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In the Quenta Silmarillion, the people of Nargothrond in general (and Orodreth their second king in particular) are depicted as fickle and weak of character, less like a bulwark and more like a flag in the wind (sorry for the German idiom).
For Orodreth, Curufin straight-out calls him a “dullard slow” (HoME III, p. 237)—and Christopher Tolkien agrees: “It may be that the position imposed on him by the movements in the legend led to the conclusion that [Orodreth] cannot have been made of very stern stuff.” (HoME III, p. 246) Orodreth also leans fully on Túrin from the moment he arrives in Nargothrond (see CoH, p. 163). (For more on how Orodreth became weaker and weaker with every iteration of the story, see here https://www.reddit.com/tolkienfans/comments/1aywrzg/celegormor_the_fall_of_a_prince_charmingpart_2/ )
But the same applies to the people of Nargothrond. The moment Celegorm and Curufin arrive in Nargothrond, even though Finrod is still alive and still king, they immediately take over. As Finrod tells Beren, “And now Celegorm and Curufin are dwelling in my halls; and though I, Finarfin’s son, am King, they have won a strong power in the realm, and lead many of their own people. They have shown friendship to me in every need, but I fear that they will show neither love nor mercy to you, if your quest be told.” (Sil, QS, ch. 19) If his people hadn’t already fallen under Celegorm and Curufin’s sway, Finrod wouldn’t have needed to be concerned about this; note here that he says that “they have won a strong power in my realm”, and that they “lead many of their own people”.
That Finrod is right in his assessment of the backbone of his people is shown the moment Finrod tries to convince his people to follow him on Beren’s quest. Celegorm and Curufin sway the people of Nargothrond with two speeches, putting so much fear into them that they will drastically change how they act for many decades (until Túrin shows up and sways them into the other direction):
“Many other words he [Celegorm] spoke, as potent as were long before in Tirion the words of his father that first inflamed the Noldor to rebellion. And after Celegorm Curufin spoke, more softly but with no less power, conjuring in the minds of the Elves a vision of war and the ruin of Nargothrond. So great a fear did he set in their hearts that never after until the time of Turin would any Elf of that realm go into open battle; but with stealth and ambush, with wizardry and venomed dart, they pursued all strangers, forgetting the bonds of kinship. Thus they fell from the valour and freedom of the Elves of old, and their land was darkened. And now they murmured that Finarfin’s son was not as a Vala to command them, and they turned their faces from him. But the curse of Mandos came upon the brothers, and dark thoughts arose in their hearts, thinking to send forth Felagund alone to his death, and to usurp, it might be, the throne of Nargothrond; for they were of the eldest line of the princes of the Noldor. And Felagund seeing that he was forsaken took from his head the silver crown of Nargothrond and cast it at his feet, saying: ‘Your oaths of faith to me you may break, but I must hold my bond. Yet if there be any on whom the shadow of our curse has not yet fallen, I should find at least a few to follow me, and should not go hence as a beggar that is thrust from the gates.’ There were ten that stood by him; and the chief of them, who was named Edrahil, stooping lifted the crown and asked that it be given to a steward until Felagund's return. ‘For you remain my king, and theirs,’ he said, ‘whatever betide.’ Then Felagund gave the crown of Nargothrond to Orodreth his brother to govern in his stead; and Celegorm and Curufin said nothing, but they smiled and went from the halls.” (Sil, QS, ch. 19)
The text explicitly tells us that “they fell from the valour and freedom of the Elves of old, and their land was darkened” (Sil, QS, ch. 19)!
A very short time later, the people of Nargothrond change their minds again: now, they totally had nothing to do with abandoning Finrod, whoever would ever think that?? No, they had always supported Finrod, is the gist of this passage: “There was tumult in Nargothrond. For thither now returned many Elves that had been prisoners in the isle of Sauron; and a clamour arose that no words of Celegorm could still. They lamented bitterly the fall of Felagund their king, saying that a maiden had dared that which the sons of Fëanor had not dared to do; but many perceived that it was treachery rather than fear that had guided Celegorm and Curufin. Therefore the hearts of the people of Nargothrond were released from their dominion, and turned again to the house of Finarfin; and they obeyed Orodreth. But he would not suffer them to slay the brothers, as some desired, for the spilling of kindred blood by kin would bind the curse of Mandos more closely upon them all. Yet neither bread nor rest would he grant to Celegorm and Curufin within his realm, and he swore that there should be little love between Nargothrond and the sons of Feanor thereafter.” (Sil, QS, ch. 19)
Also, did the people of Nargothrond try to murder the two Elves who they had let persuade them what appears to be mere months before?
Anyway, despite this change of mind, the people of Nargothrond are still afraid, not going into open battle (including the Fifth Battle—shoutout to brave Gwindor and his people, though!), and instead using, among other things, “venomed dart[s]” (Sil, QS, ch. 19). Note that other Elves would have found this use of poison despicable: “For the Eldar never used any poison, not even against their most cruel enemies, beast, ork, or man; and they were filled with shame and horror that Eöl should have meditated this evil deed.” (HoME XI, p. 330)
The people of Nargothrond only recover their courage when Túrin, a Man in his 20s, shows up and quickly becomes Orodreth’s favourite. Weirdly, it sounds like they liked him because he was young and good-looking: “In the time that followed Túrin grew high in favour with Orodreth, and well-nigh all hearts were turned to him in Nargothrond. For he was young, and only now reached his full manhood; and he was in truth the son of Morwen Eledhwen to look upon: dark-haired and pale-skinned, with grey eyes, and his face more beautiful than any other among mortal Men, in the Elder Days.” (Sil, QS, ch. 21)
Easily swayed, aren’t they? And particularly by beauty. Meanwhile, the people of Nargothrond stop respecting Gwindor, and why? Because he was tortured as a prisoner of war: “Gwindor fell into dishonour, for he was no longer forward in arms, and his strength was small; and the pain of his maimed left arm was often upon him.” (CoH, p. 163)
Túrin convinces Orodreth and the people of Nargothrond to “buil[d] a mighty bridge over the Narog from the Doors of Felagund, for the swifter passage of their arms. Then the servants of Angband were driven out of all the land between Narog and Sirion eastward, and westward to the Nenning and the desolate Falas; and though Gwindor spoke ever against Túrin in the council of the King, holding it an ill policy, he fell into dishonour and none heeded him, for his strength was small and he was no longer forward in arms. Thus Nargothrond was revealed to the wrath and hatred of Morgoth” (Sil, QS, ch. 21).
At this point in the war, building that bridge and engaging in open warfare was obviously a terrible idea for the hidden kingdom of Nargothrond (as ideas originating with the Silmarillion’s Anakin Skywalker tend to be). Even Orodreth realises this: “Orodreth was troubled by the dark words of the messengers, but Túrin would by no means hearken to these counsels, and least of all would he suffer the great bridge to be cast down; for he was become proud and stern, and would order all things as he wished.” (Sil, QS, ch. 21)
So Orodreth basically managed to get deposed too, just like Finrod, by a handsome prince who’s strong and rhetorically persuasive.
So what’s up with the people of Nargothrond? Here’s a list of their allegiances over a period of thirty years: Finrod → Celegorm and Curufin → Orodreth → Túrin. In thirty years!
And the text itself gives us the answer: they’re fickle—“they fell from the valour and freedom of the Elves of old” (Sil, QS, ch. 19).
But why are the people of Nargothrond specifically so fickle, compared to the peoples of Fingolfin and Fingon in the West, and of Maedhros in the East? I think that u/xi-feng has the best answer to this question: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” (G. Michael Hopf) https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8751435-hard-times-create-strong-men-strong-men-create-good-times
Finrod, a strong man, created a safe hidden kingdom in the South of Beleriand, far away from the lines of the Siege, which was fought mostly by Fingolfin, Fingon and Maedhros. Nargothrond is safe, and the lives of the people are easy. They become weak, changing allegiance at the drop of a hat, swayed by the strong personalities of Celegorm, Curufin and Túrin (with a short moment of self-reflection upon Finrod’s death that immediately nearly turned into a lynching).
And interestingly, the text hits us over the head with this, telling us that the people of Nargothrond have lost their valour, while highlighting that the peoples of the Northern kingdoms holding the Siege are full of valiant people:

• “But Fingolfin was held overlord of all the Noldor, and Fingon after him, though their own realm was but the northern land of Hithlum; yet their people were the most hardy and valiant, most feared by the Orcs and most hated by Morgoth.” (Sil, QS, ch. 14)
• “Maedhros did deeds of surpassing valour […]. Thus the great fortress upon the Hill of Hirming could not be taken, and many of the most valiant that remained, both of the people of Dorthonion and of the east marches, rallied there to Maedhros.” (Sil, QS, ch. 18)

Sources:
The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien, ed Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins, ebook edition February 2011, version 2019-01-09 [cited as: Sil].
The Lays of Beleriand, JRR Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2015 (softcover) [cited as: HoME III].
The War of the Jewels, JRR Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2015 (softcover) [cited as: HoME XI].
The Children of Húrin, JRR Tolkien, ed Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 2014 (softcover) [cited as: CoH].

My family experienced something I can’t explain, and we’ve stopped talking to each other. I don’t know what to do.
I don't want to sound crazy. We're normal people. If any of this sounds familiar, please reach out to me. I need to know what's happening to my family.
It's hard to know where to begin. I don't know when this all started, but it hasn't stopped.
I live with my wife and two college-aged daughters. I’m a private chef; my wife is a teacher. We live in a suburb outside a coastal US city, in an eighties-era planned community where every house and street feels like a mirror image. Crisp lawns, HOAs, everyone knows everyone. The people are a little bland, but we have a yard and a pool, and we can pay for groceries, and we can (barely) afford to send our kids to college out of state. We were lucky, I thought.
My first experience with the supernatural was last spring.
"Okay, you're really gonna hate this one," Sarah said. It was Monday, my Saturday, and I was grilling vegetables by the pool. My eldest daughter, a born trickster, sat on the least-broken pool chair, bombarding me with the most willfully ignorant pop music she could find, or terrible cooking videos, or clips of classic cars refurbished with electric motors.
Anything to get a reaction out of her poor, Gen X dad.
"Please, no. How about the guy who makes things out of chocolate?" I countered, hoping for a compromise.
"I’m looking for the Kings game you went to in 2006 where they lost 1 to 10." Sarah, jabbed.
"I’m burning your food on purpose.” I quipped.
"Wait." Sarah said, suddenly still.
Whatever this thing is, whatever these things are. My wife and my daughters feel it before I do. I don't know if they're more sensitive to it or what, but they always know something is there before me. Call it women's intuition.
"What's wrong?"
As I said it, I remember it got very quiet. Like the volume for the outside world turned all the way down. The birds, the traffic and the white noise of suburbia went silent. I couldn't even hear the sizzle of the vegetables cooking two feet in front of me.
The lack of sound didn't bother me however, because I saw something in the sky.
A disc.
I didn't want to see a disc. But I saw a disc. It was made of metal, perfectly smooth, no rivets, no seams, no wings, no exhaust. A perfectly formed metal disc, fifteen feet wide, like two contact lenses stuck together just... sitting there.
There were lights, big ones, bright in the sun even in the middle of the day, moving all around it.
I remember thinking... Really? Part of me was exasperated at how, well, dumb it looked. Like an old movie model. Only somehow, I knew it was real. And I was being watched.
And then I felt The Fear.
If you ask me I think the craft makes people feel it. I don't know. I know it sounds crazy. It’s like a madness. It fills you up, cold, just pure terror. As soon as your eyes see a craft, in a few seconds your mind blanks and you feel only fear of the thing in front of you. The disc-shaped ones, and the triangle shaped ones, they always seem to broadcast The Fear.
I’d never felt panic like that. I know how to deal with it a little easier now, but back then I wanted to put my daughter in the car and drive as far away from the thing as possible.
Only I was completely frozen.
I couldn't move, I couldn't speak. I could only move my eyes, and even that took tremendous effort. I struggled to look in my daughter‘s direction and saw she was equally paralyzed. Her pupils turned to me, then back to the craft.
And we did that for a few seconds, trying to process what was happening, looking to the disc, to each other, and back. It was agony.
And then the disc was gone.
I was looking right at it. It didn’t fly away, it didn't zoom off at incredible speeds. It was like it stopped existing while I was staring at it. When it was gone I could move and I could breathe and my daughter started crying, and I comforted her, and we swore and shook.
What the hell was that?
“Are you okay?!”
I remember we both asked that.
I remember reaching for my phone, but it was dead. Sarah’s phone was dead too. We went inside to charge them, still in a daze.
”Your face is really red,” said Sarah, concerned.
I caught my reflection in the hallway mirror. She was right. My face was burned. Like a sunburn. I wear sunblock every day and often work long hours in the sun. I never get sunburned.
“I’ll get you some aloe.” Sarah said, retreating into the downstairs bathroom.
I glanced at the oven clock. It was three hours later than I expected.
"Three hours?" I muttered.
"We were only outside for a few minutes... right?" Sarah's eyes widened in realization.
"What happened to us?" Sarah said softly.
We were missing time. I don’t know where that time went. I don’t know what happened during that time. Time feels weird around these things. It’s hard to describe.
We didn't talk much for a while. We just kind of sat in the living room, scrolling our phones. The evening darkened. I remember thinking I wanted to say something, but I didn't know what.
My wife Lauren and our youngest daughter Dani returning home from work broke us out of our malaise.
"A UFO burned your face?" Lauren said, incredulous. Lauren was always funny, even when she wasn't trying to be.
I won't lie, it sounded dumb. I tried to think of how to word it better.
"I saw it too. It was really weird." Sarah said, seriously.
"You sure you weren't standing too close to the grill again?" Dani teased. Her pants were covered in flour and oil, her hair pulled back. Dani worked at a restaurant, despite my objections.
"You're supposed to make the food in the restaurant, not on your outfit." I teased back. Dani smirked, she liked kitchen talk, she was a lot like me in that way.
"I don't understand, did you provoke them? Why'd they come all the way from space just to burn you?" Lauren asked, spreading student tests on the dining room table.
"Did it look like the ones we saw when we were kids?" Dani asked Sarah.
"No, this one was different. It was a different shape." Sarah said, shaking her head.
"What are you talking about? Which ones?" I asked, confused.
"Do you remember the night we saw the blue elf?" Dani asked.
Memories of Sarah and Dani as kids flooded my brain. One night, a brilliant blue light in the sky. Sarah and Dani ran into our room to hide. The feeling of someone watching. The memory filled me with dread. Feeling uncomfortable, I tried to change the subject.
"I don't want to cook tonight. Let's order out. What should we get?" I said, presenting a distraction.
We ate dinner as a family that night. We talked about normal things. I tried to seem unbothered, but I was obsessively turning over the sighting of the disc in my mind. What was that? Why couldn't we move?
The feeling stayed with me long after the meal had ended and the dishes were done. I remember that was our last normal dinner. I wish I'd made more of an effort that night. We'll never be the same family we were then.
I guess before I tell you about that night, I should explain what an Orb is.
An Orb is a kind of floating sphere. It looks kind of like a blue basketball filled with spaghetti-looking strands of... something. It has a mind, I think. I don't know what these things are. From what I can tell, they are unknowable. They will harm you. If you see an Orb, my advice is to run. They can move through walls.
The first night with the Orbs changed all of our lives forever. We stopped talking after that night.
I don't know if I can write it down in detail, yet. Even this was hard.
I read something recently.
Scientists have communicated with apes via sign language since the 1960’s. In all that time, apes have never asked a question. Maybe they can't conceive of what a question is. Their mind just can't form the reasoning to understand how to think of one.
I think that’s what it’s like when we see these things. These orbs, or discs, or whatever. Like we’re seeing something we can’t comprehend. I don’t think we think about aliens the right way. They’re not from another planet. They’re from somewhere else entirely.
Something has happened to my family. Something happened and we're still dealing with it, and I don't know what to do. I'm afraid to tell people. We're afraid to talk about it with each other.
I'm not even sure if anyone will read this. The world needs to know what's out there, what my family experienced. My family can't be the first. There must be others.
If you're still with me after these ramblings, thank you. The next part will not be easy to write. But you deserve to know the full truth about what the Orbs did to us. What they're capable of.
For now, I present to you this information. I do not think we live in a completely material world. There are supernatural forces all around us, and most of them are unkind. Be careful with how you think, and what you think of.

• Lee

11 minutes of լյուստռացիա and disaster update from Transcaucasian Telegraph.

graph shows the water levels of Lake Sevan

It exceeds the 2023 and 2015 levels but remains below the 2022 mark.
see,

some roads remain closed while others open in northern Armenia after the Sunday floods

Authorities published the list of closed roads and the alternatives to use: the list
The traffic resumed on the road to the Bagratashen customs checkpoint after cleanup activities. The checkpoint is functioning.
source, source, source,

efforts underway to restore services and permanent connection with several villages; inventory for compensation

INFRASTRUCTURE MINISTER: The dropping water levels have allowed us to bring construction machinery to the settlements that were cut off from Akhtala following the collapse of two bridges. The workers are covering around 5 km of [alternative] roads with gravel to make it passable. We will use helicopters to deliver food if necessary.
The road for Haghpat and Tsaghkashat is usable. There are also works on the road connecting Shnogh and Akhtala.
A storage was created to gather food and other necessities for affected residents. Each region submits its needs and we send it to them.
As of Monday, there were 4 deaths. Rescuers evacuated the residents of Sanahin.
11 small and 6 major bridges have collapsed. We’re going to need quite an effort to rebuild them.
REPORTER: Are there food and water issues in villages?
MINISTER: No. Most of the communities are located on the left bank of River Debed. Akhtala and other communities have plenty of food and grocery stores and there is accessibility with big vehicles. Yesterday we transferred construction equipment there.
REPORTER: What is the total population in this region and how many are isolated?
MINISTER: The population is 5,500. We have 2,500 residents in Lori and 1,000 in Tavush who don't have electricity. Work is underway to restore utility services.
REPORTER: Why weren't the residents evacuated sooner? There were reports that Georgia evacuated their residents.
MINISTER: We also launched evacuation activities as soon as the water began to rise at night. Many residents themselves noticed and moved out. Rescuers saved over 400 people. The organizational effort is what allowed us to avoid a much larger death toll.
REPORTER: What about before the heavy rain? Was it possible to evacuate the population before the rain?
MINISTER: The level of precipitation and the scale of consequences are not always predictable.
REPORTER: Will the residents receive compensation for the lost property?
MINISTER: Yes. We are taking inventory of the damaged infrastructure and we urge our residents to contact us to submit their losses, from houses to the goods lost in their shops.
RESCUE SERVICE: At the moment we have 429 displaced residents but most of them have since moved to their relatives' homes and do not need our help. We provide hotel rooms as necessary.
Pumps are being used to drain water from buildings.
We created a ropeway in Sanahin to evacuate residents if necessary. Yesterday we delivered them food and will do so today as well. Efforts are underway to end its isolation; we will install a mobile pedestrian bridge.
The communities near Alaverdi that are isolated will receive the necessary items with our vehicles.
We have 4 deaths. There was a report about a 5th person missing but information has arrived that disputes that the person was missing; we will clarify.
REPORTER: Is there a risk of new floods?
RESCUE SERVICE: At this time we don't see a threat and the water levels are down by 105 cm. //
Two houses were washed away without casualties in Haghartsin, near the River Aghstev. A while ago the residents were offered compensation and told to move out because the buildings were deemed dangerous due to the risk of landslides. The residents had reportedly refused to relocate.
PM Pashinyan held a meeting with the newly formed crisis group to discuss the restoration efforts.
PASHINYAN: During my Sunday conversations with the residents and rescuers I understood that the scale of this disaster could have been much worse. It is the prompt response by relevant agencies starting late evening [of Saturday] that helped minimize losses. Right now we must focus on emergency humanitarian assistance, and in the long term analyze the details of this incident and discuss possible changes to the standards in housing and road construction for better resilience. The restoration of infrastructure is of strategic importance so we must contact the companies with reliable records and launch the restoration process. I understand that they already have a busy schedule but we must gather the construction resources to restore the infrastructure. //
Pashinyan will instruct FM Mirzoyan to rally international support as the damages to infrastructure are expected to amount to tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. On Monday Pashinyan met Georges Siffredi, the Head of the Hauts-de-Seine Department Council of France, and emphasized the importance of cooperation in the direction of restoring infrastructure. Georges Siffredi said they are ready to provide support.
2.5 km of railway tracks were damaged. Local and foreign experts will begin the restoration efforts today; it will take "several weeks".
source, other video, source, source, source, source, source, source, video, video, tikin Susanna, video of Alaverdi after floods,

"we just need a few more days for them to collapse"; the pro-Russian former regime continues to shut down roads in Armenia and demand PM Pashinyan's resignation

EPISODE 1
On Monday over 280 participants were briefly detained for blocking roads at the request of protest organizers Archbishop Galstanyan and ARF MP Danielyan.
The police would often give an opportunity and 30-60 seconds for protesters to clear the roads, as in the case of Archbishop Galstanyan who was allowed to stand "one minute" on the road to give his speech:
GALSTANYAN: We must show these people with our actions that we want their [ruling party's] political existence to end as soon as possible. We must do more and I'd like to use the opportunity to encourage those who are home to join the peaceful acts of disobedience and not follow the illegal orders of these people. We are fighting for the truth. This man [Pashinyan] is afraid and has sent berets to protect himself. He has nothing else to do. We just need a few more days to topple their prop. None of you should be afraid. Do not be passive while waiting for what happens. We are moving forward in a straight line and we will reach our goal to liberate our lives. This is not a political issue but the solution is political. This is a national liberation. I'd like to thank everyone who is carrying out acts of disobedience right now. Continue the same way. //
EPISODE 2
Ժողովուրդ ջաան, բարի լույս։ Դը քինգ իզ բէք in 99 XO 001։ video,
EPISODE 3
Protest co-leader Archbishop Galstanyan was driving his Lexus with "11 TD 777" license plates when he put on the reverse and backed into the car of his supporter behind him: video.
EPISODE 4
A group of activists and a sanitation worker closed the Moskovyan-Teryan intersection while drivers honked at them. The activists complained that Nikol was surrendering their "homeland" one piece at a time.
One driver, dressed in what appears to be a military uniform and a Senior Lieutenant insignia on his shoulders, asked the activists to open the road because he was "in a hurry for service". The activist responded by saying the road closure is "a lot more important" than his service.
The drivers continued to honk at them. One passerby berated the activists and told them to go fight next to Putin. One driver got out of his car and accused the activists of being paid.
Another driver drove through the activists, striking two of them: video
EPISODE 5
REPORTER: The Sunday rally had 25% fewer attendees than the one on May 9. How do you explain this?
GHEVONDYAN (political analyst): Due to certain developments...
REPORTER: ... or perhaps lack thereof?
GHEVONDYAN: No, we've been warning that people who were disappointed in Pashinyan and attended the rallies were starting to get disappointed in this rally leaders as well. The number was down from 34,000 [on May 9, an hour after the launch] to 23,000 yesterday, and that includes the groups who arrived from foreign states to join the rally.
REPORTER: Yesterday Galstanyan led the crowd to Pashinyan's residency to "talk to him", knowing well that the PM was in a disaster area. Galstanyan said they would wait for his return, but then led the crowd back to the Republic Square. I'm under the impression that the organizers themselves understand their movement is failing but they feel "obligated" to continue, perhaps because they have made promises, perhaps they received funds from somewhere and now they feel obligated to use the money for its intended purpose. How else can you describe these actions?
GHEVONDYAN: Yesterday one of the participants of this movement asked me if it has a chance to succeed. My answer was "define victory" because the individuals who planned and led this movement have already won, if the goal was money laundering, or delivering on promises they might have made to someone, or they needed to see how many people they could rally at this time. Aramo to the rescue. The movement leaders themselves have accomplished their task. It's been 18 days, and none of their publicly announced goals have been met. On May 9 their goal was to remove Pashinyan within 7-10 days. On May 9 Galstanyan said he would leave the movement in 10 days, yet 18 days later he was named the candidate for PM.
REPORTER: At first I remained silent on the reports that the protesters in Tavush were being bribed, but today money is something that's being discussed openly by pro-Azerbaijani Russian political figure Korotchenko. Earlier he became agitated that the funds sent to Armenia to certain "experts" were not being used effectively or on purpose. Yesterday Korotchenko revealed that "hundreds of millions" were spent on them with zero effect and he spoke about Galstanyan with sarcasm. Korotchenko said it was necessary to teach Russian language in more Armenian schools and he made "corridor" demands to Armenia. He then wrote the third post and basically said they had to speak with Pashinyan [due to the failure of protests]. This gives me the right to believe the theory that funds are being sent from Russia. This is a self-lustration. Why are figures like Korotchenko so openly revealing Russia's ties with the movement?
GHEVONDYAN: Korotchenko is not personally tasked to handle Armenia, it's the job of other Russian officials, but he wants the Kremlin to assign him to work on Armenia. Those who were assigned to work on Armenia have failed. Perhaps they should have "talked to Pashinyan" instead.
REPORTER: If Russia gives up on this ineffective "5th column" in Armenia, and if we assume that Russia cannot use Azerbaijan to pressure [by invading] Armenia for now [due to Western pressure on Azerbaijan], and if Russia is too economically vulnerable and somewhat reliant on trade with Armenia in order to be able to impose economic sanctions on Armenia, what other options does Russia have?
GHEVONDYAN: That sums up Russia's capabilities today.
EPISODE 6
Murad Papazyan, the French-Armenian ARF official based in Paris, who was recently barred by the Pashinyan administration from entering Armenia, supports the removal of Pashinyan and believes it's important to restore the relations with Russia, calling it a strategically important move and describing Russia as the only partner with an agreement, according to 1in report. Interview with human rights defender Nina Karapetyan:
NINA KARAPETYAN: The size of this protest is shrinking because their true plan is being gradually exposed. If at first their rhetoric was unity and homeland, then today we see the pro-Russian forces next to them and this has alienated many original supporters. If at first people truly hoped that Mr. Galstanyan was independent, that illusion has been shattered. This movement has sponsors that are pointing this movement towards Russia.
I'm truly in shock by the comments made by ARF's French representative Murad Papazian. He was speaking with excitement and պաթոս that Armenia has no choice other than to be with Russia. Brother, if Russia is so good, why do you and your children live in France? Why do you live in France but want the rest of us to live under Russian rule? Take your family members and ARF colleagues and move to Russia if you want to live under that regime. Go live in Russia. Go to Omsk, Tomsk, or Siktivkar. It is obvious now that this [protest] is a Russian project.
Many initial supporters have major doubts now. It also baffles me how certain [pro-West] political figures with years of experience want to replace Pashinyan now without a concrete plan. You really want to remove Pashinyan now and allow a more pro-Russian figure to gain power; do you think that will make it easier for Armenia to Eurointegrate? //
Murad Papazian believes Russia and Armenia share similar interests in the South Caucasus and he is critical of the U.S. for wanting to increase "Turkey's influence" in the region by opening the borders with Armenia. Would you really want to work for a Turkish company in Armenia, wonders Papazian? "Is it in Armenia's best interest for Russia to be weakened in our region and for the US or UK to strengthen?" asked Papazian.
EPISODE 7
French-Armenian reporter Leo Nikolyan was barred by the Pashinyan administration from entering Armenia a few weeks ago. He has been on hunger strike.
LAPSHIN (Israeli blogger): I was asked to share my opinion about Leo Nikolyan who is relatively unknown in Armenia and France but is a big celebrity in Azerbaijani state propaganda outlets. Leo Nikolyan recently wrote that French President Macron had ties with Armenian militants, that France was sending spies to Azerbaijan, and that the French Ambassador to Armenia was supposedly involved in a multi-million dollar "visa" bribery. His visa story doesn't add up.
Moreover, it's strange how literally 7 minutes after he uploaded a video, Azerbaijani outlets were all over it. It's as if they knew in advance he was going to release a video. The Azeri outlets were also the first to report that he launched a hunger strike at the Yerevan airport. //
Last week protest co-leader Archbishop Galstanyan expressed his support for Leo Nikolyan, urging him to return to France for now and return when the time is right.
EPISODE 8
Bagrat Galstanyan's movement's Telegram channel shared a post with the image of rocks blocking the road after a rockslide in southern Armenia and tagged the photo: "The nature is on our side))))"
photo,
EPISODE 9
A police officer was fired for pushing and punching an ARF MP during a scuffle. A protester was arrested for using tear gas against the police in another incident.
source, interview, source, source, source, video, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, paint, trash,

Yerevan news

Yerevan resumes repairs on 55 kilometers of roads after heavy rains.
MAYOR AVINYAN: Residents often ask why certain road potholes are not fixed. The main reason is that the law does not allow us to carry out both patching and medium-level repair within the same year. //
Funds have been allocated to acquire 15 trolleybuses. Some of the contracts with the Chinese manufacturers have been signed. They will be delivered within 180 days.
The city has also allocated the funds to acquire an additional 171 short buses. They, too, must be delivered within 180 days.
As for the 250 units of 18-meter-long buses, they will be acquired starting next year, also with the municipality budget, because the financial deal between an international organization and the national government is taking too long.
source, source, source,

authorities charge two army officials tasked with equipment maintenance as part of the investigation of the deadly April 12 Ural truck incident that took the lives of 4 soldiers and injured 19

source,

January-April economic stats

Economic activity +13.2%
Inflation -1.1%
Industrial output +27%
Construction +14%
Domestic trade turnover +27%
Services +4%
Imports +110% ($5.99B)
Exports +180% ($7.73B)
source, source, source,

Armenian gymnast Artur Avetisyan wins gold at World Challenge Cup in Bulgaria

Artur Tovmasyan took the 6th place on the rings.
Olympic bronze medalist, world champion, two-time European champion Artur Davtyan was the 4th in the pommel horse.
European youth champion Erik Baghdasaryan finished 8th on parallel bars.
source,

While exploring a sprawling Dwarven city, your players learn that two massive monsters have escaped their confines and are hiding within the town’s borders. Can your party track down the reptilian creatures before they wreak havoc on the townsfolk? Or will the beasts run amok?
This quest was designed for a party of 6 level 11 players, but can be easily adapted if your party has a different amount of players or are at a higher or lower level. I ran this at my own table, and then made a few tweaks based on how it went, so I’d love to hear what you think! Without further ado, let’s get started!
Part 1: A Reptilian Caper
You can set this quest in pretty much any city, but I chose to run it in a town named Tinhagen. Built inside the peak of a mountain, the expansive city is the capital of the Dwarven kingdom, lit not by the sun but oil lamps and lava canals. It’s here that your party will come across a very strange group of characters who call themselves the Melted Rock Club.
Wearing orange robes and hats that look a bit like volcanoes, the Club is dedicated to their pseudoscientific, questionably magical studies. Most of their “research” is on things like moon dust in the water supply that turns people into werewolves, or uncovering deep state conspiracies in the Dwarven government. While a lot of it is outright wrong, sometimes they do stumble on an interesting discovery, and in this case, they need your players’ help to contain it.
The Club came across two eggs belonging to draconic creatures known as behir: Long and slender, behir sport 12 legs, sharp teeth and lightning breath to boot. So naturally, the Club thought it best to try and raise the creatures… Only now they’ve escaped, having somehow gotten out of their cage. Their only lead is that the creatures’ caretaker, named Dorda, is missing, too.
Not wanting to involve the local authorities for obvious reasons, the Club will task your players with finding and returning the two behirs - either dead or alive. When I ran this quest, I made the reward information: In exchange for helping out, the Club gave the party the location of a downed astral ship that was crucial to one players’ backstory. Tying this into the party’s own adventures is a great way to get the players interested in the hook. But considering the nature of their studies, it’s not unreasonable that the Club would have a magic item lying around for a reward, or at the very least, money.
No matter the prize, once your players accept the task of finding both lost lizards, you’ve got a quest on your hands!
Part 2: Leads on Lizards
Since their only real clue as to what happened is the behir’s handler is missing, the Club will give your party a few leads they can investigate as to her whereabouts. Dorda enjoys hanging out at a tavern known as the Underkeep, so the patrons there may be able to tell them a bit more about what she’s been up to, but the party will be warned that folks there don’t always take kindly to outsiders. Second, they know Dorda has a home across town. Your players could do some snooping, so long as they don’t get caught breaking and entering by any guards.
Whether your players decide to follow one or both leads, they’ll be able to get the information they need in order to find the missing behir. But I’ll take you through both sides of the quest, until they eventually join back together in the end. Let’s start with a trip to a tavern.
Part 3: In the Underkeep
The Underkeep is in a more residential part of town, away from the main thoroughfares and shopping centers that most visitors to the city would haunt. Outside it doesn’t look like much: it sits between two buildings, and is only a metal hatch in the ground with a sign above that says the tavern name with an arrow pointing down. Opening the gate and climbing a ladder inside, the party will find a small tavern lit by hanging lamps, with a long stone bar and quiet vibe. Unless your party is made entirely of dwarves, they’ll get a lot of dour looks from the bar’s regulars as they enter.
The dwarves in this place aren’t keen to talk to visitors, especially not about their own. So your party will need to find a way to win them over before they’re willing to divulge any information. They could do this in a lot of different ways: Buying drinks for the regulars, striking up some friendly conversation with good Persuasion checks, playing them in games of chance, or simply offering coins in exchange for information. It might even take a combo of all four depending on how they roll and what they’re willing to give up for a good lead. If you have any dwarves in your party - or anyone who speaks Dwarvish - that’ll also make things a little easier.
If they can warm themselves up to the locals, eventually they’ll learn that Dorda was in here just a few days ago. She seemed a bit out of sorts, and was asking the barkeep about their cousin, a butcher named Horrigan who runs a shop in the Sweatstone Terrace - not the city’s nicest district. If they want to keep following the trail, they’ll have to pay him a visit.
Part 4: A Trail of Blood
The Sweatstone Terrace is where the less-fortunate of Tinhagen hang out - sad pubs with only a few patrons, boarded up stores, beggars on every corner. As outsiders, your party will get more than a few glances from the shadier locals who hang out here - and if your players are itching for combat, this could be a good place to throw in some muggers or corrupt town guards looking to make some quick coin off your party. But eventually, they’ll reach Horrigan’s butcher shop.
The small store has hooks hanging out front that skewer various cuts of meat - mountain goat, bats, cave lizards. It mostly looks good - though some may be turning a bit green around the edges - and inside Horrigan is more than happy to try and sell them on any of his products. If they ask about Dorda, he’ll let them know he doesn’t remember anyone coming by with that name, and a successful insight check would show he appears to be telling the truth. But if they push a little further, he will reveal something strange happened recently: While unloading a cart out back, he noticed that some of the meat seemed to disappear between trips to get it into the shop. Thieves taking a little off the top wasn’t uncommon, but he was surprised to see several large cuts of meat go missing.
If they decide to check out back, the party will need to use Survival or Investigation to try and figure out what happened. With a high enough roll - DC 16 to be precise - they’ll notice small drops of blood that lead away from the back of the store to a nearby alley. At the end of the passage is a heavy grate that leads into the sewers below. It seems whoever took the meat escaped underground.
Part 5: Breaking and Entering
That was only one potential path, though! Your party may instead decide to head for Dorda’s home, which is in a neighborhood that’s nicer than the Terrace. While no bandits will accost them, that does mean there are more guards patrolling the streets - so they’ll need to be a little sneakier when they get to her abode.
Her house is a small one, with a small, potted fungal garden out front and only a few rooms. It’s a simple DC 15 check to get into the door or break the latch on a window, but you might want to roll to see if any guards happen by while they’re attempting to get inside. If so, you could have the player with the highest passive perception pick up on their approach, so the party can react accordingly. Similarly, if they fail their check to get in, I’d have some guards pass by regardless, to make sure there’s a small “consequence” for not getting it on the first try.
Once inside - and hopefully not arrested - they’ll find that the home consists of a bedroom, kitchen and small entryway. Here they can make Investigation or Perception checks to try and pick up on any clues as to Dorda’s whereabouts. Depending on how high they roll, they may find a few things: First are books on the shelf that talk about transmutation, illusion and other forms of magic - hints that Dorda might be a bit more competent of a spellcaster than the rest of the Melted Rock Club. Second are clothes piled up in a corner that are stained and smell terrible. Smart players may already begin to suspect she’s been stomping through the sewers below.
Most importantly though, they can find a small note stuffed under her simple mattress. It only has a few words on it, but they’re all in Dwarvish, so your party will need to translate to see what it says. The note reads: “Otug,” which is a dwarven name, and “Court of City Planning.” That’s their next destination.
Part 6: Bribes and Bureaucrats
Leaving Dorda’s home behind, the party will need to head toward the Cut of Courts, a wide street lined on either side with offices where the city’s government runs things. They’ll pass courts that deal with banking, law, mining affairs, housing records - until eventually, they reach the Court of City Planning. Entering inside and asking about Otug, the dwarf will be reluctant to meet with them. But if they bring up Dorda, they’ll be escorted back to his office.
Otug is gruff and abrasive, but also very corrupt. He’ll let the party know that for a simple bribe, he’ll tell them whatever they’d like about Dorda - after all, she bribed him first. If they’re willing to pay, or can come up with some other clever method to get him to talk, Otug will tell them that Dorda had asked for access to the city’s sewer plans. Pay him enough, and he’ll even point out on the map what section of the plumbing she seemed most interested in. No matter which route they chose, your players are heading down below.
Part 7: Behold the Behirs
Once your party knows they need to head into the sewers, they’ll have to navigate the labyrinth of tunnels and spoiled water that stretch underneath Tinhagen. If they talked with Otug and got more precise information, you could give them Advantage on investigation or survival checks made to get through the sewers, whereas if they went to the butcher, you could have them still following the trail of blood to find their way. You could also throw some encounters in there for them to find: Flocks of bat-like monsters called stirges, crazy old men who live underground, rat swarms chewing on old food scraps.
Eventually the party will reach an area where four pipes converge on one central chamber. The water is a bit deeper toward the center, where it pools around an open, rusted pipe that juts up out of the sewage in the middle of the room. If they check out that pipe, they may notice bits of bone contained within, as well as large, reptilian footprints and scratches in the rust that forms on the exterior. It seems they’re in the right place.
After a bit of waiting here, they’ll begin to hear footsteps approaching from one of the pipes. It’s up to them whether or not they want to hide, but if they do, they’ll see a dwarven woman with reddish hair and simple brown robes enter the chamber. That’s Dorda. She carries a sack full of meat shanks over one shoulder, and if the party doesn’t intervene, she’ll empty it into the central pipe. At that point, she’ll begin banging on the rusted metal… And the beasts will approach. The behirs are coming to feed.
From this point, there are several ways this quest can proceed. The first and most straightforward is combat. If your party attacks Dorda or are caught off-guard when she summons her two behirs, which will come bounding down two of the tunnels and into the room, it’ll be time to roll initiative. For Dorda, you can use the Illusionist wizard’s stat block in Monsters of the Multiverse, or just scale back the mage stat block in the monster manual. If you have less players or they’re a lower level, you could also have one behir instead of two. Between a powerful bite, lightning breath, constriction that’ll restrain your players and the ability to swallow a target whole, behirs can be a very tough challenge for your party.
All that said, this quest doesn’t have to end in fighting! If your party decides to confront Dorda verbally instead of going on the attack, or they manage to restrain her before she can summon her monsters, they’ll have the opportunity to talk it out. She speaks Common, and will explain that as the behir’s keeper, she was worried about whatever experiments the Melted Rock Club wanted to do on the creatures. Monsters or not, she believes they deserve better, and so snuck them out by casting Reduce to get them through the door late at night when nobody was around, and down into the sewers below.
She wants to release the creatures into the mountains beyond, and has been keeping them here in the sewers until she can find a way to smuggle them out. She’s finally managed to negotiate a deal with some shadier merchants to have them secretly shipped out of the city, she just needs to wait another day until they’re ready to go.
Now your players have a choice to make. If they let Dorda get the creatures out of the city, then the Melted Rock Club will refuse to give them their reward. Not to mention, these creatures are powerful and dangerous, so releasing them could have consequences for travelers heading to and from Tinhagen. But on the flip side, is it really right to leave these creatures in the hands of weird pseudoscientists who might do all sorts of strange experiments on them?
I’ll leave that decision up to your party. But if they decide to go against Dorda and turn the giant lizards in, then she will fight back with any means necessary - and without her to control them, so will the behirs. Whether they take down Dorda and capture the monsters, or let her save her precious pets, that’ll mark the end of this adventure.
Part 8: Conclusion
If the behirs are returned to the Club, dead or alive, they can claim their prize and be on their way. If they helped Dorda in the end, maybe they could still lie their way to the information or riches they wanted, or take up a different job instead. Maybe there’s even a middle ground they can find between both sides, so everybody ends up happy. Whatever they choose, at least the party can rest easy knowing those beasts won't be stalking the sewers any longer… And the city’s butchers can rest easy knowing their product won’t keep being stolen.
Thanks for reading, and if you end up running this at your table or have suggestions for how to make it even better, I’d love to hear them in the comments! Good luck out there, game masters!

While exploring a sprawling Dwarven city, your players learn that two massive monsters have escaped their confines and are hiding within the town’s borders. Can your party track down the reptilian creatures before they wreak havoc on the townsfolk? Or will the beasts run amok?
This quest was designed for a party of 6 level 11 players, but can be easily adapted if your party has a different amount of players or are at a higher or lower level. I ran this at my own table, and then made a few tweaks based on how it went, so I’d love to hear what you think! Without further ado, let’s get started!
Part 1: A Reptilian Caper
You can set this quest in pretty much any city, but I chose to run it in a town named Tinhagen. Built inside the peak of a mountain, the expansive city is the capital of the Dwarven kingdom, lit not by the sun but oil lamps and lava canals. It’s here that your party will come across a very strange group of characters who call themselves the Melted Rock Club.
Wearing orange robes and hats that look a bit like volcanoes, the Club is dedicated to their pseudoscientific, questionably magical studies. Most of their “research” is on things like moon dust in the water supply that turns people into werewolves, or uncovering deep state conspiracies in the Dwarven government. While a lot of it is outright wrong, sometimes they do stumble on an interesting discovery, and in this case, they need your players’ help to contain it.
The Club came across two eggs belonging to draconic creatures known as behir: Long and slender, behir sport 12 legs, sharp teeth and lightning breath to boot. So naturally, the Club thought it best to try and raise the creatures… Only now they’ve escaped, having somehow gotten out of their cage. Their only lead is that the creatures’ caretaker, named Dorda, is missing, too.
Not wanting to involve the local authorities for obvious reasons, the Club will task your players with finding and returning the two behirs - either dead or alive. When I ran this quest, I made the reward information: In exchange for helping out, the Club gave the party the location of a downed astral ship that was crucial to one players’ backstory. Tying this into the party’s own adventures is a great way to get the players interested in the hook. But considering the nature of their studies, it’s not unreasonable that the Club would have a magic item lying around for a reward, or at the very least, money.
No matter the prize, once your players accept the task of finding both lost lizards, you’ve got a quest on your hands!
Part 2: Leads on Lizards
Since their only real clue as to what happened is the behir’s handler is missing, the Club will give your party a few leads they can investigate as to her whereabouts. Dorda enjoys hanging out at a tavern known as the Underkeep, so the patrons there may be able to tell them a bit more about what she’s been up to, but the party will be warned that folks there don’t always take kindly to outsiders. Second, they know Dorda has a home across town. Your players could do some snooping, so long as they don’t get caught breaking and entering by any guards.
Whether your players decide to follow one or both leads, they’ll be able to get the information they need in order to find the missing behir. But I’ll take you through both sides of the quest, until they eventually join back together in the end. Let’s start with a trip to a tavern.
Part 3: In the Underkeep
The Underkeep is in a more residential part of town, away from the main thoroughfares and shopping centers that most visitors to the city would haunt. Outside it doesn’t look like much: it sits between two buildings, and is only a metal hatch in the ground with a sign above that says the tavern name with an arrow pointing down. Opening the gate and climbing a ladder inside, the party will find a small tavern lit by hanging lamps, with a long stone bar and quiet vibe. Unless your party is made entirely of dwarves, they’ll get a lot of dour looks from the bar’s regulars as they enter.
The dwarves in this place aren’t keen to talk to visitors, especially not about their own. So your party will need to find a way to win them over before they’re willing to divulge any information. They could do this in a lot of different ways: Buying drinks for the regulars, striking up some friendly conversation with good Persuasion checks, playing them in games of chance, or simply offering coins in exchange for information. It might even take a combo of all four depending on how they roll and what they’re willing to give up for a good lead. If you have any dwarves in your party - or anyone who speaks Dwarvish - that’ll also make things a little easier.
If they can warm themselves up to the locals, eventually they’ll learn that Dorda was in here just a few days ago. She seemed a bit out of sorts, and was asking the barkeep about their cousin, a butcher named Horrigan who runs a shop in the Sweatstone Terrace - not the city’s nicest district. If they want to keep following the trail, they’ll have to pay him a visit.
Part 4: A Trail of Blood
The Sweatstone Terrace is where the less-fortunate of Tinhagen hang out - sad pubs with only a few patrons, boarded up stores, beggars on every corner. As outsiders, your party will get more than a few glances from the shadier locals who hang out here - and if your players are itching for combat, this could be a good place to throw in some muggers or corrupt town guards looking to make some quick coin off your party. But eventually, they’ll reach Horrigan’s butcher shop.
The small store has hooks hanging out front that skewer various cuts of meat - mountain goat, bats, cave lizards. It mostly looks good - though some may be turning a bit green around the edges - and inside Horrigan is more than happy to try and sell them on any of his products. If they ask about Dorda, he’ll let them know he doesn’t remember anyone coming by with that name, and a successful insight check would show he appears to be telling the truth. But if they push a little further, he will reveal something strange happened recently: While unloading a cart out back, he noticed that some of the meat seemed to disappear between trips to get it into the shop. Thieves taking a little off the top wasn’t uncommon, but he was surprised to see several large cuts of meat go missing.
If they decide to check out back, the party will need to use Survival or Investigation to try and figure out what happened. With a high enough roll - DC 16 to be precise - they’ll notice small drops of blood that lead away from the back of the store to a nearby alley. At the end of the passage is a heavy grate that leads into the sewers below. It seems whoever took the meat escaped underground.
Part 5: Breaking and Entering
That was only one potential path, though! Your party may instead decide to head for Dorda’s home, which is in a neighborhood that’s nicer than the Terrace. While no bandits will accost them, that does mean there are more guards patrolling the streets - so they’ll need to be a little sneakier when they get to her abode.
Her house is a small one, with a small, potted fungal garden out front and only a few rooms. It’s a simple DC 15 check to get into the door or break the latch on a window, but you might want to roll to see if any guards happen by while they’re attempting to get inside. If so, you could have the player with the highest passive perception pick up on their approach, so the party can react accordingly. Similarly, if they fail their check to get in, I’d have some guards pass by regardless, to make sure there’s a small “consequence” for not getting it on the first try.
Once inside - and hopefully not arrested - they’ll find that the home consists of a bedroom, kitchen and small entryway. Here they can make Investigation or Perception checks to try and pick up on any clues as to Dorda’s whereabouts. Depending on how high they roll, they may find a few things: First are books on the shelf that talk about transmutation, illusion and other forms of magic - hints that Dorda might be a bit more competent of a spellcaster than the rest of the Melted Rock Club. Second are clothes piled up in a corner that are stained and smell terrible. Smart players may already begin to suspect she’s been stomping through the sewers below.
Most importantly though, they can find a small note stuffed under her simple mattress. It only has a few words on it, but they’re all in Dwarvish, so your party will need to translate to see what it says. The note reads: “Otug,” which is a dwarven name, and “Court of City Planning.” That’s their next destination.
Part 6: Bribes and Bureaucrats
Leaving Dorda’s home behind, the party will need to head toward the Cut of Courts, a wide street lined on either side with offices where the city’s government runs things. They’ll pass courts that deal with banking, law, mining affairs, housing records - until eventually, they reach the Court of City Planning. Entering inside and asking about Otug, the dwarf will be reluctant to meet with them. But if they bring up Dorda, they’ll be escorted back to his office.
Otug is gruff and abrasive, but also very corrupt. He’ll let the party know that for a simple bribe, he’ll tell them whatever they’d like about Dorda - after all, she bribed him first. If they’re willing to pay, or can come up with some other clever method to get him to talk, Otug will tell them that Dorda had asked for access to the city’s sewer plans. Pay him enough, and he’ll even point out on the map what section of the plumbing she seemed most interested in. No matter which route they chose, your players are heading down below.
Part 7: Behold the Behirs
Once your party knows they need to head into the sewers, they’ll have to navigate the labyrinth of tunnels and spoiled water that stretch underneath Tinhagen. If they talked with Otug and got more precise information, you could give them Advantage on investigation or survival checks made to get through the sewers, whereas if they went to the butcher, you could have them still following the trail of blood to find their way. You could also throw some encounters in there for them to find: Flocks of bat-like monsters called stirges, crazy old men who live underground, rat swarms chewing on old food scraps.
Eventually the party will reach an area where four pipes converge on one central chamber. The water is a bit deeper toward the center, where it pools around an open, rusted pipe that juts up out of the sewage in the middle of the room. If they check out that pipe, they may notice bits of bone contained within, as well as large, reptilian footprints and scratches in the rust that forms on the exterior. It seems they’re in the right place.
After a bit of waiting here, they’ll begin to hear footsteps approaching from one of the pipes. It’s up to them whether or not they want to hide, but if they do, they’ll see a dwarven woman with reddish hair and simple brown robes enter the chamber. That’s Dorda. She carries a sack full of meat shanks over one shoulder, and if the party doesn’t intervene, she’ll empty it into the central pipe. At that point, she’ll begin banging on the rusted metal… And the beasts will approach. The behirs are coming to feed.
From this point, there are several ways this quest can proceed. The first and most straightforward is combat. If your party attacks Dorda or are caught off-guard when she summons her two behirs, which will come bounding down two of the tunnels and into the room, it’ll be time to roll initiative. For Dorda, you can use the Illusionist wizard’s stat block in Monsters of the Multiverse, or just scale back the mage stat block in the monster manual. If you have less players or they’re a lower level, you could also have one behir instead of two. Between a powerful bite, lightning breath, constriction that’ll restrain your players and the ability to swallow a target whole, behirs can be a very tough challenge for your party.
All that said, this quest doesn’t have to end in fighting! If your party decides to confront Dorda verbally instead of going on the attack, or they manage to restrain her before she can summon her monsters, they’ll have the opportunity to talk it out. She speaks Common, and will explain that as the behir’s keeper, she was worried about whatever experiments the Melted Rock Club wanted to do on the creatures. Monsters or not, she believes they deserve better, and so snuck them out by casting Reduce to get them through the door late at night when nobody was around, and down into the sewers below.
She wants to release the creatures into the mountains beyond, and has been keeping them here in the sewers until she can find a way to smuggle them out. She’s finally managed to negotiate a deal with some shadier merchants to have them secretly shipped out of the city, she just needs to wait another day until they’re ready to go.
Now your players have a choice to make. If they let Dorda get the creatures out of the city, then the Melted Rock Club will refuse to give them their reward. Not to mention, these creatures are powerful and dangerous, so releasing them could have consequences for travelers heading to and from Tinhagen. But on the flip side, is it really right to leave these creatures in the hands of weird pseudoscientists who might do all sorts of strange experiments on them?
I’ll leave that decision up to your party. But if they decide to go against Dorda and turn the giant lizards in, then she will fight back with any means necessary - and without her to control them, so will the behirs. Whether they take down Dorda and capture the monsters, or let her save her precious pets, that’ll mark the end of this adventure.
Part 8: Conclusion
If the behirs are returned to the Club, dead or alive, they can claim their prize and be on their way. If they helped Dorda in the end, maybe they could still lie their way to the information or riches they wanted, or take up a different job instead. Maybe there’s even a middle ground they can find between both sides, so everybody ends up happy. Whatever they choose, at least the party can rest easy knowing those beasts won't be stalking the sewers any longer… And the city’s butchers can rest easy knowing their product won’t keep being stolen.
Thanks for reading, and if you end up running this at your table or have suggestions for how to make it even better, I’d love to hear them in the comments! Good luck out there, game masters!

Introduction.
I am still not giving up. After so many months of unsuccessful tries, I just can't give up on a game that I am so eager and passionate to play. I have listed all the reasons why I want to play this game down below and what makes this game so amazing. I have another reason that gives me extra incentive to play. I started a YouTube channel, trying to get the hardest achievements in games. I heard there's a few hard achievements to obtain in Ready or Not and I am always up for a challenge. Anyways enjoy reading the rest down below.
So first thing I should probably talk about is why I deserve to be on the SWAT team. Lets start off with safety. I will always let my fellow armed forces go into enemy territory before me to ensure the safety of myself. I see it more as a polite gesture, like letting the lady walk through the door before you. Makes sense right?.. right?! Firearms training? Pffft.. Ranging back from when I was 4 years old, I was granted permission to use a water pistol for the first time. 9 years old I built my very first pistol (made of legos) 15 years old, I gunned down a raging terrorist for the first time… on CSGO of course! I'm practically a pro at this point! I have plenty of experience on the field. I've successfully rescued over 5000 hostages in my lifetime. Every week I’d find myself in the same office building rescuing the same god damn people. Seems like they couldn’t stay out of trouble.. I was thinking about taking my old, wrinkled up camping bed there as I seem to be there more than anywhere else. I've defused and planted.. ahem I mean no! Not planted! Just defused many bombs throughout my life. I have been deployed in many locations of the world! Some places were covered in dust. Other areas gave me a sense of vertigo. I thought I went to another desert-like area once but turned out it was only a mirage. I’m not crazy I swear! Hey, I've even been lucky enough to explore the Aztecs! The locals seemed friendly. That was until they got a bit 'touchy'. They started chanting fresh meat in sync as they slowly marched around me. I don't know why, because I wasn't carrying any fresh meat on me? I got scared though and managed to escape on a hand-crafted boat made out of old wooden pallets. What an eventful day that was! No harm was caused, except for a couple of splinters in my bottom. I always carry the right equipment with me at all times, including these red and blue flashy lights I got from the Facebook marketplace. They were cheap as chips and an offer I just could not refuse! Seriously, every time I drive around with these lights on, people seem to move out of my way? It's like I have magical powers or something. If you guys ever get the opportunity, you have to cop some. (see what I did there..) And no that's not the only thing I carry with me. I also carry the freshest, tastiest, shiniest pink sprinkled donuts that every cop dreams about. I think the donuts alone already qualifies me as a cop. I went to this Halloween party once, I galloped my way to the costume shop in excitement as it was the first party I was ever invited too! I purchased a cop uniform and my gosh was it believable. I had people thinking I was a real cop and everything. Putting people in cuffs, getting people to hold their hands up in fear! It was brilliant! And then these 2 guys pulled up outside. They were also dressed up as police officers. They even pulled up in a police cruiser. Now that was commitment. They were a bit rough though, dragging me in the back of the car and even locking me up behind bars for the night. Someone took Halloween a bit serious that year.. Come to think of it, I think they were real police officers? But at least I know how to handcuff people! If you're not totally convinced yet as to why I would like to be apart of the armed forces, whatever reason that may be?!! allow me to present to you my actual, sincere request for this game ;).
So what is Ready or Not? - And why I would like it.
Quick disclaimer, if you don't fancy reading through everything (which is understandable) then scroll a bit further down to the 'A quick summary' section, as I have listed a few bullet points basically summarizing everything about this game that I really like and why it takes my interest, but otherwise feel free to give it a read :).
So Ready or Not is a tactical SWAT game where your main focus is to raid buildings and rescue hostages. Along the way you will encounter criminals, but this isn't just a typical case of running in and shooting like an headless chicken. This is a game that's all about teamwork and communication. Every raid needs to be planned and executed properly as your actions can lead to consequences. It's supposed to give you that immersive and realistic feel so put yourself in the shoes of a tactical SWAT officer and then you DECIDE how to approach all these kinds of situations. Of course, you play how you like. Go in stealth mode and apprehend every situation with caution or kick the door down and kill on sight, but ultimately the best way to play is how a real SWAT team would deal with these scenarios. It's what makes this game 1000x more fun. It's so realistic to the point of not just the gameplay or the mechanics, but also the little things like apparently how the A.I works. It's like playing against actual people so this is something I'm really excited to experience myself and makes me want to play this game even more. The enemies/ criminals hide in closets, they fake surrender, they can also throw away their guns and then they will take it again when you're not paying attention. Even your teammates, lets say you're playing single player. A.I SWAT officers that join you on your missions when playing act like they’re, well, highly trained police officers who have years of experience going on dangerous raids. They don’t get in your way, they listen to the many commands you can give them with a press of a button, secure evidence and incapacitate enemies without being specifically instructed to, and hold their own in firefights. Those firefights are often against enemies.
You've got all your proper SWAT gear, weapons and other tactical equipment that would be necessary for these jobs. This game features 4 weapon categories. Assault rifles, shotguns, SMGs, and pistols. You're also equipped with pepper spray, a taser, SWAT shield, lock picker, wire cutters and more. Basically all the tools you would need to help assist with the job! Every SWAT team member is also strapped with a body cam, and you are able to select through any players body cam whenever you think it's necessary. It's a good way to give other teammates a better idea of someones whereabouts or what sort of situation they're currently in. It can be useful in a lot of ways. Players must choose their loadouts carefully to help survive these tense missions which is what I like because it means planning out the jobs and being fully prepared. To me, it seems like the development team put a lot of thought and effort into this game and the community feedback really shows it.
Also the environment and the setting of the game, it really makes you feel like you're actually there. It's raw, real-like and gritty and each map looks distinctive which really sets the tone of the game. Each house or building you advance towards, has this dark and devastating feel to it, like you can almost tell immediately that something grim is going on behind those doors. And speaking of maps, this game is fully mod supported. Custom maps, weapons including guns and attachments, gear and other 'quality of life' mods that will help enhance your gameplay experience. There's so many mods that have been created for this game that it will be hard to get bored of and I would definitely love to experiment with some of these mods eventually. Playing the game purely vanilla and getting the hang of it all first is of greater importance but the fact it is mod supported just gives you endless possibilities of pure enjoyment.
Now on to an older game really quickly. So if you guys have ever played SWAT 4 or at least heard of it, then Ready or Not will sound very familiar to you. Like Ready or Not, SWAT 4 is also a tactical SWAT game, where raiding buildings, rescuing hostages and arresting criminals are your main priorities. Ready or Not is very much inspired by this older game that came out around 2005 on PC. Of course, Ready or Not is more current (13th December 2023) and up to date with better gameplay mechanics etc. For example, some doors are wired up with tripwire. Instead of barging through every door like a maniac, you must take in to consideration that some doors can be rigged to blow. This can be tackled though by first peeking through the doors, and then snipping the wire with your trusty wire cutters. Some doors may be locked though so what do you do? Don't worry, you can also carry a lock picker with you, but if you don't have one, maybe someone else in the team is carrying one. If you're a bit hesitant on opening doors because of that stressful feeling rushing through your body, then there's another way. Players have the option of carrying a mirror with them. You can use this to your advantage as you can slide these mirrors under the door gap. This gives you the upper hand as you have the opportunity to spot enemies before they spot you. You can then inform your teammates of the enemies locations, giving your teammates a little bit more time to get their selves prepared. You can also slide them under doors to find out whether or not a door has been wired up. The mirror - such a simple item, but can be a lifesaver! Some other realistic mechanics featured in this game are not being able to sprint. I like this because it give you the ability to clear rooms effectively like how it's supposed to be done. Like how it is done. Sprinting through hallways like some cracked Call Of Duty player takes away that realism. This also means that catching up to suspects who are trying to flee the scene make it more challenging. So perhaps working with your team to form some sort of formation or maybe getting someone to hold doorways would be a great way to tackle these situations. Something else I found out that makes the game a bit more challenging is sustaining injuries. Lets say for instance you get shot in the arm. You will find it a bit tougher to be able to fire your weapon like controlling the recoil etc. And sustaining an injury to the leg will prevent you from kicking down doors, limiting your options before breaching rooms. This really puts you into perspective of what being in the force is sort of like. Obviously this is just a game, but most games make it look much more simpler that what they are supposed to portray whereas Ready Or Not takes it up a level in my opinion.
Another small detail that I like is being able to collect evidence during raids for example, when a criminal drops his weapon, you can then bag it up and collect it as evidence which will then determine your rank at the end of each mission. See in my opinion, having a rank assigned at the end of mission completion gives you that little extra bit of motive to play the game properly which is what I fully intend to do. The rank you get is based off of how much you achieve during your missions and how many objectives you complete. Ready or Not is very slow-paced and deliberate compared to other shooters. It requires a lot of time and patience so rushing through the missions is very likely to backfire. Every so often, you may be under intense pressure, and you may not have time to think about your next move. You may accidentally shoot a civilian which will obviously penalize you and that plays a big role on the outcome of your player rank. There's numerous types of evidence to collect. Weapons, documents, drugs and a lot more which I think is a nice realistic element to add in a game like this.
I also know there's lots of different kinds of game modes and missions that have different points of interests and scenarios to immerse yourself into. Some missions being more complex than others which I like the sound of because too many of the same thing can feel a bit repetitive, so I like how each mode gives you a different experience altogether. The modes included in this game so far are Hostage Rescue, Active Shooter, Raid, Bomb Threat and Barricaded Suspects. I know the titles of these modes give you a clear understanding of what they involve but I don't know how these game modes will play out and what to fully expect. How they work, how challenging they are etc. I have tried not to look yet as I simply don't want to spoil it for myself. I wan't to go in the game completely fresh and take it all in step by step. This game is like a breath of fresh air and with everything I've read up on and seen so far, it just sounds astonishing.
As I mentioned a little bit in my introduction, I am very familiar with FPS games. I've played other FPS games that require the same sort of skills required for Ready or Not. For example, communication skills. I would consider myself a team player. I am very vocal and always give out important call outs and info, especially in vital moments. I can implement all the stuff that I have learnt from previous games and use that to my advantage. And as the A.I are pretty smart, I can also put my gun play skills to the test. Holding angles, peeking around corners slow and steadily, handling the weapon itself by controlling the recoil, tossing a flashbang through doors and rush B! Okay that might of been a CS reference.. But yeah hopefully you guys get my point. Overtime, I've been able to get better and better at previous FPS games as I've always grinded to improve myself and I plan to devote many hours of my life into this game to do the exact same thing. I'm fully invested in this game and I haven't even played it yet lmao.
I heard the community is friendly and welcoming for the most part. Of course there's going to be a few negatives just like every community that exists but that is to be expected. According to some of the comments in this Reddit post most people haven't experienced much toxicity so this is quite reassuring, especially to new players who are trying to get to grips with the game. And even some steam reviews people have claimed that they haven't experienced much toxicity. The community is filled with a mixture of players. Some play it on a more serious level whereas some are more casual players who are playing just for fun. There's a wide range of discord servers out there to play with other people and I would hopefully like to be apart of some of them, especially if my friends aren't playing. I'd like to imagine where I could possibly pick up new things from these players. I usually pick up on things pretty quick so it shouldn't be much of a problem getting up to speed with everyone else. I am a gamer after all :). Although what I can say is, I've already learnt quite a bit already by just doing some research on the game.
Now I know this next point may sound a bit silly and doesn't add or change anything about the game, but I wanted to talk about this as I thought it was really commendable. Of course being a tactical SWAT officer, is a very high-risk high reward kind of job. Every job taken place is unpredictable and you don't know what to expect. In some cases, not all jobs involve gunning down hostile enemies. As we know, there's a pretty common term out there known as 'Swatting'. Swatting is basically alerting the police of a very threatening occurrence happening at someone's address when in fact this is nothing more than complete lies. This happens pretty commonly to live streamers as they are an easy target I guess, or the fact that you get to see everything unfold live. Well I wanted to point this out because in one of the trailers for Ready or Not, this exact situation happens. There is no dialogue, just sort of a retro upbeat tune playing in the background which contrasts to the events actually happening. The first scene displayed are 4 SWAT forces making entry into an ordinary looking property. My first reaction to this is they are about to enter into a very critical situation, maybe a hostage situation? or maybe a highly dangerous, wanted man? Well the next scene, introduces us to what appears to be a normal looking guy, with bright blue hair and your typical e-girl cat eared headphones sitting at a nice and rich looking gaming setup. On one of the monitors, you can clearly see a live chat feed, clearly implying that this guy is a live streamer and reality hits you that this guy is about to get swatted. Now I don't see this being part of the actual gameplay as it would probably be too short and not a lot of gameplay elements would be added. I could be wrong though and there might be more involved, but the attention to detail in this trailer is superb! Being apart of the armed forces isn't always about stepping in dangerous environments, it's also about answering silly prank calls whilst being totally unaware. I have to put my hat off to whoever created this trailer for making this game even more real to today's society. It just caught my attention and that's something I just wanted to kind of write about.
The game is still fairly new. It was released on Steam 17th of December, 2021 in early access and was fully released just before last Christmas. But the developers are actively working on the game, bringing out new content and updates regularly. They also love to listen to the community feedback a lot, so most updates they bring out are input given from their dedicated fan-base. They also have a YouTube channel called 'VOID Interactive', where they give out very informative descriptions of the game that can be very accommodating to new players. Check out their latest video 'Ready or Not - SWAT AI vLog' which is a good example of how informative they are. You can also see how much progress they've made since the project first started, starting from 6 years ago all the way up until now which shows their level of dedication and commitment to this game.
If someone does happen to gift me this game, I will be able to experience it for myself and will probably have a lot more to say about the game. Based off of all the reviews I've read and all the clips I've watched, the game looks really promising! and speaking of 'promising', I promise to whoever gifts me this game, your money will NOT be wasted and I will be EXTREMELY grateful. So yeah, I would really love to delve deep into this game with my buddies. We have always talked about getting the game at some point. We play a lot of games together but this will be something completely unique and fresh to play. But I've been anxious to play this game for so long, regardless if my buddies get the game or not, I can be a lone wolf, directing my little A.I friends every step of the way to success and taking out all these filthy crooks and criminals one by one! So thanks to those who take the time to read my request.
A quick summary.
I know this is a long and probably boring post so I will just summarize some points why this game is fantastic and why I really want to dive into it.
● Realistic/ immersive feel.
● Clever A.I (Teammates and Enemies).
● Proper tactical weapons/ equipment.
● Wide-range of missions and scenarios.
● Several game mode types to spice up the gameplay
● Variety of maps (Some more complex than others).
● Top-notch game mechanics.
● Heavily relies on teamwork and communication.
● Great with friends or as a solo player.
● Each approach is handled differently.
● Actions can lead to consequences.
● Environment is very gritty and atmospheric.
● A lot of small details that brings this game to life.
● A mixture of emotions this game puts you through.
● Player ranks.
● Fully mod supported.
● Great community.
● Active development team bringing updates on the regular.
Conclusion.
Once I finish my last year of sixth form, I would like to start earning money for myself. With this money I would like to give back to this amazing community and be able to spread kindness and joy to others. Yes, I want to be in the position of being able to gift games too! Right now I'm unfortunately not able to do that. Money is an issue for me and that's why I'm requesting this game. So fingers crossed, someone out there can make me a happy guy and let me play this gem of a game. I've done my research the past few months and I can say with hand on heart, that this game is something I fell in love with the minute I found out about it. Thank you for reading my request. Take care guys and gals and good luck to everyone else out there who are also requesting games!
So.. Ready or Not? I most certainly am Sorry about that one xD
My Steam profile: https://steamcommunity.com/id/dafydd2k/
Ready or Not: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1144200/Ready_or_Not/

Hey everyone, There’s something I wanted to say. Wuthering Wave’s story needs some work. There’s a lot of potential, and I can see it, so I’ve decided to give you all a brief overview of how I would change the first chapter of the Huanglong story arc.
In this rewrite, I want to quickly establish two major changes beyond the story:

• Characterisation
• Voice acting

First, is our titular character Yapyap, I mean…Yangyang. For this rewrite, she remains mostly the same; A soft-spoken young woman, however, I’m going to make her somewhat selfish. By this I mean, she has no interest in getting involved in the current war (and while this seems redundant to mention, I promise you, It will work perfectly soon).
Next is Chixia, who oddly enough doesn’t really get much of a change, I just want to better portray her as more of a people-person.
Finally, is Baizhi, whose change is rather minimal and mostly situational; she likes to indulge in childish activities from time to time, most notably shiny echo hunting, where she rather infamously has mild temper-tantrums whenever she doesn’t get the shiny for the echo she wants, but at the same time, she’s rather embarrassed of that side of herself.
Now for voice-acting. No hate to the VA’s at all here, but I’m just giving my interpretations of how I imagine they would sound:
Yangyang can still have a softer voice, just don’t make her sound like she is trying not to fall asleep whenever she talks.
Chixia should sound a lot more spunky and energetic, having a lot of likeability from her voice alone. Making her sound like Erin Fitzergerald’s Chie Satonaka would do wonders for her.
Baizhi should have been British (in my opinion) since it helps her stand out among the current playable roster, especially the black-haired girls. So British having a VA who can a cool-sounding, mature voice would help
So let’s hop on in.
The story starts off with Rover waking up from a dream, where in it, it basically explains how they and Yangyang met while she was journeying by herself, and happened to come across your unconscious ass while wandering through a canyon, and ever since, she’s decided to drag you along with her on her return to Jinzhou as she feel pity on your lost, hopeless soul (and by that I mean she just wants to help you recover your memories). The prologue would mostly proceed around the same, minus Chixia being with you and Rover having one-on-one time with Jue. You and Yangyang reach the crevice, and look down to see the Dormant Tacet Field, where you see Chixia and Baizhi investigating the zone. Yangyang finds this especially interesting because she was expecting to meet them further up the road, and she then explains that they’re her friends after the Rover asks if she knows them. So the you glide and meet up with the duo, and after some confusion from Yangyang and short introductions, the following proceeds: Wuthering Waves CN - Crownless First Encounter Boss Fight - Closed Beta 1 (youtube.com)
(By the way, Crownless first says: Have you seen my crown, and the says: This is getting rather dull)
The following changes from the fight:

• Crownless only knocks out Yangyang rather than leaving her critically injured
• Chixia doesn’t shoot you (and the major reason why is because of one very crucial change)
• You don’t absorb Crownless, instead either the following happens whether you defeat or lose to him:
  • If you win: Crownless staggers back before summoning several Tacet Discords and fleeing
  • If you lose: Rover staggers back, landing near where Baizhi, Chixia and the now unconscious Yangyang have gathered, with Crownless then summoning several Tacet Discords and fleeing

So Rover and Chixia rush into the fray, battling as many Tacet Discords as possible (probably represented in gameplay as you using both Rover and Chixia in a ‘how many can you bet in X amount of time' section). But unfortunately, you cand Chixia are pushed back as more and more monsters rise up from the earth and surround the group. But suddenly (One winged angel blasts in the background) Calcharo appears and purges the entire threat in a single slash. Once the dust settles, he briefly scolds the girls for their recklessness, but pauses and silently quickly walks off seeing the unconscious Yangyang, simply stating “You better get back to the city, more will be coming.”
As Chixia and Baizhi properly place Yangyang on Youtan’s, Rover quickly captures Echo using their gourd after seeing it react to the holographic corpse. Chixia gets rather giddy seeing how you caught a shiny one, even mentioning Baizhi’s moments when commenting on how Echo hunting is a common sport among resonators.
Of course, it will be clarified how it works, but that comes later, right now we have a Yangyang to save! So you eventually return back to the city, with Baizhi rushing Yangyang to the medical vicinities and telling you two that she’ll be fine before entering the building, but Chixia can’t help but worry, and additionally feel guilty, as its explained that she’s the real reason why Baizhi and her at the Tacet Field, and if it wasn’t for her, Yangyang would be fine. Rover comforts her, and suggests a tour of Jinzhou as a way to ease her mind and help her calm down. So after meeting a few NPCs, those being Yhan, Maqi, Panhua and Uncle Wei.
Rover and Chixia basically have one of those Q’n’A sessions prior to seeing Yangyang, after waving a shy-looking grey-haired girl goodbye, approach you both with Baizhi by her side. Chixia bursts into tears seeing Yangyang’s recovery, only for the Yangyang to pull her into a hug and comfort her friend. After some chit-chat, a large hologram projection of Jinshi appears above the city, informing everyone that the army needs reinforcements and volunteers to work in the shelters and bases. Chixia and Baizhi are quick to suggest offering their services, but Yangyang quietly scoffs at hearing the news. Unfortunately for her friends, She states that she and Rover already have business, with Chixia and Baizhi respecting that before running off (probably to see Yhan or some other military NPC I can’t remember), as for Rover and Yangyang, you both have a date with Jinshi.
End Chapter.
And that’s about it. In terms of all the terminology bloat, I would most definitely reduce the amount said and have it be at more natural points (for example, the Echo could easily be explained a bit later on; I know I'm pushing back, but I’m prioritising the story a good bit). I do have other suggestions and ideas for the remaining chapters, but I want to see how this is generally received before I go on with those. If you have any criticism, please feel free to tell me what you think.

tl;dr despite having increasingly more connections to Joyboy and the conflict of the Ancient Kingdom, I think we still have a lot to learn about the Roger Pirates, and ultimately we will be carrying on the will of Roger, not Joyboy, and finishing what he couldn't.
I was discussing with my roommate last night my ambivalence toward the growing connections between the Strawhats and Joyboy. We spent a very large amount of the story being told that Luffy is very reminiscent of Roger. He has a similar personality/demeanor, he has the same dream, he has followed a pretty similar journey, etc. Through the symbolism of the straw hat, he carries on the will of Roger. However, as of 1115, we have been shown a number of things that increasingly relate Luffy to Joyboy. Obviously there was Zunesha saying Joyboy's name during Wano when Luffy Awakened, but in the most recent chapter we have (I believe) our first look at a Joyboy silhouette, and unsurprisingly it is very similar to Gear 5th Luffy. Couple that with Joyboy being confirmed to be a pirate and some headcanoning that the Iron Giant and Zunesha were members of Joyboy's crew and the veeeeery loose similarity to a couple members of the SH crew, and it seems like we're getting more and more connections to our crew much more closely resembling and thus carrying on the will of Joyboy, not Roger.
I don't necessarily dislike this; as I said, I'm ambivalent about it. I do really like all the lore drops, and I love the idea that we're completing a task set out for us by the people who lost their world 800 years ago (even if that isn't exactly the most novel story beat written), but I am a little sad that it feels like we're moving away more and more from picking up where the Roger Pirates left off and completing what they were unable to.
This got me thinking, though. I don't think we're done with the Roger Pirates and their story. Rayleigh told Robin that he knows the truth of the world (or something to that effect) and offered to tell her, saying she might come to a different conclusion than they did and that they were too hasty. What Vegapunk is telling us now, about Joyboy, the waters rising, the Ancient Kingdom, etc, are likely all known by the remnants of the Roger Pirates, and the more we get revealed to us, the more we learn what they've been sitting on but have been unable to do anything about. It has made me realize that despite getting the extensive Oden/Roger flashback in Wano, that only told us the "what" of their adventure, not the "why."
We have a lot of information about the adventures Roger and crew went on, traveling the world, gathering the Road Poneglyphs, making it to Laugh Tale, etc., but what we don't know is why it is Roger decided that the journey needed to be undertaken in the first place. It seems likely to me that the God Valley incident set Roger on the path of wanting to overthrow the WG after seeing how horrid an organization they are, but he didn't set off on his final journey until I believe about 13 years after that event. Something in that 13 years spurred Roger and crew to try to do something about the world and set off to find the answers for their problems. So I think we still have a lot left to learn about the Roger Pirates and why it was that they sought out the truth of the world but didn't/couldn't act on it. For now we are learning a lot about the Ancient Kingdom and seeing our connections to Joyboy and the Void Century, but by the time we get to Laugh Tale, I think we're going to learn a lot more about Roger and realize that we are still carrying on his will and trying to complete the task that he couldn't.

It’s the 20^th and 21^st anniversary of Buffy and Angel’s respective cancellations, and regarding the chance of any Buffy-related resurrection the odds are against us and the situation is grim.
Or so Captain Kirk would say.
But he also said he didn’t believe in the no-win scenario.
And just the other day, I saw a quote which put its finger adroitly on the problem:
“We could luck out and get a Fargo situation where the show intelligently builds on the source material with a new creative lead, but that’s so rare I don’t really have much hope.”
(Bacon_00 ; television ; January 2024)
On the face of it, Buffy ain’t coming back any time soon, if at all. And the belief that it so perfectly caught that turn-of-the-millennium teen zeitgeist that it shouldn’t even be attempted has genuine merit. Sometimes, you just can’t go home again.
However, there is a way, although it would unquestionably need a major fan campaign, the co-operation of all or part of the remaining cast, the help of an extremely powerful Hollywood mover and shaker (think Doomsday on acid) and indeed, a creative lead who could intelligently build on the source material.
Nor must it be forgotten that (as I understand it) Buffy has some of the toughest intellectual property (IP) contracts in the business, which will still stand inviolate when the Earth is a dead star hanging forlornly in space. That’s one reason there have been relatively few spin-offs.
Of all those ingredients, the creative lead might be the most difficult to procure. And how long would it take to create the necessary content?
I’d better start by confessing that I read and reviewed the first novel in Kendare Blake’s Buffy trilogy, and while she is a good writer, I thought it sucked.
So here’s the thing: while Whit Anderson’s Buffy filmscript (and Whit Anderson herself) was being canned, while the Buffy reboot languished in development limbo for five years before being put on “pause” (ie sent to hell and damnation), while Joss Whedon crashed and burned in the biggest inferno since the Hindenburg, and while the audio drama Slayers was being unceremoniously stomped on hard by Disney (now owners of Buffy’s license), there was a bit of secret history going on in the background. An angle nobody expected.
And you’ve never noticed. Not that I haven’t tried to tell you, but it was like whistling in the wind…
To explain, back in 2009 I was an autistic writer in Glasgow on the verge of a nervous breakdown. For fun and therapy, I decided to write a short story about Drusilla the vampire, taking place just after the end of Chosen.
And when I started writing, something very strange happened.
It was like Dru jumped out of her pocket Buffyverse, grabbed on to me for dear life and made it plain I was the one to finish her story.
Like I’d been chosen.
I hit my stride like an ageing athlete who’d been training for twenty years and suddenly finds his peak form. Two crazed months later, Drusilla’s Roses had been written. I then suggested to the National Autistic Society Scotland (NAS) that I cross America blogging about autism and visit the Californian locations I’d used for the story. I also sent a copy of Roses to a certain Juliet Landau in Hollywood, equally certain I’d never get any reply.
Although I was autistic, I’d managed to live and work in Australia for a year twenty years before. But whether I could regain my previous form and function in the field again was uncertain.
Then the impossible happened, and I guess that’s where I got my motivation.
Juliet read Roses, was blown away by it, said so to me and we got into an email correspondence.
The NAS OK’d me to cross the world to California.
I did it, and met Miss Landau on Sunset Boulevard in March 2010. I always say that scene would knock spots off La La Land.
The NAS suggested I write a book about it, in order to inspire people with autism.
Against all odds, Dear Miss Landau was published in March 2012 to rave reviews.
Now here’s a critically important point:
Dear Miss Landau is a real-life autobiographical work involving a member of the cast and referencing Drusilla.
The copyright is mine.
Hence, Dear Miss Landau might (and, I stress, might) be the only Buffy-related product in the world able to circumvent Buffy’s teak-tough IP contracts and legally be filmed.
But what about a continuation of Buffy ~itself~? I hear you ask.
This is where it gets interesting, and even more surreal.
Remember Drusilla’s Roses, which blew Juliet Landau away and got us into an email correspondence?
I didn’t stop there. Drusilla’s Redemption came next, in which an ensouled Drusilla travelled to Africa to save Xander and a village of children from the source of the slayers’ power and a reincarnation of the first slayer, thereby redeeming herself.
Miss Landau had just written a two-part Dru story for IDW Publishing, and I was preparing (quite illegally) to combine this with the third story in the series, Drusilla Revenant, when something truly surreal and strangely simple happened…
I was taking a breather between Redemption and Revenant, watching a certain Buffy episode on DVD, and I saw something.
A lost, unfinished or discarded story arc from the original series. Something which should have happened but didn’t, partly because Spike unexpectedly became a breakout character.
I emailed Juliet (imagine how surreal that was!), and told her I’d spotted something.
Looking back, I think I was in the right place at the right time, looking at the right thing from exactly the right angle. I was in the right frame of mind and I had the right amount of knowledge about the right character.
It all came together, and I just saw it.
Buffy’s continuation. Plain as day.
And it was so simple. A child could see it, but nobody else ever has.
Once I got back from the States I romped through Revenant, combined it with Juliet’s story, developed the story arc and delivered the payoff in Avalon, Catalina, where Dru went in search of Xander…
But there was one more tale yet to be told.
I think I once heard James Marsters say that Spike and Dru’s two hundred year old love story had to be resolved, and I had a crack at it. In Spike & Dru : the Graveyard of Empires, I sent them to north Afghanistan in 2019 where, among other things, they sorted out their relationship.
At that point, I got the very strong impression that I’d done what Dru wanted: I’d built up her story, turned the Buffyverse upside down, tied fiction and reality together and brought it all to something approximating a happy ending.
As, perhaps, it was meant to be.
Dru was satisfied with that.
That was 2013.
Since then, I have mentioned this at the end of Dear Miss Landau, blogged about it in the Huffington Post UK, tried to alert members of the cast at comics-conventions (Amy Acker seemed particularly interested one time) and pitched or mentioned the possibility whenever I reasonably could.
No one’s ever really got it, and I am left feeling as if I am the only man in the world with access to the restored print of Lawrence of Arabia while everyone else has to make do with the mutilated 1971 TV version…
I really would like the fans to be able to read the whole story of Dear Miss Landau and the Dru Quartet, as it is actually meant to be. It works like this:
Dear Miss Landau and Drusilla’s Roses should be read together. This is where fiction and reality subtly intersected, and wackiness ensued.
Then simply read Drusilla’s Redemption, Drusilla Revenant and Spike & Dru : the Graveyard of Empires, in that order.
Please note that the Dru Quartet (what I call all four stories in their entirety) observes Buffy canon as much as possible. I would also firmly stress that all the stories were written to the same standard as Dear Miss Landau, and I’ve always actually considered Roses better than Landau.
Dear Miss Landau has been published and Roses and Redemption can be found in Archive of Our Own. I’m only holding Revenant and Graveyard back because they contain the resolution of the lost story arc and I would like the Dru Quartet legally to be published. I don’t want to add them to Archive of Our Own as I’m no fan of self-publishing, and I don’t want to just give away the secret of the lost story arc.
And at the moment, the Dru Quartet can only be classed as fan-fiction.
Hence the problem, and the need for a major fan campaign. There is precedent for this. Bjo Trimble and the Star Trek fans saved Star Trek for a third season in 1967-1968. More recently, money-mad football bosses wanted to create a European Super League. Not unlike Disney and Hollywood, they had money, power, contracts and lawyers on their side; but the football fans put their foot down as one and the idea was destroyed in eleven days flat.
You have the power if you will only focus and use it.
I know my limitations. Unlike Bjo Trimble, I am not an organiser or manager. However, I have created the content and have natural public speaking ability (rare for an Asperger). I am willing to do what I can.
But I am not writing this article to start yet another conversation. I am trying to tell you there is a chance, but you have to grasp it. Not have long arguments on social media about it.
Once I have posted this article, I will leave Reddit forever (sorry, I found you very nice) but I will post a copy of it on my Goodreads page, where I can be contacted. It’s up to you.
I would suggest the fans lobby for the Dru Quartet legally to be published, and for Dear Miss Landau to be turned into a film. There was even an attempt to turn Dear Miss Landau into a stage musical about ten years ago. It could be revived.
While I admit I’d mainly like to see the Dru Quartet legally published, I do wish there was some way it could be filmed. I can see it on an epic scale, but all four stories would depend heavily on nuanced portrayals by actors and time has gone by.
However, there may be a way: de-aging technology, AI, even plain old recasting…
As Mr Spock would say, there are always possibilities.
However, I think this is the best and only route out of the current situation, so I will add a few reviews here and hope to receive polite contact from a focused individual.
However, I know what can happen with social media… If I receive abuse, I will simply walk away from it all and the lost story arc’s resolution will never be revealed.
It’s up to you.
I hope there’s somebody out there.
James Christie.
~Dear Miss Landau~
“This is the best book I’ve read for ten years.”
(Tim Coates, former MD of Waterstones and WH Smith, on A Good Read, BBC Radio 4, July 2012)
“I read this constantly thinking ‘is this for real?’ An autistic Scottish man in his 40s has an obsession with a character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and writes a 250,000 word novel based on the character and ends up travelling to Hollywood and meeting the actress who plays her. You couldn’t make it up.”
(Chris Norton, Goodreads, October 2012)
~Drusilla’s Roses~
“I just finished your story. I thought it was great. I really enjoyed it. You managed to catch Drusilla’s voice and behaviour so beautifully. The sad, lost, haunted feeling of Dru was there.”
(Juliet Landau, August 2009)
“This is utterly beautiful and touching. As someone who’s written a Dru story where she gets her soul back, finds love and finds sanity, I have longed for such stories. This is the first one that came close to satisfying that longing. I love that she helped heal both Xander and Buffy - the two most wounded people after the fall of Sunnydale.”
(DeepBlueJoy, fan-fiction writer, May 2014)
~Drusilla’s Redemption~
“This is a beautifully written and disturbing novelette. I really do hope that the sequel will be available here soon. Since my own writing about Dru, I’ve never read anything else where I really felt more than just Dru’s craziness. Here I felt her heart and strength and saw her insight into the complexity of the human condition, including human evil in particular. Wonderfully done.”
(DeepBlueJoy, fan-fiction writer, May 2014)
"I cannot believe you break my heart by ending it there.
This is beautiful and fearsome and full of poetry. I'm in awe.
I just wanted them to grow old together. I wish you had given them that.
Peace.”
(DeepBlueJoy, fan-fiction writer, May 2014)
I tried to find DeepBlueJoy, tried to tell her I did it…
The story isn’t over.

Chapter One
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-Sometime the following morning-
Taritha awoke to the unsettling sound of silence. She stared up at the heavy beams and planks of her new ceiling, feeling a wave of vertigo as she tried to recall where she was. For the first time in her life, she had woken up in an unfamiliar place. As she shifted, the magical mattress adjusted beneath her, and the memories flooded back. She was in the mage’s extraordinary factory-fortress-palace. She lived here now. A smile spread across her lips at the thought. Understanding the bed’s quirks now, it no longer bothered her. She got up confidently to start her day, instinctively ducking her head as she had in her old hovel. Straightening up, she noted that even if she jumped, her fingertips wouldn’t reach the beams above.
Taking in her sparse surroundings, her problems presented themselves. She couldn’t wash without warm water. She had no fire to heat the water. She also didn’t have any water.
There’s warm water in the dining hall, down on the first floor on the opposite corner of the huge building.
She sighed with resignation. So far away.
The young herbalist put on her official White Flame industries skirt and blouse, shaking out the wrinkles. As she slipped it on, a thought crept into her mind. It seemed like she’d overlooked the whole reason for the factory.
What if she didn’t have to go herself? Do the imps have a maximum range?
She invoked her imps, directed them to don their dresses and hats, then commanded, “Lady Bluebird, go to the kitchen and fetch me a large mug of hot water!” Her voice trembled a bit, unsure if she was doing it right, or inviting fresh disaster.
“Merp!” the tiny imp in a blue dress confirmed. It tugged the heavy bedroom door, to no avail.
Taritha pulled it open a crack, and the hellspawn squeezed out to bound down the hallway and out of sight.
While she waited for it to return, she emptied out her family’s ancient iron cook pot to use as a wash basin. It was mostly clean, even if it smelled of a thousand meals and was a bit sooty. She scarcely had it empty when her imp returned, a gorgeous iridescent mug of water held high over its sun-hatted head, trailing steam behind it. The little monster placed it on the floor in front of her, and stood with its ‘sisters’ in a row.
Truly a magical place, the water runs!
She dabbed one of her old raggy washcloths into the hot water to wash her face, neck and arms. Seeing the used water in the wash basin, another problem occurred to her. She couldn’t just fling it into the woods, not without a long walk. But this problem was just the mirror image of her first problem.
“Lady Crossbill and Miss Goldfinch, dump this water down the latrines, and then clean the pot, and return it to the room.” The red and yellow dressed imps merped in unison, and sprinted away with the wide iron pot, not spilling anything despite their speed. “Come Lady Bluebird, it’s time for breakfast!”
She walked the halls with a new perspective. It might be just that she was better rested, it might be that her first two real imp tasks worked perfectly but she could feel her misgivings fade already. It was exactly like she imagined nobles lived. One just says one’s wants out loud, and it becomes someone else’s problem. She used to think it was unfair, but now that she saw the other side of it, there was definitely some merit to the system. Besides, based on what Mage Thippily said, it wasn’t like the imps were even aware that they were serving, so it was no hardship to them.
She could smell breakfast as she came down the stairs. More accurately, a lord’s breakfast. Instead of porridge, she could smell bacon and eggs and fresh buns. As she came around the corner she stopped in involuntary panic, seeing that the counter crawled with tiny imps, darting about and wielding knives and spatulas as big as they were.
Of course, who else would make the meals here?
Some imps stood on the cooktop, entirely unaffected by the sizzling eggs on either side of their hooves, while others sliced fruit and veggies with phenomenal precision.
"Morning, Taritha! Hungry? How about a bit of everything?” Klive grinned. He wore an apron while ordering imps about the kitchen. He held a wooden spoon like a marshal's baton. There were far more imps than his three, but he commanded them all.
“Uh, sure?” She was badly overwhelmed, but hungry.
There were a few of the guards at a table, but none of the directors were to be seen. She overcame her shyness to sit with them, beside Jourgun.
“Good mornin’ Miss, how was your sleep?” he asked cheerfully.
“Took me a few tries to figure out the magic bed, but once I got that sorted, I don’t think there is even a comparison! I slept so well, and I feel great today!”
“Good! I’m glad you got it, Theros slept on the floor last night! Superstitious ninny!”
Theros rolled his eyes and raised his hands in frustration. “Dammit, you don’t have to tell everyone about that! Also I’m not superstitious, it’s just that the thing moved! I had no way of knowing it was safe! There’s demons here you know!” He hissed the last bit, as if he was worried that the demons were listening.
“Hah! Sure, not everyone has the courage of a peasant girl!” Jourgun asserted as he ate a thick slice of bacon. “No offence, miss.”
“I bet I face more scary things in a week than you lot do in a month! You should aspire to be as brave as a peasant girl!” she retorted with a smile. She wasn’t actually offended but it was important not to let things slide. She leaned over to whisper to her imp what kind of tea she’d like, and smiled even wider as it darted into the chaotic kitchen.
“Aye, my blood would run cold if I had to deal with sick wee ones, and dying old ones! I see you’re already getting the hang of these imps! I think Lord Thippily was too modest, they are way better than he let on,” the burly guard said.
“Mage Thipilly,” Taritha corrected.
“Might be Mage-Lord now, he owns productive lands now don’t he?” Rikad asked between bites of eggs covered with creamy dill sauce.
“Might be Archmage-Lord, I bet he’s better at magic than any of ‘em back at the mainland!” Theros speculated.
“Those terms have definitions he doesn’t meet, and that’s a poor way to speak of your betters.” Somehow Aethlina was standing behind them. Her tone was icy, which wasn't unusual for her. “I have business at the sawmill, two of you will accompany me.”
“At once, mi’lady.” Jourgun said, bowing deeply while wiping his face on his napkin. He smacked Theros on the shoulder as he rose, ”Just a moment for us to get our armour on!” The two men jogged out of the dining hall to the armoury.
The elv perched beside Taritha, her feet on the seat with her hands behind her back. It looked natural enough when she did it, but Taritha couldn't even imagine sitting in that posture.. The mysterious elv was wearing a stately flowing robe with the hood down, her plumage and narrow neck marking her inhuman heritage. The lighting was good enough for Taritha to see she was entirely covered in a nearly invisible fine downy fur. The conversation was entirely stopped, as all the humans became intensely interested in their plates, avoiding eye contact. The silence stretched and grew.
“So what are the requirements of those titles, Aethlina?” Taritha finally asked. In a society where forms of address and titles were the entire basis of one’s identity it was an important question. Calling Aethlina by name was a daring move to assert equality. Taritha blushed immediately, wondering if demons were already corrupting her manners.
Aethlina regarded her for long moments. “A Lord is nobility, a privilege granted by one’s liege. In this case, the Duke of Wavegate, which hasn’t been granted. The archmage title is awarded by the College of Magic upon completing ritualised tests, which he hasn’t done.” She kept her intense gaze on Taritha. “In the future, address me as Director of Operations, or Director Aethlina.”
“Yes, Director Aethlina. Thank you,” Taritha said with a gulp. The silence hung heavy, but the young herbalist was grateful for two imps when they delivered a plate heaped with breakfast. The imps exuded an air of comical authority. They both wore finely tailored miniature coats, complete with brass buttons and tiny cravats. Miniature satchels hung over their shoulders, and wide-brimmed hats, slightly askew, completed their meticulous ensembles, making them look like a caricature of a pair of merchants ready to strike a bargain.
The breakfast tasted even better than it smelled, and was her sole focus, anything to distract herself from the elv sitting beside her. Thankfully her relief came soon, as Aethlina rose.
“Strive to have a productive day,” Aethlina said, her voice cool and distant. She glided out the door to the central yard, her preternatural hearing picking up the faint sounds of Jourgun and Theros jogging back from the armoury. Clad in full mail and armed, they rushed across the dining hall to catch up to the Director.
“Addressing her by name?! I DO aspire to your courage! Maybe not your recklessness!” Rikad whispered once the heavy oak door to the yard shut behind the armoured men.
“What was I thinking? Light purify me! At least I lived to tell the tale!” She sighed with a bit of a tremble. She finished the rest of her meal and started to clear her dishes.
“Leave 'em, that's not people-work any more!” Klive called from the kitchen. She stopped, leaving a mess felt wrong, but she understood the reasoning. With a hurried thanks and a wave she darted out to the factory floor, where she hoped to find Mage Thippily. She’d assumed her normal lessons were on hold while he ramped up the factory, but knew she ought to double check.
The mage was exactly where she expected to find him, in the centre of his great production floor, surrounded by countless imps. It took her a second to remember that he was in no way limited to three like the rest of them were. It looked like an entire society of imps were darting around him. She stood in awed silence, just watching the spectacle of production. Raw materials eroded before her eyes as they took one plank, one bolt of cloth or cask of linseed oil at a time, as quick as a hen might peck for seeds. The imps themselves were perfectly silent, other than the odd ‘Merp’ as new commands were issued, but their tools made a jarring racket. There was sawing, planing, hammering, and other actions she couldn’t even describe.
“Oh, good morning, Miss Witflores! I’ll be with you in just a moment!” he said distractedly, before giving yet another series of commands to the imps.
“That’s fine, I just wanted to confirm that–” she started.
“I think they’ve got it now. Let’s watch them complete their orders, and we can start today’s lessons,” the demonologist said, taking off his wireframe glasses to clean the lenses on his shirtsleeve. Taritha noticed sawdust in his hair and beard.
The tiny imps began taking raw materials less frequently, while finished goods piled up at the far end of the line. The demonologist was fully focused on their work, so she remained silent, observing him. His lips twitched as if he was about to give new orders, but then relaxed. This happened almost constantly, his eyes darting from one end of the chaos to the other, as alert as a cat watching a squirrel.
Once the last dresser was built and stacked with the other furniture, they doubled back. The tiny, and to her eye naked, imps cleaned the entire area, replacing their tools and sitting cross-legged in a neat grid, covering a fair portion of the work area.
“Perfect! Just as I’d hoped!” The mage turned to leave the factory floor, and gestured for her to follow. “We’ll do your lessons in my chambers today. I’ll inspect their work later.”
“Oh, alright. We don’t–” She hustled to catch up with him.
“Actually today’s lesson will be a short one, I’ve some field work I’d like you to perform!” Demonologist Thippily was more energetic than she’d ever seen him. Gone was the normal weight of introspection and worry, in its place was a tornado of activity. If it wasn’t in bad taste, given his profession, she’d have even called him a man possessed.
“So as you are doubtlessly aware from our earlier discussions on mana field density coefficients, there is usually a slight natural variation?” he said as they ascended the steps to the third floor.
“I, uh, probably?” she said. The words were familiar, but didn’t connect to any concept in her mind.
“Anyways, there is a field of mana everywhere, like oxygen in air. And sometimes that mana is slightly more concentrated, and slightly less, again not that dissimilar to oxygen.” he continued as they walked quickly down the third floor hallway to his chambers.
“Yes! We breathe that!” she agreed confidently.
“I noticed that my imps were moving a bit slower today, which suggests they might be over-consuming local energies. Though powered by hellplane energy, the conduits rely on normal ambient mana.” He pushed his door open, revealing his chambers, more than twice the size of Taritha's.
The room was divided into distinct areas: a sleeping area, a library with a massive desk, and a cosy section with comfortable chairs for entertaining. These spaces were thoughtfully partitioned by plants, bookshelves, and painted room dividers. The room was well-lit by a series of narrow windows on the external wall, allowing beams of bright morning light to stream in. It looked centuries old but smelled of fresh sawdust and linseed oil.
“This is so nice! It’s huge!” she exclaimed, taking a seat in an ornate armchair. She ran a finger over the perfect woodwork, wondering if it had been crafted that morning or the night before. “And I felt guilty about how unreasonably big my room was!”
“Thank you! Don’t ever feel bad about that. Now, where was I? Ah, yes. I made this—a manometer to measure ambient mana.” He held up a short piece of wood with glowing lights on it. “The levels are noticeably lower on the factory floor than here. I’d like you to take some readings around town, and perhaps into the woods. The more data points, the better. Feel free to assign a guardsman to watch your back if you like.” He rummaged through his desk drawers, searching for something. Taritha’s ears perked up. This sounded a lot like having authority over the young men she worked with. She’d assumed she was organizationally far junior to them but had never asked for clarification.
“Here!” He handed her a small blank notebook, a graphite stylus, and the rough-cut piece of wood. Her gaze was drawn to the glowing parts that resembled gems. Its crude appearance stood in stark contrast to everything else she’d come to expect from him. The center-most gem was labelled with an ‘N,’ a plus sign above, and a minus sign below. The rest were unlabeled, as was the back.
“It’s just a prototype, but I’d like you to note your location and the readings. For instance, if you’re at the docks and these all light up, write ‘docks N+6’. If two gems below light up, you’d note ‘N-2’. Got it?”
“Seems simple enough.”
“I haven’t calibrated it properly, so any results are valuable, even if they seem useless,” the mage explained distractedly.
“Will do!” she said resolutely. “What are the little magic gems made of?” They were quite shiny and a soothing green.
“Just ordinary emeralds; the enchantment is all in the plank.” The world spun for a moment as she grasped the staggering value of a dozen cut emeralds of that size. She had no context, but she was sure lords had smaller stones in their swords or sceptres. She would definitely be getting an armed escort for this errand.
“Um, I’ll report back when I’m done,” she said bravely.
“Excellent! Carry on!” He grabbed a handful of books and papers and sat himself at his desk.
Taritha went a few doors down to her room to get a sturdy over-the-shoulder bag for her outing. She sat on her bed, marvelling at the treasure in her hands. It was clear that the mage had crafted it himself, and quickly. There was no consideration beyond function; the top of the wood wasn’t even square. Most baffling of all was the incredible wealth of gems casually attached. Each one was nearly the size of a pea. People died for things a sliver of the value of even one of those.
This is by far the most valuable thing these hands have ever held.
And he just handed it to me, like it was leftover toast!
And he made it sound like the emeralds weren’t the valuable part of the device!
And this bed and the imps would be vastly more valuable yet!
She closed her eyes and swallowed slowly. The true nature of the mage’s gifts hadn’t registered before. Where did she even fit in society anymore? She still felt like a hungry peasant girl from a drafty hovel, but that was at odds with what she held and what she sat on. Most curiously of all, the idea of stealing it didn’t even occur to her. The mage’s trust had somehow become more valuable than gemstones.
Don’t just sit there, be the person he thinks you are!
After a slight detour to get her imps to create a simple leather case for the garish instrument, she found Rikad in the armoury, unpacking crates of gear from the move.
“Where is everyone? Is it just you here?” she asked.
“Nah, a normal busy day, Klive’s on sentry and Kedril’s on gate. The Chief and the rest are about town. What’s up?” he said without stopping his work. He was putting gambesons on armour stands that mimicked a man's shoulders, then putting the heavy mail hauberks on top. The effect on the few he’d already finished were a lot like a headless armoured torso. There were several bare stands still waiting.
“Great news! Laundry day will have to wait. The mage asked me to take a survey around town and suggested I bring an armed protector!” she teased, her voice beaming with over the top enthusiasm.
“Well if the Lord Archmage said I shouldn't do my chores that’s good enough for me,Taritha.” He said with a smile. He stopped unpacking and started donning armour, making a point of getting his employer’s title wrong while addressing her by her first name.
Unsure how much privacy he needed she turned her back while he changed. “In the future you will address me as Medic Taritha,” she said with as much faux icy indifference as she could muster.
“Your ladyship shall have all the respect she deserves!” in far less time than she expected he touched her elbow, “Ready to proceed!” He was in full armour, including a closed helm and the white and purple company tabard. He had a longsword on his hip and a wide shield on his back. It looked like he strode off the cover of a fairy tale book, his mail even sparkled in the flickering lamplight.
“I feel safer already!” she started down the hallway and out of the building. “I’m just taking some readings from this new artefact that he made, and writing it in the book.” They waved to Kedril in the gatehouse as they left.
“So why did you want me around? This is your town, and folk here normally seem nice enough?” Rikad asked, his voice slightly tinny through his helm.
“You’ll see! Actually, this is probably a fine first reading.” They stopped just a few paces beyond the gate. She pulled out the manometer, and saw it was one over normal. “Here, hold this,” She passed him the gem encrusted object while she wrote the results in the notebook.
“Holy balls, are these…?” he stammered.
“Oh my no! Nothing special, just ordinary emeralds,” she said in her best professorial tones.
“Wow! That makes sense. I see why he’d worry about some new hire running off with this to start her own queendom, far over the horizon.”
“Strangely, it felt like an afterthought.” She put the manometer back in her bag along with her notebook. “He’s weird with money, isn’t he? If someone overcharged him five times the fair price, I bet he’d apologise and pay it!” she whispered.
“Not even kidding, that’s basically how my salary was agreed upon. And it's not normal even for other fancy folk. Some of my family worked for nobles back in Jagged, and they were the stingiest, most demanding jerks you’d ever meet!” They continued through the forest toward town. “I meant the nobles,” he clarified.
Taritha hadn’t spent much time with Rikad before but it was impossible not to smile around him. Part of her worried she couldn’t keep up with him, since he always was cracking on about something, but thankfully he didn’t seem to expect her to.
“Yeah, Mage Thippily isn’t what I expected. Not that I really knew what to expect. Do you think the town will go along with his Big Plan?” she said, intoning the last two words with gravitas.
The road passed near some outlying cottages, and Taritha stopped, quickly taking a reading and jotting down the results. She was getting better at being quicker and more subtle with the artefact.
“This town? No question. Have you not been to the pub lately? They toast to him more than they do to the Light, their count or their own wives! Don’t underestimate just how much the town has changed.”
“I grew up here! They hate things that don’t match their beliefs. If they knew the truth? You guys are gonna earn every glindi of your salary the day that gets out,” Taritha said. “Me too, for that matter.”
His helm scraped his shoulder pauldrons as he shook his head. “Nah, he’s done the hard work, won their trust, everything else is easy.”
She shook her head but didn’t reply. He didn’t know these people. Obviously no one would talk about their true reactions to some out-of-towner, in front of another out-of-towner.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” he said as they reached the trade district. She took another reading, smooth and quick; she didn’t even think Rikad saw the emeralds that time.
“I get why you think what you do,” she said diplomatically.
There was an old woman in her garden, just on the other side of the low fence they were walking by. She was mostly skin and bones and old enough to be either of their grandmothers. She knelt in her garden, pulling weeds in the midday sun, wearing an old patched dress with a wide straw hat.
“Excuse me, gran, do you mind if I ask you something?” Rikad asked politely, taking off his helm to make eye contact.
“Huh! Sure, anything for you!” Her voice was gravelly but clear. She stopped what she was doing and sat back on her bum. Her face was weathered and flushed from exertion.
“Would you consider the mage that moved here this spring a good thing for the town?” He spoke evenly, trying not to bias her answer.
“Mage Thippily is his name! You ought to know that, wearin’ his tabard and all! Best thing that’s happened to this town in my life! Ever! I spent six years in bed, couldn’t walk, just waitin’ to go into the Light! Now I feel like a teenager again! He fixed my back, he fixed my skin, fixed it all! I’m eighty-eight years old, and I’ve been gardening all day!”
“I’m glad to hear it! He’s a great man, and we are both honoured to work for him!” He nodded and started putting his helm back on. The floodgates were open, and she wasn’t done.
“Don’t think I don’t see you there, Taritha! I got good eyes again! Yer creams were a godsend! But now I’m gonna live until I’m two hundred! That mage couldn’t do anything wrong, not if he tried!”
“That’s incredible, ma’am, thank–” Rikad started.
“If he needs to eat babies, I’ll round up some for him! I ain't got a shortage of useless great-grandbabies! Shadows below, if he wants to pump a few babies into me, he’s welcome to ’em!”
“That’s very much not the–” Rikad said, slowly backing away, grateful for the low fence between them.
“Or did he send me his strapping young man to do the job?” By now she was standing with a mostly toothless grin, leaning over her fence. Rikad backpedalled more quickly. “Fine, be like that, but tell him that Abby Greyn is here for him!”
“Will do, gran! Have a good day now.” They walked quickly down the road to put some distance between them and the amorous oldster.
“I see, I may have misjudged the effect of helping people,” Taritha said, stifling a giggle.
Rikad chuckled, adjusting the chin strap on his helm. “I told you! He won more than just their trust!”
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Power Fist drives little Gus back to his house. She tells him that it's not safe for him and his family to stay in their loft alone, and recommends that he and his grandparents come to stay with them at the junkyard.
"What about my grandpa? He's sick, and dying. He might infect someone at the junkyard," little Gus says.
"Don't worry about infecting anyone. We have a couple of doctors working on a cure, and we can quarantine your uncle until he's well," Power Fist says.
Little Gus thanks Power Fist with a kiss on the cheek before heading into the house. He asks her to wait while he talks to his grandparents about leaving, and she agrees.
The streets are strangely quiet tonight. As Power Fist sits in the Justice Van, she drinks some cold medicine with MDM, and bath salts, as it’s the only thing which can get superheroes high.
The high on cold salts- as they call the drug- doesn’t last for long, but for the few minutes that it affects the brain, the user is both relaxed, and has a sense of euphoria until they come down from the high.
Power Fist has taken to drinking cold salts as of late. She and her friends from when she used to go to school made a pact that they would never use drugs or alcohol. For Marcy, that feels like ages ago. She hasn’t been that person since the day that her uncle abducted her from her home while she was sleeping. She was just thirteen years old at the time, and her life has been a rollercoaster of crazy ever since.
Exiting the house with his grandfather in his arms, and his grandmother right behind him, Hard Body puts Oldman Gus into the van, and tells Power Fist that he needs to get his grandfather's Bible before they can leave.
"Sure, I'll wait for you. Just take your time," she says, looking off into the distance.
Old lady Winston sits in the back of the van with her husband's head in her lap. She wears a purple dress with red sleeves, and a little, gold trim at the bottom.
As she looks at the old woman through the rearview mirror, Power Fist can't help but wonder if she made the dress herself, or if someone sold her that monstrosity.
After twenty minutes of waiting for little Gus, he comes out of the loft, and walks back to the car with his grandfather's Bible, and some food.
"Sorry, sorry. I was looking for Grandpa's Bible, and when I found it, I thought we might need some food, so I packed up whatever I could find," Gus says.
"HURRY, PLEASE! WE NEED TO LEAVE! HIS FEVER IS GETTING HIGHER!" Natasha Winston declares.
Power Fist throws the van into reverse, and pulls out. Once off the streets, she uses the cars afterburners to get back to the junkyard before anything happens to Oldman Gus.
Entering the junkyard, and looking around, Power Fist sees Officer Jones and Red Rider talking.
Driving to the area where Alonzo is keeping Dr. King, Power Fist and Hard Body unload Oldman Gus, leaving him in the care of Alonzo.
Natasha kisses her husband on the forehead before leaving him with Alonzo and Dr. King. The two men are concerned that, because of his advanced age, Oldman Gus might not survive his condition, but Alonzo remembers that Gus didn't choose to be a superhero, and was forced into this lifestyle by Red Rider.
Alonzo decides to use his DNA, and alter it in a way which could save Gus.
Taking some of Gus' blood, and a little of his own, Alonzo uses a DNA compiler to create a vaccine against the techno virus.
"We need to keep testing the drug before we can distribute it. It might not be safe" Dr. King says.
"THERE IS NO TIME TO TEST IT! THE OLDMAN IS DYNG! I HAVE TO TRY!" Alonzo snaps, grabbing the needle, and injecting Oldman Gus.
The techno virus begins to burn away.
As Oldman Gus' fever goes up until he’s boiling hot, Alonzo tries to dunk him in a bath of cold water, using a dirty, old bathtub in the junkyard.
As he lowers the old man into the water, it begins to bubble until the water evaporates.
Oldman Gus is glowing hot, and as his body begins to melt. He malts from his skin, and out comes a much younger man. The old man, now in his thirties, vomits up some smoking hot fluid before collapsing to the ground, unconscious.
Dr. King, who is still infected, demands to go next, but Alonzo reminds him of his own words, that their vaccine is untested, and could be dangerous.
"I DON’T CARE! I WANT TO BE CURED OF THIS ILLNESS!" Dr. King yells.
Alonzo doesn't like it, but he decides to give Dr. King the cure, as well. The doctor knows the risks.
It takes fifteen minutes for his DNA compiler to create another dose of the cure, and once it does, Alonzo injects Dr. King in the leg in hopes of minimizing the effects of the drug.
Dr. King suffers the same effects as Oldman Gus, and once he, too, sheds his skin, Alonzo is surprised to see that the fifty-year-old doctor is now an eight-year-old boy with white hair which stands straight up, making him look like a young, black Einstein.
Doctor King is able to keep down the flaming hot bile which Gus threw up, and walks to a whiteboard, beginning to do some calculations. "I think I have an idea on how we could cure everyone using your alien DNA," he says.
The doctor explains that, if they dilute his blood with saline, they might be able to create a stable version of the cure.
Alonzo thinks about what Dr. King is saying, and agrees. The two men make plans to send people to the hospital to fetch some saline, and more needles.

***

It takes three days for Gus to wake up after passing out. The formerly old man turns to the whiteboard, and begins doing a little math himself. Gus is able to solve the problem which both Alonzo, and Dr. King, were having trouble solving, and the two men are amazed that someone with such low intelligence can solve such complex math problems.
The two men look at each other, and begin to wonder what the hell the cure has done to Gus.
As he runs his hand through his strawberry-blond hair, the young man looks at his almost golden bronzed skin, and says some words in Yiddish about his striking, young form.
Gus tells Alonzo that he believes that the alien DNA which he used to cure him might have affected more than his age; it might have also affected his intelligence. "I appear to have hyper intelligence, and the ability to build weapons out of tin cans,” Gus says.
After talking with Alonzo and Dr. King for a few minutes, he demands to be taken to his wife to speak with her. "Natasha must be worried sick about me; my poor sweetheart… I can't wait to show her how young I am. Can you imagine what I can do for her in the bedroom?"
Alonzo agrees to return him to his wife, but tells him that he can't tell anyone that they cured him until they have a working prototype of the cure for testing.

***

The next morning, Oldman Gus is reunited with his wife. Natasha is beyond surprised to see that her husband is now thirty years old.
"HOW DID THIS HAPPEN TO YOU?" Natasha asks.
"Well, I can't really say, but just trust me; everything's going to be okay, starting right now," Gus says.
As he holds his wife in his arms, the young/old man tells Natasha that he loves her, and he then asks for a beer.

***

It takes two weeks, and three trips to the hospital using Alonzo's teleporter, to get the right mixture of medicine for their cure.
Once it’s ready, and has been tested, Alonzo and Dr. King spend two more days trying to turn the cure into a gas for quicker distribution.
First, everyone in the junkyard is given a vaccine against the virus, and then the city is covered by a gas cloud of the cure.
Showering the city after that, Alonzo uses his tech skills to hack into the local TV station, and declare that the No Siders have put an end to the Techno Virus, and need help from the city's remaining heroes to take down the robot mayor, and to save the city.
The No Siders, and their allies, take to the streets to find members of the police force, and armed citizens. Superheroes come flying overhead, all heading towards the mayor's office.

***

As the citizens of Bainbridge come for them, the robotic mayor, and his cohorts, surround the mayor's mansion, and prepare to make their final stand.
The Know It All is sleeping when his Robot mayor is confronted by danger.
Brain Drain takes control of the robotic mayor, and orders for him to stay in his office, and to begin typing emails.
The robot mayor does as he's told.
Outside, the two sides clash as Robo Wrecker leads his army of deputized villains against the army of heroes which has come to stop them. The front lines of the villain army are made up of infected citizens.
Releasing a spray of the cure from Metal Mouth's mouth, the heroes watch as the infected fall to the ground, and their skin begins to malt off.
Dr. King, who is inside a giant mech suit, gets ready to attack the enemy before they can attack the newly cured people.
The heroes overhead fly down into the mass of villains, and the fight begins all at once.
The speedsters on both sides hit each other at lightspeed, causing a massive blackout, and sending shockwaves all throughout the city.
As the shockwaves knock the humans fighting alongside them to the ground, the heroes, a little dusty, quickly lunch into their attacks.
One hero with super strength, and six arms, called Man At Arms, grabs three shape-changers, and pounds their faces in with his fist.
The big muscular man is cut in half by a villain called Talon, who has sharp claws which can cut through steel.
Another villain named Game Changer, who throws flaming baseballs at his enemies, and spits acid, attacks Power Fist, hurling one of his baseballs at her face.
Marcy catches the ball, and crushes it in her gauntleted fist. Using her powers, Marcy then lifts Game Changer off of the ground. With her ability to create complex constructs with her gantlets, she forms a giant, man-sized baseball, Game Changer in the center of it, and throws him across the town.
Red Rider and Metal Mouth are doing battle with a pair of psychic twins; one male, and one female, both with white hair, and wearing black leather.
Toilet King is fighting with a boy named Kaiju-Kid-Bang-Bang: a Japanese boy with the power to summon monsters.
The little boy creates a dragon-like monster, though without any wings, or horns, and Toilet King is forced to fight with this monster to keep it from destroying the city.
The fire-breathing monster crashes through buildings as it stomps down the streets, toward the bridge which leads out of the town.
The villains appear to have the upper hand as there are far more of them, but just as all appears to be lost, Red shoots red lightning into the sky, and, with that, Diamond Mine, his gang, and even the Red Rockets are teleported to the center of the battle where they finally help Red Rider, and his team, to defeat the enemy.

***

With the villains defeated, Mayor Billingsley enters his house to confront his robot counterpart. The machine is sitting behind his desk, finishing an email, when he arrives, and attacks the machine.
The mechanical mayor smiles as he stands over his defeated foe, but, just before delivering a swift kick to the glass dome that has replaced the top of the old mayor's skull, the robot mayor shuts down, and explodes.
Back in his lair, The Know It All has just detonated the bomb inside of the Robot mayor's body.

***

As word reaches the outside world about what has happened in Bainbridge, the army mobilizes, and begins to take over. They arrest over nine hundred villains, including the superpowered prisoners who helped defeat the robot mayor, and his minions.
Over the next, few weeks, things change quickly for everyone in Bainbridge. Mayor Billingsley is almost recalled in an emergency city council vote, and his status as a human is revoked; he is officially listed as a cyborg, and will only remain in power as the mayor until November, when the city will hold an emergency election to uplift the city from poverty. Apparently, the robot mayor's last act was to transfer all of the city's funds to a separate accounts- including the three hundred million dollars which the city was using to build a bullet train across the tri-state area. The city of Bainbridge is officially broke, and everyone blames the mayor.
As for our heroes, Makko has left the team until he learns how to swim in water deeper than swallow water, and Metal Mouth hasn't been seen since the battle. There are those who believe that Toilet King, or the League of Lizards, might have stolen him, but no one can prove it.
Oldman Gus, Alonzo, and Doctor Tomas King decide to start their own tech/pharmaceutical company called the Three Amigos Tech and Drugs.
Natasha Winston, and her grandson, little Gus, start their own superhero team called Granny Godliness.
Power Fist reconnects with her mother and father, and decides to leave Bainbridge, and to spend some time with them in Orange City.
As for her uncle Tomás, no one has seen the Red Rider since the battle with the evil mayor, and his villain army. It’s believed that he’s in hiding, as his brother-in-law and sister reported him for kidnapping once Power Fist came home.
The police are also having trouble finding the Know It All as, even with the mayor's help, all they could find was an empty cave beneath the city.

***

Back at Quantico Labs, Dr. Richard Luis is working on his new project when the Know It All arrives behind him.
"Hello, Doctor. I have a gift for you," The Know It All says.
"What took you so long, Paul?" Dr. Luis asks. The doctor smiles at the Know It All, and offers him a chance to rule the city of Bainbridge without having to steal, or kill for it.
"Who are you, Dr. Luis?" The Know It All asks.
"Why, I'm you from the future, silly; and, boy, do I have a lot to tell you about yourself," Dr. Luis says, dropping his façade, and exposing himself as the Know It All but much, much older.

The end

For the next three weeks, the police surround the junkyard, demanding that the No Siders come out with their hands up, and the mayor unharmed.
Meanwhile, Makko, who is completely healed from his injuries, is taken to The Dampener, where he meets up with the Red Rider.
Red introduces his fellow No Sider to his Puritan friends.
The Dampener is built with magic to keep superpowered and magical beings locked up. The police are high-level wizards, so there is very little fighting in The Dampener. Most of the murder which occurs in The Dampener is done at night when everyone is sleeping, or in the showers when the guards aren't looking.
"So, Makko, what's going on with my niece?" Red asks.
Makko, with his Hawaiian accent, tells Red Rider that Power Fist is leading the team in his absence. "She's amazing; a true leader," Makko says.
Instead of a prison jumpsuit, everyone wears a tank top, and black cargo shorts. The are over one thousand gangs in The Dampener. Each of them controls their own section of the prison, and each one will fight to the death to protect their property. The Dampener is the size of three football stadiums, and the top of The Dampener is a glass dome which stretches the length of the prison.
One of the gang leaders meets with Diamond Mine, and asks him to join in an attack against an up-and-coming gang; the new gang on the scene are the Red Rockets.
Diamond Mine agrees to march with his thousand-strong Puritans to aid Gold Rodger, and his Gold Diggers, in the fight against this new gang.
The Gold Diggers have about five hundred and fifty men in their gang.
A few members of the Raggedy Andies are in the shower. When Red Rider and Makko head to take a shower, the two of them walk in, and stand next to two men, both with long, curly, red hair, and purple hats.
The two men wear white, pancaked make-up like clowns, and one of the two men has the edges of his mouth sown closed into a smile of sorts.
While showering, one of the Andie's pulls a sword out of his body, and cuts off one of Makko's fingers.
The fish man transforms, and the other Andie attacks him from the back.
Red Rider grabs the sword from the Andie, and he cuts the other Andie's head off.
The Andie who lost his sword tries to run, but Makko gobbles him up.
Spitting up a hairball made of pubic hair, Makko regrows his finger, and leaves the showers with Red.
As they are leaving, a group of wizard guards arrive, and demand to know what has just happened.
The shower is like something out of the movie Carrie, or Psycho, but Red just explains that they were attacked by the Andies, and that they were just trying to take a shower.

***

Inside his hideout, The Know It All has built a robot version of the mayor in order to impersonate the man. He has just finished creating a layer of human skin which he can harvest from a creature which he created that looks like a giant toad.
The Know It All has to wait for a few days to harvest his skin frog’s sheddings.

***

It takes a month for his mutant frog to shed enough skin, and after that, Brain Drain is tasked with fitting the skin onto the robot. Once he completes his task, the machine is sent above ground to deal with the superheroes, and to install his villains to watch over the city.
Two weeks after sending his robot mayor into the city, The Know It All has commanded his creation to install a new chief of police, a man of his own choosing. The new chief of police is a mutant named Steel Radial: a villain who has the power to turn into a giant tire, and to flatten anyone who gets in his way.
Over the next few months, veteran police officers are replaced by supervillains, and evil mutants, all of them created by The Know It All.
The city is descending into chaos as the police themselves are extorting, and robbing anyone who crosses their path.
One night, while sitting in the junkyard, Power Fist and Metal Mouth watch as the strange cocoon hatches, and a six-foot-tall, green-skinned, squid-headed Alonzo steps out of the cocoon; he and Alliver have merged to become one. The two of them call themselves Alonzo the Alien, and they tell Power Fist that they can fix the mayor, but that it’ll take time, and spare parts which they will have to send for from their home planet.
"It might take us a few weeks to get the parts we need delivered, but, hopefully, we can get the parts before The Know It All causes too much damage," Alonzo the Alien says, using his wristband computer to send a signal into deep space.
Just outside of the energy dome which Power Fist created, Officer Jones, and his partner, Jessie Quick, wait with a bunch of police officers, and citizens, for the barrier to lower.
"How long do we have to wait for this barrier to come down before we get in the junkyard?" One of the officers asks.
As the barrier comes down, Power Fist and Metal Mouth fly off in the Justice Van, and head to Crimeville to recruit a group of former heroes to help them to patrol the streets.
Crimeville, and downtown Bainbridge, called Whites Alley, are the two safest places in the city as the heroes who patrol those parts of the city were never forced to stop.
Toilet King, and the Chicken Crew, agree to join Power Fist, and her team. No one has seen, or heard, from the League of Heroes since the robotic mayor took over the city.
Three more teams agree to join the fight against the mayor and his goons after Power Fist tells them that she has the real mayor in the junkyard.
Of the five teams which join the fight, the most powerful are the Skull Crackers, and Leaping Lizards. Each of the groups were given their name from the League of Heroes, and Castle Man, and Speed Demon, each came from one of the respective teams.
One of the new cops on the street, called Chrysalis, leads a group of meta-humans, and crooked cops, down the street to intercept the heroes coming their way. Chrysalis has the power to create crystal energy shields around himself and others, and she can fly with her butterfly wings.
Chrysalis traps Toilet King in one of her energy shields as he comes flying overhead to warn Power Fist and the rest of their group what's ahead.
The energy shield hardens like glass, and Toilet King comes crashing to the ground in his glass prison.
Power Fist hurls her gauntlets- one at Toilet King's prison, and the other at Chrysalis, who dodges it with ease.
The two sides clash with one mutant who has the power to turn into goop, enveloping three members of the Leaping Lizards, and a creature with wings called Fly-By grabs a handful of heroes, and lifts them into the air, tossing them to the ground, killing them.
One of the Leaping Lizards, Quick-Fast, knocks Fly-By out of the sky with an artic blast from his super speedy hands.
Another of the heroes, Cold Front, freezes the goop monster, and a purple-skinned, red-haired, witch-looking mutant which can change its shape.
A hero named Strong Arm- a man in a black jumpsuit with one muscular arm, and one skinny arm- punches the ground, creating a large crack, and many of the villains are swallowed up by the giant hole.
Another member of the Skull Crackers called Muscle Man, who has a bowl cut, and a muscle-tee, grabs a three-headed bird man called Tweedie, and bashes in each of his faces with his fist.
Chrysalis chases down Power Fist, who is trying to make her way through the crowd with Metal Mouth, and Toilet King flaking her on either side.
Chrysalis, and three of her goons, block the path ahead to keep Power Fist from advancing. She orders her men to kill the heroes, and to bring their bodies back to the mayor.
A six-armed goon with a bald head, and gold tooth, tries to grab Power Fist, but she ducks out of the way.
Grabbing one of his arms with her gauntleted fist, Power Fist is able to pull off two of the goon's arms on his right side.
The goon collapses to the ground in a bloody heap, and as he tries to get up, Power Fist knocks most of his teeth out with one punch from her gauntlet.
Toilet King attacks a strange, Howard-the-Duck-looking mutant who fires a laser gun at him.
Toilet King shrinks himself down, and jumps into the duck's mouth, before growing to his normal size, and tearing the duck's bill off.

***

The fight lasts for three hours before reinforcements for the villains arrive, including Robo Wrecker. Power Fist and her group are forced to retreat to the junkyard, and, with the last of her energy, Marcy is able to put up the energy shield, and stop the robot mayor's men from following them.
Upon entering the junkyard, Power Fist discovers that it is full of people, and former police officers. She demands to know what they are doing in her home.
"We didn’t have any place else to go. The Fortress of Justice is sealed shut, and most of the former heroes are in hiding, or they've left the country. It would seem that you and your friends are our only hope to save this city since the mayor's gone crazy" Officer Jones says.
"I don't understand. Why would the League of Heroes shut themselves up in their fortress instead of helping to save the city?" Power Fist asks.
It's Jessie Quick who steps in, and tells Power Fist that the League is believed to be dealing with a group of outer space aliens which are trying to invade the planet.
Power Fist laughs, and tells the officer that aliens invaded a few months ago, and the League of Heroes didn’t do shit about it.
The two girls argue for a while until Officer Jones tells them that it doesn’t matter where the league is; they aren't here to help, and there's nothing that anyone can do about it.
As men and women begin settling in around the junkyard, a group of children are playing with Metal Mouth, and Alonzo the Alien has rigged up a type of TV for the kids to watch. The junkyard doesn’t have much food, but Alonzo is working on a teleporter which can send small groups of people as far as the supermarket and back.
Jessie Quick spends her days trying to help people to find a place to sleep as there are only four bunk beds. Both Alonzo and Power Fist give up their beds to the seniors living in the junkyard, but there still aren't enough beds for everyone, and people can usually be found wandering around aimlessly at night.
It takes Alonzo three days to finish creating the teleporter, and once he's done, he sends a group of people to the local Stop-and-Go to get him a frosty slurp, and some chips.
The group returns from their trip with enough food for everyone, including a melon banana frosty slurp for Alonzo, and some onion and ranch chips.
Everyone is given something to eat. The police and heroes eat last- except for Alonzo, as it’s his invention.
After everyone's eaten, Power Fist grabs herself a burrito, and a Dr. Zipper- a popular soda from the 90s- and goes to sit by Metal Mouth.
No one has seen Old Man Gus since the hero teams were disbanded, and Alonzo thinks that he might be dead, but Power Fist holds out hope that the poor old man is still kicking.

***

Outside of the energy shield, the city is descending into chaos as gangs which have long been at war with each other over their individual turf are now terrorizing each other's neighborhoods.
The president of Marwick declares a state of emergency in the city of Bainbridge, and he orders the army to enter the city, and to begin dealing with the villains before they destroy Bainbridge, and the surrounding cities.
As the tanks and soldiers begin advancing into the city, The Know It All orders Brain Drain to release a swarm of nano wasps to inject the soldiers with his techno virus.
As the soldiers advance farther, they begin to spread the virus to anyone whom they come across.
After a few days, the techno virus begins to take shape inside of the soldiers, as well as many of the people whom they've infected. It isn't long before the CDC declares the city on lockdown.
"Everything is going to plan, Brain Drain, but I still need to make sure those heroes who locked themselves in the junkyard won't be a problem. Send word to the League of Heroes that I'm willing to meet with their leader if he's willing to do me a favor" The Know It All says.
The next day, Tiger Man arrives at The Know It All's lair with Castle Man, and Mr. Invincible at his side.
"Welcome, gentlemen. I was hoping we could talk for a bit. I was also hoping that Tiger Man would come alone, but the rest of you are always welcome," he says. "Now, then. It’s my hope that we can come up with a plan to deal with these trouble-making heroes that have been ruining my plans as of late.”
“I understand that you're having problems, Phill, but you can't drag us into this. We agreed to stay out of this fight so you wouldn’t take our powers away, but you can't force us to help you kill. We're superheroes, for god’s sake!" Tiger man says.
"I understand, but all I'm asking is for you to tell me everything you know about a group of nobodies called the No Siders.”
After talking with Tiger Man, and his team, The Know It All decides to come up with a new plan to deal with the No Siders.
The Know It All commands Brain Drain to hack into The Dampener's cells, and to free the Red Rider, and Makko, sending a group of giant, robotic eagles to capture them.

***

Back in the prison, Red is sitting in his cell when the door opens. He assumes that the time is now to do battle with the Red Rockets.
As he, Chewy, and Makko head to the lower level of the prison, the group finds the leader of the Red Rockets: a villain named Jet Streak. The big man has the power to scream like a jet engine, and as he yells, his men begin coming out of their cells to attack Red, and his friends.
Hearing the sounds of a fight, the Gold Diggers, and the Puritans, come running to help their friends as well.
As the fight starts, both sides clash, and hit each other hard. Diamond Mine, and a villain called Baboon Ben- a man with a gorilla chest, and hairy, red ass- attack Jet Streak, who uses his sonic sound waves to crack Diamond Mine's skin.
Baboon Ben uses his gorilla fists to bash Jet Streak across the face.
Red Rider is fighting a villain named Big Boss: a man so fat that he causes earthquakes just by walking.
The big man tries to step on Red, but the speedster is able to vibrate fast enough to phase through the big man's leg, removing one of his bones as he passes through him.
Just as the fight starts to die down, The Know It All's robotic eagles arrive, grabbing Red Rider, and Makko.

***

News of the Red Rider's escape reaches Power Fist, and the rest of the No Siders. Alonzo has just finished rebuilding the mayor, and after adding a special, electronic brain with what Alonzo calls a master chip, the mayor is now up and running again.
Mayor Billingsley- who is now able to walk, and talk again- asks to speak with whoever is in charge.
Both Power Fist, and Officer Jones step forward.
"I believe the mayor wanted to speak with a member of the police department, not some D-list superhero," Officer Jones quips.
Power Fist reminds the officer that, if it wasn’t for her, and her fellow “D-list heroes,” he'd be dead.
"Don't fight; I want to speak with both of you because we need to come up with a plan to take back this city," Mayor Billingsley says.
The Mayor asks about what's been happening in his city since he went missing, and Officer Jones explains everything which the robot mayor has been doing.
"Why hasn’t the governor stepped in to put a stop to this madness?" Mayor Billingsley asks.
Power Fist explains that the army attempted to retake the city, only to become victims of something called the techno virus. "I think we might be able to find a cure for the virus if we’re able to capture one of the infected people, and contain them nearby," Power Fist says.
Alonzo builds a containment pod which will allow him to capture one of the infected people. He and his team- made up of Metal Mouth, and Toilet King- then leave the safety of the junkyard in search of someone infected with the techno virus.
The streets of Bainbridge are littered with the bodies of the infected; none of those infected happen to be a superhero, as it appears that their kind are immune to the virus.
The men and women infected with the techno virus have a pattern of green and black computer circuits all over their faces and bodies. The dead bodies of the infected quickly begin to decay, leaving very little behind for doctors to study, and to learn more about the virus.
As they search the city, Alonzo and his team run into gangs of looters made up of hungry citizens just trying to survive.
Many of the infected have trouble with impulse control; some are left with white hair, and gray eyes. These people are no more violent, or crazy, than they ever were, but they are still infectious.
As they search the city, Toilet King and Metal Mouth spot a doctor with white hair, and gray eyes. This man, with his computer circuit face, tries to inject something into one of his fellow infected.
Alonzo walks up to the man, and captures him, bringing him back to the junkyard, where Alonzo questions what the man was doing to that infected person sleeping on the streets.
"My name is Doctor Tomas King, and I have been working on a cure for this virus since I became infected with it myself," he says.
Doctor King asks why he's being held inside of a containment pod, and Alonzo explains that he has been chosen as a test subject for them to use to find the cure to the techno virus.
Doctor King is both excited, and pleased to hear that he will be receiving the cure for this illness.
Tomas asks Alonzo if it would be possible for him to help with the cure, as he himself has been working on trying to save the city since this virus first started to spread.
"Tell you what, Doctor King: if you're willing to let us experiment on you to find the cure, we will allow you to help us develop the cure by allowing you access to our research. You can even leave whatever notes you might have for us," Alonzo says.
Alonzo moves Doctor King's pod to the far side of the junkyard, and puts up an energy barrier to keep everyone out. He also builds a lab which he can use for his research.
Doctor King tries to convince Alonzo that the secret to curing the infected lies with superhero DNA as superheroes cannot be infected.
Alonzo agrees, but worries that using superhuman DNA might result in meta-humans, or more villains running around the city.

***
The Red Rider and Makko are being carried above the city skyline by The Know It All's eagle drones when Red using his super speedy hands, and rips the guts out of the eagle carrying them.
Falling from a great height, the two heroes are forced to grab onto each other in hopes that Red can save them both before they come crashing to the ground.
Using his super speed, Red Rider is able to create a whirlwind with his hands which slows him and Makko before they hit the ground.
The two heroes find themselves in the middle of downtown Bainbridge with gangs of infected terrorizing the city. Red and Makko need to get off of the streets before they end up in the belly of some savage with his teeth filled down.
"Hey, Makko, you're going to need to transform into your shark form while we're walking around on the streets," Red Rider says.
Makko, turning into his tiger shark form, takes the lead.
With the eagle drones still searching the area for them, Red and Makko are forced to hide in back alleys, and break into abandoned homes of the dead, looking for food and a place to sleep for the night.
Breaking down the door to a loft downtown, Red is punched in the chest by an old woman in her 70s with short, gray hair, cut into a bob. As he lies on the ground, struggling to breathe, Red begs God to end his life, and stop the pain. Even as his crushed chest is healing, Red Rider is still unable to breathe.
Makko takes a bite out of the old woman, but his teeth- which are as hard as diamonds- are crushed by the woman's tough skin.
The old woman demands to know why the two men broke into her loft, and, as his teeth grow back, Makko explains that he and Red Rider thought that the loft was abandoned.
Looking up at a couch, Red sees Oldman Gus struggling to breathe. The old man has been infected by the techno virus, and he appears to be dying.
Red Rider and Makko ask Gus's wife to please let them stay the night as they have no place to go, and the streets are littered with bodies, and crime.
"I'll let you stay the night, but you and your friends will have to do something for me. My grandson went outside a few hours ago to fetch some food for me, and Gus- my poor Gussy hasn’t eaten in almost two days. If you can find little Gus, and bring him home, you can stay as long as you like," Mrs. Winston says.
Red and Makko agree to find Little Gus, and the two heroes head to the boy's last known location- the Big Easy Supermarket- where they find a group of infected attacking a group of survivors.
Red doesn’t see little Gus anywhere, and as he searches the area, he vibrates at super speed until he's able to generate lightning.
Throwing the lightning at the group of infected, Red watches as they seem to short circuit, and explode. Some of the infected are members of the national guard, while others are just infected citizens who've come out to feed on the flesh of the living.
As he and Makko check the bodies of the dead infected, Red sees scorch marks on their teeth, and faces.
Walking up to the supermarket, Makko, in his shark form, knocks on the door. He waits for someone to open it, and when no one does, he rips the door off of its hinges, the people inside zooming out in terror.
As they look around the store, Red and Makko see little Gus- or Hard Body, as he calls himself- eating some fresh fruit in the corner. The man appears to be in some kind of a trance, and as he eats himself to death, Red and Makko are forced to try to stop him before he eats enough to explode from the inside.
Hard Body is stuffing his face with a pineapple, and some plums, when Makko knocks the fruit out of his hand, and Red Rider destroys the fruit stand.
Once he finally stops eating, little Gus keels over from hunger pains, and demands more food. "FEED ME…FEED ME…FEED ME!” He yells.
As he collapses from his hunger, Red and Makko are forced to take him to the junkyard.
Bringing some food for themselves and little Gus, the two men steal a car, and race to the junkyard.
As they reach the junkyard, little Gus is beginning to go into anaphylactic shock. With no other choice, Red uses his speed to phase through the energy barrier protecting the junkyard.
Everyone in the junkyard comes running as the car smashes into a bunch of junk cars piled on top of each other.
Pulling Makko and little Gus out of the car, Red sees his niece, and asks her where her alien friend is, to which she explains that Alliver and Alonzo are now one, and that they’re now working on finding a cure for the techno virus.
"It's an emergency; Gus is dying. There's something wrong with him. If he stops eating, he dies, and now he's gone into shock. We need to help him,” Red says.
Power Fist uses her powers to open up little Gus's throat, and the man is able to breathe again. He tells Power Fist that a witch called Blue Genie- a completely blue woman- used magic against him, and forced him to become incredibly hungry.
Little Gus is incredibly fat from eating so much, and as she looks at his body, Power Fist comes up with a plan. Collecting as much power in her gauntlet as possible, she smashes Gus in the belly until he vomits up everything from his stomach, and the magic which is controlling him breaks.
Little Gus- who now weighs some four hundred pounds- finds moving difficult, and has trouble breathing. The heavy man thanks his new friends for helping him, and then asks if they've seen his grandparents at all.
"Who do you think sent us to go and look for you?" Red asks.
Little Gus is hungry, and asks for something to eat. He asks Red to drive him home to his grandparents' house.
Power Fist tells little Gus that she'll drive him home in a few minutes once she talks to her uncle.

***

Under the city, the Know It All is commanding his computerized slave, Brain Drain, to build him a few new mechanical servants to help him to kidnap the mayor.
"Master, I have something to show you. I've built myself a servant to do my bidding. Would you like to use him?" Brain Drain asks.
One of his drones brings in a dead Mike Luis, the seventeen-year-old, Asian teen with his rock-hard abs, and Highland Hills football team letterman jacket. The boy, with his buzz cut, looks like your average American teen from the 50s.
"Why did you bring me a dead body?" The Know It All asks.
"I am Brain Drain. He is not dead. My nano bugs have put him to sleep, so he feels as little pain as possible when we begin our work on him," Brain Drain says.
"What work do you imagine we'll be doing on this young man?" The Know It All asks his computer.
Brain Drain laughs, before removing part of Mike's brain with a laser attached to his computer console. As schematics for a machine-man hybrid appear on his console, Brain Drain straps Mike to an operating table, and begins his work.
As he watches his servant build himself a slave of his own, The Know It All is impressed.
After twenty-seven hours of surgery, The Know It All and Brain Drain have built a new monster with which to attack the city under the cover of darkness.
Their machine-man, a cyborg with spider legs, and the head and body of a human, with crab cracker arms, and one laser eye, is sent out to terrorize the city.
The cyborg, with its entirely metal, lower body, and metal arms, looks around, and demands to know why he can't feel his legs.
"Mike Luis… Is that your name?" The Know It All asks.
"It is. And who might you be?" Mike asks.
"You can call me Master from this point on," he says.
The sad look on Brain Drain's face says it all; his master has just stolen his creation.
As The Know It All looks his way, Brain Drain smiles quickly, hiding his disappointment with his master.
The Know It All tells Mike that his father was working with a superhero when a shockwave hit, and everything went crazy. "We tried to rebuild you as best as we could, but… Well, these were the only parts we had on hand, and all we wanted to do was save you. God, I'm so sorry that this happened to you…" He says crying his crocodile tears, hoping to sway Mike into joining his side.
"I want to see myself," Mike says, unable to cry with the live wires, and electrodes sticking out of his face.
After looking at himself in the mirror, Mike smashes it, and demands to know where his father is.
"He's getting a medal from the mayor. If only there was a way to get to him, and stop him once and for all..." The Know It All says. "By the way, if you're going to be a villain, you'll need a new name. How about Robo Wrecker?"
Mike smiles after hearing his new name, and is about to leave the underground hideout when Brain Drain calls out to him, and asks if he'll need any help with his mission.
"Hell yeah!" Robo Wrecker replies as a swarm of drones fly over his head with guns, and robots attached to them.

***

That night, the Red Rider is meeting with Mayor Billingsley, and Doctor Richard Luis, who stopped the explosion from a superhero named Particle Man. Red Rider is also receiving an award as he and his team defeated a mutant villain named Big Dick Dinosaur: the huge, green T-rex with its colossal penis which shoots ejaculate on command.
Red hid behind a car while Big Dick Dino frosted his team like a cake with his incredible splooge cannon. He came up with a plan to stop the dinosaur, and vibrated until he was moving fast enough to slow down time, and, once time had slowed, Red began to send car after car at the Dino's cock, and underbelly.
After crushing the Dino's junk, and stomach, Red came out of hiding. As the news cameras arrived, he pointed to the crippled Dino, and flexed for the crowd.
The mayor goes on to say that the country of Marwick is lucky to have two such heroes as Doctor Richard Luis, and the Red Rider.
Speaking at a press conference before the award ceremony, the Mayor tells the press how grateful he is for all of the new heroes who have stepped up, and begun patrolling the city in the absence of the League of Heroes.
The rest of the No Siders stand off to the side of the stage, arms crossed, watching as their leader takes all the credit for saving the city.
Red sits in a folding chair along with Doctor Luis, and the two men chat for a bit before the mayor arrives, and begins speaking to the crowd.
Mayor Billingsley talks about the value of every superhero team which is protecting the city, and all the ones who will come after them.
"What about the villains?" Robo Wrecker asks, dropping down from the sky, his spider legs digging into the ground.
The men and women who are gathered around all run in terror as Red Rider orders his team to form ranks, and to follow him.
"We'd like to, but we're on crowd control, so I guess you'll have to take care of this yourself, boss," Power Fist says.
Robo Wrecker picks a woman up with his crab claws, and snaps her in half, her blood and guts spilling onto the ground.
As Red begins to vibrate, he tosses a bolt of lightning at the cyborg.
The machine-man is struck by the lightning, and he begins to malfunction.
As drones come dropping down to the ground, they begin firing at the people in the crowd.
As they disperse, Power Fist uses the gems on her gauntlets to create energy shields around part of the city so the people can escape.
Metal Mouth is able to hack into the drone's motherboards, and shut most of them down, while Alonzo, and Old Man Gus, hide behind a group of children.
Makko bites the top off of a fire hydrant, and begins spraying water all over the remaining drones.
The battle drones all fall to pieces, and as they round up the remaining drones, Red Rider loses sight of Robo Wrecker, and of the mayor.

***

As he limps his way back to the underground with the mayor in his grasp, Robo Wrecker returns to his master, and hands him his new toy.
"Welcome, Mayor Billingsley/ I just wanted to say hello, and tell you that things are about to get really bad for you in a few minutes," The Know It All says, holding a drill.
The mayor screams in pain as his skull is pierced by the red-hot drill, and something is inserted into his skull.
The Know It All scrambles the mayor's brain, and replaces it with a mechanical brain which lights up, and glows bright pink.

***

After checking up on everyone who was taken, Red Rider, and his people, return to their hideout, and look for anything which they could use to track Robo Wrecker.
Using chips, and motherboards, from the fallen droids to track its GPS, Metal Mouth, and Alonzo, are able to track the droids to a power plant two towns over.
The group heads to the Justice Van, and piles in. The men are amazed by all the changes which Alliver was able to make to it. The Justice Van- which can now fly, and go underwater- is just incredible. It takes just fourteen minutes to reach the Luka Falls Power Plant, and, once they arrive, the No Siders see hundreds of drones guarding the facility.
Red begins vibrating at a high enough speed to stop the world, and he is able to walk in a fifth dimension, one where no one is able to move, or see him at all. Red is only able to maintain this state for twenty minutes before he begins to fade away, and get lost in the fifth dimension.
Red Rider, in his red, leather jacket, and matching pants with a black lightning bolt on the sides, and front of his jacket, runs through the storm until he reaches the power plant.
Alliver sits on Power Fist's lap, and he wonders where her uncle is.
"He's racing the speed storm. You can't see him, but he's there." Power Fist says.
Makko drinks some vodka with salt in it, and Metal Mouth looks on with a face which is frozen from rust.
Alonzo and Gus sit in the front seat of the Van, and play cards. The two of them trade cigarettes for beer as they play.
Red Rider enters the power plant, and with just eight minutes left before he fades away, finds the mayor tied up in the center of the plant. Red grabs him, and before he knows what's hit him, the mayor, and the Red Rider, are outside of the power plant, running for their lives.
Firing a flare in the air to alert his team, Red- who is weak, and bleeding from his ears, and mouth, after racing the speed storm- can barely run.
The Justice Van parks as the droids and drones begin to attack.
The mayor helps Red into the van, and the group flies away with over one hundred drones in pursuit.
Alliver tells his friends that he’s outfitted the Justice Van with many new toys, and weapons for their use.
Pressing a button on the side of the steering wheel, Alonzo sees that it's an EMP mine.
Firing the mine at one of the drones sends a shock wave all throughout the town of Luka Falls. Metal Mouth is also affected by the EMP, and is disabled for the rest of the trip home.
On the way home, Alliver and Alonzo try to repair Metal Mouth while Old Man Gus drives the van. Old Man Gus, however, is blind in one eye, and doesn’t see the building which he's about to crash into.
Power Fist, seeing that they are about to crash, uses her gem to create an energy shield around the Justice Van.
Alliver is impressed by Power Fist's magic, and he tries to hack into her gauntlet, wanting use it to create a shield around Metal Mouth, and the van, when they are in need.
As the Van crashes through a building, Mayor Billingsley demands to be let go, but Power Fist reminds him that he was just kidnapped, and needs to stay with them until they reach his office.
After crashing into the apartment building, the Justice Van refuses to start up. Alonzo tells Alliver to keep working on Metal Mouth while he tries to fix the van.
Alliver tells him that it might be smarter if he tries to fix the van as Alonzo isn't familiar with the changes which he's made.
"I'VE BEEN FIXING THIS VAN SINCE BEFORE YOUR LITTLE GREEN ASS SHOWED UP, AND I CAN FIX IT NOW!" Alonzo retorts, slamming the door, and popping open the hood of the van.
The inside of the van glows a bright, green hue, and the entire thing seems to be covered in some kind of metal-plastic.
Opening the door. Alonzo tells Alliver to fix the van while he works on Metal Mouth.
The little green man smiles, and hops out of the van.
Power Fist, in her most deadpan voice, asks Alonzo if he's fixed the van already.
"That's very funny, Wednesday Addams,” Alonzo says.
With the van fixed, the No Siders take off, leaving behind a fake card which the homeowners can call for reimbursement.
Driving out of the apartment, and back into the sky, Power Fist, who is now driving, takes the No Siders back to the mayor's office, where they hand the mayor off to his security team. He is rushed away.
After dropping off the mayor, Power Fist drives back to the junkyard, and she injects her uncle with a syringe filled with a red and black tornado.
Red begins to heal, and he fills the syringe with more of his blood, before putting it back where it was, and thanking his niece.

***

Power Fist is getting drunk with Makko, and Alonzo, when Red arrives. He asks to speak to his niece for a minute in private.
"Sure. What's up, Dunkcle?" She asks.
"I just wanted to thank you for saving me. I was at the point of death just then, but you brought me back. I just wanted to say thank you, booger head," Red says.
"You’re welcome, pig sticker. I just want you to know that I never would have let you die… unless I could be the one to kill you, that is," Power Fist laughs.
Red Rider and his niece share a few laughs as they walk around the junkyard. The two are enjoying themselves when the police show up, looking for Red Rider.
Officer Jones, and his new partner, Jesse Quick, arrest Red Rider, and tell him that the mayor has revoked his vigilante license, and is planning to disband all of the superhero teams in the city unless they join the police force.
Red is arrested for acting as a vigilante without a license, but, before he can drive off with her uncle, Power Fist asks him a question. "At what time did the mayor sign this order to suspend my uncle's vigilante license?"
"Two hours after he returned to his home. Why do you ask?" Officer Jones asks.
"Well, then you have no case against him. You see, my uncle wasn’t acting as a vigilante in the past two hours, so you have no grounds to arrest him, Officer Jones," Power Fist says.
Releasing Red Rider, Officer Jones laughs, and tells him that he doesn’t want to see him on the streets trying to save people anymore, or he'll be arrested.
Officer Quick looks around the junkyard, and she notices Makko. She stares for almost two minutes before Power Fist loudly asks her what she's looking at. "I just noticed you people seem to be living here in this junk yard, and I was wondering if that might be against the law?" Officer Quick asks, pointing at a pair of bunk beds where Makko and Metal Mouth are sitting together.
Officer Jones takes out his ticket book, and writes Red a bunch of tickets for his many violations. He also gives Red a court date to stand before a judge, telling him that, because of his former service as a hero, he'll be allowed to stand before the judge in his costume, and will most likely receive community service, and not be allowed back in the junkyard ever again.

***

Over the next two weeks, Red Rider begins working at a coffee shop called Speed Demon Deluxe Brew. All of the workers are speedsters, and each of them are able to take orders, and deliver coffee, at super speed. Red's uniform is a brownish-gray hat, and apron, as well as light brown slacks, and a white shirt with the logo of the company on it.
While he's working, the rest of the No Siders are spending their time looking for somewhere to live. Power Fist and Makko find a burned-out crack house on the wrong side of town- a part of the city called Crimeville.
The heroes of Crimeville are very overprotective of their part of the city. Superhero teams like Gang Bang and the South Side Sleuths fight each other for control over the crime-infested streets of Crimeville.
As they are walking the streets, Power Fist and Makko see a little girl being mugged by a group of older children. One of the boys is yelling at the girl in Spanish, and another, with a thick, French accent, laughs as the little girl is pushed to the ground.
Power Fist and Makko intervene, and send the boys running.
As they take off down the street, the little girl thanks Power Fist and Makko. The two then ask the girl why those boys were bothering her, and she tells them that her older brother beat up the biggest boy’s older brother, and cousin.
The girl looks up, and runs away in terror.
Looking behind herself, Power Fist sees a hovering superhero team called the Chicken Crew. The members of the Chicken Crew wear giant chicken costumes with masks, and capes.
The leader of the Chicken Crew demands to know who the hell the two new heroes in his part of the city are.
"We're not looking for trouble. We just wanted to help a little girl, that's all," Power Fist says.
Makko asks why Chicken Lord and his friends are dressed up like chickens.
"YOU DISRESPECTFUL, FISH-STINKING FUCK! YOU SPEAK ILL OF OUR COSTUMES, AND YOU SPEAK ILL OF THE CHICKEN GOD, ROY RODGERS!” Chicken Lord yells.
Power Fist tries to calm everyone down, but the Chicken Crew launches into their attack.
As they fire their eggs at Makko and Power Fist, Toilet King charges into the fight, and attacks a brown and white chicken man called King Chicken.
Power Fist throws her gauntlets at the Chicken Crew, and breaks Chica-Chica-Boom-Boom's leg, and Turkey Neck’s back.
The last man standing is Chicken Lord, and Makko swallows him whole, spitting out his costume, and cape.
Toilet King asks Power Fist what brings her to his neighborhood in the middle of the night.
"It's 4:30 PM. For some reason, the sun just doesn’t shine on this neighborhood. I don't know why," Power Fist says.
"I think a racist wizard must have done it, or something like that," Toilet King says.
Deciding to help his friends to find a place to live in Crimeville, Toilet King takes them to Wuthering Heights: a small, Latino neighborhood in the middle of Crimeville.
Wuthering Heights is a nice-enough place to stay in the morning, even though there is no sunlight in Crimeville.
Toilet King takes his friends to an abandoned lot called the greenhouse. He tells Power-Fist that if she and her friends are willing to put in the work. they can build a nice place on that lot. "It's only $5,000, and it's huge. The guy who bought it wanted to flip the land, and a group of his neighbors murdered him the night they found out what he planned to do. After that, the city took over the land, and, well, they just want to get rid of it for cheap," Toilet King says.
Power Fist and Makko head to the bank to find out how much they have to buy the abandoned lot.
With -$8 in their team bank account, the No Siders are forced to continue meeting at the junkyard.
The group is forced to wait until dark before they enter the junkyard, but without Red Rider as he is forced to wear an ankle monitor for his community service.
While meeting up at night, Power Fist reports that they are broke, and that they can't afford to move out of the junkyard. Alliver asks them why they don't just sell something of value, like water, or air molecules.
Alonzo explains to his little friend that, on Earth, gold, silver, and jewels are considered valuable.
Alliver is pleased to hear this as he has a machine which can turn air into gold and diamonds. "I believe I still have it with me. This machine is very useful as gold and diamonds are used to power my peoples’ ships, and lasers.”
Alliver creates a giant gold nugget, and hands it to Power Fist, who takes it to a jewelry store, and sells it for a fortune, taking the $500,000, and using $5,000 to buy the land, and the rest to fix up the junkyard so that they can live there.

***

While everyone is adjusting to their new lives, The Know It All is putting his plans into action, taking control of the mayor's robotic mind. He orders the mayor to begin disbanding every superhero team in the city.
Each team in the city is served with termination papers. The only team which is allowed to continue operating is the League of Heroes because of their injuries, and out of respect for their service.
Tiger Man, and Lucky Lady, are both almost completely healed, Mr. Invincible, and Castle Man, are still in critical condition, and Speed Demon was killed fighting the Golden Goons.
The mayor does as his master commands, and begins disbanding every superhero team in the city.
Arriving with the mayor's latte, and pumpkin bagel, Red Rider, whose face is concealed by a mask, hands the bagel to the mayor, who yells at him for not bringing him any cream cheese.
Enraged that this man is yelling at him after getting him fired from his team, Red dumps the man's latte over his head. Sparks begin to fly, and the mayor falls to the ground, dead.
As the mayor’s security team knocks on the door, Red grabs the mayor, and jumps out of the window behind the mayor's desk.
Hearing the sound of crashing glass, the mayor's security team comes running, but doesn’t find the mayor, or whoever took him.

***

Back in his apartment, Red has just called his niece to help him out, and to come to get the mayor. He waits ten minutes for her to arrive.
"What the hell did you do, Uncle Tomás?" Power Fist asks.
"MARCY, YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE ME! ALL I DID WAS DUMP A CUP OF COFFEE OVER HIS HEAD!” Red says.
Power Fist decides to take the mayor, and head to the team's new headquarters in Wuthering Heights.
Driving the Justice Van with Alonzo and Alliver, Power Fist discovers that Alliver and Alonzo have built a huge warehouse filled with alien teach, and sleeping pods, as well as cloaking technology.
In the morning, the police arrest Red Rider for attacking, and abducting, the mayor.
With all of the superhero teams disbanded, the police are forced to hire freelance, superpowered deputies to help them to arrest the Red Rider.
Not putting up a fight, Red lets himself be arrested, and to be taken to a superpowered prison called The Dampener.
While inside The Dampener, Red Rider joins up with a gang of mutants, and superheroes, called the Puritans. Their leader is Diamond Mine: a mutant whose skin is as hard as a pink diamond.
Red's Roommate is Chewy: a big Mexican with the power to eat anything, and spit out a fireball. Chewy introduced Red to Diamond Mine, and the two of them became fast friends.

***

Meanwhile, back in the junkyard, Alliver is cracking open Mayor Billingsley's skull. He trips a secret alarm in the mayor's head, sees a glowing light, and removes a bomb, handing it to Alonzo.
Before he can throw the bomb, it goes off in his hand, blowing both of his arms off, and a part of his jaw.
Alliver hears the explosion, and rushes to find Alonzo. He does a deep tissue scan once he finds Alonzo's body, and, after that, he decides to merge with Alonzo, something which his people can only do once in their lives as they will die as a result of the merge.
Alliver and Alonzo become fused together in a cocoon made of green slime, and hard green crystal.

***

On the streets of Bainbridge, Power Fist and Metal Mouth are patrolling the streets while Makko swims through the sewers, munching on rats, and alligators.
As he is making his way out of the sewers, a giant group of five man-sharks jump out of the water, and attack Makko.
"Hello, little brother. Did you miss us?" One of the sharks asks.
The big, blue, tiger shark picks his smaller brother up by his neck, and tosses him around.
The big blue shark pounds Makko's face into a burger with cheese, and curly fries, and, after the beating, the sharks leave Makko in a pool of his own blood.
Power Fist and Metal Mouth radio Makko to get his position, but the shark boy is unresponsive. Power Fist sends Metal Mouth back to headquarters while she goes to check on Makko.
Using the glow of her gauntlet gems to light the way, after searching a mile of underground sewer, Power Fist finds Makko's limp body. The shark lord is still breathing, and one of his twin hearts is still beating. Unlike most sharks, Makko, and other man sharks, have two to three hearts, and four lungs: two for breathing air, and two for breathing water.
Power Fist sees her friend beaten, and bloody, and she lifts him off of the ground, and carries him to the hospital.
The doctor on call is a witchdoctor named Doctor Zhivago. The man stands 6'5”, his face painted a bone white in the shape of a skull.
The big man drinks a potion, and spits it all over Makko, who begins to hyperventilate. The witchdoctor then removes a tube of salt water from his sleeve, and, after forcing Makko to transform into his shark form, pours the salt water into his gills.
The shark man begins crying blood.
Makko opens his eyes, and sees Power Fist standing over him. He strokes her face lovingly, until she catches his hand and pushes it away.
Power Fist leaves the hospital, and returns to the junkyard, where she finds the cocoon, putting up a shield around the junkyard.

***

I don’t know if anyone will read this. I’m honestly not really sure what I hope to gain by posting this. I don’t even know if anyone will understand me. The most likely option is that barely anyone will even read this. Maybe it will help to just get this all out. Or maybe not. I’m not really sure. Please don’t judge me until you’ve read all the way through.
I guess for this to make sense, I have to start from the beginning. 24 years ago my twin brother and I were born. We are fraternal twins, I’m a girl and he’s a boy. Everything seemed fine when we were born, at least based off of what I’ve been told. We were about a month premature, but that’s pretty normal for twins. My brother had more issues than I did, but ultimately we were discharged from the hospital as healthy babies.
Things just went on from there. My mom had pretty severe postpartum depression according to her and my dad. My dad told me that she didn’t care for us at all because of the depression and that he did everything. I don’t hold that against her. I deal with pretty significant depression myself and know what it’s like. Anyway, I guess the depression subsided, and she got pregnant with my younger brother.
But when my brother and I were two, something happened that changed everything. My twin was diagnosed with severe autism. Now when I say servers autism, I mean severe. Unable to care for himself in any way, can’t read, barely able to communicate, very behavioral. The worst was the constant screaming. When I say constantly, I mean constantly. I can still hear it when I think about it. I high-pitched never ending scream. I know it’s not his fault, and I don’t blame him, so please don’t come at me.
Before I proceed any further, I want to get something out of the way. I love my twin brother more than anything. I would do anything for him. I know that he can’t help his autism. But just because I love him, doesn’t mean I can’t also recognize that his autism had a profound affect on me. People don’t realize how hard it is for the families of those with disabilities. They don’t realize how hard it is to see a loved one suffer like that. They don’t understand the agonizing guilt that comes along with it. They don’t understand how traumatizing it is to endure the constant screaming, the violent behaviors. To witness your parents feel so helpless and appear so sad and distraught all of the time. To see your brother pee and poop and throw up all over himself, scream, run around both in private and in public, and to have strangers yell at you and tell your parents that they are horrible parents for not being able to control their child, and then to see their parents cry because they are trying their best. To have your twin brother, pinch, tackle you, and pull your hair and not understand why. To see your twin brother hurt himself, and hurt others. To be deprived of attention at vital stages of development because your brother’s needs are so much more than yours. To have no one explain to you what is going on, so you end up blaming yourself, because he’s your twin brother. To feel like you need to be perfect and can’t have needs of your own because your parents are so overwhelmed by your brother, that you don’t want to cause any additional burdens for them. To see your mom become a shell of the person that she used to be because she blames herself for your twin’s autism and will never get over that. To see your dad become angry and turn to marijuana as a way to cope. All that being said, I know it’s not my brother’s fault, and I know the biggest victim of all of this is him. It breaks my heart that he has to deal with all that he has to deal with. I wish that I could take it all away from him. But I’ve had to accept that I really have no control over anything. Bed things just happen. At least that’s what I tell myself so I don’t blame myself.
Anyways, back to the story. My mom found out that my twin had autism while pregnant with my younger brother. A few months later my younger brother was born. Again, everything seemed fine. Until my younger brother didn’t talk until he was four. I think he was diagnosed with autism but my parents hid it from me. I think because they were in denial about it. But then he started talking at four. He got all the services, speech, OT, all those things. So did my twin brother. I didn’t get a lot of attention because my brother’s needs were so great. I felt unimportant and like I didn’t matter. When I did have a need, it wasn’t really focused on.
I developed severe anxiety from a young age. I think it was a mix of genetics and the stressful environment that I grew up in. Severe to the point where teachers noticed. But I didn’t get any help for it for a long time.
Fast forward to the summer before 6th grade. My twin’s behaviors became worse. The screaming was still constant. He would break things and he had been to around 5 different schools at that point. He wouldn’t sleep unless he was medicated. He would take an antipsychotic medication at night to help him sleep. It worked, but had side effects, like an insatiable appetite and weight gain. We had to lock the kitchen cabinets. My brother would also try to run away all the time, and sometimes was successful. One time my dad went out, and my mom was left with all three of us. She was never the one to care for my twin hands on, that was mainly my dad and me too sometimes. My brother ran away and we couldn’t find him anywhere. My mom had to call the police. They found my brother walking barefoot in the middle of the road. My mom was hysterical and yelling, and she barricaded the door with as much furniture as she could find. We ended up getting multiple locks on all of our doors. One time he ran away while I was watching him. I turned my back for one second and he was gone. We found him on his three wheeler in the middle of the road again. I could never have friends over because of my brother’s behavior. It was hard to focus on my homework or anything for that matter because of the constant screaming.
Anyway, the summer before sixth grade is when things started to get really hard. The anxiety morphed into something way worse. I had repetitive thoughts that bad things would happen and I had to do repetitive actions or else I thought the bad things would come true. I would later realize that this was OCD, but in the mean time I felt crazy and out of control. My parents would get angry at me when I would engage in the repetitive behaviors or ask for constant reassurance. I understand it was annoying, and they didn’t want to have another kid with problems, but I couldn’t help it. I was told that it was for attention. Honestly maybe it was a little bit, because I was so deprived of it, but them telling me that only hurt more. I didn’t understand why my brother’s problems got so much care and attention but mine were just met with anger. Anyway the OCD grew worse. I would have meltdowns because my thoughts were so horrible. My dad would get so angry. He would chase me up to my room and tackle me. He cut the head off of my favorite doll and cut up one of my favorite shirts. I got kicked in the tail bone once and couldn’t sit properly for like a week. He didn’t mean to kick me in the tailbone, only the squishy part. To be fair, I was impossible. Him doing what he did was the only thing to get me to stop. But it hurt. I felt so helpless, and like they didn’t understand.
Later that summer my parents finally took me to a psychiatrist. I got diagnosed with OCD and put on SSRIs, and things got better for a short while. But middle school was rough. I lost all my friends because I was acting out. Everyone thought I was weird, and I was. The OCD was more controlled, but still there. 8th grade came and I think that’s when the depression started to developed. That was the first time that I cut myself. Honestly, I did do it for attention. I desperately craved it, because I was so deprived of it. I desperately wanted someone to care about me. The only way I knew how to go about that was to show people that I was struggling. I saw my brother’s get attention for their struggles, and I thought that that was the only way to get people to care about me. I craved it from teachers. I tried to show them my arm, but make it look like ti was an accident. Like I kept my sleeve rolled up when they were near me. But they never noticed.
High school came, and that’s when things got really bad. My twin brother ended up having to go to a residential school because his behaviors became to hard to handle at home. This killed me. I thought it was my fault because we were twins. I thought I was the reason we were premature, and maybe I caused something at birth. I had this survivor’s guilt of sorts, like why him and not me? I became very depressed. My mom also became very depressed. I have memories of her in bed next to a bottle of benzos. Everyone fell apart. For years our whole family revolved around my twin, and now he was no longer at home.
I craved attention from teachers even more. I felt like a bad person for this, but I couldn’t help it. I tried to make myself look upset in front of them on purpose because I wanted them to ask if I was okay. Meanwhile, my parents called me an attention seeker when I would express my struggles. I became convinced that I was a bad person for being an attention seeker, but I also couldn’t help being one. My OCD harped on this, and I would obsess about this constantly. Getting attention was almost like a compulsion, but then when I would do things to get attention, I would feel incredibly guilty about it, and I absolutely hated and despised myself for this.
I started self harming a lot more, and I also started restricting my eating. I lost a lot of weight. My psychiatrist became worried about me. My parents told me I was an attention seeker and my mom made fun of me for my boobs getting smaller. My obsessions about needing attention but then also hating myself for it became stronger. My OCD became really bad again. I became su*cidal. I wanted to die. I couldn’t take it anymore. But I got good grades, I played Varsity soccer, and somehow functioned. I had to. I had to be the one that would be “normal”.
I got into an accelerated doctorate of physical therapy program at a prestigious school, because my grades were good. I told myself I would be a physical therapist and help people with Autism. I went to college, against the advice of my therapist and psychiatrist, because my parents said there was no other option. I had a mental breakdown.
My OCD became debilitating. I could barely even move without extreme difficulty because the compulsions were so intense. The obsessions were awful, and torturous. My grades were terrible. I failed out of the accelerated program because I couldn’t maintain the necessary GPA to stay in the program. I stayed in the university but under a health sciences major instead. I self harmed a lot. I wanted to die and was very close to an actually trying to do so. I had no friends. I had a guy who would sexually harass me, and a boyfriend who I didn’t even love. My parents wouldn’t let me leave school. My psychiatrist I was seeing there convinced them to let me go to a residential treatment place for OCD during the summer. I couldn’t stay the full length because it would interfere with school starting back up in the fall. But it was helpful for the time being. My compulsions were reduced a lot. The root cause of my obsessions weren’t traced though. I couldn’t tell anyone what it was. That I was so obsessed with needing attention. I was convinced that they would think that I was a bad person. I was in denial about it because I couldn’t face it.
So I left the place and went back to school hoping to have a better semester. But I had a breakdown within a few weeks of being there. I became suicidal and my parents forced my parents to take me home. They treated me like a failure. They were embarrassed to bring me places because they were embarrassed that I wasn’t in college like everybody else my age. It was torture being inside my brain. I ended up having to go to the mental hospital. I was tying stuff around my neck and screaming because the thoughts in my brain were torture. I didn’t want to be alive anymore. The OCD place accepted me back, and luckily insurance covered it. But it didn’t help this time. I was too far gone. I ended up in another mental hospital because I was going to take my own life. I was done. I saw no point. I thought I brought everyone pain. I was 19 years old and I did some really intense treatments that I am embarrassed to admit to. I would act out, try to hurt myself on the unit.
One day I was hysterically crying. A nurse came to talk to me. I told her I couldn’t take it, and that I wanted to die. She listened to me. Nobody every listened to me before. She told me that she had similar struggles to me and that she was able to get better and that I could to. This was the turning point for me. For the first time in my life, I believed that I could get better. The one day I met with the social worker there. She was questioning me about my destructive behaviors. I don’t know what allowed me to do it, but I admitted to her that I think I did these behaviors because I didn’t get a lot of attention growing up because of my twin brother. I had never told anyone that before. I thought she would think that I was a bad person but instead she told me that that made a lot of sense. I hadn’t yet uncovered how crummy my family situation was yet, and I hadn’t even fully admitted to myself that I was an attention seeker, but this was a huge step for me.
I ended up deciding that I wanted to be a nurse and help other people like the nurse that talked to me helped me. This was enough to give me a reason for wanting to live. That became my purpose until I could find one for myself. I was discharged from the hospital a little bit later.
Things were hard at first I was still su*cidal. I still had really bad obsessive thoughts, and thought of myself as a bad person. But I started seeing a really helpful therapist, and enrolled in nursing school, and things started to go in a positive direction.
I started to uncover a lot of trauma that I had been through. Not only the stuff from my twin brother, like the screaming and the behaviors, but also my family situation. My mom’s depression. The emotional abuse and neglect. The physical abuse that there was a little bit of. I realized that my OCD probably arose as a way to try to find some sense of control over a situation that felt so out of control.
I graduated nursing school, and got my first job as a nurse in September of 2023. I am having a hard time right now, but it does help to think of how far I’ve come. I still have really bad anxiety and obsessive thoughts. I still have pretty significant attention. The trauma that I experienced still impacts a whole lot of aspects of my every day life. The way I interact with people. It’s hard for me to have friendships. I don’t have any friends right now. I still feel this survivor’s guilt about my twin. Why him and not me. I am starting to realize it’s not my fault though.
Sometimes I feel like a failure. I’m 24 years old. I only have an associates degree (I am going to work toward obtaining my bachelors in July). I still live at home (I’m trying to save up). I have all these mental problems. I’ve gained a lot of weight because of the medications that I take. I still give into a lot of attention seeking urges, although not as much. I feel less bad about it though, because at least I know I developed those urges for a reason. Work is really hard. I work on a med-surg floor, and it’s really difficult. I am know as the anxious one by the people I work with. I’ve never really had a fulfilling romantic relationship. My room is a mess. Work causes me so much anxiety that I sometimes dread going in. I plan on switching to psychiatric nursing after I reach the one year mark. I still have 4 months to go. I hope that that will be easier for me. I feel like a failure. I know I have overcome a lot, but I still have a long way to go. Sometimes I feel like I will never get over what I’ve been through. Nobody understands, and sometimes I just feel disconnected by people. Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if my brother never had autism. Would it be different? I feel bad thinking that. I am happy that I ended up being a nurse now and that I can help other people. I don’t know if that would have happened if it weren’t for what I’ve been through.
Anyways, that’s my story. I left some things out because it’s impossible to say everything. I hope you don’t think I’m a bad person. I love my brother more than anything.

The No Siders

In the city of Bainbridge, a group of superheroes called the No Siders operate under the radar with over one hundred different superhero teams; the country of Marwick is overflowing with superheroes.
The Red Rider leader of the No Siders: a man whose power is the ability to move at super-speed. Except for running; he can't run at super speed.
The next hero of the No Siders is Power Fist, a 15-year-old, part-time hero. The dark-haired, pale, thin, girl who is Power Fist wears a dress that makes her look like Wednesday Addams's lesbian lover, with a half-shaved head. You know, like all the cool girls these days. The only thing that made her stand out from the crowd: the sliver gauntlet which was given to her to help to control her powers by some magic dickhead. I think she said he was a doctor of some kind. I met him once, he wouldn't take off his helmet, and he talked to himself. There are a lot of weirdos out there.
Power Fist is saved from a life of boredom and education by her beloved uncle, the Red Rider. After finding out his sister's daughter had powers like him, Red left the state prison which he was staying in for the last three years to teach her to fight crime- not like the Aubrey Plaza-looking ingrate ever says “thank you, Uncle Tomás.”
Number two on the Riders list is Makko: a merman who is half-shark, yet can't swim. That's why he was so easy to recruit. But when Red Rider looked in his eyes, he saw a hunger for justice, and an ad in the paper which said that the shark-man would work for food. That was all that Red Rider needed to hear.
The next gem on the Rider's list is Metal Mouth: a hybrid robot that runs on corn oil, and electricity. He fits the team perfectly thanks to Red's power; he would always be kept charged. To think the team found him at a junkyard as they were looking for spare parts for the Justice Van. For just $150, and a Superman fan club ring, they got Metal Mouth.
The last member of the team is Alonzo. He and Red went to school together, and he let the team use his junkyard as their HQ. Plus, he can fix cars. He also has Red's Superman fan club ring, so they're stuck with the bastard until Red gets his ring back, anyway.
Tonight, the team is out to recruit a hot, young prospect named Gus. This young buck had taken down a gang of bikers selling PCP on a playground at night. The team knows everyone worth a damn would want this kid. But the No Siders have a secret: He lives two miles from the junkyard. Seeing their chance for glory, the team runs all the lights- red, yellow, and even green- to get to this kid. Red can't wait to tell the press he's a No-Sider. He can almost smell the headlines. In this day and age, good press is worth its weight in gold.
As the Justice Van pulls up to the kid's house, Red gets out, and walks to the door, knocking hard, and fast.
An old man walks to the door. "Hello, my name is Gus Winston. How may I help you?"
Thinking quickly, Red grabs the old man, and runs back to the van. "Start the car! Hurry, start the car!" Red commands as the van comes to life with a roar of sound, and ignites the most powerful lights which The Rider could afford. Red always feared that, in a world with magic, it wouldn’t be long before vampires terrorized the city. "Keep him quiet," Red says as they enter the junkyard.
Pulling the sack off of his head, Red introduces the team to the newest recruit. "Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Gus Winston the Third," Red says.
As Red tells the team not to crowd around the new guy, Mr. Winston demands to know what's going on. Pulling him aside, Red tells him about the team, and himself, also his acceptance to the most prestigious superhero team in all of Bainbridge.
After a few moments, Gus figures out what is going on, and explains to the team what happened. "The person you want is my grandson, Gus Winston the Third." Gus says. "He joined some group of heroes this morning- I think they were called The Insiders or Out…"
The Red Rider grabs Gus to stop him from talking. Seeing the look of anger on Power Fist's face, he tries to spin this mistake to the team. "Wait, did you guys want that kid from the news?" Red asks, laughing. "We came out to get the real star of the show: the man who taught the kid everything he knows, the real star, old man Gus."
Taking Gus to Justice Shack to find out more about their new recruit, The Rider finds out that he is a Korean war vet, and has no powers.
"My wife, indeed, got powers a few years ago while taking my grandson to the park. The particle accelerator blew in a lab somewhere, and they got powers. Not me," Gus says.
Before Red has time to think, Makko knocks on the door of the shack. "Sorry to bother you. but the newspaper is out here. Also, the cops, sooo…" Makko informs.
Thinking fast, Red pulls out old man Gus's hearing aid, before leading him outside to a quickly made stage with a mic. "Hello! I'm glad you're all here to welcome our newest member: Oldman Gus. This is the No-Sider's senior crime-fighting initiative," Red says. "Unlike other teams who pretend To care about justice, and think bats are scary, the No Siders are committed to helping this community," he says.
After a few minutes of talking up his team, and down-talking all of the others, Red's speech comes to an end.
As the noise dies down, the police pull Red and Gus to the side to ask about the abduction.
"Kidnapped? Are you insane?! It's a No Siders tradition to take the recruit against his or her will, you see," Red says.
"What about the six red lights you ran? And his bloody nose?” Officer Jones asks.
"A funny prank that got out of hand officer. Isn't that right, Gus?" If all would go well, Oldman Gus would agree.
"He's lying!" Mrs. Winston yells. "Tell them, Gus, tell us what these lunatics did." She instructs.
As the rest of the team sweat, and prepare for life in the big house, The Rider just smiles, and points to Gus. "Go ahead tell them the truth." The Rider winks.
Oldman Gus steps up, saying, smiling shyly, "I indeed begged them to make me a member, then I forgot about my request because I'm old, and forgetful. Sorry to worry everyone. Forgive me, honey."
As the crowd, and police, begin to disperse, Officer Jones walks up to Red, and gives him six tickets. "One for each light you ran." He makes it clear that, if anyone was living, or congregating at the junkyard, the health inspector would shut this place down.
"It's just where we park our van, you understand?" Red says.
Rolling his eyes, Officer Jones gets back into his squad car, and leaves.
After a week of keeping a low profile, the No Siders decide to patrol the streets. Red Rider and Makko abduct Oldman Gus, and the team drives into the heart of the city.
Power Fist and Makko are sent to patrol on the top of a bank, while Metal Mouth and Alonzo patrol the docks. Red takes Oldman Gus, and heads to the local Best Buy.
After waiting for over an hour, Power Fist decides to take the bus home, but just as she's about to leave, a huge explosion rocks the bank.
As three men exit the bank, each one wearing a mask, and holding a gun, Power Fist and Makko jump off of the bank, and attack the robbers.
Makko opens his mouth, and swallows a man whole, while Power Fist uses her powers to launch her gauntlet into the air, and, like heat-seeking missiles, the metal fists each take out one of the remaining robbers.
As Power Fist and Mako are celebrating, Makko farts loudly. Power Fist laughs, but as she is laughing, Makko shits himself. Instead of shit, purple slime exits his ass, and begins to take the shape of a man.
Standing before Makko and Power Fist is the bank robber whom Makko ate. The bank robber laughs, and asks, "What's wrong? Upset stomach?"
Makko can't believe what he's seeing. No one has ever used superpowers to rob a bank before. Most superpowered people choose to be heroes, and the few villains who exist don't waste their time robbing banks, they run criminal gangs which sell drugs, or extort local businesses.
Makko doesn't waste time trying to figure out this crook's motivation, he simply attacks, and tries to subdue the man.
Power Fist fires her gauntlets at the man, only for him to melt like an ice cream cone on a hot day.
The man whom Makko calls Melting Man moves around the ground like water, and enters the mouth of one of his fallen friends. Power Fist and Makko watches as the dead man rises, and vomits his friend out of his mouth.
As the dead man stands up, he emits a red aura, and fires red beams from his hands.
Makko hides while Power Fist fires her gauntlets at him.
The last bank robber splits in two, then splits himself again, and again until there are over one hundred of them walking around.
Looking out of the corner of her eye, Power Fist can see the three bank robbers escaping in their van.
As the one hundred clones attack them, Makko begins eating them, one after the other, and Power Fist flies up into the air, and comes crashing down to the ground, sending shockwaves all throughout the city.

***

While Alonzo is searching the docks, Metal Mouth is distracted by his reflection. Alonzo yells at him to pay attention, and the rusty, old robot turns to Alonzo, and asks what they're looking for. "If I knew, I'd tell you. Now, stop looking at yourself, and pay attention to what we're doing." Alonzo says.
As they get closer to a large boat called Free At Last, Alonzo sees a man sitting on the boat holding a human head. "Metal Mouth, get this guy!" Alonzo commands. But, as he turns around, Alonzo finds that Metal Mouth isn't behind him. Instead, he sees three men. One of the men is on fire, his entire body engulfed in flames, yet he smiles at Alonzo. The second man has no arms, or legs, yet he stands up as if on his feet. The last man turns into a fly and disappears.
Alonzo is glad that he doesn't have to fight three men. He just wishes that the other two would turn into cats.
Choosing the weaker of the two men in front of him, Alonzo decides to fight the man with no arms. As he runs towards him, though, a huge gust of wind blasts him in the face, and Alonzo is taken off of his feet.
The man with no arms then turns towards the man on fire, and blasts him with wind, the flaming man exploding into a ball of fire.
As the boats, and the dock which they’re standing on, catch on fire, Alonzo spots Metal Mouth on the Free At Last, and jumps onto the boat.
Alonzo punches the man holding the human head, but finds that the man is a hologram.
Making his way to Metal Mouth, Alonzo sees that his heart is missing. The heart-shaped computer chip is what keeps Metal Mouth alive.
Alonzo looks around the ship, trying to find the heart, but he's unable to. As the hologram looks on, Alonzo pulls some parts out from the boat, and jerry-rigs Metal Mouth a new heart.
"That's good work, young man. And I should know; I am a genius. They call me The Know It All, and my two friends are Hot Fire, and Windbag. I hope you four will get to know each other well,” the hologram says.
As he disappears, Hot Fire, and Windbag, jump onto the boat, and attack Metal Mouth, while Alonzo hides in the lifeboat as Metal Mouth tries to deal with them.
Metal Mouth turns his hands into a fire extinguisher, and blasts Hot Fire in the face.
Windbag blows a frosty wind from where his arms would be, and freezes Metal Mouth's arm, stopping him from defeating Hot Fire.
Alonzo, unsure as to what to do, thinks quickly, and pulls Metal Mouth into the lifeboat, and the two proceed to row away from the villains as fast as they can.

***

The Red Rider and Oldman Gus shop at the local Best Buy. As Gus wanders off, Red looks at the new, big screen T.V.s. "Is 75 inches the biggest size you have for T.V.s?" Red asks.
After being told that Oldman Gus is in the parking lot, trying to get into other peoples’ cars, Red is asked to leave the store. Walking into the parking lot, Red sees the old man hopping into a strange car. Heading over, Red Rider is stopped by two men who look like muggers. Red shakes his head, and tells the men to leave him alone.
"But we just want to talk to you." One of the muggers says.
As Red tries to walk past them, one of the men punches him with a stone fist, and the other grows to sixty-five feet. Picking up the car which Oldman Gus is sitting in, the giant mugger throws it at Red.
As the car is about to hit him, Red begins to vibrate, slows down time, and the car stands still, allowing Red to pull Oldman Gus out, and to the ground.
As the car sails over their heads, Oldman Gus and Red Rider cling to the ground in hopes of not being hit by it before they run into the Best Buy to hide. As they flee, Red looks up, and sees the League of Heroes.
As Tiger Man and his team: Lucky Lady, Speed Demon, Castle Man, and Mr. Invincible arrive to stop the two muggers, Red joins the fight to try and get some attention for his team.
As Tiger Man attacks the man with the stone fists, Red begins to chat up Lucky Lady. Speed Demon runs around the giant's legs, tying him up with some rope, while Castle Man punches the giant with his massive stone fists. Mr. Invincible uses his laser eyes to burn the giant, and as the giant swats at him, Mr. Invincible charges into him headfirst, knocking the giant over.
As both Castle man and Mr. Invincible pound the giant, Tiger man claws the stone-fisted mugger across the stomach. Speed Demon and Lucky Lady try to help protect civilians from the fight, while Red waits for his moment to strike.
The mugger with the stone hands shows Tiger Man that his entire body is made of stone.
As the media arrives, Red Rider sees his chance to be famous. Grabbing some quarters from a homeless man's hat, Red rushes to Tiger Man's side, and begins to vibrate until he's moving so fast that he turns invisible, throwing the coins at the stone man's chest, which sets them ablaze, the flaming coins bursting into the stone man’s chest, and knocking him unconscious.
After knocking out both of the muggers, the League of Heroes gives an interview, and Red stands over the unconscious giant, yelling to Tiger Man about how he just saved his life.

***

In a dark cave under the city of Bainbridge, The Know It All wakes up six of his clones to help him to build his supercomputer.
The brown-skinned Know-it-all uses his intelligence, and engineering skills to build his computer. Using the heart which he stole from Metal Mouth, the Know It All finishes building his computer Brain drain.
"I am Brain Drain. How can I help you?" The computer says.
The Know It All orders his new minion to kill the clones which he's woken up, and then to make him something to eat.
Brain Drain gives him a sideways look from his screen before sending his drone to kill the Know It All clones, and connecting to the fridge to make him a sandwich.
As the Know It All sleeps, Brain Drain sends a few of his drones outside of the cave to spy for him. One of Brain Drain's drones reaches the town of Highland Hills where it attaches to the car of Mike Luis, the star quarterback of the Highland Hills football team.
As the drone attaches itself to the car, it begins to drill into the gas tank, and, after a few miles, Mike's car dies.
Calling his father for help, Mike is told by his father that he's busy with a superhero emergency. Mike is furious, and he walks to a gas station two miles away.
As he walks in silence, the moon is blocked out by what he believes is a swarm of Locusts. Mike runs from the swarm until they are on top of him.
As the swarm of drones attaches themselves to Mike's body, he screams in pain as the little robots drill into his skin, and inject him with Nanobots. With hundreds of drones augmenting his body, Mike is helpless to stop the changes happening.
Back in the city, the Know It All is using his new computer to plan a robbery. "Brain Drain, please track police locations for the next three nights," the Know It All instructs.
The next night, the Know It All puts his plan into action. Injecting a few of his cronies with a superhuman serum, the Know It All sends them out to rob six banks at the same time. His lead crony, Whiplash, is mutated into a man with whips for hands, the metal whips made of a strange blue metal.
The rest of the Know It All's cronies have six arms, and wear gold armor which seems to have melted into their skin.

***

Sitting in the junkyard, the No Siders read the paper. As Red Rider shows off the picture of him in the paper, Power Fist and the others aren’t impressed by his feat of strength.
Makko sits by Power Fist. The boy in his human form looks like your typical, Hawaiian surfer.
Power Fist ignores him as she tries to get her uncle to listen to what she thinks is going on. "I think this is some kind of attack by that Know It All guy. If we want to stop him, we have to find his hideout," Power Fist says.
As the two argue, an explosion rocks the ground beneath their feet.
The No Siders run to the Justice Van, Alonzo driving as the team jumps in, the van heading to the center of the explosion.
They arrive just in time to watch the League of Heroes being killed by a group of bank robbers. The bank robbers all have six arms, and gold armor. They don't wear helmets, and their arms are exposed, as well.
The six-armed robbers repeatedly beat down the superheroes. Lucky Lady and Tiger Man are almost to the point of death by the time that Red Rider and the rest of the No Siders arrive on the scene.
Red-Rider orders Makko and Power Fist to help Lucky Lady and Tiger Man, while Metal Mouth and Alonzo help Speed Demon and Castle Man. The giant Castle Man is under attack from a man with whips for fists.
Alonzo calls the man with whips for hands The Whipper, and he hides behind a car while waiting for Metal Mouth to deal with the robbers.
Metal mouth grabs one of the man's whips, and pulls him towards the ground, trying to disarm him. Tt's only after knocking the man to the ground that Metal Mouth learns that the whips are attached to him. Before he can react, a six-armed goon punches him in the head, knocking him twenty feet away from the whipper.
A strange shadow watches over the battle from one of the rooftops. Red thinks that he can see the shadow from where he's standing, but then a fist twice the size of his head comes straight at him.
Red slows down time, and dodges the fist, but once he looks at whose fist it is, he’s shocked, seeing a blind Castle Man stumbling around, punching at everything in front of him.
Red Rider thinks fast, and orders Power Fist to attack Castle Man from behind. He then heads towards the Whipper, and, vibrating his hands, he cuts off the Whipper's whips. He sees Power Fist coming his way with Castle Man, and he electrocutes the whips using the power lines above his head.
As castle man runs through the whips, he's electrocuted, and collapses to the ground.
It takes the No Siders only half an hour to deal with the robbers. Makko and Power Fist make a good team as they deal with the final robber.
The No Siders return the money to the bank, and the Know It All watches them on the TV. "Looks like I'll have to try harder to take over the city," he says.

***

Three weeks after their battle with the six-armed, golden goon squad, the League of Heroes are still out of commission. Groups like the Teenage Titians, and the Duck Squad, are taking on more responsibility for the city's safety. Red Rider and the No Siders spend their time trying to track down The Know It All.
Power Fist and Makko meet up with a new hero in town called Toilet King: a man who has the power to shrink down, and breathe underwater. He can travel around in pipes, and usually climbs up and out of peoples’ toilets.
Toilet King stands at six feet tall in blue spandex with a red and gold toilet on his chest, and a crown on his head. The balding forty-something-year-old man has his eyes covered by a blue mask. "What can I do for you, kids?" Toilet King asks.
"We're members of the No Siders, and our leader, Red Rider, sent us to speak with you about something important," Power Fist says.
Toilet King and Power Fist sit at a table in front of a diner as Makko stands guard over the table, looking out for any signs of danger, though, when Makko spots a fish, and some old meat in a trash can across the street, he leaves to get it.
The meat and fish are chewy, but the fish head tastes great. As he is eating, Makko sees a spaceship overhead. Its glowing lights and tractor beam begin to release dozens of child-sized green men with squid heads, and circular mouths with razor-sharp teeth. The little aliens wear silver Lycra-like clothes, and they fire laser guns twice their size at buildings, and shops, causing them to disintegrate.
Power-Fist and Toilet King rush to the defense of the denizens of Bainbridge, while Makko finishes stuffing his face with fish and rotten meat before running to Power Fist's side.
The aliens demand to be taken to the city's leader. They use a translator box attached to their necks to communicate their wishes.
As she sends one of her gauntlets at a gang of aliens who are grouped together, Power Fist tells the alien leader that, if he wishes to speak with someone in charge, he'll need to stop attacking the city, and wait for the mayor to come and speak with him.
"Mayor? I wish to speak to Queen Felicity Porter, ruler of the University of New York,” the alien leader says.
"Do you mean New York University?" Power Fist asks.
The little green man becomes enraged, and demands to be taken to Queen Felicity.
As he turns around to point to his many soldiers, the little alien doesn’t see his men anywhere. As he calls for his men to respond to him, Makko throws up a glowing arm with a beeping white light on his wrist which seems to be some kind of communicator.
Seeing the hulking shark man standing over him, the little alien surrenders, and begs for help, telling Power Fist to save him from the monster.
"What's your name, green guy?" She asks.
"My name is Allvier. I come from a world where men and women have long since decided to just be friends, and I was cast out of my world after hitting on a girl in my year. It is my hope that Queen Felicity can convince my people to allow me to return to my world," Allvier says.
Power Fist calls her uncle, and asks him if he knows a woman named Felicity Porter.
"You talking about the woman from the TV show Felicity?" Red Rider asks.
Power Fist is curious how her uncle Tomás knows anything about the show Felicity, and he explains that it was all which he watched in prison in the late 90s, and early 2000s.
Power Fist tells Makko to get the Justice Van, and to drive her to Best Buy. She asks Allvier if he wants to come with her in her van, and he says yes.
The spaceships overhead all return to space, and Power Fist asks Alliver why his ship is leaving. "That ship wasn’t mine. It was just dropping me off. My ship will arrive in twelve lunar cycles," he says.
Makko wants to ask what a lunar cycle is, but, instead, he decides to focus on driving.
Power Fist checks the glove box, and finds her uncle's knife, and a small handgun, as well as a map of Area 51. Pocketing the map, Power Fist puts the knife and gun back in the glove box before the car reaches Best Buy.
The three of them head into the store, and look for some DVDs.
Makko finds the DVD section, walks back to his friends, and tells them he's found what they’re looking for.
Power Fist, who finds a DVD of Felicity, shows it to Alliver, and tells him they are going to buy it, as well as a few other things.
Power Fist grabs Game of Thrones, seasons 1-8, all five seasons of Breaking Bad, and a show called Outlander, seasons 1-7, and she pays using her uncle's credit card, and to make sure he doesn’t suspect anything, she heads to the liquor store, and get three bottles of vodka, some batteries, and a box of regular-sized condoms with the word Magnum printed on them.
Returning home to the junkyard, Power Fist and Makko introduce their new friend to the team.
Alliver is able to outfit the van with a device which can make it move at twice its normal speed.
Alonzo, who is the team's builder, and repairman, isn't impressed by the little green man. He demands for the Martian to show his work, and teach him how to use the alien tech.
"Of course, my new friend. I will happily teach you my ways,” Alliver says.
Red Rider pulls Alonzo to the side, and tells him to relax. "We aren’t going to replace you. I mean, you let us sleep in your junkyard for free. Also, you have my Superman fan club ring, so you're not going anywhere until I get it back. Understand?" Red tells him with a smile.

I read this book called "Science Of Regeneration: Physiological Methods Of Male And Female Regeneration (1955)", which is based on scientific experiments/ discoveries made by scientists which confirmed my initial conviction that OLD AGE is brought by indulging in sexual activity of any kind. Any serious person who follows SR should get this book which will motivate you to stay on this path. At the bottom are some highlighted passages from that book confirming that the depletion of sex hormones in the human body triggers the body to age and that strict preservation of sex hormones through STRICT absolute chastity, which includes NO SEX, NO MASTURBATION, NO WET DREAMS, NO RELEASE OF ANY KIND is key to regenerate the human body in both men and women and restore youth. Many people on this subreddit probably already read my comments where I explained how Semen Retention cured my diabetes and high blood pressure and How I helped 3 other men REVERSE their diabetes using SR alone. After seeing the mind-boggling effects of SR and how it has transformed my health entirely solely from abstaining from sexual activities of any kind and HOW that same effect of diabetes reversal could be reproduced in 3 other men who used the same method, I became MORE AND MORE convinced that humans age due to the fact that they are in CONSTANT reproduction mode instead of being in a "repair and maintenance mode" as explained by the "Disposable soma theord of aging" Below are 2 links of the testimonies of the guys I helped recover from diabetes via SR
https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?threads/did-anyone-develop-high-blood-sugar-diabetes-because-of-excessive-masturbation-please-help.111725/page-39#post-3622533 https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?threads/did-anyone-develop-high-blood-sugar-diabetes-because-of-excessive-masturbation-please-help.111725/page-6#post-1620157
The reason why Diabetes is cured when you are on a long-term SR streak is because of the cultivation of semen through spermatogenesis. When semen is not ejaculated for a period of 70 t0 90 days, it gets re-absorbed in the body, when those mature sperm cells are re-absorbed during the process of spermatogenesis, they are turned into STEM CELLS. Mature sperm cells are STEM CELLS, these stem cells can become ANY cell in the body (heart, liver, brain, pancreas etc.) Dead beta cells producing insulin in the pancreas can be regenerated by SPERM STEM CELLS and scientists have started to discover that SPERM STEM CELLS can ACTUALLY cure diabetes, here are 2 links on sperm stem cells being able to cure diabetes:
https://www.science.org/content/article/sperm-may-hold-cure-diabetes https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2010/dec/sperm-stem-cells-could-provide-diabetes-treatment-97695461.html
Not only was I able to reverse diabetes and reproduced the same effect in 3 other guys with the same disease, I discovered HOW important MENTAL CELIBACY/STRICT ABSTENTION FROM LUSTFUL THOUGHTS is important in this process. You lose lifeforce energy whenever you engage in lustful thoughts. Ejaculation is the manifestation of lifeforce energy that got denser and denser as it moved down to your sacral chakra resulting in an erection. When I strictly abstain from SEXUAL THOUGHTS, I can see my MALE PATTERN BALDNESS reversing and my hair regrowing and when I sometimes entertain sexual thoughts without even releasing, these hair growth effects and regeneration phenomena are very weak. I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT BELIEVE IN KAREZZA. The hormones that damage your hair follicles are activated by arousal alone, you don't have to ejaculate for that to open, entertain sexual thoughts will make you ball and AGE you as well even if you don't ejaculate.
I can track all my life miseries and misfortunes to the very first time I started ejaculating at 15 years old seriously, everything that's wrong in my life can be traced back to when I started masturbating and ejaculating. I was a VERY VERY bright kid in school, always among the top 3 students of my class until I discovered ejaculation and masturbation. Reversal of diabetes, blood pressure and male pattern baldness led me to believe that SR is not just a practice for generating energy, it goes way beyond that. I'm starting to FIRMLY believe that the forbidden fruit that is mentioned in the bible had to do with SEX. It was not an apple like depicted in many religions, it was the act of sex/lust.
That book mentioned above even goes on to say that the activation of the PINEAL GLAND ( ALSO KNOWN AS YOUR THIRD EYE) can also be achieved through continence/chastity and will help the retainer realize his true spiritual nature.
I am not sure if you guys are aware of the practice of "Astral Projection", the ability to get out of your own body at will and explore the astral plane. The astral projection subreddit has over 317K members and many people who successfully astral project have shared the fact that they could ONLY achieve astral projection through the practice of "SEMEN RETENTION", so SR goes beyond the physical. The ability of astral travelling is 100% linked to your sexual energy. We have dormant supernatural powers that were deactivated most likely after the FALL of man (Lust and pursuing sex)
https://www.reddit.com/AstralProjection/comments/2bsqxw/males_conserve_sexual_energy_semen_to_achieve/ https://www.reddit.com/Semenretention/comments/hfnzp7/the_link_between_semen_retention_and_astral/
My message is this one, if you have ANY DISEASE, please give SR a try, but practice it with mental celibacy- DO NOT ENTERTAIN SEXUAL THOUGHTS. This message is dedicated to the many young men out there suffering from bad health and depression, there's hope .. Give SR a try. Get on a strict streak of 5 years and you'll be brand new!
https://preview.redd.it/nguqf0erz03d1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d49f645c0548f4c4e35f5ef608afd870833b232d
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https://preview.redd.it/rees51erz03d1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9c268a4e54f1fa9648cc4da6ee9795d7a2c56831

I’m wondering if I should be concerned about the counselor my mom is going to. I sent this letter to my parents at the end of last year, and I think I spelled it out pretty clearly. There are three of us kids and we are all no-contact with our parents currently, for a plethora of reasons.
This is what I wrote (long read, sorry, years of trauma):
Mom and Dad,
I don’t even know where to begin with this letter. There are so many things that I’ve been wanting to say to you for so long, but you’re not here, and you haven’t been. And who knows when you’ll be back.
You’ve known for years now how much pain all three of your children have been in. I’ve just barely been able to hold back the decades worth of emotional anguish and disappointment I have had over our relationship, and now I’ve literally lost all hope. I have no reason to have any faith in you. You’ve made your priorities crystal clear, and your kids aren’t included. Actions speak louder than words and all you’ve given us is lip service. Knowing that makes it a little easier to move on.
I feel like I’ve been used. I was happy to be as supportive as I could when you needed help earlier this year, even knowing things between us aren't good. But go figure, as soon as you get what you want, you’re out of here. Again. Your kids have been asking you, begging you for one thing and one thing only. We don’t want gifts, we don’t want your money, we don’t want your well wishes. We only want you to get some counseling. One SIMPLE thing- that's all we want and all we’ve been asking for. We don’t want to try to summarize how our families have been and what’s been going on in our lives over text messages while you’re decidedly absent from them. You’ve made it clear that you don’t care about working on your relationships with us, it’s easier to keep us at arm’s length. You’ve raised a completely dysfunctional family, and you’re the only ones who have shown no interest in taking seriously trying to repair it. I’m just still so amazed that you keep asking to be kept in the loop about what’s going on with us.
In trying to establish healthy boundaries with you, I hate feeling like I’m treating you the way that you have treated me in the past. You know, you were about my age now when you gave a teenaged me three days to completely remove myself from your lives and what I thought was my home. You cut me out like a cancer, and we all know that you were glad for me to be gone. I wasn’t your problem anymore. I’d love to see how well either of you would land on your feet if you were given three days to find a new place to live while having no vehicle, no money nor income of any kind, no family support and nothing to offer in return. Knowing that at the end of those three days anything you weren’t able to move would be left out on the porch in the rainy winter to be ruined. And add to all of that, you have absolutely no experience with what’s required to be an adult because your parents didn’t take the time to prepare you. What it’s like to have to find a roommate (which neither of you have any experience with but felt completely justified judging me for taking literally the only option available to me aside from homelessness). And you didn’t just kick me out, you literally told me that you would never call me or come to visit me or support me in any way, hell you didn’t even know where I lived or how to get a hold of me! You didn’t care what a vulnerable, dangerous position you were throwing me into and then you punished me on top of it. You know nothing of what my life was like during that time, the repeated traumas I went through, the depression, the unsafe living situations, getting sued by a landlord, how closely and how many times I considered suicide. You made me feel like I was so toxic to the family that I worried that my siblings’ continued relationships with me sullied your view of them. I realize how incredibly lucky I am that I had someone as supportive and loving as [now, husband] to keep me going. Because if I didn’t have him to look forward to seeing I don’t know that I’d still be around. And you both treated him like shit. Right from the start you were so embarrassingly icy cold to him any time he was around.
You don’t know what it’s like to be raised by parents who were so openly hostile and resentful of their own children. You made it so clear what a burden we were to you. Our friends were uncomfortable and didn’t want to come back after seeing what our house was like. I wonder how much you even remember the general day-to-day hostility you displayed to us. Do you remember repeatedly threatening to give us up for adoption (I’m sure you don’t know how each of us unanimously felt like we’d have a higher likelihood of ending up with parents who might actually want us around)? Or how easily the negativity, shouting, anger, and complaints about us came rolling out of your lips but being encouraging and supportive were like a foreign language to you. I wasn’t even a teenager yet when I felt like I didn’t deserve to be loved by my own parents.
Mom, I remember you telling me about a painful incident you had with your grandpa when he was staying with you and your family. You recalled how much it hurt both physically and emotionally when he flicked you in the head over not doing a chore he told you to do. You told me that Gramma made the conscientious decision to marry a man that was the complete opposite of her father. And you went and married one just like him. Imagine if instead of being raised by your parents, you were raised by some that treated you like your grandpa did. Being flicked in the head, put down, insulted, mocked, spanked- not just with hands but with a belt, and a spoon- often and repeatedly. Sometimes with our pants and underwear pulled down. Do you remember how many wooden spoons you broke on our bodies? How hard and how many times do you have to hit a kid with a wooden spoon before it breaks? If I did that to you, I could RIGHTFULLY be arrested for assault. I still remember the shapes of the spoons and how each part felt hitting my body, and there were certain ones that I feared more than others. Did your parents ever hit you with objects? Did you feel like you were driving the point home more the harder you hit? The more impact, the better we learn our lesson. Guess what? You don’t have to hurt kids to get them to understand something. And when you hit your kids you only teach them to fear you and what you’ll do to them.
Do you know what it feels like to be continually punished? Do you know how easily children will internalize what a bad person they think they are when they experience prolonged majority negative feedback? For most of my life, I thought that I was such a bad kid because of the way that you treated me. I was always in trouble for one thing or another, I didn’t have a single report card that didn’t include at least one D or F, so I was always on restriction. From 6th grade until I ran away when I was 17, the only time that I wasn’t on restriction was during the summer. And aside from being there to punish us at the end of the semester, what could we count on you to do to help us when we needed it? “Next commercial,” or, “after this is over,”. And you’d usually forget about it unless we were there to keep pestering you. We could count on not being able to count on you. And after a while you start to wonder why you should even keep trying if there’s no one there to help you but you obviously can’t do it on your own.
I thought we were lazy kids because that’s what you regularly called us and how you treated us. But aside from going to school M-F (and taking care of our own breakfasts and lunches if we wanted to eat, as well as being responsible for getting ourselves to and from school), mandatory church on Sundays (and for a long time Wednesday nights), taking care of the family pets, being responsible for all of the family’s dishes every night, having constant chores and being responsible for keeping the house clean each week, having to be involved in 4H even though not a single one of us wanted to, doing our own laundry, and each of us having at least several jobs under our belts before even starting high school, we didn’t have time to be lazy!
I thought we were ungrateful and selfish because you made sure to constantly remind us of how thankful we should have been because you put a roof over our heads, and fed and clothed us. Never mind that that’s literally the bare minimum that parents are expected and required to do for their children. But instead, you made sure to continually remind us, as if you were bending over backwards to help us.
We were constantly reminded that, “this isn’t your bedroom, it’s mine and I’m letting you use it,” or, “that bed isn’t yours, it’s mine and I’m just allowing you to sleep on it,” or, “those aren’t your clothes, they’re mine because I paid for them.” When we lived in Boise, us kids were so excited when you said that we’d start getting paid for our chores. And there was a whole sheet of what each chore was worth, so we got to work knocking out chores and thinking we were working towards earning money. Nope. I don’t know how much each of us had earned before you let us know that you weren’t going to pay us after all, and we just went back to the old system of us doing it for free. And even though it’s not the lesson that you sought out to teach us, we learned some very important life lessons at an earlier age than a lot of kids: it doesn’t matter how hard you work for something, sometimes people just take advantage of you when they know you’re in a position to do nothing about it. And sometimes those people will be your own parents.
Mom, one of your favorite go-to moves was using your parents and even my hypothetical, unborn, future child against me. I don’t know how many times you would play that card on me! I lost track of how many times I was told, “I NEVER would have spoken to my parents with such disrespect,” or, “I never would have treated my parents this way!” Well of course you wouldn’t! Because you were raised by completely different parents who never would have treated you or your siblings the way that you’ve treated us. Your parents were supportive of you! They took an interest in your future and happiness and wanted to do what they could to help you achieve your goals. What’s that like? You don’t know what it feels like to be raised under a microscope and have little to no autonomy or control over your life, even down to having the hot water on your showers timed. You don’t know what it’s like to be raised by parents who only seem to take an interest in you when it’s to punish you or tell you how much you’re fucking up.
You have had our family wound up so tight that I’m amazed it didn’t snap well before now. We were raised in an icy cold household, and I know that you both know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s never been a warm home wherever you’ve lived because it comes dripping in cold judgment from two people who distract themselves from their dysfunctional marriage where they can’t even talk to each other about important things, by finding the fault in everyone else around them.
You have not been here for us kids for a long time, and we’ve gotten used to that feeling. Your eldest child has lived one state over for over A DECADE, and not once have you taken it upon yourselves to go see her because you want to see how she’s doing. No, she’s “living in sin,” though, right? I’m sure you yourselves and everyone on the list of people who you do visit is definitely “sin free.” You’re hypocrites. And in my opinion, your sins are far worse.
And even when I lived in Texas, I lived alone! That didn’t matter. You weren’t coming to visit me. Hell, you didn’t even call to see how I was doing! It broke my heart when I realized that all of our phone calls were initiated by me. You never even bothered. You don’t know how many times I cried to [sister] over the phone over how abandoned and forgotten I felt by you guys. I would have loved if you had ever even expressed an interest in coming to visit me. I lived there for 5 and a half years. At one point I decided to see how long it would take you guys to call me on your own volition. Wanna guess how you did (because it threw me into a spiral knowing how little you thought about me)?
It’s not a good feeling to mourn the parents you never had. I’ve been mourning you both for so long now and it’s really torn me apart. I wish that you guys wanted to be here for us. I’ve only barely scratched the surface with what I’ve mentioned here in this letter. There’s more. I’ve been having a difficult time processing it all and feeling like I’m stuck in limbo until you both start getting yourselves to a place where you can hear these and even more difficult truths, and be able to listen and process in a healthy manner. You both have to learn how to be able to talk to each other, as well. I’m sometimes amazed at how little you feel comfortable talking to each other about certain things. You need to get yourselves and your marriage in order and you both know you can’t do it alone. Don’t substitute an actual licensed marriage counselor who went to school and earned a degree in how best to help people in your situation, for someone in your church who is trying to supplement something "similar." They are not equivalent and you need lots of help. Same goes for each of you getting individual counseling as well. Please take this seriously. If you can’t find it in yourselves to do it for your kids, do it for yourselves and each other at least.
We've been patient, more patient with you than you were with us. You've had almost two years now and we're tired of waiting. You wouldn't have shown us this much patience if we were in your shoes, nor would you keep spelling it out for us over and over again in hopes that one day we'd finally understand. You would have lost your patience long ago and not felt bad about not looking back.
You both have so much to learn about love and forgiveness and healthy relationships but are seemingly unwilling to even take the first step. You’ve shown us how conditional and toxic your love is. [Brother] and I saw how easily you wrote off [sister] when she pulled away. You didn’t even try, and you don’t seem to care. I don’t know how you could possibly feel that way towards your own child. For all the fighting you’ve done with your family, you don’t have a clue how to fight to save it.
Feel free to share this letter with your counselors if you’re still having trouble knowing where to start. If you want, you can feel free to talk to them about how you reacted when I told you that I tried to kill myself in 7th grade. I wasn’t expecting to get laughed at in response and told how my method could use some improvement for the next time. You can talk to them about me running away from you to live with an abusive boyfriend, because he was easier to deal with. You can talk about how you lied to my face to get me in the vehicle with you, and continued to lie to me when you kidnapped me and took me to Canada. I was trusting you. I was trying to show you how much I was willing to compromise with you to work on our relationship, and you lied and took advantage of my trust in you. I almost hitchhiked home, Mom. From Canada!!! 17-year-old, 90 pounds me, hitchhiking home alone from another country. That’s putting a lot of faith in a lot of strangers not to do the wrong thing. I was planning it out, it was my next step. And I actually almost went through with it while you were in the shower, too. It scares the hell out of me to think about now as a mother to a young daughter. And in the span of about a year and a half from that trip, you guys followed it up by giving me a ridiculous three days to be out of your lives. Talk about mixed messaging. No wonder my head is all fucked up on the inside. You guys don’t even know the half of it.
I’d really like for you to do something more than just “praying” about it, because I honestly doubt you’ve even been doing that. And even if you have, so far, it's been pretty worthless to our relationship. Nothing is going to change if you aren’t willing to back it up with some actual action. I don’t even know if I truly believe you when you say that you’re Christians, because it kind of seems like you just use religion as a convenient tool and weapon to get your way and skirt any responsibility.
I don't want to hear anything from you unless and until you've been regularly going to counseling and actually making some progress. Your counselors will be a good resource to ask them when they think it might be a good time to reestablish contact, if you decide you still want to. This is the bare minimum we need from you. If you aren't willing to go to counseling and see how much it can help you, we cannot have a relationship. This is non-negotiable and I absolutely will not budge on my stance. We're really not asking much at all, just get some counseling.
I know this is painful, but please don’t delete this email. I’d like you to be able to refer back to it any time that you need to, and as I mentioned above, I think it would be a good resource to share with your counselors.

Sorry, this got so long, that seems to happen when I write a DD. I wanted to get this out last week, but it kept growing. I’ll try and answer questions, but I also kind of need a break.
THE DEADPOOL THEORY: TWO POOLS
None of this is financial advice. I’m just a stranger on the internet. Please do your own research.
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SUMMARY
I did a deep dive into the rules a year or so ago and wrote a long DD. I think it’s still relevant.
Options are most likely not used as locates for naked shorting. ETFs are the likely culprit. Bullet Swaps would likely be used for insurance or leverage, I don’t think they’re as important as some people think – they are scary as fuck though.
You need at least two parties to naked short. A Market Maker and a Hedge Fund. Market Maker pulls naked shares out of ETFs for Hedge Fund to naked short. Market Maker insures with Futures Contract or Options (probably LEAPS).
That insurance means that if the Market Maker sends X naked shares to the Hedge Fund then the Market Maker also bought enough contracts to buy X numbers of shares from the Hedge Fund on or possibly by some date far in the future. MMs practice CYA!
SEC: Where are the shares?
MM: I don’t know! I definitely sold this Hedge Fund real shares a long time ago. I have a contract for shares back and he doesn’t seem to have any. Isn’t that crazy?!
SEC: Yeah… Are you hiring?
Two Pools Theory is based around the idea that Naked Shorters likely have many reasons to naked short to one another and could potentially naked short large amounts of naked shares through the market to one another in a desperate time of need. Naked shorters didn’t get this far on wall street by trusting others – sell some naked shorts to your “buddy”, and you also get a contract that your “buddy” owes you those “shares” back at some point. CYA!
Too bad it’s impossible to CYA when you’re naked shorting. Duh. “Smart Money” my ass.
I call the pool of naked shares that naked shorters might be holding the deadpool. Maybe superstonk can come up with something better.
If the naked shorters built a huge pool of naked shares between themselves (the deadpool), a large portion of it in 2021, then how many of those naked shares have been closed/rolled? Is it possible the expiration date of some of those naked shorts was based around a witching date/LEAP date roughly three years in the future?
And my biggest question of all, if naked shorters could delay delivery of naked shorts to one another three years into the future, could they also delay the splividend to one another? What if they owe 4 shares for every 1 on a toxic mess they’re holding between themselves?
If I was a naked shorter in this situation then I’d want out. If I also knew I and every other naked shorter needed shares soon then I’d either try and buy real shares from the company or as many call options as I possibly could. GME did just sell some shares and a bunch of call options have been bought recently. Is a big expiration date coming due and someone is trying to get out?
I sadly don’t have answers to a lot of the questions I raise in this paper. I’d mostly just like you to think about these questions with me.
Now here’s another thing to think about because I’ve hyped myself up, and it’s good to stay level headed. If that’s all true, then naked shorters have also had three years to come up with a plan to survive another day.
If there’s naked shorting, then eventually DRSing will uncover it, if it fucking has to.
In the mean time, I think it’s fun to think about naked shorters building a deadpool that might be coming back to fuck them.
THE TWO POOL THEORY
This theory covers a lot and I’m hesitant to even put it out there because it could have big implications and it could also be completely wrong. It’s also based on some speculation. There’s a lot of speculation about June swirling around with LEAPS and Bullet Swaps. I haven’t seen any proof that anyone actually knows expiration dates on any bullet swaps or LEAPS that naked shorters may or may not be holding. There’s also some speculation on some rules in this write-up because I’ve been unable to find anything worthy of a citation that says naked shorters can delay delivery of a dividend to one another. I also haven’t found any citations on how splividends would work with naked shorting.
The gist of the theory is that there are two pools of naked shares. One pool is held in the hands of retail and one pool is held in the hands of the naked shorters themselves. I believe the naked shares in those pools could be handled in different ways. Naked shorting would need to be done between two parties: a Market Maker and a Hedge Fund. The Market Maker would most likely pull naked shares out of ETFs for the Hedge Fund and the Hedge Fund would then sell the naked shares into the market.
The Market Maker likely would want insurance on a risky naked shorting play. The Market Maker could enter into Futures Contracts or LEAPS with the Hedge Fund. These contracts mean on or sometimes before the expiration date the Market Maker can go to the Hedge Fund with the cash and demand shares.
Now, the obvious reason you naked short is to hopefully drive the price of a stock down, the company goes bankrupt, and you never have to buy the naked shares back. Pure profit. Sure, maybe at some point you might get found out and become an infamous slimey asshole, but you could be a rich slimey asshole! You embrace it and naked short a bunch of shares to retail investors. Asshole.
Here’s where the two pool theory comes in, you need to be the hedge fund to a market maker or the mm to a hf to naked short. Do you also naked short to your “buddy”? Your “friend”?
Hedge Fund: Why are you saying it like that?
Space Debris: Saying what what way?
Hedge Fund: “Friend” With the things. MM and I are buddies! Right, MM?
MM:
Hedge Fund: MM?
Do the MM and the HF create a naked pool between themselves? What could be the advantages of that?
Could those naked shares be used as locates for a legitimate short sale? They should look and act like real shares, right? Could they move them around in dark pools? Could they be used for margin? Again, they should look like real shares that their “buddy” sold them? Meanwhile they’re toxic garbage.
If the Stock you’re trying to crush isn’t moving, no one is buying, no one is selling, could you naked short a bunch of shares out into the market to your buddy to get the price moving down?
If everyone is buying and no one is selling, could you naked short a bunch of shares through the market to your buddy to try and drop the price?
Hedge Fund: That would get people selling, right? That would get the price dropping, right?
Plus, those shares don’t end up in the hands of bulls. They end up in your “buddies” hands. He also wants to crush this stock.
Hedge Fund: Retail is selling, right?
MM:
Hedge Fund: MM?
Now, let’s say you have a huge naked short pool in the hands of retail you have to deal with and you have a huge pool with your buddy. Which are you going to deal with first? Probably the retail pool.
So, I’m not saying you did this, but what exactly would happen if say….

• You have two monstrous naked share pools. One with retail and one pool with your naked shorting buddies

Hedge Fund: Well, I….
Space Debris: Let me fucking finish.

• On a stock of a company with potential, that’s not going bankrupt anytime soon

Hedge Fund: That’s debat….
Space Debris: Shut the fuck up

• That stock also has a large group of retail investors who have been DRSing for the past three years…

Hedge Fund: Well, then why does the price keep dropping?
Space Debris: There’s this little film from 1944 I’d like you to watch. You like Ingrid Bergman?
What would happen if say you had that huge retail pool of naked shorts that you’ve been successfully rolling for three years, but you also have a huge pool of naked shorts with your buddy that you created in a time of desperation? A time of desperation, say about three years ago?
Now, say a big part of that pool of naked shorts you have with you friend is coming due finally? You’ve been putting most or maybe all of it off just trying to tread water and roll your retail naked shorts. You’ve been crushing the price, desperately hoping retail will sell, but now you and your buddy need to roll the toxic pool you hold between yourselves. The way to roll an old naked short into a new one is by: 1. Creating a new naked share. 2. Buying a real share to close the old naked share.
If you keep reading I’ll dive into the mechanics a bit more (not as much as my old DD), but basically the Naked Shorting Market Maker will need to have special privileges (be an Authorized Participant) to rip open ETFs. The Market Maker rips open a bunch of ETFs that shouldn’t exist – which could be why you see ETFs with such high short interest and such high Failure-To-Delivers (FTDs). The MM then has a bunch of naked shares that he pulled out of the ETF and those are used to naked short the stock.
Here’s an image I want you to picture that might help. When naked shorters crush a company through naked shorts, most of the time they’re not just flushing more and more naked shorts into the market. Most of the time it’s rolling over the market in a wave. They would be closing old naked shorts as they open new ones. If a naked shorter started naked shorting against a company at $20 10 years ago then they will no longer have naked shorts opened at $20. The naked share could have been rolled at 19, 18, 17 or 15, 10, 5. In other words, a naked share was sold to Bob for $20 in the past. A real share is now bought from Suzy for $19 and sent to Bob, then a new naked share is sent to John for $19. There’s still only one naked short in the market, but the expiration date, price, and location has changed. Bob never knew he had a fake and now neither does John. The naked shorter scraped $1 off the play and is still crushing the stock. If you have a super algo that can do this for change constantly all day everyday then that change adds up very fast. Ever seen office space?
There are times where it would be beneficial to shoot out more naked shorts than you’re closing. At the beginning, possibly towards what the naked shorter hopes is the end, to get the stock moving, in a time of desperation, etc.
But now a big question I have...
A question I really wish I knew the answer to and sadly I honestly don’t. What if you delayed the delivery of a fuck ton of naked shorts to your buddy, they’re finally coming due, and there was also a split or maybe a splividend sometime in the past three years? Did you delay the delivery of the splividend shares to your “buddy”? Is that allowed?! I’m trying to find out, but the market is so fucking opaque! This seems like something that shouldn’t be allowed, but this market can also be a joke at times. Is this allowed? I’ve been trying to find it somewhere in the rules, but there are too many rules. ChatGPT said it’s allowed, but ChatGPT says a lot of crazy shit.
I need to go over that again. You’re so fucking underwater because GME is sneezing, you just spray a fucking hurricane of naked shorts at the market to crush the price, your naked shorting buddy buys up as many of your naked shorts as he can so they don’t get into retail hands. You’re also exchanging contracts far out in the future as insurance – insurance that you can buy the shares back from your “buddy” at some point. Time to crush retail. If retail doesn’t sell… and if it’s finally time to settle your deadpool with your “friend”? Has some of it been quadrupled in the past three years?
Again, I want to be clear. No one has hard evidence that there are naked shorters holding a fuck ton of LEAPS coming due in June. I also have no evidence that a split or splividend can be delayed between naked shorters. This is all a theory. It does line up nicely with the other DD I wrote over a year ago and does make some puzzle pieces fit nicely in my mind, but I also feel a bit like I’ve been smoking tinfoil and mainlining GME for years now.
So, again, don’t get too hype now….
A bigger question, the splividend is kind of weird. Does the splividend require that the deadpool be closed/rolled by buying real shares? It seems like with a split a deadpool could be closed using cash, is the splividend different?
Hedge Fund: Well… okay, but… why does the price keep dropping? You should sell… AI boom! Artificial Intelligence is here. Sure, you read a book two years ago that AGI would take 50-100 years to develop, but AGI is here! Now! I swear. Buy my AI Stocks!
A DEEPER DIVE – BACK TO THE OLD DD
A little over a year ago I wrote an 89 page DD. You probably haven’t read it. It was long and covered way too much, but there’s a lot to talk about with a stock like GME. I’m going to try and summarize my DD for you, that way you don’t need to go back through it. A lot of it is important to my theory and some of it is just interesting in my opinion. And some of it is wild cohencidences that make me feel like a conspiracy nut.
I honestly originally went on the journey to write that long DD because sometimes I felt like I was in a cult and I needed to do my own research. Fuck, I may have fell farther down the rabbit hole and I keep tumbling down. Yay!
Naked shorting has been around since markets have been around. If you have delayed delivery then it’s easy to sell something and worry about the delivery later. The stock market seemed to reach a fairly good place of stability because of rules and regulations until computers came along. Computers and algorithms have led to an insane advantage for wall street over the common retail investor. Market makers have also had special rules and have had access to different loopholes that allow for even larger delays in delivery.
I sell you 100 shares of Stock A for $10 now. If I can wait to buy then I’ll just wait until it’s cheaper. Also, remember, I have a super fast computer selling huge amounts of shares to other people too. Cheap enough for me might be $9.99. I buy for $9.99, settle my naked short with you, and now I’m selling naked shorts at $9.98. Anyone?! $9.98? I got as many as you need! (the price falls) $9.96? $9.94?
Most retail investors hold shares for less than a year. Naked shorters hate hodlers, they want to constantly be selling to new suckers at lower prices until the company goes bankrupt. They want retail investors churning through the stock in months. Shares constantly moving hands.
So, you can kind of think of naked shorting as delayed delivery. Sell high and delay delivery long enough until you can buy low. Or at the end not even buy at all. “Sorry, product is no longer available, your delivery has been canceled.”
In the past Market Makers had an exemption that made it very easy to naked short and there are some strong signs that they abused that exemption. Back in the day a Market Maker could point to an UN-EXERCISED call option as a locate. I capitalized that un-exercised part because it’s important.
WEIRD COHENCIDENCE 1 – THE OPTIONS LOOPHOLE/MADOFF/2008
So, here’s where I found some weird coincidences writing my old DD that made me really feel like I was losing my mind a bit. So, please, lose your mind along with me.

• Back in the day a Market Maker and Hedge Fund would do this naked shorting using a package of naked shares, put contracts, call contracts, and futures contracts. To the outside world it would look like normal buying and hedging of shares that hedge funds do everyday. The Market Maker side would look like something called a Reverse Conversion and the Hedge Fund side would look like something called a Split-Strike.
  
• Bernied Madoff used to claim that he made all of his money using Split-Strikes.
  
• This Option exemption or Reverse Conversion/Split-Strike strategy was closed through rule changes during the 2008 financial crash.
  
• Bernie Madoff’s fund blew up during the 2008 financial crash.
  

Hopefully, it’s just a coincidence, because, what the fuck. Who’s writing this story?

• Oh, also Bernie Madoff’s friend from prison claims that Madoff admitted to naked shorting and says that Madoff claimed everyone on wall street was doing it.

Wild, am I completely crazy wondering if naked shorting played a part in the 2008 financial crisis?

• Oh, also, the options market lost a lot of steam after 2008, and well, guess what market really started taking off after 2008? Did you guess the ETF market? Because you’d be correct!

Did naked shorters move from the options market to the ETF market around 2008? Options still would have been good for insurance purposes, but not for creating the actual naked shares anymore.
An EXERCISED option can still be used as a locate today in order to short a stock. If you exercise the option, it means you’ve paid for the stock and the stock will be delivered soon. Market Makers have about a month to make good on the delivery. You could probably naked short through exercised options, but it would give you a finite window. I don’t know why you would if you can just use ETFs to naked short instead.
The way those old Reverse Conversion and Split-Strikes were built is very important. Yes, they looked like normal plays any hedge fund might make to regulators, but they also included insurance between thugs. Options and futures contracts can provide insurance to the Market Maker, that way when the MM shows up with cash the Hedge Fund will be forced to deliver shares. CYA! Cover Your ASS! Too bad you’re already naked shorting – that’s a dangerous fucking game.
These days the Market Maker opens up ETFs for the naked shares and sends those to the Hedge Fund. The ETF is the locate. Then the Market Maker can still use futures contracts or options contract with the Hedge Fund to ensure the MM won’t be the one left holding the bag.
BULLET SWAPS
We should also take a quick detour into bullet swaps. Bullet swaps would also not work as a locate for naked shorting.
No shares exchange hands because of a bullet swap. Nobody on wall street can point to a bullet swap as proof that they can get shares. Bullet swaps would primarily be used for hedging (insurance) or leverage.
INSURANCE: If you are short a stock then you can get insurance through a swap deal by entering a swap that is long on the stock. You short the stock and also enter a long bullet swap that expires far in the future. You now have years to crush the stock. In the future if you fail to crush the price of the stock then your long swap will help offset the cost of your failed shorts. With a bullet swap you pay for the insurance at expiration.
LEVERAGE: If you are short a stock, but also want leverage you could add a short bullet swap to your position. This will grow your short position without shorting more of the stock. Also, this will leave less of a sign that you’re shorting the stock. Buying a shit ton of puts might get noticed. And again, with a bullet swap, you pay for the leverage in the future.
Hwang in there. Sorry, this DD is so long.
Let’s say you were a degenerate with a lot of money to play on the stock market. You’re naked shorting a stock and you’re positive you can crush this thing. So you also take out a big bullet swap short position. You’ll make even more money when this stock goes bankrupt and you don’t even have to pay for the bullet swap until the expiration date. You just bought, or just got leverage without buying anything… You pay for the leverage in the future!
Bullet swaps are completely irresponsible! How is this a thing?!
If your naked short position blows up AND you haven’t hedged AND all of the sudden you owe a big lump sum on a short bullet swap, yikes, you’d be fucked.
TWO POOLS – STOCK A
Let’s use a made up story to help illustrate what I’m trying to say here. In this hypothetical scenario, naked shorters decide to naked short Stock A into the ground. Let’s say they start naked shorting on Stock A around 2012 or something.
Hedge Fund: It’s a dying business!
They start pumping naked shares into the market and the price falls.
Hedge Fund: See!
Then some dude looking for deep value comes along in 2019. He buys a bunch of shares and a bunch of call options on Stock A.
Now jump forward to 2021, January is an important time:

1. FUTURES EXPIRING – Naked shares could be insured using Futures Contracts.
   
2. LEAPS EXPIRING – Naked shares could also be insured using LEAPS.
   
3. REGARDS – Also, that deep value dude has some calls expiring January 15th. Retail Investors send their regards. Dude on the internet (not a cat) and a bunch of traders on reddit YOLO hard into Stock A.
   

That means:

1. Naked shares might need to be closed or rolled.
   
2. Naked shares might need to be closed or rolled.
   
3. Retail starts buying shares and call options.
   

In other words,

1. Buy Pressure
   
2. Buy Pressure
   
3. Buy Pressure
   

The price skyrockets. Or sneezes if your prefer.
Naked shorters flood the market with naked shares of Stock A to drive the price back down. A bunch of those naked shares are sold to other naked shorters.
Now, in this scenario there are suddenly bulls and bears fighting over the stock. There’s even talk among some of the bulls of a possible short squeeze. Everyone is buying, but naked shorters need the price to go down. The only way to do that is to sell shares. More supply meets demand = price drops. Obviously, a naked shorter would do that by selling naked shares. But more naked shares into the hands of bulls?
It’s slimey, dark, and disgusting in here, but please, come join me in the mind of a naked shorter for a second. Let’s say as a naked shorter: 1. I need to buy a bunch of shares to roll a big part of my naked position. 2. Bulls are out on parade buying like fucking crazy. 3. There’s talk of a potential short squeeze.
As a naked shorter we would want to flood the market with naked shares to crush the price. A fuckton more supply meets the same demand = big price drop. On the other hand, bulls are buying like crazy. The more naked shares we pump out the more ammo we’re handing to bulls.
I don’t know about you, but if I were a naked shorter then I don’t want to hand a bunch of naked shares to bulls, especially if they’re already talking about a squeeze. I do want to flood the market with naked shares though. I would probably ask one of my naked shorting “friends” to gobble up as many of my naked shares as possible. We’ll both survive and we can settle up with each other later.
We usually use yearly contracts with retail naked shorts because most of retail sells within a year. With one another we could push it to three years. Surely, retail will give up after three years. Retail holding for three years is an anomaly. It just doesn’t happen!
Hedge Fund: That’s right!
Let’s assume naked shorters built a huge pool of naked shares among themselves on Stock A. The huge flood of shares into the market helps crush the price and most of the shares end up with other naked shorters.
Maybe naked shorters also turn off the buy button, which is the rich kid equivalent of overturning the game board. Really just pathetic.
Company A: That was fucking weird….
Retail: Was that naked shorting?
Company A:
To recap, in this scenario, naked shorters now have a large pool of naked shares in the hands of retail that they need to continually roll. I think it’s likely naked shares to retail would be built with yearly expiration dates, most retail investors sell within a year. That gives flexibility to naked shorters to continually settle old naked shares and create new ones. Waves of naked shares being gobbled back up and spewed back out and gobbled back up and spewed back out. The naked shares look and act like the real thing as long as they can find a cheaper real share before expiration. They have a year – retail sells quick, and can be easy to manipulate. Should be easy money. Easy money with a whole lot o’ fucking risk.
Then the naked shorting pool, or the deadpool, are all of the naked shares that naked shorters sell to one another. Again, maybe at a time of desperation a fuck-ton of naked shares get sold through the market from one naked shorter to another. These naked shares have been created from an ETF loophole, then packaged with insurance using a Futures Contract or a LEAP Contract.
For example, on GME (a stock completely unrelated to made-up Stock A), the share price has shown waves in the price around quarterly triple-witching dates in March, June, September, and December. This would make sense if the price is moving because of common expiration dates used for Futures Contracts and LEAPS.
Now, let’s dive back into the grimy mind of a naked shorter. We built a bunch of naked shares and sent those to retail with yearly expiration dates. If we made these naked shares around January, March, June, or December of 2021 then they would expire in January, March, June, or December of 2022. Retail sells quick, a year should be enough time to close or roll.
In a time of desperation you also naked short a butt load of naked shares to your naked shorting “buddy”, he’s also naked shorting the stock and has no interest in calling in those naked shares anytime soon.
If you built a pool of naked shares with your “friend” then why would you give them the same expiration as naked shares sold to retail? That’s just adding to your retail headache. Retail should sell in a year (most usually do), but you can hold this position with your “friend” for a lot longer. Why not sell those naked shares with expiration dates much farther in the future? Maybe three years if you’re using LEAPS.
That gives you plenty of time to scare off retail, close out your retail naked shorts, and then you can worry about settling up with your “buddies”. You have insurance with LEAPS or Futures so settling with your buddies should be pretty easy. You can put that all off for another day far in the future.
Hedge Fund: Retail sells, right?
Space Debris: It’s just a story.
Hedge Fund: But retail sells, right?
Space Debris: No.
Let’s jump back to our fake Stock A scenario, maybe Company A sees some weird shit happening to their stock and think of naked shorters. Maybe Company A even sees the possibility of a huge naked short position being paired with a lot of LEAPS. Maybe Company A then gives naked shorters a year to close their short position, seems fair to me. Or maybe Company A just liked the idea of a splividend for a multitude of other reasons.
In this story, Company A puts out a splividend, it’s a bit different then your normal dividend. Mostly because of the way it’s delivered. Normally, with a split, every share of the Stock is just split. Naked shares look like normal shares so they’d be split and no delivery would be necessary. They would just need to deliver more shares on or before expiration to go with the old naked share. The price has also been split so their naked position should fundamentally be the same.
For ease, let’s say Company A split 4:1. Every share will now become 4. But for the splividend, they’ll actually hand deliver 3 shares to only the real shares. Company A’s people are going to check. If naked shorters have 1 naked share in the hand of a retail investor then they need to add 3 more shares to that hand. Doesn’t matter if the expiration is still a year out on that naked share, they owe 3 shares right now. The rules are convoluted and hard to parse through, but I believe Market Makers would have a few days to deliver splividend shares to retail. They could potentially have a month or so, but I’m not sure on that. I don’t think they would be able to delay retail splividend delivery for much more than a month. Retail splividend delivery. RETAIL….
The Deadpool might be different! With your retail splividends you could just create new naked shares to send as your dividend fulfillment. With your deadpool could you just agree to wait?
For, ease let’s assume for every 1 naked share sent out into the market, naked shorters also sent 1 to each other. These are made up numbers. It would be impossible to see the size of a naked short position or where it’s hidden. Naked shares look just like the real thing… until they don’t.
For every 1 naked share of Stock A in the Retail Pool, there is 1 naked share in the Deadpool.
Other stocks could be different, Stock A is a hypothetical.
Let’s assume naked shorters have been rolling, but unable to close their Retail naked short position in Stock A. These naked shorters would most likely have also held onto a lot of their naked short position with one another. The stock has also been split.
If naked shorters have the ability to delay delivery of the splividend to one another then they may not have settled a bunch of dividends yet. Every 1 naked share in the deadpool could now be 4 naked shares.
Now if you’re hoping Company A will squeeze because of a huge deadpool that needs to be closed then calm down, it might not be that easy.
THE DEADPOOL
Let’s look at all of the advantages of creating a deadpool with your naked shorting friends:

1. Those naked shares don’t end up in the hands of bulls and the naked shares drive the price of the stock down.
   
2. Your naked shorting “friend” is good at hiding naked shares. If there’s a limit to how many naked shares you can shit into retails’ hands, then a deadpool could be a place to go if you start hitting the retail limit.
   
3. Those naked shares look like real shares so they could potentially be used for margin.
   
4. You could potentially move them around in a dark pool to your “friend”, just match them with a short term option or future depending on when you want them back.
   

SEC: “Where are these locates?”
MM: “Right here, got them out of the deadpool.”
SEC: “The what?”
MM: “The darkpool.”
SEC: “Oh, cool. Are you hiring?”
MM:
SEC: MM?
MM:

1. Extra Insurance with your naked shorting “friends”? “We all close our retail naked shorts and then we close these.” OR “Fine! I was naked shorting! But… but… he also sent me this huge pile of naked shares!”

1. THE MAIN ADVANTAGE – I’m gonna hit you with some minor fud. This hypothetical deadpool might (I’m not positive) be able to be closed with cash. Naked shorters don’t want to drive the price up. Buying actual shares to close would drive the price up. I believe Deadpool naked shares could and would most likely be closed using cash when the time came. I have some questions about this because of the splividend that I’ll talk about below. Basically, does the splividend change that? Can splividend naked shares be settled with cash? I really wish I knew.

The deadpool could also be rolled and they would keep some of the other benefits, but it would likely be opened the normal way, and the old naked shares would still likely be closed using cash.
Now, I’m not positive, but I do believe rolling an old deadpool position using cash could cause upward movement in the shorted stock. It could also be very expensive, but if you’re rolling and your “buddy” also naked shorts an even amount of “shares” back to you then you’re basically just breaking even.
If the Deadpool exists then it would be just another hidden festering pile of naked shares slowly dragging naked shorters down. If it was grown by the splividend then it’s like a cancerous pile of naked shares and it’s reckoning day could be coming soon. Time to close or roll. I think Deadpool is a fitting name. The Deadpool would be zombie shares (that shouldn’t exist) pulled out of zombie ETFs that were conjured out of nothing. There are no real (living) shares hanging out in the Deadpool.
Not to be confused with the comic book character. He would DRS and hodl.
STOCK A – THE DEADPOOL & “FRIENDS”
First off, there has been a lot of conjecture about a stock called GME. It’s all conjecture. No one knows dates. No one knows how many naked shares there could potentially be. No one here knows. Unless Kenny G is lurking. He might know something. No one gets that good at the sax without knowing a thing or two. Totally unrelated, but could you imagine if you were a naked shorter who had been griftin’ the market for years and your last name was Griffin.
Some of this DD is based on research into the rules, but some is also based on conjecture and theories. Take everything with a grain of salt.
Let’s go back to Stock A.
Let’s say a hedge fund naked shorted a bunch of Stock A with his friends. Then that hedge fund also entered bullet swap deals to get even more leverage on his short position. January 2021 rolls around, he blows up. He can’t roll all of his retail naked shares and can’t make good on shares with his Market Maker. Oh, and because of those bullet swaps, instead of making extra money, he owes a big lump sum.
The Hedge Fund evaporates and someone else takes over his position. Maybe someone who is not “friends” with the naked shorters and doesn’t want to be naked.
Now, Company A is smart, there were some signs that maybe your company was being naked shorted, but naked shorting is illegal. A year after all of the craziness, Company A does a splividend. A splividend could really make a naked shorting position even more of a nightmare, but naked shorting is illegal. Plus, shorters said they closed a year ago. Company A has many reasons to do a splividend that don’t involve naked shorting at all.
Company A then puts it out there that they want to sell a lot of shares. They have bright plans for the future and they need money. It costs money to make money! Or is it whisky? Again, naked shorting is illegal so there shouldn’t be any naked shares, but an offer like that could look like a lifeline if someone was naked shorting.
Seems like it would also be a good way to protect Company A from any litigation in the future that says they purposely tried to start a squeeze on their own stock. Or a MOASS. How could they start a squeeze? Company A put it out there that they wanted to sell a nice chunk of shares. You didn’t try to get any of those shares?
Company A: How many shares did you need?
MM:
Company A: How many shares did you need, MM?
MM:
Like Five Fancy Lawyers in Unison: Our client pleads the fifth.
Back to the lifeline though, you just absorbed someone’s toxic bag of naked shorts and you want out. Company A just put up a flashing sign that says, we’d like to sell some shares. Seems like a pretty good opportunity to me, doesn’t hurt to ask.
Market Maker: I just absorbed some toxic shit, got any shares you’d sell me?
Company A: Maybe
If you inherited a bag of toxic naked shorts and you know or have a strong feeling there are many more out there then trying to close by buying real shares through the market will run the price up. Can you close before you get out? If Company A sells you as many shares as they’re willing then that might cut your naked short position down or completely close it. If it doesn’t close it then what’s the next best option? You likely know that buying power is about to crank up because your toxic bag is expiring and so are a lot of other toxic bags.
Your next best option? Options…
If there’s a scenario where you’re trying to maybe not be the first one out, but insure that you make it out, this is the best play in my opinion. Again, Company A said they want to sell shares. You need real shares. If you’re unable to get enough shares directly from Company A then you turn to options. Options allow you to lock in a price for the shares you’re comfortable with, if the price drops then you can buy some shares for cheaper on the open market. If the price rises then you can still buy shares for the cheaper strike price by exercising the options contract.
Again, if you start buying at market then the price could start taking off and you’re cost basis could get blown out of the water. For example, you need 1 million shares of Company A at $20. If company is at $19, then with a big buy order your 1 millionth share might actually get bought at $21 or $25 or way higher. If you buy 10,000 $20 Calls then you can buy 1 million shares at $20 until the Calls expire.
The other advantage, you don’t have to be the first naked shorter to go to the market and start smashing the buy button. If Company A goes through some sort of Mother of All Short Squeezes then you won’t be the one who started it. To regulators, you just luckily bought some call options before this all started happening and now you’re exercising. Really wild stuff going on. Good thing you’re not naked short on that stock…. anymore… You go home and cry.

Sorry, this got so long, that seems to happen when I write a DD. I wanted to get this out last week, but it kept growing. I’ll try and answer questions, but I also kind of need a break.
THE DEADPOOL THEORY: TWO POOLS
None of this is financial advice. I’m just a stranger on the internet. Please do your own research.
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SUMMARY
I did a deep dive into the rules a year or so ago and wrote a long DD. I think it’s still relevant.
Options are most likely not used as locates for naked shorting. ETFs are the likely culprit. Bullet Swaps would likely be used for insurance or leverage, I don’t think they’re as important as some people think – they are scary as fuck though.
You need at least two parties to naked short. A Market Maker and a Hedge Fund. Market Maker pulls naked shares out of ETFs for Hedge Fund to naked short. Market Maker insures with Futures Contract or Options (probably LEAPS).
That insurance means that if the Market Maker sends X naked shares to the Hedge Fund then the Market Maker also bought enough contracts to buy X numbers of shares from the Hedge Fund on or possibly by some date far in the future. MMs practice CYA!
SEC: Where are the shares?
MM: I don’t know! I definitely sold this Hedge Fund real shares a long time ago. I have a contract for shares back and he doesn’t seem to have any. Isn’t that crazy?!
SEC: Yeah… Are you hiring?
Two Pools Theory is based around the idea that Naked Shorters likely have many reasons to naked short to one another and could potentially naked short large amounts of naked shares through the market to one another in a desperate time of need. Naked shorters didn’t get this far on wall street by trusting others – sell some naked shorts to your “buddy”, and you also get a contract that your “buddy” owes you those “shares” back at some point. CYA!
Too bad it’s impossible to CYA when you’re naked shorting. Duh. “Smart Money” my ass.
I call the pool of naked shares that naked shorters might be holding the deadpool. Maybe superstonk can come up with something better.
If the naked shorters built a huge pool of naked shares between themselves (the deadpool), a large portion of it in 2021, then how many of those naked shares have been closed/rolled? Is it possible the expiration date of some of those naked shorts was based around a witching date/LEAP date roughly three years in the future?
And my biggest question of all, if naked shorters could delay delivery of naked shorts to one another three years into the future, could they also delay the splividend to one another? What if they owe 4 shares for every 1 on a toxic mess they’re holding between themselves?
If I was a naked shorter in this situation then I’d want out. If I also knew I and every other naked shorter needed shares soon then I’d either try and buy real shares from the company or as many call options as I possibly could. GME did just sell some shares and a bunch of call options have been bought recently. Is a big expiration date coming due and someone is trying to get out?
I sadly don’t have answers to a lot of the questions I raise in this paper. I’d mostly just like you to think about these questions with me.
Now here’s another thing to think about because I’ve hyped myself up, and it’s good to stay level headed. If that’s all true, then naked shorters have also had three years to come up with a plan to survive another day.
If there’s naked shorting, then eventually DRSing will uncover it, if it fucking has to.
In the mean time, I think it’s fun to think about naked shorters building a deadpool that might be coming back to fuck them.
THE TWO POOL THEORY
This theory covers a lot and I’m hesitant to even put it out there because it could have big implications and it could also be completely wrong. It’s also based on some speculation. There’s a lot of speculation about June swirling around with LEAPS and Bullet Swaps. I haven’t seen any proof that anyone actually knows expiration dates on any bullet swaps or LEAPS that naked shorters may or may not be holding. There’s also some speculation on some rules in this write-up because I’ve been unable to find anything worthy of a citation that says naked shorters can delay delivery of a dividend to one another. I also haven’t found any citations on how splividends would work with naked shorting.
The gist of the theory is that there are two pools of naked shares. One pool is held in the hands of retail and one pool is held in the hands of the naked shorters themselves. I believe the naked shares in those pools could be handled in different ways. Naked shorting would need to be done between two parties: a Market Maker and a Hedge Fund. The Market Maker would most likely pull naked shares out of ETFs for the Hedge Fund and the Hedge Fund would then sell the naked shares into the market.
The Market Maker likely would want insurance on a risky naked shorting play. The Market Maker could enter into Futures Contracts or LEAPS with the Hedge Fund. These contracts mean on or sometimes before the expiration date the Market Maker can go to the Hedge Fund with the cash and demand shares.
Now, the obvious reason you naked short is to hopefully drive the price of a stock down, the company goes bankrupt, and you never have to buy the naked shares back. Pure profit. Sure, maybe at some point you might get found out and become an infamous slimey asshole, but you could be a rich slimey asshole! You embrace it and naked short a bunch of shares to retail investors. Asshole.
Here’s where the two pool theory comes in, you need to be the hedge fund to a market maker or the mm to a hf to naked short. Do you also naked short to your “buddy”? Your “friend”?
Hedge Fund: Why are you saying it like that?
Space Debris: Saying what what way?
Hedge Fund: “Friend” With the things. MM and I are buddies! Right, MM?
MM:
Hedge Fund: MM?
Do the MM and the HF create a naked pool between themselves? What could be the advantages of that?
Could those naked shares be used as locates for a legitimate short sale? They should look and act like real shares, right? Could they move them around in dark pools? Could they be used for margin? Again, they should look like real shares that their “buddy” sold them? Meanwhile they’re toxic garbage.
If the Stock you’re trying to crush isn’t moving, no one is buying, no one is selling, could you naked short a bunch of shares out into the market to your buddy to get the price moving down?
If everyone is buying and no one is selling, could you naked short a bunch of shares through the market to your buddy to try and drop the price?
Hedge Fund: That would get people selling, right? That would get the price dropping, right?
Plus, those shares don’t end up in the hands of bulls. They end up in your “buddies” hands. He also wants to crush this stock.
Hedge Fund: Retail is selling, right?
MM:
Hedge Fund: MM?
Now, let’s say you have a huge naked short pool in the hands of retail you have to deal with and you have a huge pool with your buddy. Which are you going to deal with first? Probably the retail pool.
So, I’m not saying you did this, but what exactly would happen if say….

• You have two monstrous naked share pools. One with retail and one pool with your naked shorting buddies

Hedge Fund: Well, I….
Space Debris: Let me fucking finish.

• On a stock of a company with potential, that’s not going bankrupt anytime soon

Hedge Fund: That’s debat….
Space Debris: Shut the fuck up

• That stock also has a large group of retail investors who have been DRSing for the past three years…

Hedge Fund: Well, then why does the price keep dropping?
Space Debris: There’s this little film from 1944 I’d like you to watch. You like Ingrid Bergman?
What would happen if say you had that huge retail pool of naked shorts that you’ve been successfully rolling for three years, but you also have a huge pool of naked shorts with your buddy that you created in a time of desperation? A time of desperation, say about three years ago?
Now, say a big part of that pool of naked shorts you have with you friend is coming due finally? You’ve been putting most or maybe all of it off just trying to tread water and roll your retail naked shorts. You’ve been crushing the price, desperately hoping retail will sell, but now you and your buddy need to roll the toxic pool you hold between yourselves. The way to roll an old naked short into a new one is by: 1. Creating a new naked share. 2. Buying a real share to close the old naked share.
If you keep reading I’ll dive into the mechanics a bit more (not as much as my old DD), but basically the Naked Shorting Market Maker will need to have special privileges (be an Authorized Participant) to rip open ETFs. The Market Maker rips open a bunch of ETFs that shouldn’t exist – which could be why you see ETFs with such high short interest and such high Failure-To-Delivers (FTDs). The MM then has a bunch of naked shares that he pulled out of the ETF and those are used to naked short the stock.
Here’s an image I want you to picture that might help. When naked shorters crush a company through naked shorts, most of the time they’re not just flushing more and more naked shorts into the market. Most of the time it’s rolling over the market in a wave. They would be closing old naked shorts as they open new ones. If a naked shorter started naked shorting against a company at $20 10 years ago then they will no longer have naked shorts opened at $20. The naked share could have been rolled at 19, 18, 17 or 15, 10, 5. In other words, a naked share was sold to Bob for $20 in the past. A real share is now bought from Suzy for $19 and sent to Bob, then a new naked share is sent to John for $19. There’s still only one naked short in the market, but the expiration date, price, and location has changed. Bob never knew he had a fake and now neither does John. The naked shorter scraped $1 off the play and is still crushing the stock. If you have a super algo that can do this for change constantly all day everyday then that change adds up very fast. Ever seen office space?
There are times where it would be beneficial to shoot out more naked shorts than you’re closing. At the beginning, possibly towards what the naked shorter hopes is the end, to get the stock moving, in a time of desperation, etc.
But now a big question I have...
A question I really wish I knew the answer to and sadly I honestly don’t. What if you delayed the delivery of a fuck ton of naked shorts to your buddy, they’re finally coming due, and there was also a split or maybe a splividend sometime in the past three years? Did you delay the delivery of the splividend shares to your “buddy”? Is that allowed?! I’m trying to find out, but the market is so fucking opaque! This seems like something that shouldn’t be allowed, but this market can also be a joke at times. Is this allowed? I’ve been trying to find it somewhere in the rules, but there are too many rules. ChatGPT said it’s allowed, but ChatGPT says a lot of crazy shit.
I need to go over that again. You’re so fucking underwater because GME is sneezing, you just spray a fucking hurricane of naked shorts at the market to crush the price, your naked shorting buddy buys up as many of your naked shorts as he can so they don’t get into retail hands. You’re also exchanging contracts far out in the future as insurance – insurance that you can buy the shares back from your “buddy” at some point. Time to crush retail. If retail doesn’t sell… and if it’s finally time to settle your deadpool with your “friend”? Has some of it been quadrupled in the past three years?
Again, I want to be clear. No one has hard evidence that there are naked shorters holding a fuck ton of LEAPS coming due in June. I also have no evidence that a split or splividend can be delayed between naked shorters. This is all a theory. It does line up nicely with the other DD I wrote over a year ago and does make some puzzle pieces fit nicely in my mind, but I also feel a bit like I’ve been smoking tinfoil and mainlining GME for years now.
So, again, don’t get too hype now….
A bigger question, the splividend is kind of weird. Does the splividend require that the deadpool be closed/rolled by buying real shares? It seems like with a split a deadpool could be closed using cash, is the splividend different?
Hedge Fund: Well… okay, but… why does the price keep dropping? You should sell… AI boom! Artificial Intelligence is here. Sure, you read a book two years ago that AGI would take 50-100 years to develop, but AGI is here! Now! I swear. Buy my AI Stocks!
A DEEPER DIVE – BACK TO THE OLD DD
A little over a year ago I wrote an 89 page DD. You probably haven’t read it. It was long and covered way too much, but there’s a lot to talk about with a stock like GME. I’m going to try and summarize my DD for you, that way you don’t need to go back through it. A lot of it is important to my theory and some of it is just interesting in my opinion. And some of it is wild cohencidences that make me feel like a conspiracy nut.
I honestly originally went on the journey to write that long DD because sometimes I felt like I was in a cult and I needed to do my own research. Fuck, I may have fell farther down the rabbit hole and I keep tumbling down. Yay!
Naked shorting has been around since markets have been around. If you have delayed delivery then it’s easy to sell something and worry about the delivery later. The stock market seemed to reach a fairly good place of stability because of rules and regulations until computers came along. Computers and algorithms have led to an insane advantage for wall street over the common retail investor. Market makers have also had special rules and have had access to different loopholes that allow for even larger delays in delivery.
I sell you 100 shares of Stock A for $10 now. If I can wait to buy then I’ll just wait until it’s cheaper. Also, remember, I have a super fast computer selling huge amounts of shares to other people too. Cheap enough for me might be $9.99. I buy for $9.99, settle my naked short with you, and now I’m selling naked shorts at $9.98. Anyone?! $9.98? I got as many as you need! (the price falls) $9.96? $9.94?
Most retail investors hold shares for less than a year. Naked shorters hate hodlers, they want to constantly be selling to new suckers at lower prices until the company goes bankrupt. They want retail investors churning through the stock in months. Shares constantly moving hands.
So, you can kind of think of naked shorting as delayed delivery. Sell high and delay delivery long enough until you can buy low. Or at the end not even buy at all. “Sorry, product is no longer available, your delivery has been canceled.”
In the past Market Makers had an exemption that made it very easy to naked short and there are some strong signs that they abused that exemption. Back in the day a Market Maker could point to an UN-EXERCISED call option as a locate. I capitalized that un-exercised part because it’s important.
WEIRD COHENCIDENCE 1 – THE OPTIONS LOOPHOLE/MADOFF/2008
So, here’s where I found some weird coincidences writing my old DD that made me really feel like I was losing my mind a bit. So, please, lose your mind along with me.

• Back in the day a Market Maker and Hedge Fund would do this naked shorting using a package of naked shares, put contracts, call contracts, and futures contracts. To the outside world it would look like normal buying and hedging of shares that hedge funds do everyday. The Market Maker side would look like something called a Reverse Conversion and the Hedge Fund side would look like something called a Split-Strike.
  
• Bernied Madoff used to claim that he made all of his money using Split-Strikes.
  
• This Option exemption or Reverse Conversion/Split-Strike strategy was closed through rule changes during the 2008 financial crash.
  
• Bernie Madoff’s fund blew up during the 2008 financial crash.
  

Hopefully, it’s just a coincidence, because, what the fuck. Who’s writing this story?

• Oh, also Bernie Madoff’s friend from prison claims that Madoff admitted to naked shorting and says that Madoff claimed everyone on wall street was doing it.

Wild, am I completely crazy wondering if naked shorting played a part in the 2008 financial crisis?

• Oh, also, the options market lost a lot of steam after 2008, and well, guess what market really started taking off after 2008? Did you guess the ETF market? Because you’d be correct!

Did naked shorters move from the options market to the ETF market around 2008? Options still would have been good for insurance purposes, but not for creating the actual naked shares anymore.
An EXERCISED option can still be used as a locate today in order to short a stock. If you exercise the option, it means you’ve paid for the stock and the stock will be delivered soon. Market Makers have about a month to make good on the delivery. You could probably naked short through exercised options, but it would give you a finite window. I don’t know why you would if you can just use ETFs to naked short instead.
The way those old Reverse Conversion and Split-Strikes were built is very important. Yes, they looked like normal plays any hedge fund might make to regulators, but they also included insurance between thugs. Options and futures contracts can provide insurance to the Market Maker, that way when the MM shows up with cash the Hedge Fund will be forced to deliver shares. CYA! Cover Your ASS! Too bad you’re already naked shorting – that’s a dangerous fucking game.
These days the Market Maker opens up ETFs for the naked shares and sends those to the Hedge Fund. The ETF is the locate. Then the Market Maker can still use futures contracts or options contract with the Hedge Fund to ensure the MM won’t be the one left holding the bag.
BULLET SWAPS
We should also take a quick detour into bullet swaps. Bullet swaps would also not work as a locate for naked shorting.
No shares exchange hands because of a bullet swap. Nobody on wall street can point to a bullet swap as proof that they can get shares. Bullet swaps would primarily be used for hedging (insurance) or leverage.
INSURANCE: If you are short a stock then you can get insurance through a swap deal by entering a swap that is long on the stock. You short the stock and also enter a long bullet swap that expires far in the future. You now have years to crush the stock. In the future if you fail to crush the price of the stock then your long swap will help offset the cost of your failed shorts. With a bullet swap you pay for the insurance at expiration.
LEVERAGE: If you are short a stock, but also want leverage you could add a short bullet swap to your position. This will grow your short position without shorting more of the stock. Also, this will leave less of a sign that you’re shorting the stock. Buying a shit ton of puts might get noticed. And again, with a bullet swap, you pay for the leverage in the future.
Hwang in there. Sorry, this DD is so long.
Let’s say you were a degenerate with a lot of money to play on the stock market. You’re naked shorting a stock and you’re positive you can crush this thing. So you also take out a big bullet swap short position. You’ll make even more money when this stock goes bankrupt and you don’t even have to pay for the bullet swap until the expiration date. You just bought, or just got leverage without buying anything… You pay for the leverage in the future!
Bullet swaps are completely irresponsible! How is this a thing?!
If your naked short position blows up AND you haven’t hedged AND all of the sudden you owe a big lump sum on a short bullet swap, yikes, you’d be fucked.
TWO POOLS – STOCK A
Let’s use a made up story to help illustrate what I’m trying to say here. In this hypothetical scenario, naked shorters decide to naked short Stock A into the ground. Let’s say they start naked shorting on Stock A around 2012 or something.
Hedge Fund: It’s a dying business!
They start pumping naked shares into the market and the price falls.
Hedge Fund: See!
Then some dude looking for deep value comes along in 2019. He buys a bunch of shares and a bunch of call options on Stock A.
Now jump forward to 2021, January is an important time:

1. FUTURES EXPIRING – Naked shares could be insured using Futures Contracts.
   
2. LEAPS EXPIRING – Naked shares could also be insured using LEAPS.
   
3. REGARDS – Also, that deep value dude has some calls expiring January 15th. Retail Investors send their regards. Dude on the internet (not a cat) and a bunch of traders on reddit YOLO hard into Stock A.
   

That means:

1. Naked shares might need to be closed or rolled.
   
2. Naked shares might need to be closed or rolled.
   
3. Retail starts buying shares and call options.
   

In other words,

1. Buy Pressure
   
2. Buy Pressure
   
3. Buy Pressure
   

The price skyrockets. Or sneezes if your prefer.
Naked shorters flood the market with naked shares of Stock A to drive the price back down. A bunch of those naked shares are sold to other naked shorters.
Now, in this scenario there are suddenly bulls and bears fighting over the stock. There’s even talk among some of the bulls of a possible short squeeze. Everyone is buying, but naked shorters need the price to go down. The only way to do that is to sell shares. More supply meets demand = price drops. Obviously, a naked shorter would do that by selling naked shares. But more naked shares into the hands of bulls?
It’s slimey, dark, and disgusting in here, but please, come join me in the mind of a naked shorter for a second. Let’s say as a naked shorter: 1. I need to buy a bunch of shares to roll a big part of my naked position. 2. Bulls are out on parade buying like fucking crazy. 3. There’s talk of a potential short squeeze.
As a naked shorter we would want to flood the market with naked shares to crush the price. A fuckton more supply meets the same demand = big price drop. On the other hand, bulls are buying like crazy. The more naked shares we pump out the more ammo we’re handing to bulls.
I don’t know about you, but if I were a naked shorter then I don’t want to hand a bunch of naked shares to bulls, especially if they’re already talking about a squeeze. I do want to flood the market with naked shares though. I would probably ask one of my naked shorting “friends” to gobble up as many of my naked shares as possible. We’ll both survive and we can settle up with each other later.
We usually use yearly contracts with retail naked shorts because most of retail sells within a year. With one another we could push it to three years. Surely, retail will give up after three years. Retail holding for three years is an anomaly. It just doesn’t happen!
Hedge Fund: That’s right!
Let’s assume naked shorters built a huge pool of naked shares among themselves on Stock A. The huge flood of shares into the market helps crush the price and most of the shares end up with other naked shorters.
Maybe naked shorters also turn off the buy button, which is the rich kid equivalent of overturning the game board. Really just pathetic.
Company A: That was fucking weird….
Retail: Was that naked shorting?
Company A:
To recap, in this scenario, naked shorters now have a large pool of naked shares in the hands of retail that they need to continually roll. I think it’s likely naked shares to retail would be built with yearly expiration dates, most retail investors sell within a year. That gives flexibility to naked shorters to continually settle old naked shares and create new ones. Waves of naked shares being gobbled back up and spewed back out and gobbled back up and spewed back out. The naked shares look and act like the real thing as long as they can find a cheaper real share before expiration. They have a year – retail sells quick, and can be easy to manipulate. Should be easy money. Easy money with a whole lot o’ fucking risk.
Then the naked shorting pool, or the deadpool, are all of the naked shares that naked shorters sell to one another. Again, maybe at a time of desperation a fuck-ton of naked shares get sold through the market from one naked shorter to another. These naked shares have been created from an ETF loophole, then packaged with insurance using a Futures Contract or a LEAP Contract.
For example, on GME (a stock completely unrelated to made-up Stock A), the share price has shown waves in the price around quarterly triple-witching dates in March, June, September, and December. This would make sense if the price is moving because of common expiration dates used for Futures Contracts and LEAPS.
Now, let’s dive back into the grimy mind of a naked shorter. We built a bunch of naked shares and sent those to retail with yearly expiration dates. If we made these naked shares around January, March, June, or December of 2021 then they would expire in January, March, June, or December of 2022. Retail sells quick, a year should be enough time to close or roll.
In a time of desperation you also naked short a butt load of naked shares to your naked shorting “buddy”, he’s also naked shorting the stock and has no interest in calling in those naked shares anytime soon.
If you built a pool of naked shares with your “friend” then why would you give them the same expiration as naked shares sold to retail? That’s just adding to your retail headache. Retail should sell in a year (most usually do), but you can hold this position with your “friend” for a lot longer. Why not sell those naked shares with expiration dates much farther in the future? Maybe three years if you’re using LEAPS.
That gives you plenty of time to scare off retail, close out your retail naked shorts, and then you can worry about settling up with your “buddies”. You have insurance with LEAPS or Futures so settling with your buddies should be pretty easy. You can put that all off for another day far in the future.
Hedge Fund: Retail sells, right?
Space Debris: It’s just a story.
Hedge Fund: But retail sells, right?
Space Debris: No.
Let’s jump back to our fake Stock A scenario, maybe Company A sees some weird shit happening to their stock and think of naked shorters. Maybe Company A even sees the possibility of a huge naked short position being paired with a lot of LEAPS. Maybe Company A then gives naked shorters a year to close their short position, seems fair to me. Or maybe Company A just liked the idea of a splividend for a multitude of other reasons.
In this story, Company A puts out a splividend, it’s a bit different then your normal dividend. Mostly because of the way it’s delivered. Normally, with a split, every share of the Stock is just split. Naked shares look like normal shares so they’d be split and no delivery would be necessary. They would just need to deliver more shares on or before expiration to go with the old naked share. The price has also been split so their naked position should fundamentally be the same.
For ease, let’s say Company A split 4:1. Every share will now become 4. But for the splividend, they’ll actually hand deliver 3 shares to only the real shares. Company A’s people are going to check. If naked shorters have 1 naked share in the hand of a retail investor then they need to add 3 more shares to that hand. Doesn’t matter if the expiration is still a year out on that naked share, they owe 3 shares right now. The rules are convoluted and hard to parse through, but I believe Market Makers would have a few days to deliver splividend shares to retail. They could potentially have a month or so, but I’m not sure on that. I don’t think they would be able to delay retail splividend delivery for much more than a month. Retail splividend delivery. RETAIL….
The Deadpool might be different! With your retail splividends you could just create new naked shares to send as your dividend fulfillment. With your deadpool could you just agree to wait?
For, ease let’s assume for every 1 naked share sent out into the market, naked shorters also sent 1 to each other. These are made up numbers. It would be impossible to see the size of a naked short position or where it’s hidden. Naked shares look just like the real thing… until they don’t.
For every 1 naked share of Stock A in the Retail Pool, there is 1 naked share in the Deadpool.
Other stocks could be different, Stock A is a hypothetical.
Let’s assume naked shorters have been rolling, but unable to close their Retail naked short position in Stock A. These naked shorters would most likely have also held onto a lot of their naked short position with one another. The stock has also been split.
If naked shorters have the ability to delay delivery of the splividend to one another then they may not have settled a bunch of dividends yet. Every 1 naked share in the deadpool could now be 4 naked shares.
Now if you’re hoping Company A will squeeze because of a huge deadpool that needs to be closed then calm down, it might not be that easy.
THE DEADPOOL
Let’s look at all of the advantages of creating a deadpool with your naked shorting friends:

1. Those naked shares don’t end up in the hands of bulls and the naked shares drive the price of the stock down.
   
2. Your naked shorting “friend” is good at hiding naked shares. If there’s a limit to how many naked shares you can shit into retails’ hands, then a deadpool could be a place to go if you start hitting the retail limit.
   
3. Those naked shares look like real shares so they could potentially be used for margin.
   
4. You could potentially move them around in a dark pool to your “friend”, just match them with a short term option or future depending on when you want them back.
   

SEC: “Where are these locates?”
MM: “Right here, got them out of the deadpool.”
SEC: “The what?”
MM: “The darkpool.”
SEC: “Oh, cool. Are you hiring?”
MM:
SEC: MM?
MM:

1. Extra Insurance with your naked shorting “friends”? “We all close our retail naked shorts and then we close these.” OR “Fine! I was naked shorting! But… but… he also sent me this huge pile of naked shares!”

1. THE MAIN ADVANTAGE – I’m gonna hit you with some minor fud. This hypothetical deadpool might (I’m not positive) be able to be closed with cash. Naked shorters don’t want to drive the price up. Buying actual shares to close would drive the price up. I believe Deadpool naked shares could and would most likely be closed using cash when the time came. I have some questions about this because of the splividend that I’ll talk about below. Basically, does the splividend change that? Can splividend naked shares be settled with cash? I really wish I knew.

The deadpool could also be rolled and they would keep some of the other benefits, but it would likely be opened the normal way, and the old naked shares would still likely be closed using cash.
Now, I’m not positive, but I do believe rolling an old deadpool position using cash could cause upward movement in the shorted stock. It could also be very expensive, but if you’re rolling and your “buddy” also naked shorts an even amount of “shares” back to you then you’re basically just breaking even.
If the Deadpool exists then it would be just another hidden festering pile of naked shares slowly dragging naked shorters down. If it was grown by the splividend then it’s like a cancerous pile of naked shares and it’s reckoning day could be coming soon. Time to close or roll. I think Deadpool is a fitting name. The Deadpool would be zombie shares (that shouldn’t exist) pulled out of zombie ETFs that were conjured out of nothing. There are no real (living) shares hanging out in the Deadpool.
Not to be confused with the comic book character. He would DRS and hodl.
STOCK A – THE DEADPOOL & “FRIENDS”
First off, there has been a lot of conjecture about a stock called GME. It’s all conjecture. No one knows dates. No one knows how many naked shares there could potentially be. No one here knows. Unless Kenny G is lurking. He might know something. No one gets that good at the sax without knowing a thing or two. Totally unrelated, but could you imagine if you were a naked shorter who had been griftin’ the market for years and your last name was Griffin.
Some of this DD is based on research into the rules, but some is also based on conjecture and theories. Take everything with a grain of salt.
Let’s go back to Stock A.
Let’s say a hedge fund naked shorted a bunch of Stock A with his friends. Then that hedge fund also entered bullet swap deals to get even more leverage on his short position. January 2021 rolls around, he blows up. He can’t roll all of his retail naked shares and can’t make good on shares with his Market Maker. Oh, and because of those bullet swaps, instead of making extra money, he owes a big lump sum.
The Hedge Fund evaporates and someone else takes over his position. Maybe someone who is not “friends” with the naked shorters and doesn’t want to be naked.
Now, Company A is smart, there were some signs that maybe your company was being naked shorted, but naked shorting is illegal. A year after all of the craziness, Company A does a splividend. A splividend could really make a naked shorting position even more of a nightmare, but naked shorting is illegal. Plus, shorters said they closed a year ago. Company A has many reasons to do a splividend that don’t involve naked shorting at all.
Company A then puts it out there that they want to sell a lot of shares. They have bright plans for the future and they need money. It costs money to make money! Or is it whisky? Again, naked shorting is illegal so there shouldn’t be any naked shares, but an offer like that could look like a lifeline if someone was naked shorting.
Seems like it would also be a good way to protect Company A from any litigation in the future that says they purposely tried to start a squeeze on their own stock. Or a MOASS. How could they start a squeeze? Company A put it out there that they wanted to sell a nice chunk of shares. You didn’t try to get any of those shares?
Company A: How many shares did you need?
MM:
Company A: How many shares did you need, MM?
MM:
Like Five Fancy Lawyers in Unison: Our client pleads the fifth.
Back to the lifeline though, you just absorbed someone’s toxic bag of naked shorts and you want out. Company A just put up a flashing sign that says, we’d like to sell some shares. Seems like a pretty good opportunity to me, doesn’t hurt to ask.
Market Maker: I just absorbed some toxic shit, got any shares you’d sell me?
Company A: Maybe
If you inherited a bag of toxic naked shorts and you know or have a strong feeling there are many more out there then trying to close by buying real shares through the market will run the price up. Can you close before you get out? If Company A sells you as many shares as they’re willing then that might cut your naked short position down or completely close it. If it doesn’t close it then what’s the next best option? You likely know that buying power is about to crank up because your toxic bag is expiring and so are a lot of other toxic bags.
Your next best option? Options…
If there’s a scenario where you’re trying to maybe not be the first one out, but insure that you make it out, this is the best play in my opinion. Again, Company A said they want to sell shares. You need real shares. If you’re unable to get enough shares directly from Company A then you turn to options. Options allow you to lock in a price for the shares you’re comfortable with, if the price drops then you can buy some shares for cheaper on the open market. If the price rises then you can still buy shares for the cheaper strike price by exercising the options contract.
Again, if you start buying at market then the price could start taking off and you’re cost basis could get blown out of the water. For example, you need 1 million shares of Company A at $20. If company is at $19, then with a big buy order your 1 millionth share might actually get bought at $21 or $25 or way higher. If you buy 10,000 $20 Calls then you can buy 1 million shares at $20 until the Calls expire.
The other advantage, you don’t have to be the first naked shorter to go to the market and start smashing the buy button. If Company A goes through some sort of Mother of All Short Squeezes then you won’t be the one who started it. To regulators, you just luckily bought some call options before this all started happening and now you’re exercising. Really wild stuff going on. Good thing you’re not naked short on that stock…. anymore… You go home and cry.