over these companies but in exchange they also reimburse those companies with DEI & ESG funds that raise their credit score as well as having social status with the marginalized demographic. However; cancel culture has not succeeded in years and developers and publishers probably only want the money and the DEI ESG rating. But they have to maintain the image of having social economic power so that they can continue to strong-arm other developers into compliance and promoting financial benefits of DEI & ESG. In other words, if you are not for sale, they discredit and stigmatize you in the industry.

Asmongold Clips.
https://youtu.be/Iq86DnmX2xY
​

• “Its not us, its you who’s wrong” Mentality: This mentality is especially annoying as they tend to use it to hide their incompetence. They often look down upon gamers who are not in the industry to hide their obvious lack of knowledge on game development thinking that their job title grants them special status that they believe gives them the right to be condescending. But the truth they never wanted revealed has already strangled their careers of all credibility. They were never GAMERS, they were INVADERS. Community Colonists that seek to indoctrinate next generational gamers into their hive-mind and brand previous generations of gamers as villains.

@GeeksandGamers
https://youtu.be/1HbrTkqQFuM
​

• Double-standard Enforcement: By labeling something as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized”, they can claim this is morally wrong if it promotes traditional dynamics between men and women. Heterosexual relationships are condemned while at the same time Same-sex relationships are praised. Additionally, heterosexual relationships with main white male characters turn antagonistic and spotlight stealing. This is deliberate as to promote the “Girl Boss” ideology to indoctrinate women into the Feminazi state of mind. While at the same time, should a male character also adopt the “I don’t need male/female” ideology its seen as Toxic Masculinity which isn’t even a real thing. The idea of a strong male character is taboo while enforcing strong female characters is the ideal.

@MugenLord
https://youtu.be/to5Uciy_yeg
@EndymionTv
https://youtu.be/7TPTR8-qmbk
​

• Dehumanization/Demonization: This is something that most military branches use in order to remove conscious inhibitions such as mass slaughter is wrong or categorization. By enforcing ideologies to denounce humanity in certain targets, it deactivates your conscience by saying this is not human therefore its ethically okay to treat this target without compassion and deny the fact it has sentience. We gamers fall under this category for journalists, developers, companies and society at large. This is a tactic we are familiar with to an extent as it implies that we are not normal when we do not do what everybody else is doing. “Geeks are the worse” or “Nerds need to fall into a pit of lava” are verbal dehumanization forms that most people in society say and we as Gamers tend to be relegated to those categories. This is their way of imposing the social hierarchy on us by establishing superiority. We know this as Gamers as we see it very often in the games that we play and some times experience it in real life.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate#The_end_of_their_relevance
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• Deflection/Projection: This is basic psychology 101. By redirecting the conversation away from their mistakes and back on to the opposing view to avert blame and justify their innocence they can avoid criticism. However; deflection is a CONSCIOUS decision, meaning they have no real argument to justify their incompetence. If you can consciously process the situation, you have self-agency which means you don’t have a legitimate excuse. Projection is something else entirely. Most times, Projection doesn’t work on conscious decisions rather it is automatically deployed when feeling threatened, anxious or both. Instead of accepting accountability for feelings or actions that are deemed socially unacceptable they accuse others of committing that unacceptable behavior thereby exonerating themselves and proving that those feelings and/or actions are not their own.

@TheTrentReport
https://youtu.be/bPIPSKruYRo
These traits are so nefarious and unconscionable that I have a hard time believing that anyone could harbor them. However, given the social, political, and economic climate that we are in, those in power who use their influence on controlling society most definitely possess these insidious traits. Everything that they do is all about control and since video games are the biggest market in the world, they want control over it and the communities built around it to accrue more wealth and to use that wealth to subjugate other cultures. Mainstream media is a tool as well as mainstream organizations and sites to help accomplish this goal.
The government recently announced its intentions towards what they believe is “GamerGate 2.0” and now even the ADL has made an official appearance, referring to gamers as “extremist’s”. We know EXACTLY what they are doing, and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore because they don’t think we are aware of their motives. This is just a pretext for them to exert even more control and we know why, it’s because they want the influence we as a community have to must serve them. So here is what we do my fellow gamers-
“In light of recent events and years of mainstream stigma, we the members of the Global Gaming Community [GGC] must officially renounce ALL TIES to the corporate western video game market. We have been financially exploited through predatorial monetization schemes, pelted with numerous articles of disdain and intentional misrepresentation from game journalists, news outlets regarding us as dangerous individuals and, even subjected to inferior products not only riddled with bugs but also products meant to push political agendas. For the preservation of our community and its unique culture, apart from a few select game development studios we officially sever all connections to western owned video game companies & their mainstream affiliates. From this point onward, we will no longer support western corporate developers, journalists and publishers that do not coincide with the goals of our community.”
Naturally this is completely optional. If you are okay with the state of the gaming community as it is, feel free to ignore this. But if you wish for real change and a break away from oversaturated monetization in the games you play and the push for radical ideological reform, then you are in the right place. Lets sever these rotted miasmic ties once and for all so that our community can be preserved and made better for future gamers. If you agree with this, share it with whoever you think might be interested. The more gamers who get involved, the easier it will be for us to finally break free from mainstream game companies and their associates.

I'll try and keep this as brief as possible to avoid writing a novel. Apologies, I know this post is all over the place.
Ultimately I'm struggling with 2 aspects of my life right now: deciding which direction to take my career and deciding what to do with my current finances / properties.
34M, working a high paying remote tech job in a HCOL city. Nearing the end of my rope working a high stress job that I don't enjoy, but that I am naturally good at and have made decent money doing it. Currently renting a 1br apartment in the city for $1500 a month with my girlfriend and life partner of 15 years with plans to get married in the future.
In terms of finances, I have been able to save $240k liquid cash (currently sitting in a HYSA), $65k RSU, and $60k 401k.
Have been fortunate enough to acquire 4 vacant land properties that all need attention to bring out their full potential. Working my current job, I haven't been in a place mentally to give them the attention they need.
Property summary:

1 - located in the city, has a driveway and parking area but no other utilities. Comps show value at $80-100k.

2 - located in small mountain town, needs a lot of work, has a small older cabin (total teardown, not salvageable), a few large dangerous trees, and needs work on the driveway. Comps @ $80-110k.

3 - lot in the woods. Has a cleared area with gravelled driveway. Comps @ $90-120k.

4 - another lot in the woods, needs driveway and clearing to be usable in any way.

2-4 are all located in a small mountain community about 1.5-2.5 hrs away depending on traffic. The area is very near a ski area and has a lot of potential for either short term or long term rentals. Ultimately while my partner and I love this area and could see spending a few months a year out here, we probably wouldn't be happy spending all our time out here because we do enjoy being in the city and being within walking/biking distance to activities.

Options with properties that I see:
-Build or buy a tiny house on wheels and move it between these properties. My jurisdiction officially allows you to stay for 2 months without issue, and could probably fudge the numbers on some of the more rural properties.
-Go all-in and build on either property #1 or property #2. Property #2 probably doesn't make the most sense because we know we wouldn't want to live there full time, but if I were to change careers and do something much lower paying I could qualify for a specific construction loan type (USDA Rural Home loan) that has very low subsidized interest rates and would allow me to hold on to more of my savings which I could then invest to help make up the difference going from a high paying to lower paying job.
-Sell some or all of the properties to buy a real house that's already built
I also really want to build things, but have no experience doing this. I do have multiple friends working in various aspects of residential construction, so I could see a path where I work for them and develop the skills needed to build things myself and with their help. If I went this route, I could see myself doing something like starting with one tiny house on wheels and living in that while I complete tiny house #2 which I would then place on one of the properties and rent either short term or to a friend, and then start building tiny house #3, etc. Ideally this path would allow me to build the skills necessary to eventually try to tackle building my own legitimate home on property #1.
Just kind of stuck here. I know I can't keep working this high stress job forever (or atleast I need a few years break, in which case AI might have taken over and made my job obsolete). If I could paint my ideal picture of a life, it would be working a job where I am actually part of a community and I get to interact with people. I would make enough money to survive, and income from investments would enable me to take 2-6 months a year to travel to LCOL areas like rural Mexico or Southeast Asia while having time to enjoy outdoor activities like motorcycle travel, snow sports, and backpacking while on the home turf. I've had these properties for a few years now and haven't taken action on them, and it's weighing on me heavier every day so I could really use all of your input to help figure out my life.

This is Laszlo and Woods. Woods was born in vault 4(this is where the show spoiler happens). Due to the aquatic-based experiments that took place there, he was in fact born with the aquaboy perk, as he is anle to safely breathe under water. He was never the most clever kid, however he was always very much into robotics, and tinkering. He joined the teams that travel the wasteland at the age of 20, and not long after, he stumbled upon a broken, yet still slightly functioning Miss Nanny. He decided to bring the barely functioning machine back to vault 4, where he started looking through his workshop for a voice box that might fit the miss nanny. He found one compatible voice box, however it was a mr handy box. When the miss nanny was able to speak, they really enjoyed the sound of the new voice, and indeed asked Woods if he may be rebuilt using mr handy patts in stead, which Woods was more than happy to do. A lot of the rebuilding was done with heavily damaged parts so Woods did a lot of reinforcing using copper, which has lead to the patches of green rust on Laszlo's outer casing. Laszlo also took his new name from the boy he had been assigned to care for, all those years ago. The two of them go on a lot of missions together outside the vault, but always return home, as though Woods may have a low intelligence stat, he knows the outside world is dangerous.

PART 1:

 Every town has their own version of “The Boogeyman”. A monster, cryptid, phantom, whatever you want to call it, it’s all essentially the same thing- just a scary story they tell kids in an attempt to get them to behave. An urban legend is just a life lesson disguised as a horror story after all. For us folk living up in the tiny and once prosperous gold-mining town of Trillium, ours was known simply as The Locust Man. Now, let me start by saying, I realize how ridiculous that name must sound to you. “The Locust Man”?? Pftt…What’s he do, besides get stuck in the grill of someone’s pick-up truck. Destroy some crops? Oooh, he sounds real scary... yeah, I know. But yet, as I sit here today 20 years after the fact - a grown woman who’s wiser, stronger, and even more grounded in reality than she was at 12, I still hesitate to even write down that name. 

As a young child I had always thought it to be a little weird that our town was called Trillium, considering I had never seen a single one growing there. If you don’t know, a trillium is a small flower, usually white but they come in other color varieties as well, with three pedals and a bright yellow center. They sort of look like if you took a lily and tore off every other pedal playing “He loves me, he loves me not”. In school, about 2nd grade or so, we were taught everything about this elusive flower I’d never seen in real life, and told how proud our town was to be named after it. Trillium, Colorado was established in 1922 - A new town born in the wake of a great tragedy which befell the town that had previously sat in the same location. For us, and those that came before us, the trillium was supposed to be a symbol of hope. Knowing all that I know now, that sentiment almost makes me want to laugh - in a morbid way.

 Growing up in a small, mostly isolated town, there really wasn’t much for a kid to do. You’d have to drive 45 minutes to get to the closest mall and movie theater. The high school kids would usually all hang out at the roller rink downtown or at the old run-down burger joint called Slim’s that sat across it. But at that age, I wasn’t allowed to go hang out there by myself yet and for me, going with my parents tagging along wasn’t an option I was open to. My neighborhood was on a long dead end road leading up to a large patch of woods that separated the main part of town from the abandoned mine. The old trail the miners used was still accessible up until a point, and so me and the other kids from my street would hang out in those woods all the time. We had a “secret spot” which was, what we thought at the time, about half way through the woods, 10 steps away from a small shallow creek that pretty much ran the length of the area. Rain Creek, we called it. There was a small clearing there, and we had created our own little clubhouse using old milk crates as supports, half- broken wooden pallets as walls, along with some old lawn chairs one of the neighbors was throwing out one day. I made my contribution by bringing a tarp we had in our basement that served as the roof of our establishment. Our parents didn’t love the idea of five 10 to 12 year olds running around in the woods by ourselves, but as long as we stayed within earshot and made it back before the streetlights came on, they probably figured it was safer than us being across town galavanting unsupervised. 

It was me, Lacey, Devin, Mikey and Michelle. We were all best friends - pretty much inseparable, except the boys weren’t invited to the girls’ sleepovers and vise versa. Everyday after school, we’d get dropped off by the bus at the very beginning of our road, and it was a running joke between the Rain Street Gang (as we liked to call ourselves) for all of us to try and run off the bus as quickly as possible, while me, Lacey and Devin would all yell in unison ‘Last two home are some rotten eggs!!’, as Mikey and Michelle tried to push past us to get a head start. The aforementioned two were siblings, and lived in the very last house on our row right next to the woods, so they’d always get home last, regardless of their efforts. Although, the year that Mikey got a pair of Heelys for Christmas he finally got his edge over the rest of us, leaving Michelle to be the lone “rotten egg” until the next summer when one of his wheels broke off. The whole point of it all was just to get home and get our chores and homework done as fast as possible, so we could meet up at Mikey and Michelle’s house with enough daylight left to make our trek into the woods and back - together as a group. All five of us had made a pact to never visit the clubhouse without all members present, although us girls always had a sneaking suspicion that the boys thought themselves exempt from that rule. They, after all, were the ones that had discovered the spot in the first place, and not to mention, did most of the physical labor of dragging our provisions out there. Me and Lacey initially only heard about the spot a day after the boys found it; Michelle had walked into Mikey’s room in the middle of him and Devin talking about it, and immediately relayed the message to us. Michelle wasn’t necessarily more loyal to the girls than the boys, she was just the youngest among us and honestly couldn’t resist blurting out any mildly relevant information she thought she might have, in an effort to be included. But in that regard, if the boys had ever gone out there on their own, they would’ve had to be extremely sneaky about it, because Michelle’s number one objective in life was to gather any piece of intel she could. It was a seemingly normal Saturday morning when we learned our suspicions about the boys may have been warranted.
I had slept over at Lacey’s house the night before. We had just woken up and were still sitting on her bed discussing our possible plans for the day, when Michelle busted through the door with a look on her face that immediately told us she had finally gotten a hold of some juicy information, before she could even open her mouth to stutter out, “You-you-you guyssss, guess w-w-what!?!” Lacey gestured the nail file that was in her hand toward her, raising her eyebrows bluntly as Michelle tried to catch her breath. “So… Devin came to sleep over last night, annnnnd I was pretending to go to the bathroom so I could spy on them. Seeeeee, I was supposed to be sleeping but I -“ “Ughh come on Michelle, get to it! What’d you hear?” Lacey snapped “Ughh okay okay. So, I heard the boys talking, anddddd…. they’re planning to go explore the old mine today!!” “Alright Michelle! Good spying!” I chuckled, trying to encourage her after Lacey’s impatience. Lacey rolls her eyes, then immediately stands up. She takes the scrunchie off her wrist, ties her long blonde hair into a messy bun, and simply said, “Let’s go.” “Lacey..” I said “What??” She responds as if she hadn’t registered the tone of my voice at all. As I opened my mouth to begin explaining all the logical and practical reasons why even if the boys were stupid enough to go play around somewhere dangerous, we shouldn’t be, Michelle exclaims, “That’s where the Locust Man lives!!” I close my mouth in defeat, as I know Lacey will take this nonsense as a challenge, and because of that, no amount of my warnings concerning actual dangers would have any effect on her decision. Lacey dismisses her comment as she attempts to shove her foot into one of her new pink sneakers that she refuses to admit are too small for her. “Pshhh, don’t be such a baby Michelle, he’s not real, you do know that right?” Michelle crinkled her face and yelled back, “Yes he is Lacey! He is!! And th-th- that’s where he lives, and he eats kids that go there!” Lacey laughs at her and says “Oh yeah? You still believe in Santa clause too? What about the tooth fairy?” Michelle looked down at her shoes, and although she could admittedly be annoying, I found myself feeling bad for her. “Come on Lacey, she’s just scared.” Lacey shot me a look like she was expecting me to burst into laughter, but I just gave her a smirk and a shrug, and she rolled her eyes and said “Get dressed.”

 We walked in silence toward the end of the road, though the reasons for all three differed drastically. Lacey’s was determination and resolve, mine was comtemptousness and defeat, and Michelle’s was just fear. I found myself half-way hoping the boys had left already, but as we approached the driveway we caught them just as they were about to step off the porch. 

“Hey!!” Lacey yelled, in her trademark cheerleader cadence. “Where do you boys think you’re going without us?”. Mikey let a groan and rolled his eyes, while Devin said through a coy smile, “Well, we were actually just heading out to go to find you girls.” “Liar.” Lacey snapped, quickly wiping the grin off Devin’s face. “Michelle already blabbed- we know where you two are going and we’re coming too.” The boys looked at each other, then Mikey shot Michelle an angry look as she tried to shrink herself behind me, and said, “Fine, whatever, but no cry baby snitches allowed!!” Michelle then proceeded to prove both of his accusations correct by yelling back, “I am not a cry baby!! I’m telling mom if you don’t let me come with you!!” At that point I finally spoke up. “Alright, listen.” I said sternly, then once I had their attention I lowered my voice a bit to say, “Just for the record, I think us going to that grody old mine is a dumb idea and a big waste of time, but if one of us goes, we all go. That’s the deal, so make your decisions.” Lacey folded her arms in solidarity beside me, and with that we all had an unspoken understanding. So, with the boys out ahead leading the way, we headed toward the tree line.

 As we entered the woods, I felt a sense of dread wash over me - but to be fair, as a preteen emo kid who had already reached an adult level of cynicism, I felt a certain level of dread towards almost everything in life. So take my premonition with a grain of salt, but for some reason, this felt… different. I remember the woods being abnormally quiet that day. It took some time for me to even notice, but as soon as I did, I interrupted the mindless chatter going on to say, 

“Where are all the freakin’ birds?” Everyone turned to look at me as if I’d completely lost my mind. “Uhhh… What are you talking about?” Devin asked me. I pointed up toward the treetops. “Listen…. ” They all looked up, then looked around at each other in confusion. “Every time we’ve ever been in these woods, there’s always birds chirping back and forth. We’ve been walking almost 5 minutes now and I haven’t heard a single bird, have you guys?” “Damn, yeah, that is weird.” Mikey agreed. “They probably all just migrated!!” Devin goofily offered. “That’s stupid Devin, it’s spring. If anything, there should be more birds here, not less you moron.” Lacie argued. Devin flipped Lacie off, which was the best rebuttal he could usually come up with, and then turned toward me and said, “Okay whatever, what’s your point exactly?” “Just that - “ I looked over to Mikey, then back at Devin. “It’s weird.” I didn’t want to say what I was actually thinking. That the woods being too quiet was never a good thing. That when birds aren’t chirping, it could mean there’s a predator nearby. Besides, I was pretty confident that the boys, having both been in the scouts, knew what I knew, so saying it out loud would only serve to annoy Lacie and further frighten Michelle. Mikey broke his gaze that had been fixed on me, and while scanning our surroundings he said, “Let’s stop by the clubhouse on the way.” With a nod from me, we continued. When we arrived at our pit stop, Lacey hobbled over to the closest lawn chair and plopped herself down in it. “Ughhh, my feet are killing me!!” “I wonder why.” I mutter under my breath. “Excuse me, what was that?” “Just saying. Those shoes are gonna be the death of you Lace, you can barely walk in them.” “Pshhh, shut up. They just need to be broken-in okay? You’re just jealous cuz you’re still wearing your dirty old Vans from last year.” “Oooh yeah, you got me there. I am so sad I don’t have a pair of ugly pink Sketchers that don’t fit me.” She stuck her tongue out at me and we both laughed. I was just about the only person who could go toe to toe with Lacey’s sass. It’s part of the reason we ended up being best friends, besides being neighbors. In regard to style, personality and interests, we were almost polar opposites. But when it came to humor we were equals. And more importantly, we both had a mutual understanding when it came to our differences- I was me and she was her, and neither of us felt the need to try and make the other one be more like us. Besides, I was the only person who had ever really stood up to Lacey and didn’t take any of her crap, so I think she respected that. While that exchange had been going on, Michelle had started picking tiny pink flowers, and the boys were rummaging in the clubhouse for something. I yelled in their direction, “Hey! Big Mike and Dirty D!!” Me and Lacey giggled and she mouthed the word “big” with air quotation marks. They didn’t respond, so I walked over to the entryway and looked in. They were standing with their backs to me while looking down at an open metal box, and Mikey was reaching to grab whatever was in it. As he stood back up, I could see what it was. “What the fuck Mikey, seriously?” Hearing me cuss, Lacey and Michelle crowded in behind me. “Chill, it’s just a BB gun.” “I know it’s a BB gun Michael, what are you doing with it, and why is it here?” I was livid at the thought that he might be coming out here and shooting at animals just to be a shithead. I expected something like that from a goober like Devin, but not Mikey. Michelle butted in, “I’m telling mom!!!” “Nice try, dad knows I have it.” He looked at me and softened his tone. “It’s for protection, just in case we come across a black bear, or some weirdo creep out here. Seriously… it’s just to scare off something, not hurt it.” He knew how I felt about killing animals, especially for no good reason. A lot of people out here are poor and hunt for food, which I could accept as a reality. But hurting animals just for fun is psycho behavior, so I was relieved to hear him dispel my fear; I really didn’t want to have to hate him. “Do you even know how to shoot that thing?” Lacey asked. “Yeah, my dad showed me.” Devin clapped his hands together, making us all jump and himself laugh. “Well alright then, let’s get going!” I turned to Michelle, still holding the flowers. “You okay?” She nodded. “If you want me to walk back with you, I can.” I was slightly hoping she’d say yes so I’d have an excuse to get out of this excursion, but she just shook her head and forced a smile. I knew she was scared, but she was just too curious. Maybe I was too.

 We walked for what felt like half an hour. The trees had gotten more dense and the path narrowed from the overgrowth. Still no birdsong. I kept scanning the area in search of any sign of life other than us. Looking for movement of creatures scurrying away, listening for the sound of rustling as we passed, hoping for a squirrel, a lizard, even a bug. Nothing. 

“How much further is this damn thing?” Lacey groaned. Mikey answered without even turning around. “We should be coming up on it any time now.” “You said that like 10 minutes ago.” “Yeah, and now we’re like 10 minutes closer to it. And hey guess what, you insisted on inviting yourself - so suck it up buttercup.” “Hahahaha!” Devin laughed like a maniac at Mikey’s quip, while Lacey folded her arms and for once in her life didn’t have a snappy comeback. This time however, I did. “Well we really only came along to make sure you idiots didn’t kill yourselves.” “Oh, so you girls came out here with us to be our protectors, huh?” Devin laughed. “Ehh, more like babysitters.” Needless to say, I was flipped off for that statement. We rounded the next bend and suddenly all came to an abrupt stop one after another, starting with Mikey. Devin positioned himself beside him and let out a disappointed groan. “Shit Mikey!” A huge tree had fallen and was blocking the trail completely. There was no way we could climb over it because of all the leaves and branches - we’d have to go around it, which meant leaving the safety of the trail and crossing Rain Creek twice to get back to it. “Seriously???” Lacey exclaimed. “Maybe it’s a sign that we shouldn’t be going.” I shrugged. Mikey didn’t seem fazed by the obstruction at all. In fact, he seemed more confident. More calm. More sure of his intended mission. “It’s fine, we’ll just go around.” Michelle, who had been mostly quiet this whole time, finally broke her fear induced silence. “We are NOT supposed to leave the tr-tr-trail Michael! We could get lost!” “We aren’t gonna get lost Michelle, I have a compass. Plus, it’s literally just a few paces that way, then we cross the creek and circle back once we pass the tree and we’re right back on the trail.” “Oh you have got to be kidding me” Lacey said, “I’m not treading through that nasty water!” “Yeah Mikey, what about Lacey’s brand new shoes??” I laughed, and she playfully slapped me in the arm. Mikey’s patience was wearing thin with us. “Look, we already walked this far - if we turn back now, we’ve wasted the whole day for nothing. If you girls wanna be lame and turn around, then go for it - but me and Dev are going.” That’s all Lacey needed. A challenge to accept; someone to prove wrong. “I’ll show you lame.” She pushed past the boys and lead the way into the thick brush towards Rain Creek. It wasn’t very wide across, and there were lots of fallen limbs and large rocks spread throughout it. The current was barely that of a trickle, and the depth was no more than knee deep for us. It was definitely doable - just an inconvenience. And of course, one more ominous obstacle lying directly in our path. Another hint from the universe telling us to turn around. We didn’t listen. Lacey placed one foot on the closest limb and pushed down a few times to test its sturdiness. “I got this.” She stepped out onto it with both feet, then shimmied sideways until she was close enough to the large exposed rock in the middle of the creek, and hopped onto it. She turned around with a full grin and said, “Coming?” Mikey made his way across the limb as Lacey hopped onto a different limb which led her to the other side of the creek. Devin followed, then me, and then it was Michelle’s turn. “I’m scared to fall in!” Of course she is, I should have made her go before me. “It’s okay Michelle, it’s easy!” I reassured her. She didn’t look convinced in the slightest. “Come on Chelle, we’re leaving you!” Mikey yelled, already walking away. “Nooo!! I’m coming! Wait!” She made it across, but instead of just walking like everyone else did, she got down on her hands and knees and gripped the limb as if it were the only thing in between her and a 50 foot drop to the ground, which was funny to see but prolonged the whole process further. After all, we were about to have to do all of this again. Next go round went a lot smoother. The creek was more shallow here, and there were a whole lot more stepping rocks and debris built up. Having just crossed successfully a few minutes ago, we were all more confident in our abilities, including Michelle - who this time we made go first. “Just walk across like it’s a bridge! You got this!!”, we all cheered for her, and then clapped when she made it to the other side. Before we knew it we were back on the trail, and it wasn’t long after that we finally arrived at our intended destination.

 We all stopped and stared at it for a minute, carefully examining the dilapidated exterior of the place that had brought both prosperity and destruction upon our town. Mikey bent down, picked up a rock and threw it into the entrance. We heard it bounce a few times before it stopped. 

“Just to make sure nothing’s in there.” he turned around to clarify. “Did anyone think to bring a flashlight?” I asked. “It’s dark as hell in there.” I was hoping for just one more reason not to go. Devin reached into his cargo shorts pocket and pulled out a small keychain-sized flashlight, smiling with the satisfaction of finally being useful. “Okay, Mikey’ll hold the gun, I’ll shine the light and you girls follow behind us. Let’s go.” Mikey shifted the BB gun from its position of resting on his shoulder, to holding the barrel in his left hand and the butt in his right; trying his best to emulate a soldier’s stance. Something his dad had taught him I’m sure. We ducked down a bit to enter. “How far in we going?” Lacey asked. “Until we see something cool.” Mikey answered. I turned around to check on Michelle, still hovering in the doorway. “You coming?” I could see in her eyes that fear had finally gotten the better of her, and curiosity had taken a backseat. With wide eyes she shook her head. “The-the Locust Man lives in there.”, she tried to whisper. “I knew you were gonna be a baby about this!” Mikey yelled. I crouched down and put my hand on her shoulder. Against my better judgment, I say “How bout you just wait here for us and pick some more flowers. We won’t be long, there’s nothing in there, I promise. Just.. don’t move from this spot and we’ll be right back, okay?” I could feel her unease, but she seemed to accept my reassurance nonetheless. “Okay.” I smiled, then stood up and looked down at my watch to check the time. 12:46 PM. I turned and headed into the darkness, trying to catch up with everyone else. I didn’t feel good about leaving Michelle, but I didn’t feel good about letting the rest of them go in there alone either. And if I’m being honest, maybe a little part of me wanted to see what was in there too. When I caught up to Lacey she asked, “Where’s Michelle?” “Stayed behind at the entrance, she was too scared. I told her to pick flowers and wait there for us.” “Pshh, figures.” “Yeah. How’s your feet?” “At this point, numb actually.” It was so dark in there that even Devin’s rinky dink flashlight was illuminating the area enough for me to start taking a closer look at my surroundings. I looked around at the rock walls, they were covered in what looked like orange mold and green algae. There was a slight breeze coming in from the entrance, but the whole place just had a staleness to it. The boys stopped and turned around as we arrived at the first curve. “So ladies, what do you think? Cool huh?” Devin asked excitedly. “Smells like a fart in here.” I said.

 The most dangerous thing about exploring an old mine wasn’t getting lost in the maze of tunnels, or tripping on the rusted tracks and slamming your head against the wall - it was something simply referred to as bad air. Pockets of still air that have dangerously low levels of oxygen, the old men in town would call it “black damp”. There was also something produced from the old chemicals they once used called “stink damp”, which smelled like rotten eggs. Both were lethal. 

“I wonder if there’s dead bodies in here!” “Uh, Dev… we’re gonna be the dead bodies in here if we go in too far. I wasn’t just making a joke, you know that rotten egg smell can mean bad air.” Mikey interjected. “The entrance isn’t far behind us, there’s still enough fresh air coming in. We won’t go in too far, let’s just get to the end of this tunnel where it splits off and look around a bit, then we’ll turn around.” The fork in the tunnel really wasn’t that much further, and even though I knew once we rounded this curve I wouldn’t be able to see the entrance behind me anymore, I decided what the hell. Maybe a hundred more steps, then we can finally turn around and this whole dumb situation would be closer to being over with. When we got there, we looked down the length of the connecting tunnels each way. Everything looked unusually identical in its deterioration. I could see how someone could easily get disoriented and lost down here. “Hellooooo…” Mikey yelled to the left, his voice echoing through the corridor. Devin turned to the opposite direction and called out, “Hey yo, Locust Man!! You in here?” We all giggled, which made me think about Michelle, still waiting at the entrance for us, alone in the woods. I looked down at my watch. 12:46 PM. “Hey what the f-“ My cuss word was interrupted by a loud bang that came from the passageway Devin had just been hollering into. We all froze. I didn’t have time to process that my watch had stopped right as we entered the tunnel, or that Michelle had been left alone for who knows how long now, or that we had just heard what sounded like a support beam crashing to the ground, because next came a horrifying screeching buzzing sound. It sounded distant at first, but was quickly increasing in volume. We silently looked around at each other and backed away stunned at what we were hearing. Mikey never took his eyes off the tunnel though, and slowly he began to raise the BB gun to firing position. Without even thinking, I grabbed the barrel and pushed it downward. He quickly tore his eyes away from his target to look at me. I shook my head and managed to barely choke out the word, “Explosion.” He nodded and I let go. I looked down at the gun in his hands, and seeing his finger had already been on the trigger, I realized how lucky it was that I didn’t make him shoot himself in the foot. All of a sudden, the noise stopped. “What the hell was that?” Lacey asked. “I don’t know, nothing good.” I said. “Let’s just get the fuck out of here before this whole place caves in on us or something.” Another loud bang erupted from the right, extremely close to us. “Shit!!!” We all turned around and ran as fast as we could back toward the entrance. Devin tried to push past me, but as he did my elbow knocked the flashlight out of his hand. “My flashlight!!!” “Leave it!” Mikey shouted “The turn is right here, we won’t need it!” We rounded the corner, and using what little light there was illuminating from the entrance to guide us back, we ran like our lives depended on it. And they may have- none of us dared to look back, not like we would have been able to see anything anyway. When we finally made it out, we were all completely out of breath. I felt like I was going to throw up. I have to admit though, once we had made it back to safety I felt a rush of adrenaline like I had just had a near death experience. That feeling quickly faded into sheer panic when I looked around and realized Michelle was nowhere to be seen. “Uh, where’s Michelle?” Mikey asked me. “I told her to stay right here, she can’t be very far… Michelle!!!!” We all called her name, as loud as we could. No answer, no sign of her anywhere. “Alright look, she probably went off a little further looking for flowers to pick.” I tried to rationalize. “Let’s just split off in 4 directions and walk in a straight line while calling for her. She’s bound to hear one of us.” Everyone agreed, and even though I appeared outwardly as the level-headed calm person you need to take control in an emergency, inside I was petrified that something had happened to her, and that it would be my fault. I took the east, and headed out. It didn’t take too long before I passed a large tree and saw her sitting down behind it, looking at something on the ground. “Michelle! Oh thank god!! Didn’t you hear us calling for you??” She didn’t answer me, or even turn around. “Michelle, didn’t I tell you to stay by the entrance and not move?!?” My relief was quickly turning into annoyance as she continued to ignore me. I walked up closer to see what she was looking at, and my mouth dropped in awe of what she had found. It was a single white trillium.

 They say it takes 8 years for a trillium plant to produce a flower, and conditions have to be just right for it to bloom. That’s what makes them so special and rare. I stared down at it almost in a trance, like I was seeing a mythical creature. Michelle slowly reached out her hand towards it and I snapped out of it. 

“No!!” I grabbed her by the arm and she finally turned around to look at me. “If you pick the flower, the plant will die.” She ripped her arm away from my grasp and whined, “But I want to show my mom!” We heard Mikey calling from the north and I cupped my hands over my mouth to yell back, “I found her, she’s over here!!” I looked back at her. “No Michelle, come on, you can just tell her about it when we get back home.” I had enough, I was beyond ready to go and we still had at least another 45 minutes of walking to even get back to the clubhouse; an hour if Michelle kept up her crap. I grabbed her arm again and pulled her up to a standing position, looking back at the trillium as I walked her away. Mikey caught up to us, breathless but trying to hide his concern. “You little shit, we should have left you out here! What the hell were you doing?” I let go of her arm and she walked toward Mikey. “She was trying to pick a flower over there.” “It was a trillium!!” Michelle said, with the biggest smile on her face. “Wait, really?” He looked at me in disbelief. Before I could respond, a blood curdling scream echoed through the forest, coming from the west. It was Lacey. My heart dropped into my stomach and once again, every molecule in my body went into full blown panic mode. This time, I couldn’t contain my composure. “Laceyyyyyy!!!!!” A panicked shriek erupted from my lungs and I took off running. Mikey grabbed Michelle and sprinted after us. The trees became a blur; I didn’t even feel all the scratches and scrapes. Had she come across a coyote? A mountain lion? A bear? I didn’t even stop to think about the danger I might be about to come in contact with, I just ran. And then I found her. She was lying on the ground, holding her left foot. “Lacey!!” I said, trying to choke back the tears that were building up. “I think I twisted my ankle!!” “Oh god damn it, you bitch.” I struggled to catch my breath. “I thought you were dead.” “I might as well be, I have cheerleading practice on Monday!” Mikey and Michelle caught up to us. “What happened?” He asked “She’s being a drama queen, she just rolled her ankle.” I was angry. “Can you get up?” He asked her. She was able to stand, but as soon as she tried to put any pressure on her foot at all, she screamed in pain. We spotted Devin running over from the south as he was yelling out, “Hey yo, everyone alive and accounted for?” “Yeah, Lacey hurt her ankle.” Mikey yelled back. As he approached he looked concerned. “Can you walk on it?” He asked her. “No.” Without hesitation he replied, “Well alright then, looks like you’re gonna have to piggyback it all the way back home.” He lowered himself enough to where she could hop up onto his back, and we headed back toward the trail. Even though my nerves had begun to settle a bit, I knew we were still far from being out of the woods, in more ways than one.

he’ll spend the other half of the day at his clinical aba center which we love and he’s making a lot of progress in! i’ll likely have to be the transportation but they are at least asking to see if it’s possible to commute him to the center. we will slowly cut off half days to work towards a full school day week as he progresses.
he’ll have to have an aid, i got no pushback from the school system surprisingly but a little bit of push back from the particular school. they said they usually don’t have one on ones in their setting but the system said that now they will for my son. i still have to wait on the final approval. he needs the aid primarily for access to content, self care, and to have sensory breaks as needed. he’ll need to be watched at recess & lunch due to his sensory distraction, he doesn’t mean to put himself in danger but without someone watching he may elope.
the school and school system had other plans but i truly feel in my heart that the only way he’s going to learn to function in group settings is by exposing him.
they are working on a special education hybrid model for kids with similar testing results as my son, low social scores but promising or above average academics, however, when they explained it they didn’t know how they were going to include the students yet, it’s a recently proposed program and i am worried he wouldn’t have all the academic access he’s capable of.
my initial reasoning for this is because of logistics. in my county they fit the special ed programs in regional locations and they are usually the areas with less crowded schools. the issue i have is that i specifically rent to have access to a school we love and trust and i’d like both my sons at the same school, it’s across the street! if i’m ever needed i can be there in less than 5 minutes.
i am so happy they are willing to try my plan as he’s been in the most restrictive pre k. we are all a bit nervous but i think the 1/2 day compromise makes it seem much for doable for the district. i am willing to sign a maturity waiver to redo kindergarten if he doesn’t work towards a full week and misses too much or doesn’t seem ready to transition to first by the end of the year.
he is good with other kids but more interested in playing his way. he has a lot of empathy too which i hope will help him act appropriately but there’s no way to know exactly how it’ll go with 25 other kindergartners and expectations to participate on demand. they do roam with him in his early learners pre-k and he does well most days but there’s been rough transition days too.
anyone have any experience with this kind of inclusion in a general setting with an aid?
his school is top rated in our county and i do trust them i just don’t want him to be pushed out due to challenges and hoping we can make it work with support.

DISCLAIMER : if you're AH employee, u're not allowed to read below. move along before i send you to your nearest democracy officer.
I wanted to share my best in slot loadout that rekts bots for any situation :

• SUPPORT WEAPON : LAS-98 LASER CANON - rekt anything : tank tower / tank / hulk / gunship / all devastator / light unit / good to desarm factory strider (killing it is too long when bot pack is around the factory strider) - for scout and zerker, use primary
  
• PRIMARY : PLAS-1 SCORCHER - for scout strider and berzerker (I mourn the eruptor doing the same + fabricator)
  
• SECONDARY : GP-31 PISTOL GRENADE - for fabricator (shoot only from higher ground, and aim at the very low of the vents, prefer eagle airstrike if possible)
  
• GRENADE : EMS GRENADE (for panic button, kitting, preparing high priority target)
  
• STRATAGEM : Eagle Cluster - for fast pack clearing
  
• STRATAGEM : Eagle Airstrike - for fast clearing of tank / fabricator / finishing factory strider
  
• STRATAGEM : Shield generator - i like to chill and the shield will allow a lot of small mistakes, not big ones. will help a lot to flee a bad encounter
  
• ARMOR : Medium - Explosive resistance (superstore exclusive for now, but heavy can do as good)
  
• BOOSTER : Localization Confusion - the patrol spawn reduction is a breath giving
  

TACTICS
At long range assault should start with laser cannon to destroy high priority target one after the other. take cover. repeat.
At mid range assault should start with an eagle, cluster on patrol, airstrike on base. laser cannon. take cover. repeat.
If feeling in danger, flee. change target let it despawn before coming back. or I get around to attack from another side.
In team assault, it's very smart to have 1/2 diver outflanking ennemies while the main crew is doing the frontal assault. the outflanking helldivers will be able to safely dump all their sweet DPS (Democracy Per Second) on bots.

Previous
So, if you’re just joining us, I work at a haunted zoo now. Since I’ve gotten some rest, it feels like I’ve got my head on straight, at least, so I’d like to continue where I left off.
I sat on the floor in the office after meeting the ghost until I’d settled my rattled mind (and realized I’d forgotten to ask her name, how rude is that?). I took a deep breath and got up off the floor. Walking over and falling into the rolling chair in front of the large screen of camera views, when I brought up the camera that covered the area in which I’d spotted her, she was still there, and it seemed she hadn’t moved an inch.
Sitting there, at a loss, I continued to watch her. The ghost hung around for another five minutes or so, appearing to look at a few things off-screen, though I’m not sure what. Then she walked off into the forest and left the view of the cameras. I wasn’t sure if she vanished into the ether or if she’d gone looking into the trees to look for something.
But that wasn’t the end of the job interview, so let me jump back there. It continued into what kind of animals the zoo had, with Andrew asking me how much experience I had with dangerous animals.
I took a moment to consider the question. “So, ah…I’ve been going hunting and fishing with a neighbor since I was sixteen,” I told him. “We always have to keep an eye out for gators, bears, and hogs. Then there’s snakes, of course…snapping turtles… Since I’ve lived here my whole life and been aiming for a job with wildlife for a long time, I know a lot about the animals in Arkansas in general. But good advice for all of the above is avoid them, so I’ve had encounters, but I don’t know if you’d say I have experience with them.”
“That’s fine,” Andrew said, nodding. “That’s an answer I’m satisfied with. Now, the ghost was the appetizer, Ripley; here’s the main course. To start with, the pay isn’t twenty-five an hour. It’s fifty.”
Staring in shock for a moment, I asked, “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. But that’d be weird to post online considering what applicants think we need, so I halved it.”
“That’s… Okay, why?”
“The animals are already here. You just can’t see them.”
I stared at him for a long moment, some disbelief worming its way into my expression, before saying, “Sorry, what?”
“There’s a chance you’d naturally never see them, or at least some of them,” he continued casually. “It depends on both your genetics and how long you stay on the job. I can naturally see six of them, but that’s it. Suzanne can see all of them, and more. Some are what people would label demons or ghosts. Or magic. Mostly you’d call them cryptids. The ghost was just a warm-up; I mentioned her first because it never takes more than a week to see her if you work the night shift. If you manage to handle her okay, soon you’ll be able to see the animals too. The more time you spend on the grounds, for weird reasons,” he said, wiggling his fingers in the direction of the back door, “the more you’ll be able to see.”
“So, this…this is a zoo for cryptids,” I echoed slowly. He nodded once, waiting to find out what kind of reaction I would have. I gestured vaguely around the room. “If this is a hidden camera show, will you cut me a check for showing up and participating?”
Andrew coughed out a chuckle and shook his head. “No joke. There are a ton of stories out there that have been written to death, pulverized until they’re not the Grimm stories of old and instead they’re Disney films. A lot of those stories come from what some humans have seen. There are dozens of other worlds pressed up against ours, and occasionally things come through by accident. If they’re smart, they’ll lay low and then make their way back when they can. If not, they become local folklore until someone helps them back. I’m just from London, but Suzanne is from somewhere else. She hires people like us for this zoo. Humans.”
Sighing, I shook my head. “That makes no sense. Why would she hire a muggle for a magic zoo?”
Andrew burst out laughing at that, and then waited to gather himself before he continued. “Fair point, but this is less about magic and more about animals, and you’re missing some information that will explain it. First of all, if I misjudge an employee, and they think they can make bank by outing the endangered and valuable animals we have, it’s easy to relocate the zoo.”
“Because magic?” I asked.
“Exactly,” he replied, ignoring the thread of skepticism in my tone. “That means it isn’t the end of the world if that happened, though it is a pain in the arse. But second…let me ask you a question. Speaking of reality shows, say the Discovery Channel put out a call to replace Steve Irwin when he passed. Imagine they had a line out the door,” he said with a gesture, “of people who thought they had the skill and natural talent to replace him, to take on everything he’d been doing his whole life. How many do you reckon would lose an arm, a leg, or their life, by the end of the day?”
My lips parted in surprise and I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re saying people from…wherever…they’re just as dumb as humans, but they’re worse, because they actually think they can handle these things.”
Andrew pointed the pen at me. “Things. Exactly. You called them things. Suzanne and her friends grew up with them and would call them animals. These animals have dispositions and temperaments that we’ve studied for as long as there have been scientists. Where Suzanne’s from, they know the weaknesses of these animals, and also they’re in enclosures here, even if you and I can’t see the walls because they’re invisible things called ‘wards’. If I hire someone who’s got magic on top of all that, they’ll have almost no instinctive fear.
“Everything here is nocturnal, and every one of them is a hunter. Some of these things? Humans see them and they pass out. Not that I want you passing out, but I need someone who is scared of these things, who knows to stay out of the enclosures no matter what. Not someone who thinks they can train them to do tricks, who gets close enough for them to grab a mouthful of hair and drown them. Once, we had a night shift manager injured, and once killed, because they didn’t take these animals seriously enough.”
Thinking back to the Sea World orca incident I knew he’d been referencing, I remembered wondering how someone at that level of her profession could be so careless as I watched the video on YouTube. It made sense when he explained it like that. I hesitated before mentally throwing my hands up and going all in. “So, why put this place here, then? If they’re endangered and also dangerous, why have a zoo at all instead of just a small reserve?”
He pursed his lips, looking disappointed in me. “Ripley. You know that already. You already said as much.”
Thinking back through our conversation, I said, “The rich humans who pay top dollar to see supernatural animals.”
“Not humans,” he told me. “But people, yes, and they are rich, and they’re making donations and spending their money on a ticket here because everything we have is endangered.”
“So…”
I just let my voice trail off and my mind started to drift. Andrew remained silent, letting me do so. There’s that thing people say, ‘I believe that you believe it,’ which is just a kinder way of saying, ‘Bullshit.’ Parents say it about closet monsters. Psychologists say it to people who say they’ve been abducted and probed by aliens. I wanted to say it to Andrew.
But I also wanted a job. If it meant working overnight at an empty zoo, that was fine. When it came down to it, especially when I took the tone of our conversation into account, this was a zoo specifically focused on preserving endangered ‘animals’, and it was allegedly doing important work. Also, if this turned out to be the real deal and I started seeing the animals, I would deal with it, just like I would deal with an enclosure that had a lion or tiger or gorilla. If it came with a ghost and invisible creatures, I really didn’t see what the difference was, if I couldn’t go in the enclosures either way.
On that note, I’d like you to imagine a kid who looks at a roller coaster, watching everyone screaming and grinning as they go up and down and all around and they’re like, ‘Heck, I could do that! That looks like a blast!’
Then they get on, the first drop hits, and they realize they’ve made a terrible mistake.
“All right,” I sighed. “I can’t say I’m going to turn down a job just because it’s going to be scary. Especially not one with this paycheck.”
Andrew smiled. “Awesome. There’s an adjustment process for anyone working here, similar to a dog that gets adopted, actually. I know the general guidelines of, ‘three days, three weeks, three months’ in terms of milestones, until they finally feel they’re where they’re supposed to be,” he told me, “and you can think of your time here along those lines. I really think you’re a great fit, and once you reach the milestone of working here for three months, I’ll officially consider you our new night shift guard. And I hope you’ll stay with us for many years.”
I nodded and smiled at the flattery of an employer wanting me to work a great job for them for a long time. I’d never had a dog, but those milestones were well-known among anyone who knew animals, especially dogs. The first three days, the dog is getting to know its new digs, exploring, and decompressing. At three weeks, they’ve gotten used to their environment and are starting to get comfortable with their surroundings and the routines of the humans they live with. By three months, they know the rules and follow them, they trust you, and they feel they are where they’re meant to be. I could only hope to be so lucky.
I saw the ghost two days ago and she has yet to make another appearance (for those who are curious, I asked, and her name is Leila), and I still hadn’t seen any animals. I did hear one, though, I feel compelled to note. A growling roar sounded from the lake on occasion, echoing across the vast zoo, sending a shiver down my spine. Whatever that animal was, it sounded gigantic.
Andrew said there was apparently a group that wanted to visit for a birthday and they were offering a huge donation, so he let me know they were making an exception and that this group would be walking through the park that night. That meant I’d be watching people watching animals that, as far as I could tell, weren’t there.
It was anticlimactic. Even the three people who came for the tour just looked like people, not like aliens or something eldritch from another dimension, and I stayed in the security office the whole time. Andrew was the one giving the tour. I watched them spend about five minutes at each enclosure, the hour or so that they were there passing without incident. It was clear that they were able to see all the animals, though, since they motioned excitedly at each enclosure and spoke to Andrew, who presumably answered any questions they had.
If they could see the animals, that was that. There was still that niggle in the back of my head, from my twenty-three years of life never encountering anything like ghosts or cryptids, telling me that this was ridiculous. Waiting for someone to knock on the door, a camera mounted on their shoulder, to tell me that it was a big joke and they wanted to see how long I’d play along. But from all I saw, this was a real place with real, invisible animals.
I do carry a taser and pepper spray in my capacity as a security guard. Though it isn’t for the animals, since they’re in the enclosures; they’re actually for the rare instance of a break-in. Andrew mentioned that it had happened several times it the past, someone trying to steal an animal in the hopes of selling it on the black market. They’d been successful before, but apparently my predecessor Roger was good at his job, and mostly they left in handcuffs.
I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of confrontation, but my job was to call Andrew and then confront the person, not kick their ass. That’s what the police were for, or rather, the people Andrew would call in lieu of police in certain situations.
Fifty bucks an hour. That’s the key here.
Andrew hadn’t set up direct deposit, since he was sticking with a strategy of waiting to see if I’d continue to work there once I found out myself dealing with the animals (I’ve decided I am going to just call them animals). Instead, I got an old-fashioned check after my shift every Friday. The number on the first check was delightful. I went out that evening and had a big dinner at the local diner, order my most expensive favorites on the menu and a big slice of pie for dessert.
When it came to the paychecks in general, though, I had this weird feeling of not wanting to tell my dad and brother about the fact that it was actually $50/hr. I previously mentioned that my dad, his name’s Nathan if you’re curious, works at a local grocery store. Our town has a couple food franchises, but I think its size is just short of whatever threshold Walmart uses to decide where to open. He earns $14/hr. and that’s after the tiny raises he’s gotten over the past thirteen years.
That’s not to say he’d feel bad about not making as much as me. On the contrary, he would be ecstatic for me and really proud. But, like me, he’d be suspicious. That hourly rate was the biggest hint that this was more than just a private zoo for cryptids. And as soon as that fat check cleared without problems, my dad wouldn’t be satisfied with reassurances; he’d want to come visit the zoo and look around.
I’d told him it’s a private preservation with scheduled (expensive) visits only and that it had only eleven animals, so he’d been appeased by me brushing off the idea of a visit. Also, I took a few photos of my workplace; one of the security room, one of me sitting in my chair, one photo of the many screens I watched, and a selfie where I was feigning sleep out of boredom, slouched in my chair with my mouth open in a faux snore. That let him feel like he knew where I was and what I was doing, and that I was safe.
But if I told him I was making double what he thought, my father would practically order me to quit. No job was worth my safety, he’d tell me. I was quite of the opposite opinion, however, considering how crucial any and all conservation efforts were these days. Especially with the steep extinction levels due to humans competing with other animals for space, not to mention climate change. Working in any job that helped preserve species and keep ecosystems in balance, or put them back in balance, was so important.
Then again, my father would also point out something I had realized right away: the fact was that I was working with endangered species that were not from Earth. I wasn’t helping my planet. To be honest, though…that didn’t matter to me. Especially after that talk with Andrew about why he hired a human for this job, I figured whichever dimension these animals came from had the equivalent of us, razing forests to the ground, clouding the planet with pollution, and leaving the animals with no avenue of recourse when yet more land was taken from them.
I really do hope to keep working here for a long time, though, and not just because of the money. I can’t help it; I want to know what these things were, and I want to work with them, to do the job of a zookeeper. The same way you go up to the chain-link fence to get close to a carnivore on the other side who thinks you’d make a nice afternoon snack. You just want to be closer to them, to experience that incredible, daunting feeling of being in their presence.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long before I got what I wanted.
The day after we had the tour go through, I was doing my sweep when I saw the ghost again. She was sitting on a small boulder in the same area I’d seen her the first time, looking identical, blood covering the front of her slashed shirt, the wounds visible underneath. I stopped and stood there for a moment before I decided to raise my hand in a small wave.
The young woman cocked her head at me and raised a hand in the air in an imitation of my gesture, her expression showing a bit of curiosity.
She was low-key, seemingly not concerned with my presence, looking at me as a novel phenomenon in her world. I wondered what that world consisted of. Was she always here, sometimes visible and sometimes not? Or did she have another world next to ours, in the ether, where she left everything in this world behind and floated in her disembodied form? Did she still feel emotions? Was that really curiosity on her face, or was I projecting? Did she feel happiness? Fear? Did she have the option of moving on, or was she stuck here?
Many questions that I might never get the answers to. And that was assuming Andrew knew the answers, since I’d never met Suzanne Cooper and he hadn’t even mentioned that possibility. This place was clearly her baby, but I’m sure running it was a lot of work. Plus, if she was rich enough to own it, she was rich enough to have other businesses and charities to run.
When it comes to the enclosures, they’re all wrapped by a barrier of some kind, though never one that seems adequate. There was not a single place with the ugly metal weavings of a chain-link fence, and no stretches of circular razor wire. Instead, there are nice fences. Black iron, or wrought steel fencing in a similar style to the one circling the perimeter of the zoo, just shorter and with different patterns. Or a spaced picket fence, the wood stained in some tone of brown, or a split two-rail fence. As if to say, ‘This is the border of your enclosure, but we’re just letting you know out of courtesy.’
When I started to pass enclosure number seven last night, a young woman’s voice spoke, “Hello.”
I startled, unaware that I hadn’t been alone. “Oh. Hi,” I said, staring at her standing a few yards in.
She had been next to a large tree and I hadn’t seen her. This enclosure was behind a picket fence, and she walked through the large area of wild grasses and flowers that stretched across the other side of the fence. There were fewer tall grasses closer to the fence, which I guessed was because it had been tromped down by her regular pacing along it when there were visitors, or if she wanted to see the various enclosures of the zoo. Her sudden appearance was a bit weird, considering I had been expecting to see a cryptid and instead I was looking at, it seemed, an attractive Asian woman.
She wore a black kimono, the soft silk robe draped gently over her body, with beautiful patterns of cherry blossoms, more so over her left side, and red and blue birds with their wings spread. A sash wrapped around her abdomen, she wore socks and sandals on her feet, and her hair was up in those rolls that gave volume to the style.
I was no expert on any fashion, much less that of another country, so I just assumed it was all traditional Japanese clothing. Most likely, the visitors who came liked to see a certain time-honored style and that’s what she stuck with. Or maybe she played on stereotypes. That would be amusing.
“I’m Yui. It’s nice to meet you,” she spoke, arriving at the border of the fence and holding out a hand for me to shake.
I’d been standing about three yards away from her, and I’ll be honest, muscle memory tried to kick in. But I only made it two steps, my hand starting to rise, before I froze, the hand falling limply at my side. “Nice to meet you, too,” I answered, my voice quiet.
Damn. I wonder how many times that honey trap works back where she comes from.
The pleasant look on her face faded, and she lowered her hand. “You won’t shake hands with me? Isn’t that rude?”
“I mean, I kind of like my hand where it is. You know, attached to me.”
Her demure smile widened into something more amused. “I would never do something so revolting.”
Looking her up and down, as if more visual information would give me more knowledge of what she was, I asked her, “What would you do?”
“I would be less wasteful,” she said softly.
A finger of ice trailed down my spine, and I had the sudden image in my head of her grabbing my outstretched hand in an iron grip and yanking me over the fence, leaving me to sprawl on the ground. Then killing and consuming me efficiently, without a single careless step, the same way humans slaughtered pigs, using everything from the hog but the squeal. I was struck with a shiver at the idea of her consuming everything from me but my screams.
Slowly, I took one step further down the path, then another. Just as I got to a walking pace, though, I realized the woman had started walking too, in the same direction. I’d have eventually gotten to the end of her enclosure and keep going, leaving her behind, but she spoke up. “Are you leaving?”
I came to a stop, meeting her gaze again. “My job is to walk the zoo every hour. Then I’ll get back to the security room and stay there until my next walk.”
“Have you met the others yet?”
I hesitated before saying, “Just Leila.”
She blinked languidly. “That means nobody welcomed you here.”
“Andrew did.”
She didn’t reply to that. Instead, she slowly started to lean forward, and I flinched backward a few steps further as I saw insect legs start curling out from her back.
No. Not insect. Arachnid.
The eight legs ended in small ‘paws’ with tiny claws, a layer of hairs covering the leg from top to bottom, like any typical tarantula. I took two more slow steps back and my mouth went dry as the jointed legs just kept lengthening, until they were large enough to lever her off the ground.
My gaze had been on the spider legs, but my heart skipped a beat as I realized her human legs had melded together and turned into a bulging abdomen. Her skin was shifting to a carapace, eventually all the way up to her shoulders and down her arms, her fingers elongating and her nails stretching to claws. From there down, her body was that of a pale tarantula with pedipalps the size of my arms and piercing fangs in her jaws that looked like they could take my head off.
There was a moment, my vision blurring, where I was worried that I might piss myself. The part of my brain that still had its humor intact in that moment told me that I should keep an emergency set of clothes in my car, or at the very least, start wearing Depends to work.
“I show you my true form,” she said softly, her voice now raspy like an eighty-year-old after a lifelong smoking habit. “Welcome to Suzanne Cooper’s zoo. The night shift guard for many years was Roger, before he retired and the zoo moved, and I miss him dearly. What should I call you?”
I choked on my words. There was no way my throat was going to cooperate enough for me to clearly get a sentence out. Instead, I realized my legs had taken control of the situation themselves, unsatisfied with my conscious brain’s decision to stand and stare, taking steps backward. I backed up a yard, then five yards, then ten.
My mind focused on the fact that spiders don’t waste anything, and pictured my demise. I’d be wrapped in a cocoon, killed, and made nice and mushy before she had me for dinner.
The whole time, my brain was a frenzied mess, my pupils were probably the size of dimes, and I was staring at that tiny, pathetic fence between her and me. There was so much adrenaline pumping through my body that I felt like my bones were vibrating. The fence was, to my eyes, the only thing between us. The only thing keeping her from tackling and killing me. My only hope was that she’d do it quickly.
But she didn’t move. As I absorbed her innocent, polite words, the look on her face was calm, and I wondered if this was typically the way a conversation went before she devoured her prey. I wondered how many people she’d eaten. Not humans, not people from Earth, but the ones from where she came from. The fact that she doesn’t scare the shit out of those people means they’re staggeringly dumber than humans.
Finally, I rounded a corner, both relieved at having her out of my sight and worried that she would take that moment to come find me. When she’d been within eyeshot, I had at least known where she was and could run in the other direction. But I didn’t hear the sound of faint footsteps moving rapidly toward me. All was quiet, in that deep, smothering way that only an empty business in the middle of the night in small town America could be.
My hands trembling, I barely paid attention to anything but the confirmation that my surroundings were free of the colossal spider as I finally got back to the door. Grabbing the handle and letting my eyes dart around for about ten seconds and my ears prick for the slightest sound, I finally swiped my key card across the pad and went inside, shutting the door behind me and engaging the backup deadbolt.
Maybe that was why they had decided on keycards. If I was running from something and panicking, using an actual key or inserting the card like at a hotel would keep me from getting to safety considering my hands were shaking enough to mix a margarita.
Walking over to my chair, I fell into it, letting my body flush itself of terror as I looked up at the cameras. There she was, still in arachnid form, exactly where I’d left her behind that rinky-dink fence, casually looking around and slowly pacing back and forth. I stared at her as my racing heart gradually slowed, and a minute or so later she turned on her eight legs and walked back into the trees.
Whatever invisible fences the enclosures have apparently work, which is nice, because I wasn’t keen on getting killed by one of the creatures here. And that’s what brings me here, spilling out everything that’s happened so far. Because nearly passing out from terror isn’t something I wanted to deal with at work, obviously, but I keep going over what she did in my head again and again, and I feel like I reacted like a child who spotted a wolf spider on their bed. I started to worry for my overactive sense of self-preservation, at least in my capacity as an employee here.
The spider didn’t even try to hurt me, and so I was feeling a bit foolish. Even annoyed, actually, at the fact that I’d freaked out so hard and took off instead of trying to engage in at least basic conversation. I got the sense that she wasn’t at human-level intelligence, but I was never going to be able to hold any level of conversation with an alligator.
Sure, she did mention that she wouldn’t be so crass as to yank off my hand because she’d rather just have my entire corpse, but wouldn’t a wolf do the same if it was hungry? Wouldn’t any carnivore? Actually, they probably would’ve been satisfied with one of my hands. The fear here was from the fact that she turned into a giant spider. If she’d turned into Clifford, I would’ve reacted the same way, if not better than, meeting Leila.
With that, I decided I’m staying on the job. Considering how frustrated I can get with foolish people, it’s a bit hypocritical, and I’m being a bit of an idiot. But…there are definitely wards keeping them in their enclosures. Also, I signed up for creatures for another dimension, whether or not I believed in them at the time, and I will not let encountering my first one in an objectively boring way be the reason I quit.
The money is a factor, I’ll grant you. Of course it is. And I can’t spend it if I’m dead, but all signs point to surviving as long as I don’t do anything dumb. Also, yes, I’ll admit there’s a not-so-little voice in the back of my head that’s desperate to know what else is here. I never thought I’d do something like this, but finding out these things are real, I honestly do want to learn more about them.
Still, though, I decided to call Andrew at the end of my shift to ask if the pepper spray and taser I carried worked on a certain spider, as well as the other animals I’d yet to meet.
Previous

Previous Part
By the time I’d woke up bright and early at 4 A.M., Rocco had amassed an impressive pile of pilfered food in the corner of the tepee. He was just dragging in a turkey leg when I saw him, must’ve been at it all night form the looks of it.
“Rocco, what the hell!”
I shouted, waving my hands at the pile of food he’d brought in.
“I told you to stay out of trouble, lay low. This is… not that!”
I complained, trying to think of how I’d talk my way out of this if anyone asked about the missing food. Rocco simply responded by shrugging, turning around, and diving face first into the mountain of food. I was annoyed at the moment but then I got to thinking. If Rocco stole all that and no one saw him what else could he do without being noticed?
“Hey… hey Rocco no-one saw you stealing all this right?”
I asked, grabbing his tail and dragging him out of the food mountain.
“WHATS DA BIG IDEA!”
He protested, flailing around as I held him in the air by his tail before regaining his composure and adding.
“I’m a profesional, of course I didn’t get seen. Why?! Did someone say something!?
Rocco shot his head from side to side, like he would find someone listening or critiquing his heist. All the movement causing him to spin slowly, still dangling from his tail.
“No, I was just thinking, as long as your out here I could have a job for you.”
I said, setting him down as he answered,
“Whad’ya mean? Spit it out!”
with his classic charm.
“I mean, I want you to sneak into that blonde guy’s tepee. The one with the shitty attitude, Brooke I think his name was. Just see if you can find anything in there.”
I could see Rocco’s interest was peaked but he still had one last all to predictable question.
“What’s in it for me?”
“You keep whatever you find in there no questions asked.”
Before the words even left fully my lips Rocco cried, “DEAL” and sprinted out of the tepee on all fours, leaving me alone.
I wasn’t really sure what the process was now, was Shaoni going to come get us or did she expect us to meet her in the coliseum? I’d never been part of anything like this before, I had no idea what the attendance policy was like. So, lacking anything better to do, I walked down into the mines and waited in the coliseum. It was obvious they were’t really ready for us yet. A few of Shaoni’s people were down there placing cactus looking things into five carved wooden bowls on the floor. Five bowls, five people in these trials so those had to have something to do with us. I looked around the room, trying to find Shaoni. She wasn’t up on her perch like yesterday and she certainly wasn’t part of the small group setting up those bowls. I felt a little different about her now that we’d had a chance to talk. Before I’d been afraid of her, and for good reason, but she seemed to want the opposite of that. Maybe not from me specifically but in general. Although, how could you not be scared of someone who could turn into a giant bird and seemed to consistently be the cause of freak storms. There was a lot of power to her but she didn’t want people to be afraid of it, she wanted respect. I’m sure there was more to her that I hadn’t heard but I certainly was going to hear anything new here.
Seeing as I was still apparently early, I decided not to wear out my welcome in the coliseum. I made my way back out of the mines and settled down back at that canvas tent with the huge table. It was again filled with food that had come from nowhere in particular, probably set up by more of Shaoni’s people. As if to confirm my suspicion, the bandaged man Bianca had stabbed earlier emerged from the camp, walking towards me with a platter of bacon. He starred daggers at me as he placed the platter at the table but didn’t say anything. I was almost tempted to apologize on Bianca’s behalf but I got the sense that wouldn’t be a great idea. Not long after I saw two of the others approaching.
“… Sure, but for some glorified tent it’s still pretty comfortable.”
Brooke said to Katrina who looked thoroughly uninterested in what he had to say.
Brooke wore a… purple suit that made him look like some stereotypical version of a pimp. I couldn’t think of any reason he’d wear that out here, at least no-one would mistake him from anyone else, that ’s for sure. Katrina wore an equally confusing getup, a blue tank top and jeans that made her look kinda like the girl from those tomb raider games. It was about 50 degrees out and probably wasn’t going to get much warmer. If she wanted to freeze, so be it. I gave a slight nod to them as they sat down across from me. Katrina still eyeing Brooke with an expression that begged for him not to open his mouth again.
I couldn’t stop staring at her, no not like that, I was staring at her belt where a holster sat,
“You like it?”
She asked, noticing the staring that I should’ve been trying harder to hide, drawing the handgun from the holster on her hip.
“Beretta M9 semi-automatic pistol, my father’s service pistol actually. Always served me well, so I always keep it on me, well almost always.”
She said with a wink, checking the gun and pulling back its slide. I wasn’t all that familiar with guns but I distinctly saw her flip the safety off. Which had a profound effect on my nerves considering I was staring down its barrel.
“They let you keep that around here? I would’ve thought they take that from you.”
I asked incredulously, still eyeing the gun she had pointed at me.
“I hid it on me yesterday, if they have an issue with it they can try and take it from me. I’m not doing anything like this without some kind of insurance. They get me and Luke or nothing at all.”
She retorted, spinning the gun back into her holster and turning the safety back on with a practiced hand. “Oh that’s cute, she named it” I thought sarcastically as my nerves settled, a loaded gun no longer pointed directly at my face.
“I’m not sure Shaoni would let you leave, even if you wanted to.”
“Oh please! She wouldn’t dare lay a finger on me or she’d have bigger problems coming her way.”
Katrina laughed, throwing her hand back in seemingly genuine amusement. She really didn’t have a care about the Thunderbird? I found that hard to believe.
“So what do you do anyways then? If you’re so sure she wouldn’t touch you.”
I asked incredulously. This seemed to grab her attention as she immediately snapped her head down, locking eyes with me and barking,
“That’s a need to know thing and you don’t.”
Before returning her attention to the food on the table and ignoring me. She was military, that was probably a safe assumption.
Brooke had been listening in to our conversation as he ate. After Katrina snapped at me he finally spoke up.
“So hang on, you came all the way out here with no insurance, no protection? Does anyone even know you’re out here?”
I briefly thought about Rocco, he wasn’t great insurance but he sure came cheap. I hadn’t stopped to think about preparing anything to bring out here with me. I just stupidly assumed everyone was on the same page as me, an unprepared fish out of water.
“No, I guess not.”
I responded, a little shaken at the realization that everyone here was probably more prepared than me.
“You must be stupid or have balls of steel to do something like that.”
Brooke told me, reaching over the table to clap me on the shoulder. I didn’t know if this really was the Brooke Bianca told me about or not but I really did not like this guy. We ate the rest of our breakfast in silence. John and Robert never showed up but I guessed they were down in the mines helping set everything up. I guess being a participate in the trials didn’t exempt Shaoni's followers from having to help get ready for them.
Apparently my guess was right because Robert and John were both already in the coliseum when the three of us arrived. Shaoni was once again up on the balcony and all of the people that had been there earlier were gone. I could clearly see what was in the five bowls now. It was some kind of small cactus thing with a white-pink flower at the top. I’d never seen anything like it before but it did seem a little out of place.
“This is your first trial, the trial of morals. This trial is meant to show us where your morals lie through visions of the past and beyond. Sometimes the plant has a mind of its own though so I don’t expect anyone will have the same experience. Some may not even serve the purpose of the trial but the vision is more important than anything I hoped to learn.”
Shaoni spoke like an announcer from above us.
“There is a plant there for each of you, peyote plants that I had grow for just this occasion. Each of you will eat one of the plants and they will give you visions. You will walk among the spirits and they will show you what you need to see.”
Shaoni finished, like she hadn’t just asked us to take hallucinogenics in an unfamiliar environment surrounded by people we didn’t really trust. I wasn’t a huge fan of being here when I was in control of my faculties but while experiencing a vision, oh no, fat chance. Then again it wasn’t like I had all that much of a choice, I realized just before I opened my mouth to protest.
“Fine but what does that tell you about us? Sure we can go get high for you here but it doesn’t really help anyone.”
Brooke spoke up, taking his usual disrespectful tone with Shaoni.
“I have my ways of knowing, but this experiences is for you. It should tell you more about yourself than it will tell me but I assure you, I will learn something.”
An annoyed but composed Shaoni responded. With that she turned and left us to our task.
“So does anyone want to go first?”
Katrina asked, putting a finger to her nose, inviting anyone else to go first.
“Not so fast sweetcheeks, I don’t trust any of you so how about you take the first crack at it?”
Brooke pointedly suggested. I think Katrina wanted to throw a haymaker at his face right then but I stepped in first.
“What if we all did it at once? Then no one is waiting around and I highly doubt she would let anyone come down here and do anything to us if these trials are that important to her.”
I reasoned, pointing up at the balcony Shaoni had been standing on.
“I still don’t like it but I can live with that, I agree everyone at once like… what’s your name?”
“Keith”
“Everyone at once like Keith said.”
Commanded Katrina, looking everyone in the eye and daring them to challenge her. I didn’t know what she did before coming here but whatever it was gave her a glare even Shaoni would be proud of. No-one hesitated to walk up to their respective bowls and take a bite of the strange pinkish flower at the top of the cactus.
The effects weren’t immediate, John just ate his flower then knelt by his bowl, eyes closed waiting for the vision to come. Robert leaned against the wall looking at his watch, seemingly judging the time before it took effect.
“It’s not my first time with peyote, I’ll probably stay up a little longer than you guys.”
Brooke bragged to the room, taking a seat by his bowl as Katrina and I did the same.
Poetically, Brooke was actually the first of us to go down for the count. I had to resit the urge to stand up and kick the crumpled up purple ball that was formerly Brooke. I don’t think anyone would have stopped me, heck the way Katrina was glaring at him this morning she might’ve joined in. But given what came next it was probably a good idea I didn’t stand. All of a sudden the room began flashing different colors, orange then brown then blue. I felt like I was falling but I hadn’t moved. Eventually a sensation came over me, like I had stood up but I was acutely aware of the fact that my body was really lying on the floor of the coliseum. As my vision cleared I started to recognize things, sights and sounds of a hospital room. It would seem my vision had started by bringing me back to my father.
I inched through the hospital room, sure of what I’d see on the other side of the thin curtain. A heart monitor beeped, just the same as the first and last time I’d been in this room. I saw my father, splayed across the bed no different than the only time I’d been in this room. I’ve always maintained that my family life was generally normal, anything that lay outside of that box of normality could be attributed to my father. He was never what I’d call a good person. Sure, he was never aggressive towards me but it didn't really count for anything. You could tell he never really wanted me. What he did to my mother, that was another story. He came home drunk almost every night and she end up with a black eye or worse at least once a week. Unfortunately for us he had a good job, he paid the bills and my mother and I couldn’t really support ourselves on our own back then. Worse still my mother always told me she put up with it for my sake when I asked her about it. That meant I always felt partially responsible every time I heard a fist meet skin in the room below mine.
My father had ended up in this bed by way of a drunk driving incident. Funnily enough it wasn’t actually his fault. He just so happened to be in the wrong intersection at the wrong time when a box truck plowed right into him. The accident left him with severe brain and spinal damage. It was a sick joke he survived, not a miracle. He’d be on life support from now on. I could’ve made him pay for everything he did with the simple tug of a cable. The only reason I didn’t was that the owner of the company that employed the box truck driver offered to pay all his medical bills. He must not have looked to closely because my fathers insurance was covering all of it. But every week a hefty check came in the mail anyways. As long as he was alive and in that hospital bed, me and my mother could live comfortably. It wasn’t really the right thing to do but I figured it was what my mother deserved after years of putting up with his abuse.
The heart monitor’s shrill beeping focused me back to the situation. I stood over my father’s body, the old urge to just pull the plug washing over me again.
“It would be so easy. Mom’s fine now, you’re managing, why do you still need him?”
I thought to myself, toying with the idea as another voice spoke in my head, Shaoni’s voice.
“He’s earned it, he ruined years of your mother’s life, Its only fair he pay a price for what he did.”
I looked around for the source of her voice but I saw nothing, maybe I was just hearing things, it was just a vision after all right? I looked down to see I was now on the opposite side of the bed, hand reaching toward the cord that powered the life support. Time seemed to move at a crawl, was this really the best option? He was probably solely responsible for the distance between my mother and I, he beat her so many times. Some of the blame for it even sat on my shouldres, would killing him take that away? Could I live with myself if I did this? Knowing I took the easy way out at his expense. No… I couldn’t, it would make me just as bad as him. It just wasn’t right I shouldn’t be the one to decide if he dies. Besides, whatever sliver of sentience remained in him deserved to watch as he shriveled and died in his own way, in some ways that was far worse but he didn’t deserve an easy way out either. The room spun as I made my choice and pulled my hand back from the plug. Sending my vision spiraling as my body collapsed to the cold hospital floor. When I finally fought my way through my spinning vision and back to my feet I was somewhere else. I was in Imalone and if I had to guess it was the night I first saw Shaoni.
I was somewhere in the town square where I got chained into the wooden monstrosity the cultists had made. Shaoni was circling in the sky so I guess I was watching this memory from outside of myself. I was made absolutely sure of this when I saw myself being carried out of the old rotting bar. I watched as the situation played out exactly as I remembered it. Right up until Shaoni landed and came to speak with the one masked cultist. What had been gibberish to me before was suddenly crystal clear english.
“What IS this! You think this is right!? This is what you think I stand for, human sacrifice?!”
Shaoni shouted with such intensity and force I jumped back, looking for a place to take cover.
“Brother Aaron foretold your approach, this outsider wandered in so we thought he would make an excellent gift to you.”
The masked cultist answered, missing the point entirely as Shaoni’s eyes flashed with fury.
“There will be a sacrifice alright, a price must be paid for everything you’ve done here. You have no understanding of what I stand for, You’ve spit in the face of it in fact and for that, each and every one of you will make a sacrifice. Release that poor boy, NOW!”
Shaoni commanded the cultists with a voice so stern I almost ran to try and free the trapped version of myself. None of them budged, they didn’t even seem to realize what kind of danger they were in. Shaoni strode past them over to me where she offered me her all to familiar deal. I was stunned, I never stopped to think that she fully intended to let me go either way. Sure, now I knew that these guys weren’t her usual followers. I still never thought she came here intending to wipe them out. I didn’t really have a chance to dwell on it. Before I knew it Shaoni was transforming again causing a tornado to appear in the middle of town as lightning struck around the area like machine gun fire. As the wall of wind rain and lighting reached me I felt a familiar falling sensation and blacked out again.
When I came to I was back on the cave floor again. I wasn’t sure if I was still in a vision until I felt a sharp kick to my side.
“Oh… that felt… very real. Oh god why?”
I groaned as I looked up at the smirking Katrina.
“He’s awake, that’s everyone then.”
She called out to the rest of the group who were all standing around me. She and the others walked off in the direction of the exit, leaving me there on the floor. With nothing better to do I followed them out. Outside the full moon had shown itself, bathing the camp in shimmering moonlight. Shaoni walked up to greet all of us who’d just collectively decided to just go outside.
“You’ve all made it through it would seem, I hope your experiences weren’t to unpleasant.”
Brooke charged straight past her, I could practically see the steam coming out of his ears. Obviously he’d seen something he didn’t like while he was under the influence of that plant. Katrina seemed completely unaffected, marching by Shaoni filled with the same confidence she had when I first saw her. Robert and John seemed completely unaffected by whatever they had seen but something told me they might be used to it. Me, I wasn’t doing so great. I wasn’t all that pleased about revisiting my father and all those old memories and whatever that flower was called had really done a number on me. I weakly waved to Shaoni as I walked by, just trying to focus on walking straight. She didn’t seem to surprised that none of us wanted to talk to her. She didn’t say anything to us as we all quietly sat and ate. I didn’t like the silence, it felt like everyone was just waiting for something to happen but no-one had any idea what. So I got up and headed back to my tepee, maybe Rocco had turned something up on Brooke.
Rocco was waiting for me atop his mountain of food when I got back.
“I found somethin yous might be interested in”
He said triumphantly, waving around a polaroid photo he had clutched in his paw.
“Give that to me!”
I snapped, ripping it right out of his paw.
“Well someones in a mood.”
“Getting drugged will do that to you.”
I snapped as Rocco stared at me, paws on his hips like he was about to give me attitude.
“I’m sorry My heads still just spinning from… well everything today.”
I sighed, holding my head in one hand as I shook it. Apologizing to a raccoon, my life really was something wasn’t it? I looked down to the picture enemy hand and immediately ice shot through my veins. It was a picture of Bianca taken not too long ago by the looks of it. She was walking back into her house in the photo and it looked like it was taken from a passing car. The photo itself isn’t what really concerned me though, the message written on the back did that. “What you seek can be found in the town of Eagles Peak”, the note read in a singsongy way. I’d never seen Shaoni’s handwriting but given the circumstances I was sure that’s what I was looking at.
I looked up at Rocco who looked more serious than I’d ever seen him.
“Now I don’t know what happened to that girl but somethin’ hurt her before we knew her. If that’s the somethin’ that did, and I’m guessin’ it is lookin’ atcha’. I say we should hurt em’ back.”
Rocco told me with cold steel in his voice. It was weird, hearing him speak without a hint of a joke or over exaggerated movement. We finally found something that the little menace to society could focus on, something… productive.
“My hands are tied, I don’t think anyone here would take kindly to me just attacking someone. Besides, look at him, he’s taller and obviously stringer than me. I’m just a scrawny guy who’s way out of his element, I don’t want a fight. Just… keep an eye on him, maybe we can find something to turn the others against him?”
It wasn’t the answer Rocco was looking for, that’s for sure. He deflated at my words, I’m sure he wanted to go in guns blazing and confront Brooke with what we thought we knew. That wasn’t really going to be an option here, even if it was I’d rather not do that.
“Oh, one more thing, Don’t let Brooke go back into town if he tries to leave, I don’t care how you do it just don’t let him leave.”
I added as an evil grin crossed Rocco’s face.
“Aye’ aye’ captain!”
He cried, raising a paw to his head and saluting me.
Just then I heard someone knocking, no rustling? Screwing around with the front flap to the tepee trying to get my attention. I opened it only to see, “Shaoni?”
“I wanted to ask about the visions today, I’ve talked to everyone else but I couldn’t find you so I guessed you’d be at… is that a raccoon?”
Shaoni stopped, seeing Rocco frozen mid step behind me as he tried and failed to run before she saw him. Realizing he’d been seen Rocco twirled around and in a way only he could announced,
“Whatcha’ think you were looking at Pocahontas?”
“Oh? It talks as well?”
Shaoni said, somewhere between bewildered and bemused as she looked between me and the mouthy Raccoon.
“Course I talk! I thought you woulda’ seen somethin’ like that when you were busy painting with all the colors of the wind!”
Rocco yelled back at her. I wasn’t sure if he was actually offended by Shaoni’s questions, or just deliberately trying to be a nuisance, probably the second thing. I whirled around and glared at Rocco, holding my finger to my mouth in an attempt to shut him up. For once he actually listened.
“I… sorry about him, he’s always like that, part of his charm you know.”
I said with a shrug and a nervous chuckle. Shaoni shook her head dismissively and continued.
“Did you see anything in the cave that you wanted to talk about?”
She asked me, now sounding a little annoyed. I thought back to my father and that hospital room, I wasn’t really ready to talk about that with anyone just yet. But I did have some new questions about how I got into this whole mess in the first place.
“You said back in Imalone you saved me because I realized there was a price for being saved. That wasn’t really it though was it? I saw it again, I could understand you this time. You were going to save me regardless. So why mark me Shaoni? Why did you really bring me here?!”
I said, my voice raising outside of my control as I spoke. I had to finally admit to myself that I was sick and tired of being dragged around in the dark. I was suddenly furious and I didn’t care who it was standing in front of me, I wanted an answer.
“Those men were ruining my name, they thought they were following the Thunderbird but it was just some idea of me they had come up with. They used me to justify their horrid actions and I came to put a stop to it. You were there and when I offered you a deal you didn’t fight it. That’s why I marked you.”
Shaoni spoke quickly, like she wanted to avoid the subject, all but turning around and leaving right then.
“Bullshit! I want an answer Shaoni, a real answer!”
I yelled at her, my fury taking full control of me. Shaoni was silent for a minute, when she finally spoke she looked down, never meeting my eyes as she softly said.
“You remind me of someone from a long time ago. They were blind to the way of things at first, an outsider even. In time though, he became what bound our people together as one family. I don’t have a better answer for you than that. I wasn’t sure I should’ve chosen you at first, I had a feeling that day and I followed it. What you’ve done since you’ve got here, how you’ve handled learning what little you know about the world of the supernatural. Those things are what tell me I made the right choice.”
As she walked away I thought I saw tears reflecting in the moonlight shown on her face. As I settled down I swore I heard soft sobs, echoing across the camp long into the night.

I have finally decided to post low-context quotes from what I like to call my "Roblox daydreams".
Long explanation of some things, skip if you want (I get the urge to overthink and overexplain things...):
Note that they're not really word-for-word to the first time I daydreamed them, since I don't write things down the moment I daydream of them, so I can't remember that much. But the nature of daydreams is that they are intangible, and can easily be changed in my mind anyway. So, "accuracy" doesn't really matter, as it's not really fixed and official, anyway.
So I have decided to change the quotes a bit so that they actually make sense, because doing it word-for-word wouldn't make sense as I don't remember that much.
And another thing: when I say "unnamed" here, it means that I both didn't give them a name nor did I give them a role. Like "Judge" isn't a name, but I didn't write "unnamed" because that is still a character with a role.
With all that out of the way, here are the quotes!
Quotes:
Plozon: I don't have the energy to teleport.
Max: Oh, you don't have the energy to do anything!
Plozon: That's because you defeated me, you moron!
​
"Don't worry about it. I know this place like the back of my hand. (bumps into something) That wasn't there before. (notices a strange thing on his hand) Or that. Ha, I guess I really do know this place like the back of my hand."
-Max
​
"I do not think that I'm a cat. Hold on, let me just... (climbs off a balcony and falls to the ground) Argh! Why didn't I land on my feet?!"
-Max
​
Plozon: (mockingly) This is the part where you cry for Mommy.
Max: (quietly) M-Mom...
Amber: (barging in) I'm coming, Max!
Max: Wow, I wasn't expecting you to actually-
​
Judge: Um, I said "check on him", not "throw a bucket of water on him", but yes that works too.
Max: That water was freezing! Are you trying to give me hypothermia?!
​
Max: Well, I'm the CEO of a company.
Past classmate: Oh yeah? And I'm the president of this country!
​
"Was anyone actually listening to anything I just said? Besides me?!"
-Max
​
"Mr. President! You came here at the absolute worst time! (quietly) Why am I so good at making a fool of myself?"
-Max
​
Judge: Please sit in the defendant's chair.
Max: Your Honor, this is an electric chair.
Judge: Exactly.
Max: Wha-?
​
"So to make my powers stronger, I have to be annoyed! Mom, annoy me. (quietly) And I mean more than you usually do. (Amber smacks him) Ow, no, that wasn't annoying enough."
-Max
​
Max: I lost Emily! I should've been paying attention! She could be in danger, or starving, or-
Emily: (laughing in the distance)
Max: ...Or she could be perfectly safe.
​
Max: Harold, do you think I would make a good father?
Harold: No way. You can't even babysit Emily right.
Max: That's exactly what I was thinking! I'm going to phone my mother right now and tell her that she's not getting any grandchildren!
​
Emily: I didn't think you of all people would have mommy issues.
Max: ...Please don't call them that...
​
Max: Unnggh...My back...
Unnamed character: What about it?
Max: It hurts!
​
"Ugh... I got poisoned... Why does that keep happening?"
-Max
​
"(to the tune of a part in Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up)
And if
You ask me what I'm doing
I'll tell you that
You don't wanna know"
-Max
​
"So the mind control is only broken if you watch me die?! Who comes up with these rules? It's almost like we're in some story where the author wants us to suffer as much as possible... (briefly stares at fourth wall)"
-Max

It's been almost a week and a half since I published a post about my mid-game Valkyrie. You can view the original posts here and here.
Upon reflecting, it seems that not much has happened. The Valkyrie ran up and down the branch and mines about a dozen times, collecting items, especially Elven daggers. Did a second attempt at polypiling, and got a magic marker, and a ring of conflict. Wrote 3 or 4 scrolls of ID in an attempt to identify rings, and the enchantment of my daggers.
Erode-proofed and enchanted some of my armor, but still no Gauntlets of Power.
Did some alchemy and had 5 potions blow up on me. But got a modest HP boost out of the ones I had left. Kept a few potions of full healing in the event that I run into a powerful monster that I cannot survive.
Enchanted Mjollnir and my Elven daggers to +5. After all this I looked at my stash and am running dangerously low on Holy Water. A look at my potions indicate there isn't very much I can dilute to make more at the moment.
So I put a bunch of wands and escape items into my Bag of Holding, quaffed a potion of enlightenment, and looked at my stats. Everything looked good as per resistances and alignment. Then I quaffed a potion of Gain Level to get me to level 14 and did the quest.
Lord Surtur didn't stand a chance. Wands of cold and a volley of +5 Daggers cut the Giant down to size. Picked up a bunch unidentified items, so I'm back to my stash to sort everything out and hopefully find the last pieces I need to do the next chapter of the game.
I still have all my wishes, and still pondering what to do with them.
Next stop: Valley of the Dead.

I have___
AFRO:

• Keinemusik - Out Of Touch
• Drake - Confusion ( Keinemusik Remix )
• Drake - A Keeper (Keinemusik Remix)
• The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition ( Keinemusik Remix )
• Fortress - Diplo ( Rampa Remix )
• Uncle Waffles - Tanzânia (Rampa Remix)
• Toto - Africa (Rampa Edit)
• Together - Janet Jackson (Rampa Remix)
• Zouk Machine - Maldon (Rampa Edit)
• France Gall - Ella, elle l'a (Rampa Remix)
• Busta, Rampa, Black Coffeee - Mamakusa
• Go Low L.A.X (Rampa Edit)
• &Me, Rampa - Tong 4 (Original Mix)
• Travis Scott - Butterfly (&Me Remix)
• Feel - ABRA (&ME & Sasha Tigresa Edit)
• Ilanga - Masšh (&Me Edit)
• Lakou Mizik, Joseph Ray - Samba Yo Pan Pale (&Me Remix)
• Da Africa Deep - Humans (&ME edit)
• CUT Off (&Me) (16khz)
• Marssi, Adam Port feat. Ninae - All I Got
• Joris Voorn - Homeland feat. Matthew Dear (&Me Remix) {Jinadu Vocal Edit}
• Aba - Fell (&Me remix)
• Simian Mobile Disco - Caught In A Wave (&ME Remix)
• Adam Port, Massi, Ninae - All I Got
• Adam Port, Chris IDH & Adassiya - By Myself
• Keinemusik - Muye (Enoo Napa Remix)
• Daughter of the Sun (Ankhoï Remix)
• Ankhoï - Sandiya
• Ankhoï - Clound
• Ankhoï - No sleep
• Ankhoï - Corazon
• Ankhoï - After All Night Shift
• Tato - Merah
• Tato - Juremas Flower
• Alegria - ARYMÉ & OSFUR ( Chris IDH Remix )
• Chris IDH - 7 nation
• Victor Alc - Essamina
• Victor Alc - I Know You Know
• Victor Alc - Hangin Tree
• Victor Alc - Alma
• Victor Alc - Sudamérica
• Victor Alc - Boreal
• Victor Alc, Murilo Tronco - Forma De Querer
• Carlita, Mojoo - Havana
• Outkast - Ms. Jackson (Moojo Remix)
• Coco, Joezi, Pape Diouf - 7 Seconds (Moojo Remix)
• Michael Jackson - Billy Late Jean ( Moojo Edit )
• Moojo, Demeya - Hot N fun
• Moojo - Atitude
• Moojo ft Gabsy - Ze Roberto
• Moojo - I Whant Your Soul
• Moojo - GTA
• Moojo - Meditation
• Moojo - Giant Ft. Awen
• Cairo - Here We Are (Moojo Remix)
• Moojo - Oui
• Rihana - Stay (Moojo Remix)
• Moojo ft Starving yet Full - Limitless Vocal Version
• Moojo,Da Capo - What U Desaire (Vocal Mix)
• Post Malone - I Fall Apart (Moojo Remix)
• Drake - A KEEPER (Moojo Remix)
• &friends, Joseph (CH) - Jackie Brown
• &friends, Lily’s Mandre - Blending Love
• &Friends - Oya Jo (16khz)
• Abdel Kader - Monte Rougue
• Love Me Back (Raffa Guido Remix)
• Valeron, Payment & Klaudia Touch Me (Sam (GR) Children Touch)
• Marten Lou - Better Days
• Vxision - Love Preparetions (Slow Down Edit)
• Classy 101 (Vxision, Maz Remix)
• Empire Of The Sun- Walking On A Dream Vxision Remix)
• Jovem Dionisio - Pontos de Exclamação (VXSION Remix)
• Rui Da Silva - Touch Me (Peace Control Remix)
• Drake - Sticky (Peace Control Remix)
• ROUTE 94, Jesse Glynne - My Love (Alex Wann Remix)
• FCLT - Fell It’s You (Alex Wann remix)
• Zhu - Faded (Alex Wann Remix)
• Alright - Red Carpet (Kashovski & Abel Ray Remix)
• Sérgio Mendes - Mas Que Nada (Ahmed Spins Edit)
• ANOTR, Abel Balder - Vertigo (Carlita Remix)
• Kura - Sentir Saudade (Guapo, Antdot Remix)
• Drake - Finesse (Antdot Remix)
• Peaty - 6pm In Casablanca
• Peaty - KILOSA (Afro Melodic Mix)
• Black Cofee, David Guetta - Drive (Da Capo Remix)
• Empire Of The Sun- Walking On A Dream (Da Capo Remix)
• Michael Jackson - Billy Jean (Da Capo Remix)
• Coco, Joezi, Pape Diouf - 7 Seconds (Da Capo Remix)
• CamelPhat - Home (Samm (BE) & Ajna (BE) Remix)
• Super Flu - Lovesong
• David Mackay, Dela Sur - Carnaval Breve
• Dj Yellow, Flowers And Sea Creatures - No One Gets Left Behind (BLOND.ISH Beirut Edit)
• Moderat, Keinemusik - More Love (Kalidon Mykonos Mashup)
• Roy Rosenfeld & Sébastien Léger - ID {Played by Keinemusik} (16khz)

MELODIC:

• Adam Ten - Kepler
• Adam Ten - Deep Love
• Adam Ten - Carovana
• Adam Tem -3 Days (16khz)
• Quentin Harris - Warning (Adam Ten & Mita Gami Re-Edit)
• Mita Gami - Danger
• Pink Floyd - Confortably Numb (Mita Gami Sunrise Edit)
• Solique - Heat Of The Moment
• Solique - Mood In The Jungle
• Ego Maria - T Mapper Native
• Ego Maria, Toto Chiavetta - Cells Under Attack
• Tal Fussman - North
• Tal Fussaman - Sam Shure - Inferno
• Tal Fussaman - Childrem Of 95 (V3 Instrumental)
• OPUS III - It's A Fine Day (Aera's Finite Edit)
• Amê - Mifune (Dixon Acustic Edit)
• Jimi Jules - Palpitations
• Jimi Jules - Run (FT Remix)
• Schneider TM, Kptmichigan - The Light 3000 (Aera Private Edit)
• AIKON, Sobek - Burning Hats (Dixon Edit)
• Kavinsky - Nightcall (Dixon's Private Edit)
• Maind Against - Love Seeking
• Maind Against - Hydra
• Chis Bake - Ride (Mind Against Remix)
• Mathame - There Is The Light
• Mathame - Brothers
• Ae:ther, Mind Against - Black Museum
• Ae:ther, Marino Canal - White Atlas V2
• Artbat - Dark Knight
• Yet More - Don't Let Go
• MGMT - Eletric Feel (Ivory’s Eletric Reshape)
• Amber Run - I Found (Ivory's Re-Found Edit)
• Billie Eilish - Everything I Wanted (Ivory Head Underwater Remix)
• Christopher Cross - Ride Like The Wind (Ivory’s On The Run Edit)
• Ivory (IT), Tal Fussman - Labyrinth
• Ivory - Identity
• Ivory - Lovers Hymn
• Ivory - Mirrors
• Ivory - Eye Blink
• Ivory - Jewel
• Ivory - Acid Rain
• Ivory - Conquest Of Space
• Ivory - Upon A Time
• Fideles - Lost In Town
• Hard To Tell - No Matter
• Hard To Tell - Stranger
• Aera - Pullunder
• Aera - Puzzle Emotivo
• Echonomist - Overseas
• Skepta - Bullet from a Gun (Colyn Private Edit)
• Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence (Will Clark Remix)
• London Grammar - Hey Now (Cristoph Private Mix)
• Opus III- Fine Night (Cristoph's Private Edit)
• Nelly Furtado - Say it Right (Adana Twins Remix)
• RY X & Frank Wiedemann - Howling (Tinlicker Prague Edit)
• The XX - Fiction (Eagles & Butterflies Remix)
• Massive Attack - Teardrop (Antony Toga Remix)
• Cassius - The Sound Of Violence (Antony Toga Background DiscoVox Version)
• Sting - Desert Rose (SOEL Remix)
• Starsailor - Four to the floor (Mångata Projekt Rework)
• Sin Cos Tan - Destroyer (Adriatique Remix)
• Anna Caragnano - Parola (Erly Tepshi Edit)
• Yotam Avni - Island Hopper (Franky & Sandrino Remix)
• Rebuke - Along Came Polly (Konstantin Sibold, Zac, Carmee Remix)
• Armin Van Buuren - Yet Another Day (8Kays Remix)

A long time ago, I came across a beautiful build. Bodyswap when linked with summon phantasm on kill gained the minion tag and could then be used with Null's Inclination, and for a brief, glorious window there was a flicker-esque build. I cannot for the life of me find any footage of this build or even evidence the build existed and I didn't simply dream it, but I distinctly remember seeing a ranger blast through Underground Sea with a dozen bodyswaps every second. And then another Null's Inclination build appeared: Wormblaster. Null's was hit with a hefty nerf, gaining a significant trigger cooldown. Flicker Bodyswap was killed before I ever had a chance to try it.
When the new Bodyswap of Sacrifice gem was revealed, I saw the 'minion' tag on the gem and immediately tried to recreate the build. The numbers, sadly, weren't there. Without targeting a minion, it just didn't do any damage, and I eventually gave up on using Null's altogether. The idea went on the backburner for a while, but it was still there, itching at the back of my mind. This league I resolved to make it work, and eventually struck upon the idea of Cast on Critical Strike to replace clunky on-kill triggers.
After many, many failed PoB's, I came up with something that looked viable, and a week later, I had this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4StIXUy-yw - epilepsy warning. Just a plain unjuiced T16 for demonstration purposes.
PoB: https://pobb.in/NfNRRksoikSO
Build breakdown:
This is a cast on crit Bodyswap of Sacrifice elementalist built costing approximately 120 divines, including the Mageblood. I did, however, craft many of the pieces of gear myself - in fact, the only gear piece I didn't craft is the helmet. As a result, some of the gear is a bit wonky, but this is probably my last build of the league and I'm getting the itch to play other games.
Pros:

• Good damage. PoB doesn't calculate the damage very well, because it doesn't support triggered attacks/spells triggering other attacks/spells, but with 11.5m average damage per explosion at the maximum trigger rate of 6.06 per second I believe this build has 70m pinnacle DPS, and from experience with other builds with that much damage that feels about right.
• Decently fast and low-effort one-button mapper.
• Lots of pretty explosions.
• Flicker.

Cons:

• Mediocre defenses. Not a glass cannon, but it just doesn't have the lifepool to be properly tanky.
• Quite clunky mechanically. You can see in the example video that I have almost no control over when I stop bodyswapping, and sometimes I will frostblink out of a dangerous situation only to be bodyswapped straight back in.
• Bad at some mechanics. You would think it would be good at strongboxes, but aukuna's will makes zombies count as corpses and detonate dead exists. Divine Shrines are... problematic to say the least. And good luck ever standing in Ultimatum stone circles. It is, however, superb at essences and rituals.
• Not beginner or budget friendly to gear. I've had to jump through quite a few hoops to make this work.
• Flicker.

Skills:

• The build uses two separate CoC setups, one Rain of Arrows of Saturation for Raise Zombie, the other another RoAoS triggered by Manaforged Arrows for Bodyswap of Sacrifice.
• Mark on Hit Assassin's Mark gives a bit of (unreliable) power charge generation and more consistency, and self-cast Flammability gives a nice chunk of extra damage.
• Precision is mandatory as I am already pushing the limit of how little accuracy I can get away with.
• I run Determination, Purity of Elements and Purity of Fire with Enlighten in gloves with a +1 level, +2 auras double corrupt, which gives just enough mana to run Herald of Ash for mapping and War Banner for bossing.
• CWDT Molten Shell smooths out the defences a little bit.
• I wouldn't play this build without Frostblink. Being able to instantly blink out of an awkward spot is almost mandatory.

Uniques:

• Aukuna's Will is necessary to raise zombies without a corpse.
• Dialla's Malefaction and Ashes of the Stars aren't strictly necessary, but the extra gem levels and quality in the right places give a lot of extra damage.
• I wouldn't try and build this without Mageblood as resistances and crit chance are very tight as is.
• Polaric Devastation gives a bit of extra crit and the very powerful Covered in Ash debuff.
• Melding of the Flesh, with a Ruby Flask in the Mageblood and Purity of Fire, gives - in my case - 87% max resistances. This should really be 88% but I've been too lazy to get a properly rolled one.
• I run a very specialised Elegant Hubris that cost me a bank-breaking 50 chaos. Impossible Escape is doing a lot of work here.
• Lastly, a Mindless Aggression Forbidden Flesh and Flame duo for 20% more minion life.

Passive Tree/Ascendancy:
As I cannot run golems, there's pretty much only one way to build elementalist. Mastermind of Discord/Heart of Destruction/Shaper of Storms for lots of damage, Bastion of Elements for some much-needed EHP and reflect immunity.
The passive tree is pretty basic, with one very important exception. See the note at the end.
The cluster jewels are pretty important here, there's no easy way to get enough global critical strike chance. Make sure one of the elemental damage large cluster jewels has Doryani's Lesson, and Corrosive Elements if (like me) you don't have a level 5 Awakened Fire Penetration. A 3-passive reservation cluster with Uncompromising gives just enough reservation to run everything. Clusters are a good place to pick up enough dexterity to run everything, as I take hardly any on the rest of the tree.
A note on mana:
Raise Zombie costs a lot of mana. Getting it to a reasonable mana cost to trigger repeatedly without turning off manaforged arrows was a puzzle that took a while to solve. I take a total of 56% reduced mana cost of skills on the tree, another 6% on my gear, and a level 16 (I think this could be 20, but it doesn't make any difference, really) 0 quality inspiration giving another 32% supporting RoAoS+Raise Zombie for a total of 94% reduced mana cost. The Bodyswap setup, however, runs a 20/20 inspiration which gives 39% reduced mana cost for a total of 101% reduced. This is the only way I could find to sustain mana while still have Rain of Arrows cost any amount of mana, and importantly have the bodyswap rain of arrows cost so little that it triggers with every single attack.
Conclusion:
On the whole, I built this because I could, not because I should. There's much better ways to spend 120 divines. It is, however, fun and unique. I haven't - yet - tried in in T17s or against ubers, and I don't expect it will fair well, but neither did I build it with aspirational content in mind. If anyone does choose to build this, please temper your expectations.

This technique allows to user to manifest any command in the form of a shikigami. The more personal the words are to the listener, the more dangerous the shikigami born from those words.
For this technique to be activated, the user must understand the psychology of the target. A low understanding of the target results in low impact attacks, but a supreme understanding of the target deals supreme damage.
This technique is pairs with with quick talkers and thinkers, and extremely intuitive cursed users.
MAXIMUM TECHNIQUE - MALEVOLENT BLESSINGS
This is a closed domain where all the target's insecurity is laid out in front of the user, who then transforms them into extremely powerful shikigamis which begins to devour the target. This is a sure-hit.

I bought a 2017 Audi eTron with about 40k miles on it in 2020. In 2022 the car just stopped driving and I received a “low power” alarm. Prior to this there was no warning light, alarm, or other indicator that something was wrong. Had my car towed to Audi Bellevue and they tell me it’s going to be over $7k to fix this 5 year old car. Luckily I bought an extended warranty and didn’t pay much for the repairs but $7k in repairs for a car that’s 5 year old seems extreme. In September 2023 on a road trip to Spokane I stopped for gas about 90 minutes outside of Spokane. When I arrived in Spokane a car alarm indicating my key was not within range went off. I’m rattled by this alarm because it’s loud and it keeps going off every couple minutes. I park my car in a parking garage, tear the car apart looking for the key and it’s s no where to be found. Since I only made one stop to get gas, I realize I must have dropped it at the gas station. It’s hard to believe this car let me drive away without the key and did not alert me that the key was out of range until I was 100 miles away from the key but it happened! Now I’m parked in a garage, several hours from home without a key for my car. I ended up having to have a key made which was close to $1k. The whole thing was a nightmare but it gets worse. A few days ago I’m at Goodwill , I go out to my car and it won’t start. Again, no warning light, alarm or notice prior. I see a “low power” notice and a “transmission malfunction notice”. I want to throw up because the warranty expired and I know how much this is going to cost to repair. Begrudgingly, I have my car towed to Audi Bellevue. Went in the next day (5/18/24) to test drive a $40k van. Because my car is not drivable, Audi Bellevue proceeds to lowball me on the value of my car. Long story short, I left and contacted a couple of places that take non running cars and I’m offered $1k more than Audi offered me. I ask Sodi at Audi (over text) for $1500 more than their original offer. She responds they can’t do it. She doesn’t respond with, “this is what we can do”, nothing, no follow up, no help which forces me to respond and ask if they’ll match the offer I received and she says she ask her GM tomorrow. I attached the text exchange for you to see she asks how she can “earn” my business in one text and in the next says, no to my request with no additional info. If you didn’t know, Audi Bellevue is owned by the multi billion dollar company, Autonation that Bill Gates owns 19% of. This is the highest earning auto dealership in the US. They are haggling with me over a couple hundred dollars EVEN THOUGH I am interested in buying a $40k van!! Make it make sense. These people are unethical and I won’t get into the entire ridiculous experience but just wondering if anyone else has had issue with Audi Bellevue or Autonation? Also, want to say do not buy an eTron because it is a giant POS. Imagine being on a road trip in a rural area or in the mountains, you make a pit stop at a truck stop and your car all of a sudden just stops working! Now imagine not having cell service. I want to get the word out because that’s and dangerous and scary.

I got accepted to an out-of-state medical school and am on the waitlist for another out-of-state school that both have a high cost of attendance. I won't have any family financial support during medical school because I come from a low SES background and other issues so I will be entirely reliant on loans. Since FAFSA was delayed this year I haven't received a financial package yet but I am assuming it will only be student loans.
I am considering doing the Air Force HPSP because they have the SOST (Special Operations Surgical Team) and enlisting was something I was thinking about after HS but my family wasn't supportive of it. However, now I don't care if they are supportive or not lol and going into the military has been lingering in the back of my mind, but I have other considerations since I'm starting medical school at 27 years old.
I missed the chance to apply for the 4-year scholarship since I start school this August but I could still apply for the 3-year scholarship. I broke down my current student loans, school cost of attendance, and other considerations against HPSP below. Thank you for any advice!
Student Loans Before Medical School
Total: $59,951.01
Half are subsidized and the other half is unsubsidized
Currently, some of them are in forbearance while others are still in the grace period so I don't have to pay while I am waiting to start school however I think I can do the SAVE plan to stop the interest? Honestly can't afford to make payments on them right now.
Cost of Attendance from School Website
Tuition and Fees: $66,924
Indirect Expenses (Living Expenses): $29,725
Health Insurance: $5,354
Loan Orientation Fee: $1,082
Total: $103,085
I will have no credit card debt going into medical school and they are all 0% APR right now (Applying to medical school was expensive lol)
I have a non-renewable scholarship for $18,900
Other considerations
As of right now, I am interested in orthopedics and all my research right now is all bone related but I am very open to changing my mind in medical school
My long-term (2-3 years) gf doesn't really like the idea of me going into the military because she thinks it's dangerous
I want to start a family around 31-32 around the end of my first year of residency and we plan to save money from her working while I'm in medical school so she can be a stay-at-home home while I'm a resident. If I did HPSP then my resident stipend would be higher and we could have a comfortable life financially while I'm in residency.
If I do get the 3-year HPSP then my current loans and first-year loans will be $144,136.01 and I will owe the military 3 years of service. The other route I would take if I didn't do HPSP would be doing PSLF and hoping I can match a residency that qualifies for PSLF so I would have to practice for another 4-5 years until PSLF clears the debt.