Because lately, I'm seeing people claiming that we're all going to die within this decade:

Experts are warning AI could lead to human extinction. Are we taking it seriously enough?
Human extinction.
Think about that for a second. Really think about it. The erasure of the human race from planet Earth.
That is what top industry leaders are frantically sounding the alarm about. These technologists and academics keep smashing the red panic button, doing everything they can to warn about the potential dangers artificial intelligence poses to the very existence of civilization.
On Tuesday, hundreds of top AI scientists, researchers, and others — including OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis — again voiced deep concern for the future of humanity, signing a one-sentence open letter to the public that aimed to put the risks the rapidly advancing technology carries with it in unmistakable terms.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” said the letter, signed by many of the industry’s most respected figures.
It doesn’t get more straightforward and urgent than that. These industry leaders are quite literally warning that the impending AI revolution should be taken as seriously as the threat of nuclear war. They are pleading for policymakers to erect some guardrails and establish baseline regulations to defang the primitive technology before it is too late.
Dan Hendrycks, the executive director of the Center for AI Safety, called the situation “reminiscent of atomic scientists issuing warnings about the very technologies they’ve created. As Robert Oppenheimer noted, ‘We knew the world would not be the same.’”
“There are many ‘important and urgent risks from AI,’ not just the risk of extinction; for example, systemic bias, misinformation, malicious use, cyberattacks, and weaponization,” Hendrycks continued. “These are all important risks that need to be addressed.”
And yet, it seems that the dire message these experts are desperately trying to send the public isn’t cutting through the noise of everyday life. AI experts might be sounding the alarm, but the level of trepidation — and in some cases sheer terror — they harbor about the technology is not being echoed with similar urgency by the news media to the masses.
Instead, broadly speaking, news organizations treated Tuesday’s letter — like all of the other warnings we have seen in recent months — as just another headline, mixed in with a garden variety of stories. Some major news organizations didn’t even feature an article about the chilling warning on their website’s homepages.
To some extent, it feels eerily reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic, before the widespread panic and the shutdowns and the overloaded emergency rooms. Newsrooms kept an eye on the rising threat that the virus posed, publishing stories about it slowly spreading across the world. But by the time the serious nature of the virus was fully recognized and fused into the very essence in which it was covered, it had already effectively upended the world.
History risks repeating itself with AI, with even higher stakes. Yes, news organizations are covering the developing technology. But there has been a considerable lack of urgency surrounding the issue given the open possibility of planetary peril.
Perhaps that is because it can be difficult to come to terms with the notion that a Hollywood-style science fiction apocalypse can become reality, that advancing computer technology might reach escape velocity and decimate humans from existence. It is, however, precisely what the world’s most leading experts are warning could happen.
It is much easier to avoid uncomfortable realities, pushing them from the forefront into the background and hoping that issues simply resolve themselves with time. But often they don’t — and it seems unlikely that the growing concerns pertaining to AI will resolve themselves. In fact, it’s far more likely that with the breakneck pace in which the technology is developing, the concerns will actually become more apparent with time.
As Cynthia Rudin, a computer science professor and AI researcher at Duke University, told CNN on Tuesday: “Do we really need more evidence that AI’s negative impact could be as big as nuclear war?”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/30/media/artificial-intelligence-warning-reliable-sources/index.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThere%20are%20many%20'important%20and,that%20need%20to%20be%20addressed.%E2%80%9D

Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down
BY ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY MARCH 29, 2023 6:01 PM EDT
Yudkowsky is a decision theorist from the U.S. and leads research at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He's been working on aligning Artificial General Intelligence since 2001 and is widely regarded as a founder of the field.
An open letter published today calls for “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”
This 6-month moratorium would be better than no moratorium. I have respect for everyone who stepped up and signed it. It’s an improvement on the margin.
I refrained from signing because I think the letter is understating the seriousness of the situation and asking for too little to solve it.
The key issue is not “human-competitive” intelligence (as the open letter puts it); it’s what happens after AI gets to smarter-than-human intelligence. Key thresholds there may not be obvious, we definitely can’t calculate in advance what happens when, and it currently seems imaginable that a research lab would cross critical lines without noticing.
Many researchers steeped in these issues, including myself, expect that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die. Not as in “maybe possibly some remote chance,” but as in “that is the obvious thing that would happen.” It’s not that you can’t, in principle, survive creating something much smarter than you; it’s that it would require precision and preparation and new scientific insights, and probably not having AI systems composed of giant inscrutable arrays of fractional numbers.
Without that precision and preparation, the most likely outcome is AI that does not do what we want, and does not care for us nor for sentient life in general. That kind of caring is something that could in principle be imbued into an AI but we are not ready and do not currently know how.
Absent that caring, we get “the AI does not love you, nor does it hate you, and you are made of atoms it can use for something else.”
The likely result of humanity facing down an opposed superhuman intelligence is a total loss. Valid metaphors include “a 10-year-old trying to play chess against Stockfish 15”, “the 11th century trying to fight the 21st century,” and “Australopithecus trying to fight Homo sapiens“.
To visualize a hostile superhuman AI, don’t imagine a lifeless book-smart thinker dwelling inside the internet and sending ill-intentioned emails. Visualize an entire alien civilization, thinking at millions of times human speeds, initially confined to computers—in a world of creatures that are, from its perspective, very stupid and very slow. A sufficiently intelligent AI won’t stay confined to computers for long. In today’s world you can email DNA strings to laboratories that will produce proteins on demand, allowing an AI initially confined to the internet to build artificial life forms or bootstrap straight to postbiological molecular manufacturing.
If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter.
There’s no proposed plan for how we could do any such thing and survive. OpenAI’s openly declared intention is to make some future AI do our AI alignment homework. Just hearing that this is the plan ought to be enough to get any sensible person to panic. The other leading AI lab, DeepMind, has no plan at all.
An aside: None of this danger depends on whether or not AIs are or can be conscious; it’s intrinsic to the notion of powerful cognitive systems that optimize hard and calculate outputs that meet sufficiently complicated outcome criteria. With that said, I’d be remiss in my moral duties as a human if I didn’t also mention that we have no idea how to determine whether AI systems are aware of themselves—since we have no idea how to decode anything that goes on in the giant inscrutable arrays—and therefore we may at some point inadvertently create digital minds which are truly conscious and ought to have rights and shouldn’t be owned.
The rule that most people aware of these issues would have endorsed 50 years earlier, was that if an AI system can speak fluently and says it’s self-aware and demands human rights, that ought to be a hard stop on people just casually owning that AI and using it past that point. We already blew past that old line in the sand. And that was probably correct; I agree that current AIs are probably just imitating talk of self-awareness from their training data. But I mark that, with how little insight we have into these systems’ internals, we do not actually know.
If that’s our state of ignorance for GPT-4, and GPT-5 is the same size of giant capability step as from GPT-3 to GPT-4, I think we’ll no longer be able to justifiably say “probably not self-aware” if we let people make GPT-5s. It’ll just be “I don’t know; nobody knows.” If you can’t be sure whether you’re creating a self-aware AI, this is alarming not just because of the moral implications of the “self-aware” part, but because being unsure means you have no idea what you are doing and that is dangerous and you should stop.
On Feb. 7, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, publicly gloated that the new Bing would make Google “come out and show that they can dance.” “I want people to know that we made them dance,” he said.
This is not how the CEO of Microsoft talks in a sane world. It shows an overwhelming gap between how seriously we are taking the problem, and how seriously we needed to take the problem starting 30 years ago.
We are not going to bridge that gap in six months.
It took more than 60 years between when the notion of Artificial Intelligence was first proposed and studied, and for us to reach today’s capabilities. Solving safety of superhuman intelligence—not perfect safety, safety in the sense of “not killing literally everyone”—could very reasonably take at least half that long. And the thing about trying this with superhuman intelligence is that if you get that wrong on the first try, you do not get to learn from your mistakes, because you are dead. Humanity does not learn from the mistake and dust itself off and try again, as in other challenges we’ve overcome in our history, because we are all gone.
Trying to get anything right on the first really critical try is an extraordinary ask, in science and in engineering. We are not coming in with anything like the approach that would be required to do it successfully. If we held anything in the nascent field of Artificial General Intelligence to the lesser standards of engineering rigor that apply to a bridge meant to carry a couple of thousand cars, the entire field would be shut down tomorrow.
We are not prepared. We are not on course to be prepared in any reasonable time window. There is no plan. Progress in AI capabilities is running vastly, vastly ahead of progress in AI alignment or even progress in understanding what the hell is going on inside those systems. If we actually do this, we are all going to die.
Many researchers working on these systems think that we’re plunging toward a catastrophe, with more of them daring to say it in private than in public; but they think that they can’t unilaterally stop the forward plunge, that others will go on even if they personally quit their jobs. And so they all think they might as well keep going. This is a stupid state of affairs, and an undignified way for Earth to die, and the rest of humanity ought to step in at this point and help the industry solve its collective action problem.
Some of my friends have recently reported to me that when people outside the AI industry hear about extinction risk from Artificial General Intelligence for the first time, their reaction is “maybe we should not build AGI, then.”
Hearing this gave me a tiny flash of hope, because it’s a simpler, more sensible, and frankly saner reaction than I’ve been hearing over the last 20 years of trying to get anyone in the industry to take things seriously. Anyone talking that sanely deserves to hear how bad the situation actually is, and not be told that a six-month moratorium is going to fix it.
On March 16, my partner sent me this email. (She later gave me permission to excerpt it here.)
“Nina lost a tooth! In the usual way that children do, not out of carelessness! Seeing GPT4 blow away those standardized tests on the same day that Nina hit a childhood milestone brought an emotional surge that swept me off my feet for a minute. It’s all going too fast. I worry that sharing this will heighten your own grief, but I’d rather be known to you than for each of us to suffer alone.”
When the insider conversation is about the grief of seeing your daughter lose her first tooth, and thinking she’s not going to get a chance to grow up, I believe we are past the point of playing political chess about a six-month moratorium.
If there was a plan for Earth to survive, if only we passed a six-month moratorium, I would back that plan. There isn’t any such plan.
Here’s what would actually need to be done:
The moratorium on new large training runs needs to be indefinite and worldwide. There can be no exceptions, including for governments or militaries. If the policy starts with the U.S., then China needs to see that the U.S. is not seeking an advantage but rather trying to prevent a horrifically dangerous technology which can have no true owner and which will kill everyone in the U.S. and in China and on Earth. If I had infinite freedom to write laws, I might carve out a single exception for AIs being trained solely to solve problems in biology and biotechnology, not trained on text from the internet, and not to the level where they start talking or planning; but if that was remotely complicating the issue I would immediately jettison that proposal and say to just shut it all down.
Shut down all the large GPU clusters (the large computer farms where the most powerful AIs are refined). Shut down all the large training runs. Put a ceiling on how much computing power anyone is allowed to use in training an AI system, and move it downward over the coming years to compensate for more efficient training algorithms. No exceptions for governments and militaries. Make immediate multinational agreements to prevent the prohibited activities from moving elsewhere. Track all GPUs sold. If intelligence says that a country outside the agreement is building a GPU cluster, be less scared of a shooting conflict between nations than of the moratorium being violated; be willing to destroy a rogue datacenter by airstrike.
Frame nothing as a conflict between national interests, have it clear that anyone talking of arms races is a fool. That we all live or die as one, in this, is not a policy but a fact of nature. Make it explicit in international diplomacy that preventing AI extinction scenarios is considered a priority above preventing a full nuclear exchange, and that allied nuclear countries are willing to run some risk of nuclear exchange if that’s what it takes to reduce the risk of large AI training runs.
That’s the kind of policy change that would cause my partner and I to hold each other, and say to each other that a miracle happened, and now there’s a chance that maybe Nina will live. The sane people hearing about this for the first time and sensibly saying “maybe we should not” deserve to hear, honestly, what it would take to have that happen. And when your policy ask is that large, the only way it goes through is if policymakers realize that if they conduct business as usual, and do what’s politically easy, that means their own kids are going to die too.
Shut it all down.
We are not ready. We are not on track to be significantly readier in the foreseeable future. If we go ahead on this everyone will die, including children who did not choose this and did not do anything wrong.
Shut it down.

https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/

I fully expect to die in the AI apocalypse in 5-10 years, and I'll be surprised by happy if I don't.

https://old.reddit.com/Futurology/comments/134g9zp/one_of_the_creators_of_chatgpt_said_that_the/jifgp46/?context=3

People are going to say no because it would be inconvenient, but I don't see what's stopping AI from ending all life in the next couple of years. Alignment is an unsolved problem, and an unaligned AI will most likely try to kill anything it sees as a threat to its mission.

https://old.reddit.com/artificial/comments/13xsbnt/is_ai_going_to_cause_the_complete_extinction_of/jmjzpmo/?context=3

Yes, AI will probably cause human extinction in the next decade. Paul Christiano, former senior employee of OpenAI, said that there is 20% chance that AI causes human extinction. Eliezer Yudkowsky, major contributor to AI safety and development, thinks it is 99%.

https://old.reddit.com/artificial/comments/13xsbnt/is_ai_going_to_cause_the_complete_extinction_of/jms84rb/

I am trying actually! I organized a picket outside OpenAI's HQ in May, before the Extinction statement.
You can search Eliezer Yudkowsky podcasts on youtube, or his blog. The podcast i recommend is Bankless one.
He says that our death is the most likely outcome from AI, and is now living off his life, like it is his last years.

https://old.reddit.com/artificial/comments/13xsbnt/is_ai_going_to_cause_the_complete_extinction_of/jmsqj28/
Based on these, it seems like we're far more likely to go completely extinct than we did before with AI, COVID-19, nuclear weapons, and so on. None of those existed during Medieval Era, so maybe we should've never left that era.
Thoughts on these?

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Corva fiddled with an empty medicine bottle, he looked at the labels and peeled them, only to stick it on the bottle again, he would screw off the cap and screw it back on repeatedly. It was an old habit of his, just looking at random things and playing with them like a fidget toy, he only does it when he has nothing to do, ever since he got a job that habit disappeared, but now, all he can do is lay down on the bed of a hospital tent, and he's also technically currently unemployed. Since no company is going to recruit anyone in the middle of an invasion from killer robots. He thought back to what happened yesterday, when Lavoss came into the tent and confronted Kawl.
"You're still awake?"
"Hmm?"
He was still curious about it, what did Lavoss mean by traitor? Did Kawl kill someone? He doesn't look like someone who would do such a thing, whatever it was that he did though, it was significant enough for Lavoss to hit him in the head with the stock of his gun knocking him out cold. It was shocking to see, he was awfully calm up until the point he said something about the traitor part and not a moment later Kawl was on the ground unconscious with a gun stock shaped dent on the chitin protecting his head. Everyone gasped, except Mari, the nurse, she looked like she expected it for a long time and stayed calm.
"Do you have trouble sleeping?"
She asked as she came back with another box of medical supplies.
"No, just… didn't feel like it"
"What do you mean you don't feel like sleeping?"
She put the box down and walked up to him.
"Well… i got plenty of sleep yesterday, spent the rest of it sleeping, didn't i? And most of today as well"
"With all due respect that doesn't justify staying up until the middle of the night, besides, you need rest"
"Same thing can be said about you… I haven't seen you take any kind of break, even the doctor's not here, why are you?"
"The downside of being the only qualified nurse left around, not the only one in the camp of course, just the only one left for this tent, besides… it's my duty to watch over the patients, and make sure they have enough sleep…"
She raised her voice a little on that last word, as well as throwing a glance at other patients that were already asleep.
"Subtle…"
"Right i am, now sleep"
"I've tried, i don't think i can"
"So you do have trouble sleeping, hold on, i think i have something for that in stock"
"No thanks, can we just… talk? It's been some time since I've had a friendly talk with anyone, just… Not about anything in particular, you know? Just talk"
"Hmm… fine, when was the last time then?"
"Right before the invasion… right before he lost his life…"
"Let's… not talk about that…"
"Wise…"
"Uhm… What's your job?"
"QC, for quality control, in an arms factory"
"A factory worker? You looked way cleaner than i thought you would"
"If i were working in the assembly i think you would change your mind about that, but no, QC's don't get their hand dirty often, maybe once in a while when a weapon explodes on them"
"Huh… ever had one?"
"Personally? No, have I seen it? Yes, funny story, when i first got accepted i had this instructor, telling us how to check the quality of products, the first rifle he picked up to show us how to check the pulse had a faulty wiring on it, too much energy, it blew up on his face while a group of new QC's was watching, safe to say he doesn't like it when some of us laughed"
"Poor guy, Reminded of someone"
"Who?"
"My sister"
"Oh i…"
"Oh don't worry, it's nothing sensitive, it's like your story, she's a teacher, been one for a while even before she got here, so when she got here to Rosan she was considered a senior teacher, and when new ones needs a tour of their workplace and know how to handle the kids they relied on her, now one day she was guiding a new teacher…"
"Mhm?"
"And she was like… maybe she wants to show off a little bit, I don't know, but from what she told me, she said to this new teacher something along the lines of: 'look at these children! So behaved! If you want to do that you have to learn from me' or something like that… and… not a second after that, one of the kids who were playing threw a wet ball of paper and it hit her right in the back of the head"
Corva had to spend some willpower trying not to laugh, remembering that he was the one who laughed when his instructor blew himself up along with Kasso didn't make it any easier.
"Oh the look of embarrassment on her face, didn't see it myself, but i wish i did, i can feel her esteem crumble every time i mention it, it was cute to see her just shrink and try to hide her face"
"Oh… you'll like it when you see how my friend acts around girls, Kasso, he…"
Mari was a bit confused why Corva suddenly fell silent, why he looked at the ground with a frown, until she remembered what he said, and it clicked on her.
Right before he lost his life
"I'm sorry for your loss"
"It's fine, i'm sure he's in a better place… much better than this… hellhole"
She wanted to comment on his sudden pessimism, but decided that won't be so wise considering he's not wrong, no matter how many times she tries to ignore it, she has to admit, their current situation is a hellhole.
"I suppose that's enough talk for now…"
"...."
"I advise you sleep now, you'll get tired"
He didn't respond, and just went to sleep without another word, and an unchanged expression of sorrow. She sighed and returned to her work, sorting the type of medications into different containers.
"When will it all end?"
—-~----
It was calm… and black… that is about all Schen can think about regarding his current state, he can't tell if he's dreaming, or if he's asleep or awake, it's just that he is aware. It was a strange feeling, like being asleep physically but not mentally, he feels like he's floating, without a body, like there's nothing that can limit him. And yet at the same time he can't do anything, he was just aware, and drifting away in this weird state of half dream. For some reason, he thought of those tales of people who 'died' , people who experienced long comas, and the tale of their supposed journey to this place between the mind and the world.
Ridiculous stories, barely believable, and uninteresting if you ask him. And yet, here he is now, aware of what's happening, he remembers everything, he passed out from blood loss, after fighting one of those things. He wants to wake up, check on his men, maybe meet up with Captain Vaiya and make up a plan on what to do next regarding their situation. But you can't wake up when you don't even have control over your eyes, so it was more of a waiting game, an annoying one, knowing what's happening and yet can't act on it. He'd rather be actually dead over this, at least if he's dead he doesn't have to worry about anything. The problem is, he knows he's alive, it's just that his body is not responding to him, nor can he feel it.
It took what felt like hours, since he wasn't actually asleep, he was paralyzed but still conscious. After an agonizing few hours, he felt the first bodily sensation, his finger, it graduated to the feeling of his hand resting on a soft surface, probably some sort of bed, he can feel his breath as well. He started feeling his body, little by little, unfortunately, now that he feels his body again, he can feel what his body feels, and that is pure unadulterated pain. On his head, on his leg, his back, his arm, everywhere, he doesn't remember getting hit that much, but apparently he did. His back arched from trying to suppress it, and he let out a grunt that was too loud for his standard.
"Calm down! Don't move just yet…"
A voice, good, that means he should be in a friendly area now. He opened one of his eyes with a considerable amount of struggle, and saw the face of an Enovian with a waterproof paramedic hat on through his blurry vision.
"I've had worse…"
What a word for him to say before his back gave up on him and suddenly went limp, triggering pain in many areas of his body.
"Aergh…"
He grunted with some exasperation and regret. Maybe he shouldn't be showing off at this kind of age, it's not good for his bones.
"Where's our painkillers?"
—-~----
"Captain?"
"Yes?"
"He's awake"
"Just? or?..."
"For awhile, he needed some time to actually get up, thought we'll just wait for him before telling you"
"Alright, thank you, i'll be there, a wonder he survived though, and to wake up this early"
"It is, his wounds were near fatal, he was essentially one light tap away from a fractured skull"
"Tough little guy… you can go now, there are others no?"
"Oh…yes, sorry ma'am"
Vaiya turned off her personal datapad, and stood up from her command seat. She dusted some metal dust off her uniform and made her way to the recruitment office turned into a temporary medical bay. She walked through a collection of the remaining crew of the ship, some simply threw a glance at her, some greeted her, and some gave her a salute. She noted the look of despair in their eyes and sighed, but kept on walking as that isn't her goal right now. She arrived at a door with a plate next to it that says: 'recruitment', the plate had an electrical tape with a writing on it that says: 'medical bay now' stuck haphazardly on top of it.
It isn't a neon sign, but it works. She opened the door manually with her hand as most of the doors in administration are now unpowered, inside was simple, four 'beds' laid on the floor, with most of the desks removed, the remaining medical crews stay here now, treating anyone they can. Including the new security captain, Schon, who she spotted sitting on his bed half awake wrapped in blood caked bandages, while clearly struggling to drink from a glass cup. He looked oddly… calm, like he's not surprised he's here at all. Granted, she did rescue him from becoming minced meat, and it's only logical to assume there are survivors holding out somewhere, but he looks absolutely unfazed, as if he had this happen before.
"SC Schon?"
She walked up to him, he gave an unsurprised look and went back to doing his best to drink.
"Captain…"
"Nice to see you awake already, i figured it would take a long time but you prove me wrong…"
"Uh-huh…."
"About that status report you ask for-"
"I already know, stranded, no engine, almost all crew dead, ship's practically scrapped, light's dying, and surrounded by killer machines chewing on the hull, and Rosan IV isn't so lucky either"
"Yes… unfortunate is it?"
"Yes, but right now I don't care, how's my men?"
"Your what?"
"My subordinates"
"Ah… they're… few, 50… down to you and two others, i'm sorry"
"I see… who?"
"Koern, and Ayuna"
Schen wasn't paying much attention to the captain, he simply stared off into the distance, but hearing the young Caevit's name roll off her tongue took his attention.
"Really?... Thank you, but you're not here just for that right?"
Now that he actually pays some attention to her, he noticed her face change, a bit more tense.
"You read my mind, come"
"I can barely move my lips and you want me to walk?"
She looks around for a minute before looking back at him.
"I don't mind carrying someone"
"Huh?"
—-~----
"If i have credit for every time a Tekit lady carries me in her arms while i can barely move, i'll have two"
Schen commented on his current position, it earned him a confused and curious look from the captain. She took him to an uninhabited room to talk, as it turns out most of the administration has been turned to some sort of holdout for whoever's left alive in the ship. She set him down on a chair and followed suit, sitting right in front of him.
"So what is this? Is there something you want to know? If it's about this whole thing then you're talking to a wall"
Her behavior was odd, Schen noted, she seems… agitated, not angry, just stirred, like something's bugging her. He can understand being scared, but the way she moves suggests whatever's currently happening isn't the case.
"Nothing much… i just want… confirmation"
"Go ahead…"
"So… I heard that Koern asked you for help, is that so?"
"Yeah? Got to me after he said you can't help"
"Do you know what his issue was?"
"Yes, random images and voice recordings from his cousin"
"Okay… where does his cousin lives?"
"In Rosan IV and from what i heard, it's about as messed up as this ship"
"That is correct, do you-"
"Wait, can we just get to the point here? What's the issue? Why are you suddenly interested in Koern's problem?"
"I… because…"
"Hmm?"
"...Because i've been having the same problem, what you said, random images, and voice recordings, now i know it's exactly the same, that is what i want to know"
"Huh… okay… so?..."
"There's one difference… his problem started today, during the jump, my problem has been going on for the last five cycles"
"....."
"And I want to know one more thing, please, answer this honestly… do you see it?"
He can feel her agitation increase tenfold as she asks the question. She was normal, now she's visibly shaking.
"See what?..."
"The shape…"
"Shape?"
"Please tell me you saw it too, i… I've been thinking about it… for a long time… ever since I've peered into those images, there's a shape stuck in my eyes, it's burned itself into my mind, and I feel it…. Everyday i think i see something in the corner of my eyes, i hear noises that aren't there, closer and closer every time!…. It… it was getting closer… the shape…"
Her stare became intense, like the stare of a crazed person.
"i… don't know…"
"Oh but you know! You saw it!... Just as I did… it sees you, but you can barely see it, it's there… watching… First it stays in the image, then it creeps into you, haunts you, then you see it hide everytime you turn your head… it follows you, everywhere you go… in your sleep… when you work… all the time…"
Her breathing was rapid, almost uncontrolled.
"Perhaps… that's just you, i do not experience these"
"It may not now, but it will…. Because it has to me, it's like a tumor, and it won't go away, no matter how hard i try… it's still there…"
She calmed down slightly, her breathing was normal again, sort of, and she's no longer shaking, but the stare is still there, the stare of true fear, striking deep into his soul. As she calmed down more and thankfully finally averted her gaze elsewhere, Schen took the downtime to process what he just listened to, and his conclusion was: what the ////?
"Sorry… i… i just… i needed to know… i need to know if i'm not the only one… now i know it's in you too, not now, but soon, t-thank you"
"Your… welcome…"
"Should we return?"
"We…"
He pondered about asking her to take him to the bridge, so he can look out and see what's happening outside the ship, but now he's reconsidering it, because of that… experience.
"...Yes, we should"
She let go of his arms, he didn't even realize it, but she was holding on to him tight the whole time.
"Of course… of course, let's make this quick…"
—-~----
Schen observed Captain Vaiya as she left the medical room, he noted her sudden return to her previous well mannered behavior, he can still see a tinge of anxiety in her eyes and movements however, and realized how similar it was to Koern's behavior. Anxiety, unease, massive discomfort, moving around constantly, and eyes snapping to random positions as if they're trying to catch something on the move. It was unmistakable, Schen recalled back to his conversation with Koern, about something he said.
'it's… distressing'
Koern did look at the images before coming to him, and it was clear the images caused it, if Vaiya had something similar or identical happen, he can assume the cause for her distress is the same. But one question remains that still baffles him: how? How do random images do that? Implanting irrational fear into someone, making them see things that aren't there, what is happening? And now that he considers it, he did see the images, is he going to fall victim to the same thing? Why hasn't he felt anything if those images can do that to someone through just a mere look at it?
One question leads to another, and it all gets more complicated the longer he tries to solve it. He wanted to ignore it, maybe they were just unstable and he misjudged the whole thing, but he can't help but feel there's something to it, it's clear those images and recordings somehow were sent by the creatures currently roaming the ship, he sees the connection, but why? And how? Psychological warfare? Maybe, that was the most rational answer he could come up with. With their clear situation of being in the middle of an invasion, he can only assume such an answer, but applying it to only a few specific targets seems beyond strange.
He pinched his snout in frustration, before taking a deep breath and exhaling it as slowly as he could. Perhaps he shouldn't think of it too much for now, maybe that's how it gets into you, the shape… whatever it is. He looked around his surroundings, a 'medical' room, previously an office, he watched the doctors treat the wounded as he thought of his next step. Looking outside the ship should be a good idea, he had asked a nurse about the whole situation before Vaiya showed up, they told him the entire star system has fallen, Rosan IV was silent, any attempts at communication and call for help were futile, the other planets around the system, some are yet to be named, are the same.
That means those things have been here for a while, and somehow stayed out of the union's radar. He remembered the emerging stories of Rosan IV, how it became a ghost, how communications were far and few between, how many ships that traveled to its system went missing and ones that returned had signs of heavy damage on them, and how their crews looked 'lifeless'. If Rosan's system has been like this for some time, wouldn't that mean any ship that comes here would suffer the same fate as his ship?.
Why would some return and look 'fine' was beyond him, but a thought nestled itself in his mind, a terrifying thought, it made his blood run cold, the thought that these things have spread beyond this solar system, spread silently, in cargo ships that travel to every corner of union space. Suddenly people seeing shapes and hearing sounds after they look at an image doesn't sound horrifying anymore.
"////…"
—-~----
Faen sat in his office, for the millionth time, he stared at his computer, for the millionth time, he opened the files containing the Qrid military spending, for the millionth time, he looked at the reports file, for the millionth time. It has always been like this, being a general wasn't all about giving orders and making war plans, most of his time was spent in front of his computer, looking at the passive activity of his army, and its spendings, receiving calls or calling someone to see if he can learn something new about someone else's army. Look at pirate reports, raiders, terrorists, radicalist, sometimes cultists, it has always been like this, looking away at the computer, looking at files, always has been.
He wouldn't say he couldn't make wartime decisions, if one were to ever occur, he's always confident he can, after all he has learned from both his father and many mentors. He trained for it, for war, he trained how to control an army in such a situation for pretty much his whole life, he doesn't have to, but it's better to know how to fight than not at all. You never know when it'll come, maybe now, maybe in years during your old days, maybe never, but if it ever does come, he knows what to do, whether he likes it or not. It's a part of his pride, his identity, though he couldn't say much about his son, and everyday he worries about not having a successor, not having someone to pass the torch to, and as time marches on indiscriminately, his worry can only grow.
Sometimes he wondered if should've been harsh, and not fulfill his wish to go to university so he can learn computer science, and put him in the very school he himself went through to become what he is now. But that's not a good father, isn't it? It would be against his wish, and he would've needed to force him, it's what his son's grandfather did… to him, he still thinks about it, about his original dream. A singer, a far cry from a supreme general, he remembered the angry face of his father upon learning what he wanted to be, it felt like it happened just yesterday. He never liked it, not once, despite managing to prove himself worthy as a leader of an army in the end of everything.
And to think, he was almost like that, to his own son, he couldn't handle the thought. Faen took his eyes off the screen, just for a moment, and looked at another one, a camera display, showing his son's room. Rana was sleeping, as usual and as he should be at a time like this, he looked at him through the screen, at his arm, and thought about his latest conversation with the woman he loved.
"Disappointment, huh?"
He felt a subtle pain in his chest out of nowhere, he opened the drawer on his desk through a motion that tells of excessive habit, and absentmindedly took his medication without looking. With a sigh, he looked at a small button to his right. There was a screen above it that had a list of people considered significant enough to be contacted by him directly, which ranged from the supreme generals of other species, to the head maiden that cleaned his and his son's bedroom. He looked for a specific one that he recently added, the surgeon that is the head of operation for the trials he had put Rana through for the last few cycles, the trials that he and his mother show complete disapproval to.
He found it and clicked the button, it was answered after some time and he entered a call with the surgeon.
"A pleasure to speak with you general"
"Hrm…"
"Is there something you wish to ask of me?"
"Yes… we should stop, no more trials"
"If that is what you want, then I will gladly comply, but may I ask why for the sudden stop? You seem invested in this when you first called me to arrange it"
"Family issues"
"that is-"
He cut the call short, and continued his work. Looking at the files, looking for differences every so often, making sure everything is stable and taken care of, and glancing at his son's monitor once in a while, and for the first time since his son graduated university, he smiled. Perhaps that's the right thing, to be a father, not a general. At least… for a moment, his smile disappeared as he received a call, it was marked as urgent, and was displayed on his screen instead of just a sound notification. He dusted his uniform and fixed any creases as he noticed the call wasn't just any call, it was a notice for him to join a discussion between supreme generals of each species and their respective leaders, that includes the matriarch.
It is odd he wasn't notified of this earlier, oftentimes these kinds of things have their own schedule that was discussed beforehand, a sudden meeting like this can only mean one thing. He accepted the call, and his screen changed to the display he's all too familiar with, a digital conference room, two lines of camera display, the bottom for the generals, the top for the leaders, they were all present, which is to be expected. The matriarch of Qrids, the Tekit queen, the Caevitan allfather, high empress of Enovia, and the Civean president, the current roster of union council, below them was him, and other generals, including general Cynte of the Civeans.
He still remembers his little offer to make an accident to highlight Rana's name, after the reveal of the Goels and the incident it was kept as a private thing between them that didn't really go anywhere. He doesn't want to talk about it, neither does Cynte, so it was technically a win-win situation, despite the unexpected and frankly out of their favor results. The call was oddly silent, no one was saying anything even the loud ones like his mother, they seemed to be waiting for something, or someone. Faen didn't question it, it would be considered stupid, so he too followed the silence. It was a strange and awkward few minutes of staring at each other not saying anything, up until what they waited for arrived in the call.
Another screen appeared above all ten screens, and on it was something he dreaded to see, the collection of red revolving rings, Cain. Practically every general present felt tense, including him, the leaders couldn't care less, except maybe for the Civean president who expressed the most worry as they all waited for Cain to speak. Sudden meeting, all members, and Cain, and considering their latest development with the Goels, this couldn't be good. The red rings assemble into the shape of a solar system like it did when it appeared on the monitors of his warship, and Cain spoke with his usual low pitched synthesized voice that everyone in the room knew quite well.
'it is no doubt all of you will question why I requested this urgent meeting, i apologize if any of you found it to be too sudden, but what I have to tell you will change your mind, and I will not waste your time, as we are in a race against time itself… the union has been breached by an invader, you are under attack, and in a process of galaxy wide invasion'
No, definitely not good.
"What do you mean by this?"
Faen immediately asked, as much as he distrust Cain, he must agree with his mindset that no time should be wasted. And it seems his question stopped a particular set of leaders trying to speak, stopping them from blurting out what are probably4 going to be pointless sarcastic remarks, so that was another benefit of speaking first.
'your union is currently under the invasion of a race that is arguably similar to me, we call them Shakran'
The display of red rings changed to a scrolling collection of images, images of… Faen doesn't know how to describe it, bipedal creatures, made of metal, and grossly disfigured bodies, with sharp claws and many eyes. Every single thing varies, some of the things in the images looked small and only had claws, some were massive and had what are clearly cannons as a weapon. He noted a certain detail about the images, they were blurry, and not straight, and some strange things were staring at the camera, while looking elsewhere. Something tells Faen these images were taken in the middle of active combat.
'They are a hivemind of machines, their sentience and sapience is debatable, but that does matter currently as their only goal is to destroy and conquer'
"Lies! If we were under an invasion from them, we would've known already! Besides… we already have an invader… we're talking to them right now"
The Tekit queen spoke with clear passive aggresive energy in her voice. Faen sighed in annoyance but kept it to himself.
'i understand the distrust, but it is no reason to make a sarcastic remark, however, you need to trust me on this matter, because their return can only mean danger to the union, and the universe as a whole, they are-'
"Wait, what do you mean… their return?"
'you all must've wondered how and why i and my brother ended up the way we did on that desert planet, what you are seeing on my screen is the answer to your question'
It didn't click for any of the leaders, their annoyed expression stays the same as Cain finished his sentence, but it clicked for every single military leader in the room, and it horrified them.
'my kind have encountered them before, my creators, it led to a war, a million year war, between me and them, they are what wiped my creators out of existence, and soon will be the cause of extinction for every single species in this union if we don't take any actions, since you refused, i have personally tracked every ship that left Rosan IV for the last six cycles, here is the data'
The scrolling images turned into a detailed map of the galaxy, with every single star system currently under union control included in it, there were red lines all over the map, they were all traced back all the way to one specific system, Rosan IV. A heavy weight rested itself on Schen's mind as he realized how far the lines have gone, to a point it crosses itself, wrapping around the galaxy in a circle, like some sort of a chaotic web.
'Rosan is lost, it is highly likely they have turned it into a staging ground, i know that we all have strived to avoid this, but war is inevitable, i have send a complete data regarding the Shakrans to all of you, please review it as fast as you can, and take your moves, as i will mine right now, alert your fleets, if they see my fleet entering a system, tell them they are here as an ally, i have been defeated once, i will not repeat the same mistake again, i hope you can catch up and help me, because there is no telling of what they will do once their setup is complete, and there is no telling whether or not i can do this alone'
"Wait! What should we do?"
'search and destroy, hunt down every ship that left the system, check every station, scan every inch of space, detonate stations, evacuate every planet they have visited then purge the cities and hammer the surface with orbital strikes if you might, but by all means… do not let. them. develop. That is all i have to say, my reinforcements are coming, but i do not know if there is enough time, act now'
And with that, Cain left the conference room, and at that very moment, it shattered, every world leader was either furious or dead silent with a look of horrific realization, his fellow generals went into a panic and contacted their fleets. Except for him, he simply sat there, unmoving and very still, staring at the galaxy map Cain had brought up, looking at one particular star system, crossed several times by the red lines, and surrounded by it, Sheneae XI, isn't that?... The solar system his wife is visiting to look at a newly opened hospital?.
(a TON of RIC's)

ChocoPro 314: GanPro Returns Need something to do tomorrow morning (or to check out after you wake up!)? Ichigaya has you covered! The Special Early Morning Episode features Akki teaming up with “May” Suruga once again to take on the Showa Era shooters, Mei Suruga (classic) taking on Smiling Violence Sayaka, and EGG TART welcomes Shota (teaming with Ichigaya’s Lucky Charm, Miya!) for his first official appearance on the regular show. Let’s Go, ChocoPro!
🍫 CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK! ChocoPro 314 🍫 Ken Ohka & Baliyan Akki VS Tokiko Kirihara & Cherry, Mei Suruga VS Sayaka, and EGG TART (Hagane Shinno & Chie Koishikawa) VS GanPro’s Shota & Miya Yotsuba! It airs TOMORROW at 4 am EDT / 1 am PDT / 9 am BST / 5 pm JST. Live and Free on YouTube!
This link will be updated with a direct one when available

Don't forget to Adjust Your Volume, Wrestling is Loud!

Change the stage, escape the normal! ChocoPro is built different. Find out why wrestlers like it so much: Find a new home on the bleeding edge. (This is not your regular wrestling show.) Join us for this episode, or check out the back catalog of 17 wonderful Seasons on the Gatoh Move ChocoPro YouTube channel...260+ episodes with stories and pro-wrestling like you've never seen. New to the promotion? It features a roster of skilled veterans, rising stars, and wonderful guests fighting in the ChocoPro Arena: Ichigaya Chocolate Square. Subscribe for more content than just the live matches! (AEW Watch Alongs, Discussions, Interviews, Food Challenges, etc) Even if you can't catch it live, don't sweat it! It will still be available on the channel.

Ken Ohka 🤠 (as May Suruga) & Baliyan Akki ♠️

VS

Tokiko “Otoki” Kirihara 💃 & Cherry 🍒

Best Bros?

Ken Ohka, the hero of Ganbare Pro-wrestling, is basically a regular part of ChocoPro as well at this point. When he’s not working with food at DDT’s restaurant Ebisco Sakaba with Obi or getting the crowd roaring at GanPro, he’s spearing someone out of their boots in Ichigaya! This man is enthusiastic about everything he does, even when he is occasionally pretending to be Mei Suruga. Now that “May Suruga” has been officially recognized, be careful not to be overwhelmed by his charm. Baliyan Akki & Mei, the regular Best Bros, are one of the greatest Tag Teams out there. Baliyan Akki keeps a serene attitude while dealing out some of the most devastating strike combo’s you’ll ever witness. The “Zephyr of Ichigaya” is among the best when it comes to in ring quality, but how well will he handle this replacement Mei? Ken & Akki have teamed together in the past (especially in GanPro!), but this false version of the beloved tag team is still untested. How will the Apple Substitution go? Can the Ace find that awesome synergy with a different “Mei”?
Cherry Comaneci returns!? The Showa Era Shooters Tokiko “Otoki” Kirihara & Cherry are two of a kind! Will these two show the boys the power of their physical perfection? Otoki is a very down to earth fighter for the most part, bringing a vicious realism that is a bit more visceral than a lot of the high characters of ChocoPro! Though the Iron Claw user might occasionally pull off a Comaneci Taunt or torturous twist, she's known for her ungodly kicks and throws...She was a champion Kickboxer, after all! Mischievous Fortune Teller Cherry also brings a lot of ground work and technical prowess, being able to slickly roll into pins and armbars. Cherry is one of the scariest grapplers to grace Ichigaya, considering she even gives a rough time to a lot of the power fighters! Can the False Best Bros bring down these dynamic pair?

Mei Suruga 🍎

VS

Sayaka 👗

Apple Violence

Whether you know her as the Apple Goblin or the Big Apple Girl, Mei Suruga is a vast sea of charisma. The real Red Fairy of Ichigaya tends to convert new viewers into her “dummies” quite quickly, even the coldest heart finding it hard to resist her charm and explosive wrestling ability...despite her being so utterly rotten most of the time! She is undeniably a rising star of the Joshi world...making appearances for STARDOM, TJPW, DPW, AEW, Evolution Girls, DDT, and many more! Though the Goblin tends to appear mostly in tags at Ichigaya these days, singles are a rare tasty treat for her: Mei loves getting an opportunity to be a goblin the entire match! With her 5th Anniversary in the rear view, the Apple Road continues...with a pit stop in violence city.
“I'm gonna kill you! Yayyyyy!” While she has become infamous for her unsettling quotes, “Smiling Violence” Sayaka is known more for her ungodly striking power. Those explosive forearms and pinpoint dropkicks stagger even the toughest opponents! Sayaka’s unnerving cheerfulness while she does brutal things provides her with a big presence in the square. That unattached joy will eventually be the stuff of legends! (After all, she’s “happy to beat someone”!) Don't forget, Sayaka hangs out around Minoru Suzuki and survives to tell the tale...This photogenic phenom is on the rise, keep an eye on her! After the Lucky Violence team managed to deliver some brutality during the Birthday Gauntlet, Sayaka will be delighted to bring more pain to the Apple Goblin.

EGG TART (Chie Koishikawa 🏵️ & Hagane Shinno ⚔️)

VS

GanPro’s Shota ⚾ & Miya Yotsuba 🍀

Mr. SHOWTIME

Chie Koishikawa & Hagane Shinno, the combination known as EGG TART, are a hot and cold team. Opposites definitely attract, and the polar attraction results in some of the craziest team attacks you will ever witness! “Too Much Energy” Chie brings an uncontrollable excitement wherever she goes (including to the recently rebooted GanJo), sprinting around the Square and delivering lightning quick striking...often from the air! Her tightly locked Stretch Mufflers and eye catching arm drags will have you shouting as much as she does. The Frantic Fencer is one of the most popular characters in all of ChocoPro! Her Wintery partner on the other hand is a remorseless killing machine...and the Super Asia Champion. Hagane’s icy ferocity usually brings about ugly thuds via heavy striking and brutal slams. The “Cold Killer” earned his epithet by easily dispatching some of the best the promotion has to offer. This ageless assassin only shows emotion around his chaotic partner...and together they amplify each others personalities. These two have limitless potential, and now that Hagane has the Big Blue Belt they will also have limitless enemies looking for an opportunity! Speaking of which...
Shota, GanPro’s charismatic underdog technician, finally makes his official ChocoPro Debut! He might give off some of the same vibes as “Generic Masa” from long ago, but there is nothing generic about Shota! This world traveling jump suit enthusiast impresses everywhere he goes, so expect Ichigaya to be no different. Anticipate a lot of flowing transitions and crisp technique! With an unbeatable in ring IQ and a talent for complex pinning skills, “Mr. SHOWTIME” is going to be a great support for his Rookie partner: The Avatar of the Fifth Generation, Miya Yotsuba! “Ichigaya’s Lucky Charm” Miya brings a strength empowered style that is quite flashy (especially that Miya Hammer)! Our new powerhouse has begun a series of difficult matches against her seniors (joining gangs and facing clowns, fortune tellers, drunks, cannibals, and the truly wild), in order to speed up her adjustment to Ichigaya’s strange (and vicious) world. Teaming up with guests is a common theme in ChocoPro, so this will be a great test for the Mint-Green Bruiser...especially with a guest this good! Good Luck, Miya!
Let’s Go ChocoPro, Let’s Go GanPro!
Come and see the wild creativity that produced Two of the Seven AEW Women's World Champions! (Both of which have appeared on ChocoPro!) You'll be wondering if you're seeing future champs, as well. ChocoPro is the Frontier of Pro Wrestling! Match after match of hard hitting, chaotic, fun bouts with a friendly online audience. We're quickly growing, and you're welcome to come along!
Here are some Frequently Asked Questions:

“What is this?”

ChocoPro is a free online promotion run by AEW's Emi Sakura, that takes place in the legendary Ichigaya Chocolate Square! It features a steady pace of live Episode releases, fan interaction, season long story arcs, and much more! A place where the turnbuckles are replaced with 14th floor windows, the ropes are often replaced with fans, unforgiving walls provide creative avenues for skills otherwise unthinkable, and you can take solace in knowing that the referees usually do nothing. While it might be a shocking change at first, the intensity and storytelling will leave you wanting more.

“Why are they fighting in ____?”

Short answer is that it is a cost effective, unique venue with a better availability schedule and allows the roster access for training. Emi Sakura has been using this place for a long time, and you might be surprised at some of the names that have used it (even outside of ChocoPro!). There are a few in-ring Episodes and Gatoh Move has in ring shows with crowds on the YouTube channel. Think of it like the Hart Dungeon but as a promotion, if that helps!

”What are the rules?”

While special match stipulations will usually be explained before the respective matches, the general rules of ChocoPro are simple. Pins only count on the Chocolate Mat and are not broken by the edge or Wall. Submissions usually only count on the Chocolate Mat, and ARE broken by reaching the edge or wall (sometimes ceiling...). Double pins and Double submissions are legal (and encouraged) in ChocoPro Tag matches, meaning cohesive teams will always have the advantage! Count Outs only exist if specified, since many matches stray from the comfort of the Chocolate Square into the streets (and the rest of the building itself!) There is a Time Limit for each bout (based on card placement and importance) and the Referee has discretion (even if they tend to do nothing most of the time!). Every Ref is different, some have different levels of bias and speed.

“How can I support them?”

Watch the show! Even if you can't see it live, the views matter! Like & Subscribe! You can join the Channel's membership for different tiers of perks...but also, you can buy single episode Sponsorship, Digital autographed photos, and more on their shop site as well as purchase shirts from PWTees (which features some great options!) If you'd like to donate or purchase a main wall sponsorship, you can via Paypal or Patreon...and don't forget to cheer for your favorites! (especially if you want to do a superchat!)

”How come there aren’t a lot of comments on the threads?”

ChocoPro is a YouTube show, meaning the discourse happens live...in the chat! Those that comment in the threads on here tend to do so in order to help new viewers that might be intimidated by the fast moving chat. Don’t be afraid to just dive in though, the community is friendly.

“Why are you posting this here? / Are you paid for this?”

This is a wrestling forum, and I'm trying to broaden the horizons of others! There is a lot of good wrestling out there...Plus growing the fan base means more people for me to joke around with! I honestly do believe this is what a lot of fans are looking for, even if it is too different for some! But different tastes are good. Variety is the spice of life. This is a labor of love (it really doesn't take that long) considering how much work they do to put on so many shows...for free!
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me on here or on Twitter, where I’m everywhere! ChocoPro is going to the UK!
Season Tracker: We're 14/18 into Season 18! (Each Season is usually around 18 episodes)

Long time lurker, first time poster. English is my first language but forgive any mistakes due to nervous typing patterns. Trigger warnings ahead. If mentions of 'sewerslide' and OD will put you in a place that makes you feel scared or unsafe, I would very much like to ask you not to interact to protect your wellbeing. The last thing I want to do when asking for help is to put someone else into a painful spot. Also, this is going to be a novel but I know context is important and there's a lot of it.
I, (30 F), thought I had grown up in the most ideal situation as a kid of divorced parents. My parents never fought loudly if at all in any period of my childhood. Even after the divorce, while the romantic love had shattered, they still valued their friendship and communicated pretty well when it came to me and my younger brother. Now after incidents from Memorial Day weekend, I'm starting to relive moments growing up that I've begun to grow to resent instead of value as parts of my 'responsible' nature.
I guess it starts in childhood. My mom and dad were young parents. My mom was 19 when she had me and my dad was 17. He dropped out of school to work full time and my mom went back to school and worked so the first 6 years of my life I mostly remember being with my paternal grandmother. She was/still is a wildfire in my eyes. Not in a negative way. Even at 90 the woman could light the room ablaze with her joyous nature and just wants to enjoy what life she has left with humor and happiness. Once mom finished her degree and got work in her field/ had my little brother, it seemed to be the beginning of the failure of my parents marriage.
When I was 8 or 9, I came home from school for my mom to tell me that her and my dad were divorcing. She carefully explained what that meant I'm sure, I have very little memory of those days. She even got me with a therapist to help with the transition but according to the therapist, she told my mom I was actually coping well in the circumstances, likely due to my father's absent nature. I don't mean absent emotionally. I mean absent physically. While working for a national fast food chain, he was also travelling around and making money through music.
My N-Father has a talent for music. Even I can't deny that. Some of my fondest memories as a teenager was hearing him strumming away in his room while he recorded studio pieces he needed to complete for a deadline. Me already liking my solitary space, didn't mind the distance since I gave me room to explore my likes and wants for myself without interruption. Well, back to what caused the divorce. My N-Father cheated on my mom with one of his coworker. I'll call her SM1 (Step-mom 1). She seemed to be a kind woman with three kids I was quick to accept as my step siblings. Well, this is where one memory I used to praise as a moment of growing up, I realize was my first steps into parentification.
My younger brother, who's well into adulthood now with his own child (my niece is literally my world 2nd to my spouse), used to struggle with horrible growing pains. His legs would hurt so much from rapid development that my mom would crush up children's painkiller into his juice and set up a hairdryer to warm his legs to soothe the pain. Thankfully I was smart enough to watch her do this and during one of my N-dad's weekends I woke up to my brother's shrill crying. I was around 9 while my brother was barely 3 and if you've heard a toddler that age crying in agony, you know how scary it sounds as a child. I tried to wake up my father for nearly an hour with no cease to the crying. My step-brother (bless him) was doing everything he could to soothe my brother while me and my step-sisters were trying to wake our parents. With no hope of them hearing us, I rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the closest thing to juice they had, mountain dew. I found a ziploc bag and the ibuprofen and a spoon, crushing the pills as best I could and mixed it with the mountain dew. (I know. Dumb kid moment.) Finally after twenty minutes of giving my brother the drink, my step sisters succeeded in getting my father out of bed.
Let's just say he had just woken from a very 'intimate' nap and only covered his modesty in frustration of being woken up. Now that we've set the scene for the rest of this, it never ended. He divorced SM1, dated a woman fresh out of high school, broke up with her once her parents stopped funding his music, and then met SM2.
SM2 I still hold in high regards. She truly became a 2nd mom despite our 14 years age difference. She wanted children more than anything, but due to complications with her health, it wouldn't be an easy matter. What she didn't know either was my father had a vasectomy after my younger brother. So he played into her fantasy. She wanted a girl. At 12, who saw a woman who wanted nothing but a child of her own, I never held it against her. She always took me places with her and bonded with me while my father would play video games with little brother. No biggie. Father's and sons deserve bonding time at my brother's age at the time. I was 14, my brother around 7/8. One thing to mention, before they got married, my dad cheated on her too. With a coworker. Messed up, right?
Well, once that whole thing settled and they got married, things seemed to be great. All of my parents and step-parents were respectful to each other. I was happy, my brother was cared for finally, I could be a kid for once, right? No. After about 5 years, the marriage began to fall apart. My father revealed his vasectomy. Told SM2 is was irreversible. My poor SM2, so desperate to save her first marriage tried her damndest to be content with my brother and me. She never once made us feel unloved or unsafe and I don't think I could ever thank her enough for what she was to us. Well, her friend from school was in a rough patch. We'll call SM2's friend C. One weekend at our dad's, I was told my room was now being used to house C while she got back on her feet. Me, being my ever people pleasing self for my father's approval, just accepted the living room as my new bedroom.
I slept on that couch for almost a year until it came out C and my dad were getting too close. Dangerously close. Until a line was crossed. C was gone. I got my room back. But it no longer felt safe anymore. After my father was chased from the church he helped build up, he got caught flirting with the preacher's daughter at their new church. SM2 and my dad divorced, we maintained contact when we could and even met up for lunch as often as we could manage.
Things were quiet for a while until my wedding. In the weeks leading up the affair, my dad and I went on shaky grounds in terms of a relationship. I watched my mother go through a divorce from my N-Step-dad (a story that deserves its own post). SM2 calls me in fear. NDad broke down and cried about how he's having some (TRIGGER WARNING!!!!!)
"Dark thoughts".
Okay. I'm 20. I know those thoughts. I held some of my own for some time. But what she told me next I wasn't ready for. She tried to encourage him to stick around for me and my brother. Even after all this time, we were still her first priority and she hoped we were to him. We weren't. He only complained of how lonely he was. That we didn't need him. Given since he's alive and well, nothing happened, that was the first time I started to 'unlove' my father.
It only got worse from then. He and SM2 got back together, only dating, only to have it explode in chaotic fashion. According to Ndad, she tricked him to going to couples therapy with a therapist she was secretly sleeping with to coax him into giving her financial control. Which I now find funny considering my father had little money and since SM2 finished her degree, she was making bank. Sound familiar? Woman finds financial maturity and man gets to feeling small since he's not fulfilling his 'godly role' as the husband. And before you ask, yes, he's a pastor. Making me a PK (Pastor's Kid). If you know anything about that lifestyle, many of us would do anything to stay in our father's godly image to gain love and support even if we weren't fully understanding what we were selling away. Not to say there aren't PKs who fully love their place in God's eyes. That is not my place to stomp on. And not my relationship to ruin.
Well, I stopped talking to my father after he kept trying his damndest to make SM2 look bad in my mind, but after so much love and support she gave, I couldn't ignore that he was denying his wrong doing. So one long text later, I went NC with him at the age of 22. For two whole years, nothing really changed. Ndad never really called or texted anyways other than holidays and birthdays, which I did block him to avoid any temptations of caving to his lovebombing.
Then my younger brother was in the hospital. It's a point of disagreement on why he was really in there, but I believe my brother when he said he did it because he googled 'quick highs' on the internet and did something stupid with that information. My parents both think otherwise, but thats not the point. I had no way to get to my brother. My husband and I were sharing one car at the time and my mom was already at the hospital. So I had to do something I still hold shame for. I unblocked my father. I warned him my only concern was getting to my brother and that my asking for his help to get there was not a sign of my forgiving him. But if he agreed to do this for me, maybe we could start slow. (Important note: During those 2 years everyone, including SM2, were insistent I try to keep dad in my life. That he loved me, blah blah blah. But my brother wanted it more than anyone and as you can tell, I'm very protective of my brother.)
I let him talk the whole 2 hour drive to the hospital. I did listen, but never responded other than short answers. When we pulled up to the hospital and were entering the room, I won't ever forget the first words out of my father's mouth. My brother, who just overcame potential death, had his father, our father, spew out the words "You're so stupid." as his first words to him. I wanted to kick him out then and there, but my brother, doped up on painkillers, gave a weak chuckle and just said, "I know." So, I just let it be. Once I had a moment with my brother, my only concern was how he was feeling and all he said was, "It was nice to see you and dad entering together". That stopped the NC order for me and I caved to let my father back into my life.
By all means the chaos didn't cease, but since I was an adult, I was able to keep myself far away from my father's dating dramas. I think the worst one was SM 3, who I loved to call 'Evil Reba' because she looked just like Reba McIntyre but the woman had no room for disaggreeing POVs so I just ignored her since her and my father lived a state away. She started a Dating Psychos page for my father. And boy howdy, when I found it, I agreed with everything these women had to say. One of them even defended my brother and I from any backlash that may come our way. They were anonymous, but I hope they know I was/am happy to see someone else saw the truth before we did.
I became seduced by my 'new' dad. He was accepting of everything I was. An ally to our LGBTQ relatives, and even supported me when I came out as Pan a few years back. Even more recent, he was perfectly okay when he found out I'm a practicing witch. Something I hid from everyone for almost 11 years. I thought I was healing. My innerchild was revelling in her father's words of acknowlegement of all the bad things we went through. My inner teen was vilified when he told me he should've never had me moved onto the couch when C lived with him. He apologized and 'lovebombed' my brother and I with all the money he made from his 50/hour a week job. That should've been my clue it was about to go wrong.
When my father craves affection, he'll give money. Do everything he can to appear the provider for his kids despite us both being grown adults. What did warn me that it was about to go wrong was my mother telling me in one of my father's new druken stupors, he texted my Aunt who's hated his guts since the divorce. She'd be nice and civil if he was around but I wish I could explain the deep hate my aunt has at my father for hurting her baby-sister. Well, he brought up this photo she hates (sadly my aunt does not have the highest self esteem despite how gorgeous she is but that's besides the point). How he wished he still had that photo. The photo in question? A bikini photo from one of the big family vacations. My father was flirting with my MARRIED aunt, who's been with the same incredible but quiet man for over thirty years.
I want to make it clear, for about 5 years, there were no red flags in his passing relationships of him flirting with other women. He was ever forth right with all of them of his past.
So hearing that from my mother, who I think knew I needed to hear it from her first, I knew it was about to get bad again. So that weekend, last weekend, we went to my father's to have dinner and hang out. Something we've done before. Now, in the last two years, my father started as a Flat Earth sympathizer. I have my own feelings on the whole back and forth of it, but in the last few months my father seemed driven to convince my brother and I that the earth is flat and that airplanes are named because the earth is truly one flat plane. The UN's map of the world. You name it, he's used it. Even going as far as using the bible to justify this knowledge.
Well, before the next discussion of our perceptions of reality, he proposed we do something I already love doing. Grounding. The practice of walking barefoot in the grass or ground to reconnect with the energy of the earth. I find it peaceful and tend to treat that time as a form of meditation. But as I'm laying in the grass, enjoying the nice weather and getting to share this kind of moment with family, he goes off again trying to coerce us of flat earth. I don't know my brother's position on it, but that's not my journey. And I will respect his journey. So I did what I used to do. Agree with everything he says until he shuts up. Now I'm unaware of how much my father had drank. According to my husband it was definitely more than three, but I've seen the man drink a whole case of Natty Lites (Natural Light Beer) and function like a sober person. Given he's now obsessed with Mexican beers because of, wait for it, his GIRLFRIEND. I really like this woman. I really do. Her and her son are an absolute delight but my father has gone from calling them by their names to now calling them 'the Mexicans'. Don't worry, they are actually Mexican, and made sure to tell my dad not to call them hispanic as they do not like it. No biggie. Respect.
But everything out of my father's mouth that day in reference to anyone different than him sounded more like an inconvieniece than an actual term of validation or respect. I went from 'Wonderful Witchy Daughter' to just 'Witchy daughter' with a look of mild discomfort. Everything I confided in him about, was now inconvienet knowledge. I pretty sure he even forgot I was Pansexual even though I was making plans with a cousin from his side to attend my first Pride since I've never had anyone to go with and felt unsafe in large gatherings without a safe person with me. Well, as the evening went on, there was a discussion between my father, me, my brother, my brother's girlfriend (who I wish wasn't there to witness any of this but I'm glad she was with my brother for the ride home), my father's girlfriend (E), and E's son.
This is where it's going to sound confusing and a little crazy. We were discussing slang in the modern age and my brother called our dad a SIMP. When my father asked what that meant, my brother explained and we were all in agreeance being a SIMP isn't always a bad thing. Especially when it's being used to downplay someones adoration of their partner. Well, then my father began to question my brother's perspective of the world and why he chooses these new slang terms instead of just speaking his own words. Well, little brother told him the truth. He had no other words of equivalence to use, as that is usually where I pull an equivalent word from the dictionary in my brain. Never got to. My father began to push my brother more to get him to explain why my brother labels people in such a way while my brother was trying to explain he just doesn't how else to express himself since he hasn't really taken the opportunity to learn more.
Well, somewhere in there, my brother was trying to discuss his feelings and understanding all the while my father was getting more and more frustrated. Accusing him of not seeing 'reality'. I feel so much guilt for this, but I fell back into old habits. Trying to play both sides to keep everyone happy. Put my mask back on and just tried to play peacekeeper to stop the hurt feelings from growing in both of them. My husband, who has his own fair share of family trauma, stepped in on my brother's behalf. Told my father he wasn't actually listening to what my brother was really saying. Then my father went on a tirade of how he works 50 hours a week and is always on call to provide for his family and how he works hard with no complaints. (Note: My brother has been struggling to find employment since the birth of his daughter and if you know anything about applying for jobs right now, you know it's not easy.) So, essentially, he attacked my brother's weakest point. I know my brother's trying. But with his health problems due to past troubles, it adds an extra level of complications that I know only make my brother feel worse.
My husband, during this, was packing up all our stuff. The baby bag for my brother and his gf, all of my stuff, and doing everything he could to get us out of there. I was standing there feeling shock and having flashbacks to the last time it got this bad. (Spoilers: it got physical between my father a brother.) In my fear, once my husband returned and gave me the look of 'we gotta go' I hugged E, her son, and even tried to hug my dad in fear of if I didn't, I'd only make it worse. All the while, he was screaming at my brother "Is that tree green?!" over and over. Looking back today I realized I wasn't in my body while the fighting started.
While we were all piling into our respective cars, my dad was still screaming but at my brother and husband saying "I love you too, husband!" "I love you, brother!" in an almost effort to make them come back and hug him or verify the sentiment was returned or as a play to see if he had control over them I'm still not fully sure.
If you're still reading, I hope I haven't wasted your time since I know it's something we'll never get back. Once I was in the car and the door was shut, I decided to call my mom since my brother and his girlfriend are living with her until they can get back on their feet. It's only been 2 months since the move so this isn't a long term thing nor has it been. I told her footnotes while hubs explained what he remembered knowing I was shutting down quickly. We just wanted to let her know in case my brother showed up still angry or very quiet just to assure her she didn't do anything and that dad 'messed up again'.
She understood the assignment and was about to check on me when my brother called. So we paused our conversation so hubs and I could talk to brother. Despite my anxiety, my brother sounded less angry but almost confident in his next choice. My father gets sober, or he never sees my neice ever again. I 110% will have his back if it comes to that since that's all I wanted when I went NC. And while I trust my brother to handle his emotions as best he can, I'm finding it hard. He sounded so sure, so confident and in the days past I thought I was going through the stages of grief. Now I'm not so sure.
When I did call my mom back after we were certain my brother was good and had his own plans of coping and someone to talk to, I asked the question I never thought I'd ask of my mom. "Mama, is Dad a Narcissist?" Her first words to follow were, "I hate to say it but..." She didn't have to finish. I got my answer. My innerchild cried. My inner teenager wanted to break everything in sight since she never got the chance to. My adult self almost disappeared since the other two were unsure of where they stood after getting everything they wanted only to discover they may have only been props to make my father look good for the next woman who had the patience to put up with him.
I feel tricked. Lied to. Shamed. Maybe even numb. Even worse, I'm pretty sure I have PMDD and undiagnosed autism because this past week I've been acting and feeling in ways I don't recognize since it's been so long since I've been like that. Crying until I vomit. Feeling undeserved anger towards anything inconvenient. So I'm also trying to navigate my real feelings from what my hormones are making worse. Logically, going NC should be easy. My father rarely reaches out anyways so ghosting him should be enough to give him a clue. My husband is prepared to defend my if he tries to show up. But I think what hurts most is the day after the incident, the only person to recieve an apology was my brother. The one with a kid. The one who can take away everything my father wants "A second chance to make it right." I know my father craves to be a dad now. Which sucks.
Anytime he'd lie to SM2 about kids, he praised to urge for a daughter. SM2 only wanted a girl because she had a name she loved. Now she's with a good man who gave her exactly what she deserved. A loving marraige and a daughter that she could give the name to. He just wanted a 'second chance'. And even when my brother's gf, who I honestly prefer to call my sisteSIL but I don't want to make things more confusing, was pregnant he wanted to be a grandfather to 'get it right this time'. Some days I wanted to scream "I'm right here! We can still make it right! Just because I'm grown doesn't mean shit!" But it's not me now that he wants. He wants that little blonde daughter who didn't know better. Who was praised in Sunday School for such a 'loving heart and giving soul'. A prop in his life to show he's a good person. Just like I think his girlfriend is realizing. "I can't be racist. Look who I'm dating!" Yes. He truly said that. I tried to speak spanish with them just because I can tell it's easier sometimes, but I was called racist for doing that. And if that does make me racist, please tell me. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable because I overcorrect to make everyone comfortable.
I don't know what to do now. Yes. NC is definitely an option, but I want to move past these emotions. I want to move past this pain. It's so bad I can feel the toll it's having on my body. I won't go TMI but I know I'm not well. Sleeping, eating, even going to the bathroom, it's painful. My body is holding in all this stress and I don't know how to make it go away. My husband tries but he's even said he doesn't know how to help. He's so wonderful. He even scratched my back for me like my grandmother did when I was little to quell an anxiety/panic attack. How do I make it stop? What steps do I take? Therapy, while I know I need, is scary where I live. The local clinic doesn't have the greatest reviews but my brother had a good experience with one of their doctors but I feel weird requesting his old therapist. Anyone else in the area doesn't have many reviews and I haven't heard much good from Better Help. I want to do good by me. I want to be better. Not better good but better in wellness.
Anyone who's been through something like this, I'd love to hear your journey and how you cope/overcame these emotions. I'm tired of constantly feeling like my 14 year old self crying herself to sleep again. I just want to start healing and I don't know how to.
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TLDR: Just found out my father's a narcissist and don't know how to cope with the information and looking for tips to heal and grow from this.
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For the MODs: If I broke any rules, feel welcome to tell me bluntly. I tried to follow everything listed but I know I am human and will mess up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyUC9loa2v4
I wasn't active on Reddit back during the game's tenure, so I never posted my feat here. I was active on GameFAQs at the time where my original post is housed. I'll be copying the bulk of that post here.
Since the game is dead here's a little nostalgia hit. I do see a few other posts from back then where others cleared the node with the same restrictions, but they used stronger jobs. The two jobs I used were considered among the worst, which is what made me set out to showcase their viability. Forgive the lack of commentary in the video, I worked on this win for three days and it didn't occur to me to record a voiceover after victory, I just really wanted to share it.

Two things you should know about me. First is that I was a Red Mage main, I used it in every facet of the game including multiplayer. It's my favorite FF job after all, so it's only natural I used it in this game! I had people constantly telling me how bad the job is and blah blah blah, but I made it work in spite of their comments. Using auto abilities and custom panels you can compensate for a job's shortcomings really well; iirc I had over 14k HP in multiplayer because I pumped it up knowing that was the job's weak point, and let me tell you I was a damn good healesupport. I certainly did use other jobs when I needed to, particularly to climb towers and of course for Hall of Fame, but I always tried to make Red Mage work for the main content.
Second thing about me is I really hated Supremes/Legendary Skins. Hell, I hated most of the powercreep crap that we got way too early in global (cough cough FFRK L'Cie) that just warped player's perceptions for what's necessary, but Supremes were the worst of it. So many players on the GameFAQs side of the community were utterly convinced that Supremes were the only way to win the game, you couldn't possibly do even basic routine gameplay without them. Even 6 months after Aerith first dropped, where the card was only available for two weeks and had a crazy bad drop rate, multiplayer lobbies still insisted the Healer have the card or they'd disband the lobby. Utterly ridiculous. This was an RPG, full of wildly differing jobs and abilities, heaven forbid players use any strategy in the game. I drew a few Supremes in my day but refused to use any of them, ever.

Back on topic, for anybody that remembers the FF13 event, Ultimate Realm Mobius was no joke. It was easily the hardest node in the game, using unique game mechanics that really pushed the envelope on strategy, and they made it even harder during the rerun to cope with the stronger classes and abilities. I did clear it on the first event using Knight of Etro and Highwind, the same setup I used in the tower to clear up to floor 100, but this time around I wanted to flex my skill by using my favorite job in Red Mage and my brother's favorite job in Dragoon (another job people insisted was bad). The decks:
Dragoon w/ Buster Sword: Nora Nora Nora!, Sapphire Beam, Turbulence, IceshiftCustom Panels: Magic +84, first three HOFAuto Abilities: Two JCR, the rest +magic
Red Mage w/ Trismegistus: Sagefire, Primal Boon Fire, Ruby Ray, Dusk ShardCustom Panels: Avert Slow +100%, HOFAuto Abilities: Two JCR, the rest +magic
On Dragoon, Buster Sword is for Elemental Third Strike and Ultimate Charger and the intense magic focus is to clear as much yellow bar as possible, especially against Lightning. On Red Mage, Trismegistus is for Extended Break, and Avert Slow is to prevent getting slowed by Hecatoncheir's preemptive strike.

My first clear last time used Etro/Highwind. These two had good synergy, namely that Highwind's dark orbs would convert to Wind for my Etro to immediately hit the yellow gauge on later rounds. Since I went into the Lightning round with full HP she didn't touch my orbs, instead going into Ultimate Mode. From there I would work her break bar down, stun and tank her due to Etro's high defense and light drive/resist, then switch to Highwind, get my orbs in check and slay her. It's all in the video linked above, that's just a quick rundown for comparison here.
None of that worked here for a couple reasons. First is Dragoon has less defense than Etro and he lacks light drive, so he can't tank her even when she's not in Ultimate Mode. When I first started this I actually brought Darkforce solely for the 3 light drive, but even with that and a custom panel full of light resist he could not take hits from her, even if she didn't have Commando.
Another problem I was having the lack of orb synergy between Dragoon and Red Mage. Red Mage's offense was fire so when I switched back to Dragoon he'd be full of fire orbs that he can't use, and you cannot do any taps to fix your orbs without screwing up your breaking ability. At first I was trying to save 3 prism orbs from the shift so he could use Sapphire Beam but this also meant I had to be very careful to run down my fire orbs or else Dragoon wouldn't pull enough. That's when I remembered I have Iceshift, coincidentally my only augmented -shift card from way back when 4* summons were a thing. This meant I only needed to keep two heart or prism orbs and Dragoon could hit the ground running on the switch.
Which just left Lightning, how would I deal with her? She steals my orbs if I have too many and if I don't she kills Dragoon anyways. Well in my initial attempts to tank her I noticed a few times she wouldn't attack straight away, and once she actually restored her break gauge. Eureka! A full break gauge is vital to actually clearing the boss' bars, so her restoring it meant this was going to be possible even if I have to tap to refill my orbs. But in my attempts that followed she wasn't doing that, instead opting to attack me. It took a while before I realized she would restore her gauge when I damaged it enough while she was in Medic paradigm (triggered by the status effects of Turbulence). So I had to get on the ball with Dragoon and really hammer that yellow to make her do a restore, while keeping enough orbs to actually hit the gauge after the reset and hopefully not trigger her driving my orbs.
So after three days of trial and hardship I managed to get her break bar within range while getting my job change ready, so Red Mage was finally ready for action. Unfortunately I ran into another significant obstacle: I didn't do enough damage.
This broke my heart, after all that effort I literally couldn't KO her. Sagefire was hitting the damage cap on every hit (even with the fire drive shown in that image), so even when I did everything perfectly I couldn't achieve victory. Game over right? No! Most players would accept defeat here, and of course the community would start calling for Supremes, but I came this far and I was determined. Assessing the problem, at 25% she gets Wall which is just more damage I have to push through. Since I couldn't push my damage any higher I either needed to clear the Wall, or get more hits. Unfortunately along with Wall she gets Status Immunity which prevents Unguard from cancelling it out. So my last option was to get more hits, which meant extending my break. One option is to throw bodies at the node until my spirit decides to do this for me, but I remembered there's weapons that do this too. I maxed out my Scholar for his Trismegistus, but since it's completely unboosted I was worried about the significant stat reduction. Fortunately Sagefire and Red Mage are both just so powerful that I was still maxing my damage, so all I was really losing was a speed star which wasn't important here.
With that minor adjustment I went back in, tackled Lightning and got her. In the video you do see a small blunder on my part at the end though; since I lost the speed star, I didn't realize my turn had rolled over for the final hit against Lightning, making my Sagefire do pitiful damage and she recovered. I was stunned and felt defeated all over again, hence the pause. However I collected my wits again, threw up my last Commando and chipped away at her, barely taking her out before she got a turn. PHEW! Would've made the video nicer if I had realized and finished her off proper during the Break, but I got the victory and that's what counts.
There's two small details that make the win so much sweeter on a personal level. First is the Iceshift I mentioned, which I got back when 4* summons were a thing. Way back then the common advice was "summon tickets are for jobs only, only ever pull jobs!" Well guess what, I pulled a 4* despite that wisdom which gave me Iceshift. Remember this was back when growstars were really rare and 5* wasn't a thing, so getting 4*s was hard to do and they made a big difference...if you got a good one. Of course my main job can't use water so that Iceshift sat in my bank since the beginning of the game, but it is cool that it made a reappearance to come in clutch here. The second small thing is Scholar is actually my brother's second favorite job, so not only did his main job serve as my breaker, his sub-job's weapon was the final piece I needed to win it all.

** I know about not falling for the recovery scams, I've been reading this reddit for the past few days coping. Will add a TLDR at the bottom, I just really want to let this out. Maybe my rambling might show patterns to people that they have seen, and they won't be subject to falling for the same thing and they may snap out of it.**
Hi all,
I already know I was stupid, I ignored many red flags blatantly. I was recently affected by a crypto romance scammer. Story as follows:
I have not dated in almost a decade, I closed my heart off to a lot of people and lost a lot of friends on the way. I have always been an introvert, but finally broke out of my depression somewhat a year and a half ago. I began self improvement, and feel a lot better now than I did 5 years ago. I live alone, I'm lonely, and just turned 27. I have my own apartment, and felt it was time to start working on different parts of life, instead of doing everything alone.
I decided to give online dating a try. I matched with a girl on Tinder, and I was the first to initiate. I messaged her, and she did not reply for a day. There were a couple sentences exchanged back and forth, and she asked for my phone number. I ended up providing it to her, since my friends always recommended to get someone off Tinder as soon as possible.
She messaged me on my phone, and we had a few back and forths on many different topics and ideas. It seemed surreal since it felt like I was clicking with her very well. This usually does not happen at all with people I meet in real life, and she was leading multiple parts of the conversations, which did not raise a flag to me. She mentioned that English was not her first language, I was ok with that because the English was written well, a few hic ups here and there in the conversation, but I chalked it up to a language barrier. It did not seem to be translated at all, she was even using well structured sentences with unique words that you do not hear day to day, which I assumed would not be translated in the normal sense (think obfuscate).
Some of the conversations we had was what we did for work, what our hobbies and goals are. Our taste in music, movies, recommendations. It seemed so normal first for a conversation. On the end of the second day, she wanted me to download telegram which was a possible red flag, I never trusted google hangouts, telegram, whatsapp due to scammers being known for using these applications. I was a bit hesitant but she wanted me to download it so she could talk to me while she was at work. I eventually agreed, we said our good nights and I went to sleep. I generally keep my guard up with people (why are they being so nice, what do they want from me?), but I ended up going with it since I was genuinely enjoying this person.
I added her on Telegram, and we were continuing our conversations from the day earlier. Said our good mornings, and talked more about goals and aspirations. She would talk to me about her childhood, and I would talk about mine. We eventually began exchanging pictures (nothing sexual), voice recordings, jokes. We talked for a week, and she began talking about how she uses AI for short term node investing to make money on the side while she was working and invested at times the AI told her to. I said cool, and continued with our normal conversations. Eventually I was beginning to get loved bombed and sweet talked to over the course of a couple weeks. I was feeling great about myself, and confident. I felt like I had a connection to them, I was mentioning her to friends and family about how awesome she was. About a week and a half in, she said she had to travel for a few weeks to a different part of the USA. Another red flag yay. Probably 5 so far?
I was super skeptical, but not enough. This girl intrigued me so much. I was sick for about a week, and she was constantly checking up on me and reminding me to eat, sleep, take my temperature, and to get up every few hours to stretch. None of my family or friends do this for me, which made me fall for her a bit more. She made me reconcile with my parents too, and my relationship with my parents is a lot better than before. She did mention before that she was very family oriented, and it opened my eyes that I should leave the past in the past, and embrace the future.
We had a heart to heart with one another one night, I don't want to go into details but she explained why she was single and why I was single, and this kind of sealed it for me I think. LOOOOTS of love bombing after this. One of the patterns I was noticing through the weeks is that she would always message me at 10 am, the good mornings and the like, and go to bed at 12 am (shift change anyone?). Never any messages before or after this time. She also facetimed me, had a quick conversation, but she claimed the connection was bad, so we ended it after a few minutes. I read this was a common thing after I got scammed. She was a real girl, I've heard her and seen her, but she is most likely just part of an operation. I even reverse image searched her on multiple different platforms, no results showed up. Insane.
She began talking talking about her crypto again, and wanted me to join her! I did not care about the money as much as I was caring about her. I wanted to start for her. She showed me how to to buy crypto, and how to put it in my wallet, and how to set up 2FA to transfer the crypto to said wallet. Seems normal so far, and we continued the next day. One of the things I noticed was that I was getting the drive to learn back, I dislike my current job. It's monotonous, boring, tedious, and this was something new! She got me back into reading, watching shows, improving on myself in different aspects of life.
The next day, she showed me how to use the browser in the wallet, to start staking crypto, and make passive income. I started with 200 USDT. I am kind of broke right now since everything costs so much and I make an OK wage. This could lead to financial freedom I thought. The website itself was fishy, poorly done, numbers had floats attached to them. Did not look professional, but I felt like I was in love and I could trust her. I know it's stupid loving someone you have not met.
After a few days of staking, I withdrew the money into my wallet. Looked legit! I made money. Not that much, but it was something. She mentioned to me how much money this makes compared to a 401k or roth IRA, seemed believable. She then showed me what app she uses for the short node investing. It was not on the app store, so I had to follow a link to download it (yay another red flag I saw and ignored on purpose). I set the app up and we said our good nights.
During the next day, she began walking me through how to use the app, how to input money from the wallet I have, including my staking if I wanted to. She sent me 20 dollars in ETH for the gas fees to send the USDT. Made me believe in her even more. I inputted about 250 USDT into the app, and we began short term node investing. I made about 100 dollars that day. Felt good. Yes I know it's fake.
The next day were serious red flags. She told me how her coworker withdrew his full 401k (40k USD) and put it into staking and short node investing, and has made a few hundred thousand dollars. I was intrigued, and she said I should do that too. I want to thank my job and bank for only letting me withdraw half, and loaning it against myself, and not letting me do a hardship withdrawal. I withdrew about 6000 USD from my 401k, sent it to my bank, and wired it to crypto. After waiting a few days for it to clear, I put it into my wallet, and into the fake exchange for short node investing.
I made about 44000 in fake money over the course of a couple days. She mentioned there's a new member reward, if I put in 10k USD in my account I get another 800 USDT free for being a new member. I mentioned that I can't, rent would be in a few days, and I needed the money for rent. She assured me that I should let my money work for me, and that I can withdraw it when I needed to for rent. Trusting this, I put my rent money into the fake exchange expecting to be able to withdraw it later since I was able to withdraw money before.
I got to about 8.5k USDT, 1.5k away for the free 800 USDT from the rewards program. She recommended me to apply for bank loans (another red flag LOL, but I was blinded). I never really built my credit at all before, only car loans and a credit card that I missed 2 20 dollar payments 4 years ago. My credit is low (640) so I could not loan out 50k from the bank like she wanted me to. The best I could do was 1.5k. I ended up getting my first credit card in a long time, it has a 500 dollar max currently and unsecured.
I did not end up taking out the loan (not yet), and I did not using any of the credit card to buy crypto with. This is when I began to believe something was wrong. There's no way I am getting scammed! She was messaging me and talking to me 15 hours a day, right? That's a lot of time investment.
Rent day was coming up, I went to withdraw my rent money from the fake exchange. I got an email stating I have to pay 5k in fees to withdraw the money because I won a lot of money.
I talked to her about it, inquiring why I could not just take out a portion of my principle I put in, without touching any of the winnings. She claimed it was for tax purposes and forgot to tell me. I half believed her. I talked to 2 friends seeing if I could loan out 5k from them. One said they will talk to their wife first, I respected their decision. They ended up saying no, I said thank you and I understood.
The other friend said sure, since I payed back a loan another friend gave me timely in the past. He tried to send it to me via cashapp, but was told to contact his bank first. I am very happy that happened. I said don't worry about it, I'll find out what to do. Didn't mention it the next day since I was still thinking.
Rent day came, and I took that 1500 loan to pay most of my rent. I still had a little extra money in my account to cover the full rent. Paying 500 dollars back a month on this loan to get it done asap, since my credit history isn't good, and I don't want to pay 30% interest. I'd rather loan from a bank if I can than mess up a friendship due to my stupidity.
I didn't talk to the girl for almost a full day, she kept trying to check up on me asking if I was ok and sending me voice messages. I went to a bar with friends and had a great time. I have 30 dollars in my bank account now, I get payed next week, I have a 1500 dollar loan with 30% interest I have to pay back, and 6000 dollars in a 401k I have to pay off that comes out of each paycheck. I stopped contributing to it so I don't feel as underwater.
I began responding to her, her messages weren't as lovable or frequent anymore (most likely because I mentioned that I am no longer interested in short node investing unless I get a portion of my principle back), maybe good morning and good night, and something short in the day. I used to reread our full conversations from the days when we began first talking, it just felt like bliss to me. Now I hardly want to talk to her, I downloaded and exported our conversation history from Telegram, but keeping her there just incase I can use something against it. Most likely won't be able to.
A friend mentioned to me he saw her account on another dating app, and they reported it. Different name, only a few miles away when she's supposed to be somewhere else. I told one friend about this story so far. They are very close to me and we had a heart to heart about it.
The most painful part about this is that I told my mom and sister about how I met someone new that really clicked with me, and I was finally happy. I struggled for so many years and they noticed my demeaner changed and were super joyous about it. Not only that, I don't miss the money I lost (~8.7k dollars), I miss the person that I thought I was building a relationship with that I would eventually meet and love. I was on Tinder for 3 months before I found her, every conversation was so dry and uninteresting to me until I met her. I only talked to her for about a month so maybe that is why I was able to break the spell early.
I feel free right now. I thought I would go back to being depressed, but I feel like I gained more than lost from this. I learned how to be a bit more sociable with people, what to look out for in scams (this one was way different than any I have ever experienced), to talk to people close to me about their thoughts of what's going on. I kept it all in. My relationship with my family is better because of her, but I will miss the person I thought that was for me. They really are intelligent in what they do, it's crazy. Maybe I found out that I am a hopeless romantic when my guard is not up. Which sucks, but it is what it is.
I will try to pay back all my loans asap, it's not too much money, but I will have to live more frugally at the moment. I'm not ready to let me mom or sister know, but I told one of my friends so far that won't joke about it. I am also happy I did not rope any friends into this. I needed time to clear my thoughts and do what I could to make this right.
Whenever I see her pictures online, I feel melancholic. I report her to the apps but it forces me to see what could have been if it was real. I have also submitted a case to the FBI, I don't know what else I should send to.
Thanks for reading if any of you did, I rambled a lot.
​
TLDR:
- Haven't dated in years, met chick on dating app and I was first to initiate
- She asked for my number, I gave it to her
- Quickly moved onto Telegram
- Lovebombed for weeks
- Mentions she's an investor in crypto, and wanted me to join her
- Blinded by fake love, lose 8.7k USD to the scam, everything in my bank account + half my 401k
- Had to take a loan out from a bank to pay rent
- Will miss the person I thought was for me more than the money lost itself
- Learned more from this than lost in my opinion. Thank god I'm already poor. It could have been much worse if my credit was good. Now I am on the path to building my credit for the first time in years.
- I'm aware that I was most likely talking to different people over Telegram, and she would send the recordings herself or facetimes.

Hi all, long time lurker here but I wanted to get some unbiased opinions on this. This story is long. Sorry in advance.
Six months ago, I (27M) ended a friendship with a my long-time best friend (28M) and of 7 years after a fairly explosive fight about the woman he is dating (33/34F). The whole thing took me by surprise. We currently have a large tight knit friend group of people across a variety of major cities and we all try to hang out when we can. However, some of my friends in this group have been unhappy with me for cutting of ties with this person.
For context, This friend was my college roommate, fraternity brother, and the most consistent source of emotional support and guidance throughout my early-twenties. Throughout college, I felt that we had a unique and supportive friendship. He taught me how to be believe in myself, stand-up for myself, take care of myself better, and brought a lot of light into my life as a friend. We were both full-scholarship students at a fancy-pants highly ranked college that is know for being elitist and stuck-up. Looking back, I think one of the things that made us such tight friends is that we didn't fit in all too well at that school. Both of us had pretty difficult lives before college and neither of us had any money. He was essentially an orphan and I was/am from a low-income single parent household. However, despite these circumstances, I felt like we both inspired each other to become more well-rounded and well-adjusted people. A central theme of our friendship was trying to figure out how to live a good life, solve interesting problems, make the world a better place, and to go on adventures with good friends.
During our early twenties/in college I feel like I did everything I could to be the best friend possible. Since he didn't have a stable father figure, I tried my best to be a loving brother. I was there to support him for every major test or every time a girl broke his heart in college. I knew that finding a group of friends and a community was important for him, so I advocated for him to join my fraternity. While my fraternity was voting on final round of rush, I was working on a major project with some classmates and someone texted me that my friend didn't get enough votes to be offered a bid to join. Immediately, I told my partners that I had to go for an emergency and ran to where the voting was taking place. I basically made a 2-3 minute long speech about how my friend was one of the best people I've ever known and convinced everyone to revote him into the group. Additionally, when he had to take a year off from college because a close member of his family passed a way, I spent almost every weekend with him for emotional support, helped him navigate the dark and uncomfortable family drama around the situation, and was the only friend who went to this family member's funeral with him for support. I even helped him with the little things, like teaching him how to tie a tie and find his own sense of style.
However, towards the end of college and after graduating, my life got difficult and dark. At the end of my senior year, two close relatives of mine passed away within two weeks of each other and I became extremely depressed. After graduation, I left my home state for a job that offered me a significant amount of money. Though my plan was to go to grad school, I wanted to take some time to make money and help my younger sister afford college - she didn't get any significant scholarships. However, the job I worked at was terrible. I was being abused almost every since day by my boss and the company I worked for was extremely unethical. After starting this job, I learned that the average hire only lasts about 6-8 months and that having a breakdown from working there was extremely common. Working here took a huge toll on my mental health and after 9 months, I quit to return home before I broke down like many of my co-workers. I thought things would be better when I went back home but some of my family members were going through it at the time and became abusive as well. Though my family was never abusive towards me growing up, for some reason they chose to be abusive when I came back. Chairs were thrown at me and I never had a moment of rest. I also had a grandmother who was living off food stamps and nobody was taking good care of her. So I had to continuously try and get her groceries while working 60-70 hrs/wk on a construction job. It was a bad time.
During all of this, I felt that my friend was being extremely immature and selfish. He kept yelling at me and criticizing me for not hanging out enough with him and not partying with him enough. Even after explaining my situation, he didn't offer too much support and expressed frustration that I wouldn't help him meet girls at clubs or get laid. He's always had a deep desire to find love but has traditionally had issues with female rejection. One night, I agreed to go out clubbing with him, but I remember explicitly stating that I was not in the mental space to hit on girls, wingman, or to hook-up. I was just down to drink, dance, and have a good time. Despite this, at the club he got extremely frustrated with me when I wouldn't start any conversations with groups of girls. When we got home he literally starting screaming in his bed about how he wished someone "would show him the steps" on how to meet women. Though this was clearly not a high point in our relationship together, I felt that he was probably just going through something and let it go. After a few months, even more negative things happened in my life and eventually had a mental breakdown. I definitely was not acting normally or myself for 3-4 months afterwards either. Despite this, my friend insisted that I party with him and a group of other people one night. However, when we were ready to go out, I overheard him loudly making laughing at me and making fun of my behind my back about how "I had serious mental problems, totally lost it. etc." I was shocked because he definitely knew about all that I was going through. After this, I stopped reaching out to him and to distance myself. Part of me didn't trust him anymore but also I wanted to see if he'd put in effort to keep our relationship strong.
Fast forward a few years, and we were still friends but not as close as before. I partially attributed this to me moving around different states for work and also for finally getting into a grad school far away from everyone. During this time we both ended up dating women which we both considered to be long-term partners. Initially he starting dating this girl for a couple of months, and then something terrible happened in his life - his last surviving family member died. After telling her he needed to put their relationship on pause and leave town to wrap up family affairs. She blew up at him while he was out of town, about how he "led her on" and wasted her time. For context, she made it clear that she wanted to get married and have kids after 2-3 years of dating.For some reason, he got back together with her and stayed with her for a few years, but he expressed some concerns about her to me. He told me that she didn't really seem interested in engaging with him on an intellectual level (e.g., reading books with each other, talking about work) and also expected him to pay for all of their dates and meals (which were pretty expensive) because he has a well-paying job. He also expressed worry that she'd wouldn't be interested in respecting or having a relationship with any of our other friends because of her age. Because she was 31 at the start of their relationship she felt that a lot people in our friend group of mid-twenty somethings "wouldn't be mature enough" for her.
Despite telling him that these were all big red flags, he continued dating her. Because I was busy working and trying to make money for my family I never got a chance to hang out with her. But as predicted, as all of our close friends eventually met her over the years - she was pretty disrespectful. Though she never fought or argued with anyone, she'd either ignore people or be passive aggressive.
She also started to negatively influence his perception of the world and his level of maturity. After a member of our friend group (who previously has always been kind and caring) had a public freakout and yelled at his girlfriend because he was in a bad mental state, I called him to talk about how we could support our friend and expressed concerns that a marijuana addiction might be contributing to his issues. Instead of talking about the issue he said that our friend was "spoiled", "immature", and said that his girlfriend "weak woman" - which was out of character.
Eventually, my partner and I met this girl during my college reunion and we felt that she was pretty awful. He begged me to go to this reunion multiple times and even though I told him that I couldn't go because of the COVID risk (I work with patients who are immunocompromised), and the fact that I really couldn't afford travel costs. After the second or third time he asked me to go, I relented and said that it'd be fun to go and see all of our friends again. Instead of agreeing with me, he interjected that he wanted to go because he felt our classmates would look fat and out of shape because of their jobs and he wanted to go because he was in "good-shape" and had a hot girlfriend.
My friend allowed my girlfriend and I to stay at his appartment to save money for the trip. Before the actual reunion we all agreed to hang out. My girlfriend arrived in town a day before me and spent time with both of them before I did. Though I wasn't there, my girlfriend told me that this woman threw a napkin at a waiter during dinner. Apparently, she also got sleepy at around 9pm while my friend was showing my partner around the apt. Instead of waiting respectfully or finding a place to rest, she passive aggressively pretended to fall asleep in the common room of the apt and pretended to snore. Then after a few minutes she started yelling that she called an Uber for herself to go back to her place, slammed a door in my friend's face, and left the building - leaving him to chase after her.
I met her the next day during a double date, and I didn't get the best impression. I tried to be nonjudgemental but it was pretty hard to hold a conversation with her. When I asked about her interests, she could only really talk about how she like to drink/party a lot, spend a lot of money, and travel. Though this really wasn't that bad (who doesn't love these things), I initially thought she was just shallow because thats really all she could talk about. However, as we spent more time together bragged to me about her older brother threw a glass ashtray at an elderly neighbor. Additionally, at a one point in the double date, she made fun of a man going for a run outside. He was actually in pretty decent shape and even had visible abs, but she kept saying how he was "too overweight" to be running without a shirt, and bragged about how she was in great shape and runs marathons. Despite this, she has a pretty significant muffin top and if my understanding is correct she hasn't run a marathon in many years. When we actually went to our reunion, she kept complaining to me that all of my college classmates kept staring at her and that they were all clearly "obsessed with her" because of how attractive she is - even at times when there would be almost nobody around. At the end of our time together, he told me he want to elevate their relationship and was thinking about moving in with her. He also suggested to other people he was interested in getting married and having kids soon.
I called my friend few weeks after all of this and expressed concerns about his relationship. Trying to be as respectful as possible while being truthful, I told him that I was concerned about him furthering his relationship with this woman. First expressed that she was hard to talk to and that she displayed some concerning behaviors. Then I highlighted that he should consider that she might not be the best long term partner. I felt that since she made the death of his family member "all about her", she probably wont be good teammate or a supportive partner when they both go through difficult times together. In all, I probably spoke for about a minute and a half before he started getting defensive and hung up on me to "take a brake from the conversation".Afterwards he stopped talking to consistently me for about six months. He mentioned to other friends that he and I would have a formal discussion about how I crossed a line soon, but he kept putting it off and never reached out. Even after I sent an apology text, he kept ignoring me.
Finally, six months ago visited the city that I'm currently living in to visit some people in our friend group and didn't tell me. I was invited by people in our group to spend time with them, but I immediately noticed that something was off. When I would speak about my interests or things that were going on in my life, my former friend would roll his eyes or look at me with disgust. Later in the night, I asked him if he wanted to finally have the discussion her wanted to have and he explosively blew up at me. Immediately, he started intensely screaming at me asking me about why I didn't like his partner. This took me by surprise, so I started getting heated and I pointed out that she seemed pretty superficial, hard to talk to, and that she was really disrespectful to all of our friends. Quickly, he got even more angry and said that all of our friends were "career obsessed people" and that I was the worst one of them all because I'm obsessed with grad school. He said that I was "an egotistical person", with "poor social skills", and that I only care about making friends with people "who kiss my ass and and feed my enormous ego". Additionally, he stated that I was an extremely "selfish person" and he purposely grew apart from me because I was such a broken person with so many problems. He also said that if I couldn't see or agree with him I "needed to look deep within myself". After this, I went home, slept off the fight, and texted him to cut off the friendship the next day.
Not only did I found all of this hurtful, but I found this to be extremely hypocritical. Despite all that I did for him, he wasn't really there for me during the worst years of my life. Also, I recognize that I do work abnormally hard and dont spend time as much time with my friends as I used to. However, I feel that I mainly do this to so I can be successful in support my family and because grad school is a deep passion of mine.
I get the sense that now, some of my other friends are a bit upset with me because I ended this friendship. Is this my fault? I did press him. He initially said that he wanted to wait on our discussion, but I pointed out that we live in different states and don't see each other that much anymore. Did I pressure him too much? Maybe I'm being too sentimental, but I used to think that this was the person in my life who knew me the best. I used to always think of myself as the kind of person who will stand up for what is right. So hearing this from him, made me question my own self-perception a bit.
Sorry for the long, great-american-novel, of a post.

~Escape The Night~ PvE w/PvP ZonesWIPED3PPHelisAI-BossesRaidingBBP100kNoobsKeycardsAirdropBunkersParty-SystemTraderBlackmarketBankingDrugsBedRespawnSpawnSelectVehicles+Guns+Loot+
IP: 51.81.221.168:7915
Join Our Discord https://discord.gg/2EQPEZ8
Server Restart Intervals Are At 5:40AM PST - 11:40AM PST - 5:40PM PST 11:40PM PST
BASE BUILDING: AT THE MOMENT TRADERS DO NOT SELL NAILS/FOOD/ARMOR, for a more survival feel we made base building a little more grindy than other servers for a better experience (MOD: BASE BUILDING PLUS), THERE IS NO BUIDLING NEAR PVP ZONES, HIDEOUTS, OR TRADERS (500m from Hideouts/Traders, 300m from PVP zones). Get your grind on and have fun with more of an immersive pvp building system. We have BasicTerritories/PVEZE Flag Zones. You need a flagpole to make a base & you need a flag fully raised on your pole to enable PvP. Since we use PVEZ the flags help in case you need to defend against a raid. The flag also helps keep all your items secure from poofing away. Sadly bases can be raided even with your flag pole lowered. So it’s recommended that you keep your flag pole raised.
ALL BASES HAVE A LIMITED AMOUNT OF VEHICLES THEY CAN POSSESS! Each base can have a max of 3 Land Vehicles & 2 Helicopters (This Is To Help Prevent Lag)
PVP ZONES/PVE: All PVP Zones contain either a military spot on the map, or Custom Keycard areas, Custom Key Cards spawn randomly around the map or in airdrops/military bases/bunkers.THERE IS ABSOULETLY NO KILLING OUTSIDE PVP ZONES, what ever damage you afflict on another Survior, that damage will come back to you, this a noob/pve setting of a server so show some respect.
KEYCARDS: There many different keycards you can get but they all are different. Some have different loot, some have mixed loot. Rare keycard rooms give 10x better loot than normal military/bm loot. There Is 2 Red/Black/Violet/Green Rooms. 1 Yellow/Blue/Med Lab/White Rooms.
Right Now The Keycards Ranging From Best To Worst Are Red, Black, Yellow, White, Violet, Green, Blue, Med Laboratory. There will probably be more in the future. Red Keycard Loaded but is suuuper rare.
(NOTE: Right now please don't fly into keycard areas. We recently added helis again and some areas are possible to fly into (AI will probably shoot them down but still we want keycards to be used to access keycard areas. ALSO When you open a keycard room it will stay open until server restart because the loot crates wont reset until after restart)
THE BUNKER: Right now there is currently 1 bunker on the server. You need a White Keycard to enter it & when you enter it turns to total darkness. You'll need a light or nvgs too see anything after entering. This place is worth checking out but be careful of possible chances of Zombies/AI. The bunker is really nice for finding blackmarket items and chances decent/guns/armoammo.
TRAVEL TRADER: We recently added a trader that can change locations and also change what they Buy/Sell! The Travel Trader Can Spawn At Any Keycard Locations (Based On When I Move Them) & Trades Rare Items Other Traders Might Not Sell Or Might Buy/Sell At A Discount!
TRADERS: Traders are all around the map and they only sell certain items there. Very high powered weapons cannot be bought a civ traders, they will most likely be purchasable at Blackmarket or not purchasable at all, you will need to scavenge your way around the map if you want to be the best, there are no handouts. Normal Civ Traders will have the essentials there to survive.
AI/BOSSES: AI spawn at all keycards/hideouts except Blue/Green Keycards. They have a chance to spawn anywhere else. There are 3 Bosses on the server. Killa, Zryachiy, the Goons. Killa spawns at Red/Black/Yellow Keycards. Zryachiy spawns at Prison Island. The Goons can spawn at Red/Black/White/Med Lab. The Goons are the rarest Bosses to run into right now while Killa and Zryachiy are about the same. Killa and Zryachiy can have guards.

I recently met a guy while I was out last weekend. He invited my friends and I to a section at a club and bought drinks all night. I (23F) sat and talked with him and he said he was in his late 30s but that he “takes good care of a woman”. He asked if we could do dinner this weekend and I said yes. I didn’t hear from him all week until yesterday when he asked if I could do dinner tonight. After looking up his number, I realized he was in his early 40s and is a millionaire/partner at an investment bank here in NYC. The two places he suggested for dinner & drinks are $$$$ however they’re in his neighborhood which is somewhat of a red flag to me since that’s a 30 min commute on public transportation (and i don’t want him to think dinner = going home with him). I told him that I’d be coming from far away in a more subtle way but he didn’t offer to cover transportation. Obviously in an arrangement, this would be expected. Am I wrong for wanting to cancel? I’m not physically attracted to him, he’s shorter than me & also older so I’m keeping all of this in mind too. I’m wondering if I should just go on the date (I think it would go okay and we’d go on more/could discuss something more spoiled GF-like for sure based on how he was talking last weekend) or if I should just see what he’s looking for in advance. I obviously don’t want to use SB language but feel like the behavior above is a red flag (maybe I’m just used to arrangements vs vanilla dating)
Edit: thank you all so much! Took the advice and he reimbursed me for the Uber and ordered one home. He also offered to connect me with a bunch of different people and purchased tickets to an event I’d been wanting to go to.

< Previous Episode First Episode
Based on the fourth round of the elimination contest by u/Ok_Dragonfruit_9612
Spoiler tag only for basic character spoilers
Chris: Last time on Total Drama Triple D. Before the morning even started Topher was put out of commission for the day. Too bad, because he missed the epic callback challenge! Teams chose members to do the classic thousand-foot cliff jump into shark infested waters! Some succeeded, some failed and some were just plain old chickens. But don't count your chickens before they hatch, as in the second half of the challenge Cameron helped her team build a proper boat and Lightning paddled the Lions to their first victory. While Sierra straight up threw DJ into the water! Bro, seriously couldn't swim, whatta ya know? In the end The Octopi came in last and voted Sierra out of the competition. Can the Lions keep the wins aloft and will the Narwhals continue to sail on by in this competition. Find out right now on Total Drama Triple D of Danganronpa: Despair Disaster!
[Cut to the boys cabin. Korekiyo sitting on the floor quietly chanting]
Makoto: Hmph…huh?
Korekiyo: Good morning, Mr. Naegi
Makoto: What time is it? Where's Mondo?
Keebo: It's 7:30 in the morning and he left around 6:15.
Shuichi: You've been awake since then, Keebo?
Keebo: No, I was still in sleep mode, but my eyes still record everything and stores it in my memory banks.
Ryoma: So, you are always recording everything that's happened?
Kokichi: Ew, never took you to be a voyeur key-boy, nee hee hee.
Keebo: T-that's not it at all!
Makoto: I'm gonna go look for Mondo-oof oh, sorry Mikan.
Mikan: No, I'm sorry for being in your way please forgive me.
Shuichi: What's up, Mikan?
Mikan: I'm just letting members of your team know that Taka is feeling better. He should be ready to join you all later this morning.
Makoto: Ah, that's great. Thanks for the update, Mikan.
Mikan: If you'd like, you can talk with him, but you'll have to wait until Mondo is done.
Shuichi: Huh, Mondo went to visit Taka?
Kokichi: Hey, no fair. He's part of our team, not yours, Shuichi!
Shuichi: I didn't tell him to go there.
Makoto: Maybe I'll go see how he's doing.
Nagito: Mind if I come along? I must make it up to Taka for causing him so much pain.
Makoto: Sure, I guess it'd be okay.
[Cut to Nagito and Makoto walking to the infirmary tent]
Nagito: I must say we really struggled without him. To think without our Moral Compass, we crumbled as a team.
Makoto: Well, I wouldn't say it was all because we didn't have Taka, but hopefully we can bounce back from this loss.
Nagito: Ah yes, we really do just need to have hope.
Makoto: Right…oh there's Sayaka! Good morning!
Sayaka: Oh yes, good morning, Makoto, Nagito.
Makoto: Is everything okay? You don't seem like yourself this morning.
Nagito: Maybe it is due to the harrowing close loss of yesterday. But cheer up for today is a new day!
Sayaka: Thanks Nagito…I guess. But actually, it's more about Himiko.
Makoto: What's wrong with Himiko?
Sayaka: Well last night she slept on the other side of the girl's cabin. Maybe it was just so she didn't have to sleep with Junko but this morning she's just been really quiet. Even more than usual.
Makoto: Really? What do you think is going on?
Sayaka: If I had to guess, she's probably missing Tenko. I think they were good friends so seeing her leave already is getting to her.
Nagito: Really, this is all about Tenko, huh? Such a shame to see Himiko be hurt by our decision, but it was a decision that had to be made, nonetheless.
Sayaka: If you say so. I dread us coming in last. I worry that my team doesn't see me as a valuable teammate and will vote me off like Tenko.
Makoto: Well, uh, that's not exactly why we voted off Tenko, but don't be thinking like that, Sayaka. You're super talented and they should be proud to have you on your team.
Nagito: Better than having the talent of luck. Much good that did for us last challenge.
Makoto: Yeah…at least here we're not really judged on talent so much.
Sayaka: [giggle] You're right, thank you guys for the confidence boost. I guess Taka's really rubbing off on you, Makoto. By the way have you heard anything about him?
Makoto: Oh, right Mikan said he's feeling better and we're actually on our way to go see him.
Sayaka: Well, then I won't keep you guys. See you later then and tell Taka I'm glad he's feeling better.
Nagito: But you're not on our team. Wouldn't it be beneficial to you if we're down another member?
Sayaka: Ugh, I never liked all this inter-team drama. It's bad enough we have inner team drama with Miu and Fuyuhiko, and now Junko's upset with Himiko. Plus, he's still part of our class, right? Anyway, I've said enough. See you later, boys. [She runs off towards the dining cabin]
Makoto: Bye, Sayaka. [to Nagito] It's strange I never thought about everyone feeling they may not be beneficial to their team. I mean they are Ultimates but I guess talent doesn't matter too much in this competition.
Nagito: But being Ultimates means they'll always have the hope to succeed in any challenge they are faced with. Not like us useless Ultimates with nothing talents. No wonder we lost the last competition.
Makoto: Well, I hope Taka can motivate the team again. Speaking of which, we're here.
Nagito: Interesting, it sounds like he's still not alone in there.
Makoto: Hey, you're right! Is that Mondo?
Mondo: …and then Nekomaru paddled everyone back to shore himself. Bro, it was incredible. To think the big guy finally came through with his wanton speed.
Taka: Sounds absolutely amazing! I really hate that I missed out on such a worthwhile competition.
Makoto: Yeah, we really could've used you.
Mondo: O-oh, hey Makoto, Nagito, what are you doing here?
Nagito: We should ask you the same question. What's a guy from the other team doing talking to our teammate? Trying to weigh in the on competition I see. Figures you'd resort to such underhanded tactics.
Mondo: What'd you say? You think that's how it is?!
Taka: Hold on bro, I'll take care of this. Actually Nagito, Makoto, Mondo here was just recounting everything I missed yesterday. And I appreciate it. Nice to wake up to a bro who's got your back even if we are on different teams.
Nagito: Oh, then my bad for jumping to conclusions. I just came to apologize for causing you harm. Although, it's to be expected when you're around me.
Taka: Apology accepted, Nagito!
Makoto: But Mondo, have you really been here since around 6:15 when Keebo saw you leave the cabin.
Mondo: Well, yeah, I-uh care about the well-being of my classmates is all. Even if we are in a competition. I don't wanna see them get weak, y'know.
Taka: Well put, bro. Plus you've proven to me that even team boundaries shouldn't matter when it comes to supporting each other. This may be a competition, but we're friends first and foremost!
Nagito: Yes, I love it. The kind of inspiration we need from the Ultimate Moral Compass. I can feel the hope in succeeding in this competition rejuvenating us as we speak.
Makoto:.........
Taka:........All right then.
Mondo: Hey, he's your teammate.
[The three laugh as the camera pans to Junko eavesdropping outside]
[Confessional]
Junko: [cutesy] Oh, the hope returns to our team and makes us just the best of friends! [normal] Hgggck! Give me a break! Still there is too much comrade going on. Time for a little sibling talk, like old times.
[End]
[Cut to the girl's cabin]
Sonia: Don't be too late for breakfast, okay Mukuro!
Mukuro: Don't worry, I'm just going to take a quick look around the camp. It won't take long. [Leaves through the door]
Junko: Hey ya, ugly!
Mukuro: Agh, u-uh yes, good morning to you too, sister.
Junko: Hey, no need to be so formal. We're not carrying out anything now, so feel free to take it easy. Call me Junko or Heather if you want. I'm still going to call you ugly though.
Mukuro: Yes, of course Junko.
Junko: So, how are you getting along with your team, huh? Probably the best of friends, right?
Mukuro: Well, we haven't lost a challenge since the first but…
Junko: But you've never won, like my team! So, you wanna be useful to your team then?
Mukuro: I do but everything I do never helps us win, just well, not get last.
Junko: That's because you're playing it too safe, stupid. You gotta play dirty to get ahead, like moi! Just don't get caught, okay. I can't bail your sorry butt out when we're not on the same team.
Mukuro: Play dirty? But how should I do that?
Junko: Hey, you're mildly smart. I bet you could figure it out yourself. Just focus on sabotaging a team to make sure you're not last. Simple as that really
Mukuro: I see….
Junko: Well, that's all I wanted to say. Gotta meet with my amazing team for breakfast now. Bye ya, Mukie! [Walks passed to leave but stops to solemnly say] Don't disappoint me, again.
[Mukuro stands there for a bit after Junko leaves]
Aoi: Oh, Mukuro you're still here?
Mukuro: Huh? What?
Sonia: I thought you were going to take a walk.
Mukuro: Oh yes, I-it was just a quick walk. I'm already back.
Hiyoko: Well then, enough yapping. I'm hungry and we've wasted enough time as it is. Kyoko and Peko are probably already eating by now.
Sonia: Yes, let's do the dipping. Right, girls!
Aoi: [chuckle] Sure thing, Sonia.
Mukuro: Hmhm, yes of course.
[Confessional]
Mukuro: Junko's right, I have been feeling worthless, but still, I can't say my team's completely against me, right? A little sabotage shouldn't hurt anything…
[End]
[Cut to the dining cabin]
Junko: So, my wonderful team, how's everyone doing?
Mikan: Uh um, fine, I guess?
Rantaro: We're kinda down two teammates right now.
Sayaka: I don't think Himiko is going to join us right now. She's still lying in cabin.
Toko: Okay then where is Fake Master?
Tsumugi: [chuckle]
Fuyuhiko: You mean the Byakuya from our class. No clue, the guy just up and left early this morning. Not a word from him but he's been quiet anyway.
Tsumugi: [giggle]
Miu: Alright, four-eyes what's got you so giddy.
Tsumugi: Hmhm, wait for it…
Gonta: Wait for what?
[The dining room door swings open and inside walks Imposter. He is no longer wearing his white suit, but instead has on a red sweatshirt, jean shorts, a black jacket, and a red baseball cap turned backwards.]
Mikan: What the…Byakuya?
[Imposter puts his hand up and then holds them out close together]
Mikan: No sorry… less, right? So just B then?
[Imposter gives a thumbs up]
Tsumugi: What do you think! B asked me to make him this outfit last night. I think it suits his new personality quite well.
Byakuya: Hold it right there. [He gets up from the Rhinos table] I see, so this is your new gimmick, huh? [Studies Imposter] Well, better than thinking you could possibly be me.
Toko: So true, no one could ever replace Master.
Chris: Good morning, campers! I hope you're all rested and ready for today's challenge. Hmm, it seems most of the teams are missing some people.
Akane: Did Nagito hurt Taka and Makoto this time?
Kaede: Akane!
Taka: Don't worry Octopi, I have arrived with the others ready and raring to start a new day!
Kaede: Taka! Thank goodness you're feeling better.
Ibuki: We absolutely missed you! Topher's team was totally falling apart with you.
Keebo: Well, I wouldn't say that, but we were a little unstable without your guidance.
Chris: That's great for you guys, but enough with the reunion, I'm trying to get this show going. Topher, Cody, Harold and Brick take your seats. So that only leaves…Narwhals where's Staci?
Sayaka: She's...uh, not feeling well. I mean she's not sick, but I don't think she's up to being with us today.
Chris: Like I care about your personal feelings and neither do the viewing audience. Chef, go bring Staci her-
Himiko: Don't bother…Nyeh, I'm here now.
Chris: Great! Now we can finally get this challenge started. I feel like we've wasted nine minutes on pointless stuff.
Tsumugi: Himiko, are you alright?
Himiko: I'm fine, okay. I was just…. Nyeh, getting hungry that's all. Guess I was needed here anyway.
Chris: Indeed, because we're about to begin the next challenge. It's another Flashback Challenge: The Talent Competition!
Nagito: Oh my, a Talent Competition, with the most talented people in the world. How exhilarating.
Chris: Exactly. I've been watching you all and noticed you're pretty much freaks of nature when it comes to talent, so I thought it'd fit this group the best. However originally this competition just had teams pick three members to perform individually. This time you have to pick at least three members to perform together! Use your freaky talents to make one big display which Chef and I will grade not just on the impressiveness of the talent but also the cohesiveness of the members performing. So, get to choosing your performers. The competition will start in three hours.
Korekiyo: A question, Chris. You said at least three of us must perform but could there be more?
Chris: Sure, if more of you want to embarrass yourselves go for it. Let's just say no more than five to not crowd up the stage. Now hurry, times a wastin!
[Team Raging Rhinos]
Sonia: Alright team, let's first decide who's going to be performing.
Hiyoko: I could do a dance if the rest of you want to perform around that.
Kyoko: Ideally, it'd be one of us who has a more concrete and flashy talent. So unfortunately, I would be no help as a detective here.
Byakuya: I wouldn't want to help even if I could. Performing is for the peasants who can't get ahead in life.
Sonia: While I don't share the same sentiments as Byakuya, I don't believe being an Ultimate Princess is going to be too flashy of a talent here either.
Kazuichi: I could definitely build something to go along with someone else's performance.
Sonia: Oh, how about Gundham putting on a show with his Dark Devas.
Gundham: Speak not, Dark Lady, for the Devas do not trifle with the mediocrity of carefree showmanship.
Yasuhiro: Come on man, just have them do flips around Hiyoko while she's dancing or something.
Hiyoko: Ew gross! I don't want those filthy hamsters anywhere near me when I dance.
Gundham: You dare insult the cleanliness of my Devas! I'll have you know they not only know how to clean themselves of filth from this dimension but several beyond as well!
Leon: Dude chill, no one's insinuating anything about your hamsters.
Aoi: I doubt we could get a swimming pool on that stage.
Sonia: No, probably not. Peko, Mukuro, do you have any thoughts?
Peko: Well, my skills with a sword could be considered performative, but I'm not sure how well it'll fit with Hiyoko's dancing.
Mukuro: I don't suppose we have any guns or knives around. Those are really the only thing I'm good with.
Yasuhiro: Well, I'm not sure about guns, but there's probably some knives in the kitchen.
Hiyoko: Knives, with my dancing?! How's the even going to work dumb[bleep].
Yasuhiro: H-hey, I'm just trying to help. No need to get so hostile.
Kazuichi: I bet we could think of some way to tie it all together.
Byakuya: I'd say it's worth a shot. Let both of the weakest links fail together.
[Confessional]
Byakuya: I'm not truly sure who's the weakest link in our team. The annoying dancer was definitely it at first, but recently the soldier girl hasn't been very useful in challenges, always falling short. No better way to weed them out then put their talents against each other, I'd theorize. And if we lose, it'll be obvious who to vote out.
[End]
To be continued
Ep 4- Part 2>

I've shared fiction here before and it didn't go altogether too poorly, so I'm going to press my luck and do it again. This was written about a year ago, and I'm tired of trying to peddle it to lit magazines. Might as well share it here, know that it met a few eyeballs, and have done with it.
It's relevant to the sub insofar as it's about urban alienation and the working conditions at a small business run by IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE people. (I tried to pitch it as a story of the great resignation with a momentary flicker of cosmic horror.) It's based on a similar job I took on after getting laid off during the lockdown, and the circumstances of the main character's breakup are faintly similar to one I went through several years back (her job sucked the life out of her).
Without further ado:
* * *
It was getting close to midnight, and the temperature outside was still above 80 degrees. We’d locked up the shop at 10:15 and walked over to Twenty, the dive bar on Poplar Street, where a single wall-mounted air conditioner and four wobbly ceiling fans weren’t putting up much resistance against the July heat baking the place from the outside and the dense mass of bodies giving it a stifling fever from within.
Just now I came close to saying it was a Wednesday night, because that was usually when the cyclists descended upon Avenue Brew, the gritty-but-bougie craft beer and sandwich shop I was working at back then. Every Wednesday between March and November, about fifteen to twenty-five Gen Xers dressed in skintight polyester, all packages and camel toes and fanny packs, locked up their thousand-dollar bikes on the sidewalk and lined up for IPAs and paninis. They reliably arrived around 8:00, an hour before we closed, making it impossible to get started on the closing checklist and leave on time at 10:00. The worst of them were demanding and rude, and even the best got raucous and stubborn after a couple drinks. There were nights when bringing in the sidewalk tables couldn’t be done without arguing with them. Most were sub-par tippers, to boot.
After Wednesday came and went that week without so much as a single 40-something in Ray Bans and padded shorts stopping in to double-fist two cans of Jai Alai, we dared to hope the cyclists had chosen another spot to be their finish line from there on out. But no—they’d only postponed their weekly ride, and swarmed us on Friday night instead.
I was the last person to find out; I was clocked in as purchaser that evening. The position was something like a promotion I'd received a year earlier: for twenty hours a week, I got to retreat from the public and sit in the back room with the store laptop, reviewing sales and inventory, answering emails from brewery reps, and ordering beer, beverages, and assorted paper goods. When I put in hours as purchaser, my wage went up from $11 to $15 an hour, but I was removed from the tip pool. On most days, tips amounted to an extra two or three dollars an hour, so I usually came out ahead.
This was back in 2021. I don't know what Avenue Brew pays these days.
Anyway, at about 8:15, I stepped out to say goodbye to everyone and found the shop in chaos. Friday nights were generally pretty active, the cyclists' arrival had turned the place into a mob scene. The line extended to the front door. The phone was ringing. The Grubhub tablet dinged like an alarm clock without a snooze button. Danny was on the sandwich line and on the verge of losing his temper. Oliver was working up a sweat running food, bussing tables, and replenishing ingredients from the walk-in. The unflappable Marina was on register, and even she seemed like she was about to snap at somebody.
What else could I do? I stayed until closing to answer the phone, process Grubhub orders, hop on and off the second register, and help Danny with sandwich prep. After the tills were counted out, I stayed another hour to take care of the dishes, since nobody had a chance to do a first load. Oliver was grateful, even though he grumbled about having to make some calls and rearrange Sunday's schedule so I could come in a couple hours late. Irene and Jeremy, Avenue Brew's owners, would kick his ass if he let me go into overtime.
Danny suggested that we deserved a few drinks ourselves after managing to get through the shift without killing anyone. Not even Marina could find a reason to disagree with him.
The neighborhood had undergone enough gentrification to support an upscale brunch spot, an ice cream parlor, a gourmet burger restaurant, a coffee and bahn mi shop, and Avenue Brew (to name a few examples), but not yet quite enough that the people who staffed them couldn’t afford to live within a ten-minute walk from the main avenue where all these hep eateries stood between 24-hour corner stores with slot machines in back, late-night Chinese and Mexico-Italian takeout joints with bulletproof glass at the counters, and long-shuttered delis and shoe stores. Twenty on Poplar was the watering hole set aside for people like us. It was dim, a bit dilapidated, and inexpensive, and usually avoided by denizens of the condos popping up on the vacant lots and replacing clusters of abandoned row houses.
When we arrived, Kyle waved us over. He didn’t work at Avenue Brew anymore, but still kept up with a few of us. He was at Twenty at least four nights out of the week.
So there we all were. I sat with a brooding stranger freestyling to himself in a low mumble on the stool to my left and Oliver on my right, who tapped at his phone and nursed a bottle of Twisted Tea. To Oliver’s right sat Marina, staring at nothing in particular and trying to ignore Danny, who stood behind her, closer than she would have liked, listening to Kyle explain the crucial differences between the Invincible comic book and the Invincible web series.
I recall being startled back to something like wakefulness when it seemed to me that the ceiling had sprouted a new fan. I blinked my eyes, and it wasn’t there anymore. It reminded me of an incident from when I was still living with my folks in South Jersey and still had a car, and was driving home from a friend’s house party up in Bergen County. It was 6:30 AM, I hadn’t slept all night, and needed to get home so I could get at least little shuteye before heading to Whole Foods for my 11:00 AM shift. I imagined I passed beneath the shadows of overpasses I knew weren’t there, and realized I was dreaming at the wheel.
I was pretty thoroughly zombified at that point. Heather and I had broken up for good the night before, and I hadn't gotten even a minute of sleep. Calling out at Avenue Brew was tough. Unless you found someone willing to cover your shift on like six hours' notice, you were liable to get a writeup, a demotion, or your hours cut if you couldn't produce a doctor's note. So I loaded up on caffeine pills and Five-Hour Energy bottles at the corner store, and powered through as best I could.
I finished the last thimbleful of Blue Moon in my glass. Oliver wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a napkin and covered his mouth to stifle a laugh at the KiwiFarms thread he was scrolling through. Pool balls clacked; somebody swore and somebody laughed. The TouchTunes box was playing Bob Dylan’s “Rain Day Woman #12 & 35,” and enough bleary 40-something men around the bar were bobbing their heads and mouthing the words to make it impossible to determine which one of them paid two bucks to hear it. A guy by the cigarette machine who looked like a caricature of Art Carney in flannel and an old Pixies T-shirt was accosting a woman who must have been a toddler when he hit drinking age, and she momentarily made eye contact with me as she scanned the area for a way out. Danny was shouting over the bartender’s head, carrying on a conversation with the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, who was sitting on the horseshoe’s opposite arm.
I never got his name, but when Oliver first referred to him as the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, I knew exactly who he meant. Philly scene kid par excellence. Mid-20s, washed-out black denim, dyed black hair, thick bangs, and dark, gentle eyes. He was only truly alluring when he was on the job, because he seldom smiled then—and when he smiled, he broke the spell by exposing his teeth, stained a gnarly shade of mahogany from too much smoking and not enough brushing.
“How’s Best? Marcus still a joker?” Danny asked him.
“Yeah, you know Marcus. You know how he is.”
So the Hot Guy had been working at Best Burger (directly across the street from Avenue Brew) ever since Pizza Stan’s owners mismanaged the place unto insolvency. (Afterwards it was renovated and reopened as a vegan bakery—which incidentally closed down about a month ago.) Danny used to work at Best Burger, but that ended after he got into a shouting match with the owner. I happened to overhear it while I was dragging in the tables and collecting the chairs from the sidewalk the night it happened. It wasn’t any of my business, and I tried not to pay attention, but they were really tearing into each other. A month later, Oliver welcomed Danny aboard at Avenue Brew. I hadn’t known he’d been interviewed, and by then it was too late to mention the incident. But I’d have been a hypocrite to call it a red flag after the way I resigned from my position as Café Chakra's assistant manager two years earlier—not that we need to go dredging that up right now. Let's say there was some bad blood and leave it at that.
Anyway, I was thinking about giving in and buying a pack of cigarettes from the machine—and then remembered that Twenty didn’t have a cigarette machine. I looked again. The Art Carney-lookalike was still there, fingering his phone with a frown, but the girl was gone—and so was the cigarette machine.
I had only a moment to puzzle over this before Danny clapped me on the shoulder and thrust a shot glass in front of me.
“Starfish!” he said. (Danny called me Starfish. Everybody else called me Pat.) “You look like you need some juice.”
He distributed shots to everyone else. Marina declined hers, but changed her mind when Kyle offered to take it instead.
She and Kyle had stopped sleeping together after Kyle left Avenue Brew to work at the Victory taproom on the Parkway, but Marina was still concerned about his bad habits, which Danny delighted in encouraging.
We all leaned in to clink our glasses. Before I could find an appropriate moment to ask Marina if I could bum a cigarette, she got up to visit the bathroom. Danny took her seat and bowed his head for a conspiratorial word with Kyle.
I watched from the corner of my eye and tried to listen in. Like Marina, I was a little worried about Kyle. He got hired at Avenue Brew around the same time I did, just before the pandemic temporarily turned us into a takeout joint. He was a senior at Drexel then, an English major, and sometimes talked about wanting to either find work in publishing or carve out a career as a freelance writer after graduating. But first he intended to spend a year getting some life in before submitting himself to the forever grind.
He read a lot of Charles Bukowski and Hunter Thompson. He relished the gritty and sordid, and had already been good at sniffing it out around the neighborhood and in West Philly before Danny introduced him to cocaine, casinos, strip clubs, and a rogue’s gallery of shady but fascinating people. (None were really Danny’s friends; just fellow passengers who intersected with the part of his life where he sometimes went to Parx, sometimes came out ahead, sometimes spent his winnings on coke, and sometimes did bumps at titty bars.) Kyle recounted these adventures with a boyish enthusiasm for the naked reality of sleaze, like a middle schooler telling his locker room buddies about catching his older brother in flagrante and seeing so-and-so body parts doing such-and-such things.
Marina hated it. She never said as much to me, but she was afraid that the template Kyle set for his life during his “year off” was in danger of becoming locked in. The anniversary of his graduation had already passed, and now here he was trying to convince Danny to contribute a couple hundred dollars toward a sheet of acid his guy had for sale. He wasn't doing much writing lately.
I was the oldest employee at Avenue Brew (as I write this I’m 37, but fortunately I don’t look it), and when Kyle still worked with us I felt like it was my prerogative to give him some advice. The longer he waited to make inroads, I once told him, the more likely he’d be seen as damaged goods by the publishing world. He needed to jam his foot in the door while he was still young.
I could tell the conversation bored him, and didn’t bring up the subject again.
The bartender took my glass and curtly asked if I’d like another drink.
“No thanks, not yet,” I answered.
She slid me my bill.
I missed the old bartender, the one she’d replaced. I forget her name, but she was ingenuous and energetic and sweet. Pretty much everyone had some sort of crush on her. Sometimes she came into Avenue Brew for lunch, and tipped us as well as we tipped her. Maybe three months before that night—Danny witnessed it—she suddenly started crying and rushed out the door. Everyone at the bar mutely looked to each other for an explanation. (Fortunately for Twenty, the kitchen manager hadn’t left yet, and picked up the rest of her shift.)
She never came back. None of us had seen her since. But drafts still had to be poured and bottlecaps pulled off, and now here was another white woman in her mid-twenties wearing a black tank top, a pushup bra, and a scrunchie, same as before. Twenty’s regulars grew accustomed to not expecting to see the person she’d replaced, and life went on.
“How’re you doing?” I asked Oliver, just to say something to somebody, and to keep my thoughts from wandering back to Heather.
“Just kind of existing right now,” he answered. His phone lay face-up on the counter. He was swiping through Instagram, and I recognized the avatar of the user whose album he hate-browsed.
“And how’s Austin been?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. Not even three weeks after getting over the jetlag from his trip back from the Cascades, he’s off touring Ireland.” He shook his head. “Living his best life.”
He’d hired Austin on a part-time basis in September. We needed a new associate when Emma was promoted to replace a supervisor who'd quit without even giving his two weeks. There was a whole thing. I'm having a hard time recalling the guy's name, but I liked him well enough. He was a good worker and he seemed like a bright kid, but he was—well, he was young. Naïve. One day he found Jeremy sitting in the back room with his laptop, and took advantage of the open-door policy to ask why the store manager and supervisors didn’t get health benefits or paid time off. Jeremy told him it "was being worked on," and that he couldn’t discuss it any further at that time. I understand the kid got argumentative, though I never knew precisely what was said.
Irene started visiting the shop a lot more often after that, almost always arriving when the kid was working. No matter what he was doing, she’d find a reason to intervene, to micromanage and harangue him, and effectively make his job impossible. A coincidence, surely.
It’s something I still think about. By any metric, Jeremy and Irene have done very well for themselves. They’re both a little over 40 years old. I remember hearing they met at law school. In addition to Avenue Brew, they own a bistro in Francisville and an ice cream parlor in Point Breeze. They have a house on the Blue Line, send their son to a Montessori school, and pull up to their businesses in a white Volkswagen ID.4. But whenever the subject of benefits, wages, or even free shift meals came up, they pled poverty. It simply couldn’t be done. But they liked to remind us about all they did to make Avenue Brew a fun place to work, like let the staff pick the music and allow Oliver and me to conduct a beer tasting once a day. They stuck Black Lives Matter, Believe Women, and Progress flag decals on the front door and windows, and I remember Irene wearing a Black Trans Lives Matter shirt once or twice when covering a supervisor's shift. None of the college students or recent graduates who composed most of Avenue Brew's staff could say the bosses weren't on the right team. And yet...
I'm sorry—I was talking about Austin. He was maybe 30 and already had another job, a “real” job, some sort of remote gig lucrative enough for him to make rent on a studio in the picturesque Episcopal church down the street that had been converted into upscale apartments some years back. Austin wasn’t looking for extra cash. He wanted to socialize. To have something to do and people to talk to in the outside world. He wanted to make friends, and all of us could appreciate that—but it’s hard to be fond of a coworker who irredeemably sucks at his job. Austin never acted with any urgency, was inattentive to detail, and even after repeated interventions from Oliver and the supervisors, he continued to perform basic tasks in bafflingly inefficient ways. Having Austin on your shift meant carrying his slack, and everyone was fed up after a few months. Oliver sat him down, told him he was on thin ice, and gave him a list of the areas in which he needed to improve if he didn’t want to be let go.
When Austin gave Oliver the indignant “I don’t need this job” speech, it was different from those times Danny or I told a boss to go to hell and walked out. Austin truly didn’t need it. He basically said the job was beneath him, and so was Oliver.
It got deep under Oliver’s skin. He did need the job and had to take it seriously, even when it meant being the dipshit manager chewing out a man four or five years his senior. He earned $18 an hour (plus tips when he wasn’t doing admin work), had debts to pay off, and couldn't expect to get any help from his family.
The important thing, though, the part I distinctly remember, was that Oliver was looking at a video of a wading bird Austin had recorded. An egret, maybe. White feathers, long black legs, pointy black beak. Austin must have been standing on a ledge above a creek, because he had an overhead view of the bird as it stood in the water, slowly and deliberately stretching and retracting its neck, eyeing the wriggling little shadows below. As far as the fish could know, they were swimming around a pair of reeds growing out of the silt. The predator from which they extended was of a world beyond their understanding and out of their reach.
The video ended. Oliver moved on to the next item: a photograph of the bird from the same perspective, with a fish clamped in its beak. Water droplets flung from the victim's thrashing tail caught the sunlight. And I remember now, I clearly remember, the shapes of like twelve other fish stupidly milling about the bird's feet, unperturbed and unpanicked.
Danny peered at Oliver’s phone and observed a resemblance between the bird—its shape and bearing, and the composition of the photograph—and a POV porn video shot from behind and above, and he told us so. Elaborately. He made squawking noises.
“And mom says I’m a degenerate,” Oliver sighed. “Can you practice your interspecies pickup artist shit somewhere else?” Oliver flicked his wrist, shooing Danny off, and held his phone in front of his face to signal that he was done talking.
Danny sagged a little on his stool and turned away. I sometimes felt bad for him. For all his faults, he had the heart of a puppy dog. He really did think of us as his tribe. There was nobody else who’d only ever answer “yes” when you asked him to pick up a shift, and he did it completely out of loyalty.
He was turning 29 in a week. I wondered how many people would actually turn out to celebrate with him at the Black Taxi. Kyle probably would—but even he regarded Danny more as a source of vulgar entertainment than a friend.
Then it happened again. When I turned to speak to Oliver, there’d been a pair of pool cues leaning side-by-side against the wall a few stools down. Now they were gone.
This time it might have been my imagination. Somebody passing by could have casually snatched them up and kept walking.
But a moment later I seemed to notice a second TouchTunes box protruding from the wall directly behind me. I let it be.
Marina returned from the bathroom. Danny rose and offered her back her seat with an exaggerated bow. Before she got settled, I asked if she’d like to step outside with me. She withdrew her pack of Marlboro Menthols from her canvas bag, which she left sitting on the stool to deter Danny from sitting back down.
Marina never minded letting me bum cigarettes from time to time. I couldn’t buy them for myself anymore; it’s a habit I could never keep under control, and was only getting more expensive. Like everything else in the world. About once a month I reimbursed her by buying her a pack.
The air out on the sidewalk was as hot as the air inside Twenty, but easier to breathe. After lighting up, Marina leaned against the bricks and sighed.
“I wish Oliver would fire Danny already and get it over with.”
I nodded. Marina rarely talked about anything but work.
“He sneaks drinks and doesn't think anyone notices he's buzzed,” she went on. “He steals so much shit and isn’t even a little subtle about it. He’s going to get Oliver in trouble. And he’s a creep.”
“Yeah,” I said. These were her usual complaints about Danny, and they were all true. “At least he’s better than Austin.”
“That’s a low bar.”
Three dirt bikes and an ATV roared down the lonely street, charging through stop sign after stop sign, putting our talk on hold.
“Remind me. You’ve got one semester left, right?” I asked after the noise ebbed.
“Yep.”
Marina was a marketing major at Temple. She’d had an internship during the spring semester, and her boss told her to give her a call the very minute she graduated. Her parents in central Pennsylvania couldn’t pay her rent or tuition for her, so she was a full-time student and a full-time employee at Avenue Brew. Her emotional spectrum ranged from "tired" to "over it." She’d been waiting tables and working at coffee shops since she was seventeen, had no intention of continuing for even a day longer than she had to, and feared the escape hatch would slam shut if she dallied too long after prying it open.
She’d considered majoring in English, like Kyle. She went for marketing instead. I couldn’t blame her.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been kind of off all day.”
“I’m terrible.”
“Why?”
I gave dodgy answers, but she asked precisely the right follow-up questions to get me going about what happened with Heather the night before.
It was the new job. Before the pandemic, Heather worked as a server at a Center City bar and grill. (That's where I met her; we were coworkers for about a year, and then I left to work Café Chakra because it was quieter and closer to where I lived.) When the place closed its doors and laid everyone off during the lockdown, she got a stopgap job at the Acme on Passyunk, and hated it. Then in March, she found a bar-and-lounge gig in a ritzy hotel on Broad Street. Very corporate. Excellent pay, great benefits. Definitely a step up. But her new employers made Irene and Jeremy look like Bob and Linda Belcher by comparison. It was the kind of place where someone had recently gotten herself fired for leaving work to rush to the hospital after getting the news that her grandmother was about to be taken off life support, and not finding someone to come in and cover the last two hours of her shift.
Heather seldom worked fewer than fifty-five hours a week, and her schedule was even more erratic than mine. At least once a week she left the hotel at 1:00 or 2:00 AM and returned at 9:00 the next morning. Neither of us could remember the last time she’d had two consecutive days off, and it had been over a month since one of mine overlapped with one of hers. She’d spent it drinking alone at home. All she wanted was some privacy.
I’d biked to South Philly to meet her when she got home at 1:30. The argument that killed our relationship for good began around 2:30, when I complained that we never had sex anymore. Heather accused me of only caring about that, when she was so exhausted and stressed that her hair was falling out in the shower. Quit the job? She couldn’t quit. The money was too good. She had student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt, and for the first time in her life she could imagine paying it all off before hitting menopause.
So, yeah, I was cranky about our sex life being dead in the water. Say whatever you like. But at that point, what were we to each other? We did nothing together anymore but complain about work before one or both of us fell asleep. That isn’t a relationship.
She said my hair always smelled like sandwiches, even after bathing, and she was done pretending it didn’t turn her off. I told her she was one to talk—she always reeked of liquor. As things escalated, we stopped caring if her roommates heard us. “You want to be a father?” she shouted around 4:00 AM. “Making what you make? That poor fucking kid.”
We fought until sunrise, and I left her apartment with the understanding that I wouldn’t be coming back, wouldn’t be calling her ever again. I biked home and sat on the steps facing the cement panel that was my house’s backyard. After my phone died and I couldn’t anaesthetize myself with dumb YouTube videos or make myself feel crazy staring at the download button for the Tinder app, I watched the sparrows hopping on and off the utility lines for a while.
At 11:40 I went inside. One of my roommates was already in the shower, so the best I could do was put on a clean Avenue Brew T-shirt before walking to the shop and clocking in at noon to help deal with the lunch rush.
“That’s a lot,” Marina finally said. “Sorry.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say. She was sixteen years my junior, after all, and just a coworker. She didn’t need to hear any of this, and I definitely didn't need to be telling her. But who else was there to tell?
She’d already finished her cigarette. I still had a few puffs left. She went inside.
I decided to call it a night.
The second TouchTunes box was gone—naturally. Danny had taken my stool, and regarded my approach with a puckish you snooze you lose grin. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d just pay my bill, give everyone a nod goodnight, and walk the five blocks back home.
And then Danny disappeared.
One second, he was there. The next—gone.
Danny didn’t just instantaneously vanish. Even when something happens in the blink of an eye, you can still put together something of a sequence. I saw him—I seemed to see him—falling into himself, collapsing to a point, and then to nothing.
You know how sometimes a sound is altogether inaudible unless you’re looking at the source—like when you don’t realize somebody’s whispering at you, and can then hear and understand them after they get your attention? I think that was the case here. I wouldn't have known to listen if I hadn't seen it happen. What I heard lingered for two, maybe three seconds, and wasn't any louder than a fly buzzing inside a lampshade. A tiny and impossibly distant scream, pitchshifted like a receding ambulance siren into a basso drone...
I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I’m certain I remember a flash of red, and I have the idea of Danny’s trunk expanding, opening up as it imploded. A crimson flower, flecked white, with spooling pink stalks—and Danny’s wide-eyed face above it, drawn twisting and shrinking into its petals.
For an instant, Twenty’s interior shimmered. Not shimmered, exactly—glitched would be a better word. If you’re old enough to remember the fragmented graphics that sometimes flashed onscreen when you turned on the Nintendo without blowing on the cartridge, you’ll have an idea of what I mean. It happened much too fast, and there was too much of it to absorb. The one clear impression I could parse was the mirage of a cash register flickering upside-down above the pool table.
Not a cash register. The shape was familiar, but the texture was wrong. I think it was ribbed, sort of like a maggot. I think it glistened. Like—camo doesn’t work anymore when the wearer stops crouching behind a bush and breaks into a run. Do you get what I’m saying?
Nobody else seemed to notice. The pool balls clacked. A New Order track was playing on the TouchTunes box. A nearby argument about about Nick Sirianni continued unabated.
Finally, there was a downward rush of air—and this at least elicited a reaction from the bartender, who slapped my bill to keep it from sailing off the counter.
“Danny,” I said.
“Danny?” Kyle asked me quietly. His face had gone pale.
“Danny?” Oliver repeated in a faraway voice.
After a pause, Kyle blinked a few times. “You heard from him?”
“God forbid,” said Marina. “When he quit I was like, great, I can keep working here after all.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Kyle. Did I ever show you those texts he sent me once at three in the morning?” The color had returned to Oliver’s face.
“No, what did he say?”
Oliver tapped at his phone and turned the screen toward Kyle.
“Oh. Oh, jeez.”
“Right? Like—if you want to ask me something, ask me. You know? Don’t be weirdly accusatory about it…”
I pulled a wad of fives and ones from my pocket, threw it all onto the counter, and beelined for the exit without consideration for the people I squeezed through and shoved past on the way.
I heard Marina saying “let him go.”
I went a second consecutive night without sleep. Fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to come in the next day.
The schedule. It’s funny. Oliver was generally great at his job, and even when he wasn’t, I cut him a lot of slack because I knew Irene and Jeremy never gave him a moment’s peace. But I could never forgive him those times he waited until the weekend to make up and distribute the schedule. This was one of those weeks he didn’t get around to it until Saturday afternoon. When I found it in my inbox, Danny’s name wasn’t anywhere on it.
As far as I know, nobody who hadn’t been at Twenty that night asked what happened to him. We were a bit overstaffed as it was, and everyone probably assumed Danny was slated for the chopping block. The part-timers were, for the most part, happy to get a few additional hours.
Oliver abruptly quit around Labor Day after a final acrimonious clash with the owners. I never found out the details, and I never saw him again. Jeremy and Irene took turns minding the store while a replacement manager was sought. None of the supervisors would be pressured into taking the job; they knew from Oliver what they could expect.
About three weeks after Oliver left, I came in for my purchasing shift and found Jeremy waiting for me in the back room. I knew it was serious when he didn’t greet me with the awkward fist-bump he ordinarily required of his male employees.
“You’ve seen the numbers,” he said. Business for the summer had fallen short of expectations, it was true, and he and Irene had decided to rein in payroll expenses. My purchaser position was being eliminated. Its responsibilities would be redistributed among the supervisors and the new manager, when one was found. In the meantime, I'd be going back to the regular $11 an hour (plus tips of course) associate position full-time.
Jeremy assured me I'd be first in the running for supervisor the next time there was an opening.
I told him it was fine, I was done, and if he’d expected the courtesy of two weeks’ notice, he shouldn’t have blindsided me like that.
“Well, that’s your choice,” he answered, trying not to look pleased. His payroll problem was solving itself.
I racked up credit card debt for a few months. Applied for entry-level museum jobs that might appreciate my art history degree. Aimed for some purchasing and administrative assistant gigs, and just for the hell of it, turned in a resume for a facilitator position at an after-school art program. Got a few interviews. All of them eventually told me they’d decided to go in a different direction. I finally got hired to bartend at Hops from Underground, a microbrewery on Fairmount.
I’m still there. The money’s okay, but it fluctuates. Hours are reasonable. I’m on their high-deductible health plan. There’s a coworker I’ve been dating. Sort of dating. You know how it goes. In this line of work you get so used to people coming and going that you learn not to get too attached. I walk past Avenue Brew a few times a week, but stopped peering in through the window when I didn't recognize the people behind the counter anymore.

Company Name	Title	City
UnitedHealth Group	Surgery Coding Auditor - National Remote	Mesa
LifeStance Health	Clinical Psychologist - 100% Remote or Hybrid	Goleta
UnitedHealth Group	Surgery Coding Auditor - National Remote	Hartford
Talkspace	Licensed Mental Health Therapist Counselor (Remote)	Evansville
L.L.Bean	Sr. Cloud Engineering Architect- Remote	Brunswick
Benetech	VP, Finance and Administration (Remote)	Palo Alto
Apollo.io	Staff DevOps Engineer (Remote - US)	San Francisco
Viva Railings	Business Development Manager (Remote)	Tenderloin
Vertical Scope	Director of Content, The Streamable (Remote)	Washington
Diameter Health	Director, Clinical Sales (Remote)	Mid Florida
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc	Security Architect, VP (Remote)	Atlanta
NIKE, Inc	Principal Data Engineer (Remote Option*)	Atlanta
Swyfft	Senior Data Engineer (US Remote)	Boston
Belkin International, Inc	National Account Manager - East Region (Remote)	Boston
Fresenius Medical Care	IT Category Manager, Software - Remote	Waltham
Wolters Kluwer	VP Customer Experience (Remote)	Waltham
Target	Director, Experience Insights (Remote or Hybrid)	Minneapolis
Red River Commodities	National Account Manager Natural Channel - REMOTE	North River
First American	Product Marketing Manager - Remote	Portland
Jacobs	Senior Accountant, Financial Reporting - Hybrid / Remote	Dallas
Kraton Corporation	Manager, Market Development I - (Remote)	Houston
Foundever	Remote - Cable Technical Support	Gatineau
Confidential	Immediate Openings RemoteB2C MidSenior Digital Marketing Specialist Phoenix	Mesa
Real Staffing	Immediate Openings Audience StrategistMarketing Specialist Full Remote Los Angeles	Los Angeles
C.R. Laurence	Immediate Openings Architectural Business Development ManagerRemote Seattle	Seattle

Hey guys, here are some recent job openings in . Feel free to comment here or send me a private message if you have any questions, I'm at the community's disposal! If you encounter any problems with any of these job openings please let me know that I will modify the table accordingly. Thanks!

Company Name	Title	City
UnitedHealth Group	Surgery Coding Auditor - National Remote	Mesa
LifeStance Health	Clinical Psychologist - 100% Remote or Hybrid	Goleta
UnitedHealth Group	Surgery Coding Auditor - National Remote	Hartford
Talkspace	Licensed Mental Health Therapist Counselor (Remote)	Evansville
L.L.Bean	Sr. Cloud Engineering Architect- Remote	Brunswick
Benetech	VP, Finance and Administration (Remote)	Palo Alto
Apollo.io	Staff DevOps Engineer (Remote - US)	San Francisco
Viva Railings	Business Development Manager (Remote)	Tenderloin
Vertical Scope	Director of Content, The Streamable (Remote)	Washington
Diameter Health	Director, Clinical Sales (Remote)	Mid Florida
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc	Security Architect, VP (Remote)	Atlanta
NIKE, Inc	Principal Data Engineer (Remote Option*)	Atlanta
Swyfft	Senior Data Engineer (US Remote)	Boston
Belkin International, Inc	National Account Manager - East Region (Remote)	Boston
Fresenius Medical Care	IT Category Manager, Software - Remote	Waltham
Wolters Kluwer	VP Customer Experience (Remote)	Waltham
Target	Director, Experience Insights (Remote or Hybrid)	Minneapolis
Red River Commodities	National Account Manager Natural Channel - REMOTE	North River
First American	Product Marketing Manager - Remote	Portland
Jacobs	Senior Accountant, Financial Reporting - Hybrid / Remote	Dallas
Kraton Corporation	Manager, Market Development I - (Remote)	Houston
Foundever	Remote - Cable Technical Support	Gatineau
Confidential	Immediate Openings RemoteB2C MidSenior Digital Marketing Specialist Phoenix	Mesa
Real Staffing	Immediate Openings Audience StrategistMarketing Specialist Full Remote Los Angeles	Los Angeles
C.R. Laurence	Immediate Openings Architectural Business Development ManagerRemote Seattle	Seattle

Hey guys, here are some recent job openings in . Feel free to comment here or send me a private message if you have any questions, I'm at the community's disposal! If you encounter any problems with any of these job openings please let me know that I will modify the table accordingly. Thanks!

"Hey! Be careful with that fire!" the old merc shouted while taking cover. "Rick, you are boring… you know I can heal you back up, right?" the younger merc in the middle of the hallway answered. Rick just muttered, "Without becoming a giant tumor? Damn Magicians…" "We have a medical station on board, and you know it.", the young one snickered. With a scoff, the senior returned to kill the intruders.
The two Private Security Contractors were doing their job of guarding the cargo bay of the CLF Vessel. Xenith pirates boarded the ship after a lucky hit to the engine. While Joshua threw small fireballs, Rick struck down any eager Xenith with his repeating gauss rifle. Then a faint stomping sound could be heard from afar. Rick cried out to the magician, "Joshua! Watch out!" The devil has just arrived at the end of the Hallway. "I have… OH FUCK!" The bioengineered beast sprinted through the long hallway. Its 5 claws leave marks on the composite floor plating. The unnatural scream of the abomination even drowned out the kinetic fire of the now desperate Rick. "Rick! I need a grenade! Now!" Joshua just ordered him. "No! You can't do that!" screamed the man back. Now angrier than everything else, Joshua coldly threatened Rick, "Right now." With no hesitation, the older merc just threw the grenade at the Magician. While flying through the air, the grenade disintegrated into a fine mist, while making its way to Joshua's hand. Even in a stressful situation like this, he knew he could turn this primitive weapon into a deadly piece of art. He just hoped it wouldn't destroy any important part of the ship. After a couple of seconds of strange movement of the mist, he was ready. The magician laid out his trump card. The ball of death whirled down the hallway. Before it made contact with the malformed beast, the Bulkhead was closed violently, the metal of the door warped under the stress, but it was sealed shut. The mercs felt the explosion, then heard fading screaming. Then the lights cut out. Rick was now standing, illuminated by the red shimmer of the backup lights, helmet in his hands, quietly muttering. Joshua asked, "What are you doing, old man?" "Making peace with my gods, you should do the same.", the old merc answered quietly.
The two were entombed in a now-dead ship. After some months of searching, the ship was cataloged as MIA, the precious cargo safe but lost in space.

Two Kakampinks walked into a café.
This was after they lost the elections, and they've recovered na from the hard-hitting reality. Mga one year later na 'to.
They were in 12th grade senior high when they chanted along with the pink crusade, now they're both in their first year of college. The first is taking up a course on secondary education, major in English; the second, business administration. Well, dahil unti-unti na silang nagiging busy sa kanya-kanya nilang buhay, minsan na lang sila magkita. That's why these two friends, when they found the time, arranged this date.
The café was a typical modern café. It was one of those minimalist-styled establishments na may maliit na blackboard sa labas with cute chalk doodles to highlight its business hours. The interiors were adorned with overhanging indoor plants. The wooden tables varnished to golden-brown shine. The walls were an of an aesthetic black, designed with white huge calligraphy of optimistic cliches nabbed online. The entire place had a yellow lighting, setting up the ambience, making the entire place worthy to be posted on Instagram.
Waiting naman the tables, is an apron-clad guy with a deep dimple and a bulging Adam's apple, who was handsome enough to be romanticized.
But the two Kakampinks didn't care for him, as they are in love to each of their boyfriend. That's characteristic of women. When they're in love with a guy, the other guys get ignored, no matter how handsome they are.
Anyway, there they were. Sitting side-by-side. In an intimate table for two, catching up with each other's lives, that is, chatting about that funny professor they've had, that campus event in their respective university, that latest episode of that Netflix show they watch, that one fond memory they keep recalling. There was noise, there was glee, there was laughter, there was whispering, and of course, as this was in a café nga, there was eating. Particularly the eating of a creamy carbonara; and of a mushroom soup; and of a red velvet cake; and of a frappe; and of other dishes and beverages and desserts that one has to take a picture of before eating it.
Well, the hours passed and the skies got darker. Without alcohol, they began to get drunk—drunk from the intimacy that only friendship can give. From the honesty that this drunkenness has granted them, things then began to get political, as one said to the other:
"I don't know if you feel it too pero I cringe about being a Kakampink."
This remark came from a train of thought that began with their discussion of the leftist initiatives they've heard in each of their campuses. To this, a reply:
"Oh my god, ikaw din?" with gleaming eyes, the other said. "I feel that too. Takot lang akong i-verbalize sa circle ko as that may be an unpopular opinion today. Ang binary na kasi ng lahat. Any anti-pink rhetoric can suddenly turn you into a pro-red apologist."
"Then, this is a good thing na we share the same sentiments. And I'm glad na it's with you, whom I can finally speak of this." she said, "you know, I keep seeing sa fb feed ko yung fb memories of the pink rallies. My friends keep resharing them ta's sasabihing the best era daw. Well, whenever I see shares like that, I feel this funny feeling of cringe. Primarily from my intellect."
"Same. Probably kasi, we used to belong in there?" she replied, "we used to be one of them, in that pink crusade."
"Probably."
"Pero, I guess, that's okay. A wise man once told me na cringing at your past self is one of the surest sign that you've progressed to maturity."
"I like that. Education through disillusionment." she said with an honest smile. And then, she asked: "well, what led you to your disillusionment?"
"I am not so sure." she said, "wala namang maling ginawa si Leni for me to stop supporting her—pero, i guess the disillusionment came from the closest Kakampink I know, namely my self."
"Yeah, what about your self?"
"I had this episode lang of being moved by the poverty of our people, while I was dining in an eat-all-you-can buffet," she said almost laughing at her self with cynicism, "The restaurant had glass walls, so kita mo yung labas, from the inside. Well, while I was eating nga, may madungis na batang pulubi na dumaan, holding his hand out to me, mouthing something at me. I know na nanghihingi siya ng limos. Pero, I just consciously ignored him, shoving a spoonful of rice na sinabawan ng kare-kare, straight in my mouth. After that epispde, I kept contemplating on the glass walls. Is that not what we're doing? Just the rich and the privileged looking through the glass wall that separates us from the hungry, while we eat and dine and have our fill?"
"You think we're one of the rich and the privileged?"
"Are we not? We think na mga pasistang pulitiko lang yung rich and privileged, yung may subdivision 'gaya ng mga Villar o yung may private jet 'gaya ng mga Marcos," she said, "pero, think about it: don't we belong there, too? As we enjoy all our iPhones Pro's? Our Aquaflask tumblers? Our eat-all-you-can buffets? Our boba teas?"
"Yes, I think we are," the other replied, "If that's how you would put it, we basically are."
"Well, yun," she explained, "I guess, that's the part that doesn't make sense to me. How can I claim to fight for the poor, join them in their plights, while at the same time, enjoy my self in such lavish comfort? I think that would be hypocrisy."
"I'm really glad we're having this conversation," she replied fondly. "cause what you said—it's so aligned with an idea that I've been thinking about since the pink era was over." she sipped from her milk tea, and then continued, "we both joined the rally 'di ba? And we both saw the people there. And we both saw na most of them had an iPhone. I was just thinking, in retrospect, na maybe, we're part of the oppression too?"
"What do you mean?"
"Where does the iPhone user get his prestige?"
"Well, as a user of one, I don't find my iPhone prestigious kasi I'm not that petty." she said, with a laughing pompousity. "pero i could honestly answer that, in behalf of those petty materialists. The prestige of the iPhone comes from the fact na mahal yun and not everyone could afford one."
"Exactly. And yung mga 'di maka-afford ng iPhone, will have to settle with an Android phone." the other remarked, "so the prestige of the iPhone users, is based on the poverty of the Android users. Now, you can apply that to any material object advertised as a social emblem of luxury. Gucci, Jordan shoes, Starbucks, even the Aquaflask tumbler. The prestige of having one, enjoying one, consuming one, is based on its expensiveness, on how Capitalism privileged it on a pedestal, and on the idea na not everyone could afford it."
"So the glory of the havings is based on the lacking of the having-not's"
"Wow, you've put that aptly in a nutshell." the other remarked excitedly, "and yes! That's about right. The reason why our ideas of luxury, prestige, and privilege exist is because of their lacking, their not having, and their poverty. We are rich because they are poor. That's why I posited na we may be part of their oppression, too."
"That indeed makes sense." the other replied, "that's probably why ide-Day ko ang Starbucks ko, kasi alam kong may maiinggit."
"Right." the other said, with a laughter, "You're getting the idea. Pero you're adding your own mean twist. But that's my point: we exist in a social pyramid of lower class, middle class, upper class, where each class is really stepping on the back of the one immediately lower to them to maintain the height they enjoy. Yung lower class yung pinaka-kawawa as two classes are above them. And in this case we're discussing, their oppression is through our idea of luxurious materialism and the prestige we attach to commodified objects."
"Kaya it won't make sense for us to say 'eat the rich' kasi that would mean we have to eat ourselves."
"Exactly." she said, "the pro-red apologist proud of his iPhone, is the same with the pro-pink proud of her iPhone. They're both from the same greed and gluttony, blinded by the same object fetishism espoused by Capitalism. That's why the Kakampink revolution is not really the revolution. It's a revolt against the dominant group of iPhone users, by just another group of iPhone users. A bourgeoisie revolution. And that does not change things, for as long as the same object fetishism exists, as long as the same ideals for luxury exists, as long as Capitalism's definition of what a self is exists—the true proletarian revolution will not happen. We simply replaced the rich with a new set of rich."
"Well, what should be done, then?"
"This may be corny, pero I'll say it anyway," she said, shyly, "what must be done is to follow what Christ said to the rich man: sell your possessions and give them to the poor."
"Yes," she remarked, in-between a laughter, "that is indeed corny."
"Yes," she agreed, and then explained: "pero i think it's the closest thing we have to achieve a truly equal, egalitarian paradise as this Christian advice encourages the complete abolition of self and private property by a complete and genuine charity to the entire community."
With a concerned look, the other then remarked, "And by that you mean, surrendering our iPhones, our Aquaflask tumblers, our eat-all-you-can buffets, our boba teas, our ideals of luxury, of vanity, of prestige— our spectacular self-images, right?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's too ideal." she said, scoffingly, "can you do that?"
"No, I can't," she admitted, with a secret despair, "maski ako, I can't give up those. I can't live without my iPhone, you know? Pero I guess, the important thing here is we have to be honest about that. Self-awareness is as important as social awareness. We have to see na not only are we inside Capitalism, but that Capitalism is also inside us. We are molded by the same greed, the same gluttony that shaped the fat, privileged capitalist we condemn." Then she adds: "kaya siguro i cringe at my past. i envisioned my naive activist-self as a holy hero in the pink crusade—that I was someone noble, fighting a just war. Pero, I can now see much clearer. I'm really just a noisy child with a silver spoon in her mouth, who knows nothing about poverty, and who happens to have read a thread on Twitter. A poser who could courageously scream 'eat the rich' but could not muster enough courage to 'feed the poor.' "
Emphatizing with the melancholia she just voiced out, the other replied, "That reminds me of a lyrics from a song: everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to die."
"Yeah, that's about it. That's so true," she said, realizing something. And then, she laughs it off, "grabe. we're on a different level of wokeness here."
"Kaya nga eh. Nagutom tuloy ako." the other assented, a change of mood then took place, "I'm craving for some Samgyup. May alam ka ba na nasa malapit lang?"
"Ay, meron. Walking distance lang from here," the other answered, "madalas kaming mag-date ng boyfriend ko do'n—tara, kain tayo."
They began to pack their things up, grabbing their shoulder bags, clutching their purses. As they walk out of the café, the bell chimes over the doorway signalled their departure. At this, the waiter then makes his move; he cleans up the mess they leave behind.
The two Kakampinks walking out of the café, will now head to that Samgyup resto, to eat and have their fill.

At Royal Rumble 2023, Asuka returned after a brief hiatus, sporting a deranged look reminiscent of her days as Kana. And since that point, the Empress of Tomorrow has solidified her powerful aura, winning the Elimination Chamber match and avenging her disappointing loss to Bianca at WrestleMania 39 by dethroning the EST at Night Of Champions. And while Asuka has been Raw Women’s Champion before, this time feels…different…
Monday Night Raw (5/29/23):
Following Night of Champions with the crowning of Asuka, it would appear the landscape of the women’s division has changed. While some individuals are surely eager to go after singles gold, this isn’t initially the case for the Way. In a backstage interview with Byron Saxton, Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell express their desire to go after the Women’s Tag Team Titles, only to be interrupted by the lunatic duo of Chelsea Green and Sonya Deville. Deville tries to get under the skin of the pairing, particularly LeRae, mocking her struggles to get victories as of late. However, Candice retorts that Sonya and Chelsea haven’t done anything either, their only actual success as a duo being making Adam Pearce question his own sanity. After a few more moments of bickering, Green tries to slap LeRae, but Hartwell blocks it for her, shoving Chelsea to the ground. Sonya shoves Indi back, and Candice in-turn attacks Deville, forcing several officials to have to separate things.
This results in a singles match later in the evening between Deville and LeRae, with Sonya trying to make an example out of the “Poison Pixie”. It’s a fairly back-and-forth encounter, with LeRae starting the match off hot, but Sonya is able to adapt, using her MMA background to her advantage with increasingly strong shots. However, as Sonya gains control, her emotions also start to fluctuate a bit. Rather than just go for the win at points, she decides to inflict further damage, regularly targeting the right arm in particular with a combination of stomps and armbars. However, the turning point of the match comes when Deville kneels down, once again looking to apply some type of submission hold…only for LeRae to transition it into the Garga-No Escape! While Sonya doesn’t submit, it gives her enough breathing room to mount a comeback, eventually hitting her signature springboard moonsault to finish things.
Candice LeRae def. Sonya Deville via pinfall
After the match, Candice and Indi take a moment to celebrate the win…BUT HERE COMES ASUKA! The Raw Women’s Champion is in the building, and she looks as maniacal as ever. She makes her way towards LeRae…and offers a handshake? Candice is definitely hesitant to accept, and for good reason, as when she starts moving her hand out…ASUKA HITS HER WITH A ROUNDHOUSE KICK! Indi tries to avenge her downed partner, but Asuka takes her out with a spinning backfist. The Empress moves back towards LeRae, staring at the injured right arm…AND SHE APPLIES A VICIOUS ARMBAR, SNAPPING IT IN THE PROCESS! Asuka eventually lets go, with Johnny Gargano and a medical official coming out to tend to LeRae while Adam Pearce wants to know what’s wrong with Asuka…to which she merely replies with a sinister smile…
Monday Night Raw (6/5/23):
About half-way through the show, Johnny Gargano comes to the ring, ready to give an update on his wife Candice LeRae. He says that while LeRae is unable to compete, it’s only for a short period of time, and the fracture to her arm was small enough as to where she won’t require surgery. However, Gargano also says that LeRae wanted him to pass along a message…which is why he’s calling out Asuka to the ring! On cue, the Empress comes out, looking at Johnny Wrestling with a curious look. Gargano says that once upon a time, he and his wife both had respect for Asuka’s accomplishments, especially her record-setting run in NXT. However, with the actions of last week, they no longer have those sentiments, and when LeRae returns from this set-back, she’s challenging you for that Raw Women’s Title! As Gargano says this, Asuka just begins giving a deranged laugh. No one in the arena knows what to make of this…until Asuka picks up a mic…to simply say…bye bye…
As Asuka makes her way to the ring apron, Gargano is left staring in confusion at what transpired…but suddenly, the lights go out! When they turn back on…a trio of masked men are destroying Johnny Wrestling! He tries to fight back, but he’s just overpowered, and left to be stomped on as Asuka just watches on from ringside, enjoying the carnage. The biggest of the three hits Gargano with a top rope splash, before what appears to be the leader hits…a wheelbarrow neckbreaker. As the individual hits this, Asuka comes back into the ring, standing alongside the figures. She whispers something to them, and they move their hand to the top of the masks, pulling them off to reveal…IT’S SAnitY! Eric Young, Alexander Wolfe, and Killian Dain are all back in WWE, and it appears they’ve aligned themselves with the Empress of Tomorrow. But the question left to be answered… Where is Nikki Cross in all of this?
Monday Night Raw (6/12/23):
In a backstage segment early in the show, the camera shows Nikki Cross backstage, alone and looking down, drowning in her own crazed thoughts…until Eric Young enters the shot. Cross raises her head, looking expressionless while a smile slowly creeps across the face of Young. He asks her…
“Won’t you join us?”
However, before Nikki can answer…HERE COMES JOHNNY GARGANO! He dives at Eric, looking to get revenge on one of the men who decimated him the week prior. He’s successful initially, but soon enough, Wolfe and Dain rush in, prying Johnny off Young and starting to beat him down. Luckily for Gargano, he came prepared, as he too has backup in the form of Dexter Lumis! SAnitY backs off as Dexter comes in with a steel chair, but not before Young mouths the words…This isn’t over…
Monday Night Raw (6/19/23): Johnny Gargano and Dexter Lumis vs. Eric Young and Killian Dain
With the tensions continuing to rise between the Way and SAnitY, it was inevitable they’d have to square off at some point, and Adam Pearce decides to see if a tag match can resolve this. The match starts off with Gargano and Young, Johnny Wrestling anxious to annihilate him while Young is more amused than scared. Johnny is able to get the upper hand initially, a superkick giving him the brief opportunity to then apply a Garga-No Escape. However, Killian Dain breaks up the hold by just hitting a Senton on Gargano’s back, a tactical maneuver to give Young the chance to gain control. However, Lumis enters the ring as well, grabbing Dain and trying to set him up for a side slam. However, Killian avoids it, and the pair move to the outside of the ring to brawl. By the end of the match, Gargano is weakened, but he’s still got the power of adrenaline on his side. He’s able to tag in for Lumis, getting in a flurry of offense against the big man Dain, including a pair of superkicks to knock him off his feet. However, as he goes for the One Final Beat, Young grabs his foot by the ring apron, preventing him from springboarding into the ring. Gargano’s able to kick him away, but when Johnny does go for the maneuver, Dain catches him, planting him in the center of the ring. He follows up on it with a splash from the top rope, with Young tagging in as he does so. And with Killian shoving Lumis off the apron, Young is able to hit the Wheelbarrow Neckbreaker to finish the match.
SAnitY def. Johnny Gargano and Dexter Lumis
After the match, Asuka makes her way to the ring, standing alongside SAnitY once again. She looks at the downed Gargano, now with a disgusted look on her face rather than an evil grin. She turns to Young, who nods and motions for Dain and Wolfe to pick Johnny up. But right before Asuka can seemingly hit him with the Mist…Here comes Nikki Cross! She rushes to the ring, sliding in and looking right at Asuka as she does so. Young walks up to her, asking her the question…
“Are you with us, Nikki?”
Cross stares at Young for a moment…then to Wolfe…then to Dain…then to Asuka. It’s to the Raw Women’s Champion that she gives the longest stare, Nikki’s eyes slowly growing wider and her expression becoming more intense. And with that, she mutters just a few words…
“You hurt my friends…she hurt my best friend… now she will pay.”
And with that, Cross dives onto Asuka, unleashing a flurry of strikes and catching everyone in the ring by surprise. However, Young pries Nikki off of the Empress, to which Cross responds by starting to attack him! However, it’s short lived, as Asuka runs up behind Nikki and drops her with a roundhouse kick. She quickly gets her locked in a crossface chickenwing as well, Nikki unable to escape and ultimately passing out. Before she fades, she’s left to only see the disappointed looks on the face of the SAnitY members…”You made the wrong choice Nikki”. But the attention soon shifts back to Gargano and Lumis now. They’ve slowly risen to their feet, and Gargano, looking directly at Young, demands another fight! Young sighs, seemingly bored at the prospect of SAnitY having to dismantle those two again…but it shall be done. However, before they can move in for the kill, we suddenly hear crashes echo throughout the arena. They happen for a few seconds, before the lights dim slightly. An unfamiliar melodic theme starts playing, sounding slightly reminiscent of that of a final boss, but as the lights turn back on, it changes back into the more recognizable song…
…NO ONE WILL SURVIVE! IT’S TOMMASO CIAMPA! After being on the shelf for months, he’s finally back, and as he gets into the ring, he looks at Johnny Gargano…there’s no shortage of history here. And while there’s a momentary tension as to what he’s gonna do, he sides with his former DIY partner, making it a more fair fight! Unfortunately, he doesn’t get the chance to lay into any of SAnitY, as they decide to make their exit, already having made a statement with the victory and assault on Asuka, nothing more needed to be done…tonight, at least.
Monday Night Raw (6/26/23): Indi Hartwell vs. Asuka - Non-Title Match
In her first match since beating Bianca at Night of Champions, Asuka looks to prove why she’s the champion. She starts off the match well, not letting Indi get any momentum by just rocking her with a series of kicks to the chest. After dragging Hartwell to the outside, Asuka begins going after the arm, slamming it several times into the ring post before deciding to inflict some pain to the skull with a tiger suplex. This momentarily causes the ref to check on her, potentially looking to end the match…but Asuka isn’t willing to let that happen. She gets Indi back in the ring, lining her up for a running hip attack…BUT HARTWELL TRANSITIONS IT INTO A GERMAN SUPLEX! Despite having just been on the ropes, Indi managed to use what she had left in the tank to take down Asuka, and as she gets to her feet, she feels the crowd surging behind her. She starts taking it to the Empress, getting her backed into the corner and landing a few solid chops. However, she gets a bit overzealous, trying to get Asuka on the top rope for a potential suplex attempt, only for the former Kana to kick her away and land a knee directly to the back of Indi’s neck. And with that, Asuka remains in the power position, eventually locking on the same Armbar that injured Candice LeRae and forcing Hartwell to tap or get snapped.
Asuka def. Indi Hartwell via submission
But before Asuka really has a chance to even get up…HERE COMES NIKKI CROSS! She runs out with a kendo stick, furious as to what transpired the week prior, and gets in a few shots on Asuka before Alexander Wolfe attempts to pry the weapon away. In response, Nikki shoves it into his gut, before hitting him with a swinging neckbreaker and sending a message to Asuka that she’s just as much of a force to be reckoned with. And it’s later announced that this match has been declared official for Money In the Bank: let’s see if these two dangerous competitors can live up to their classic from NXT…
Money In The Bank (7/1/23): Nikki Cross vs. Asuka (c) - Raw Women’s Championship
Despite not having a stipulation like their Last Woman Standing Match in 2017, the match is still intense from start-to-finish. Cross runs at Asuka immediately, getting in some shots with the elbow to the side of the face. Asuka is forced to a sitting position, allowing Nikki to gather some steam from running along the ropes before landing a kick to Asuka’s jaw! Unfortunately for Cross, her frenzied nature ends up backfiring, as when the action shifts to the outside, Asuka dodges a running attack and sends Nikki nearly head first into the barricade! With Nikki instinctively grabbing her head after the missed maneuver, Asuka sees what to target, dragging Cross to the ring apron and repeatedly crushing her skull into the ring post. And as the action shifts back into the ring, it’s just more of the same, Asuka being momentarily hit by mini-bursts of offense, but the damage inflicted on the skull clearly affecting her. This is evidenced when Cross has Asuka lined up for the swinging neckbreaker, potentially able to get her the win…only to collapse before she can properly hit it. With that, Asuka is able to apply the Asuka Lock, and as happened a couple of weeks ago, Cross passes out in the hold.
Asuka def. Nikki Cross via submission pass-out to retain the Raw Women’s Championship
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On the Raw after Money in the Bank, Candice LeRae would make her return from injury, calling out Asuka for a match…only to learn she isn’t in the building. But she decides to still issue a challenge, saying that while she wanted the Raw Women’s Title initially…now it’s about more than that. Asuka took out Candice’s friends and family, and left her away from the ring for too long…now, she wants to beat Asuka for vengeance first, gold later. And later on, it’s confirmed that the match will be taking place when Asuka returns…except it’ll be for the title as well! Pearce claims that the decision is due to Asuka’s recent actions, as after all, letting someone try to break someone’s limb after a match with no repercussions is a pretty bad look. But while this choice of action would normally upset some superstars…it might just put a smile on Asuka’s face…
Monday Night Raw (7/10/23): Candice LeRae vs. Asuka
Before making her entrance, Candice LeRae gets herself prepared with the rest of the Way, with Nikki Cross sitting in a corner nearby as well. Indi tells her to be cautious…Asuka’s a very dangerous competitor. LeRae of course knows this, but she’s caught off-guard by some words of wisdom from Nikki several feet away:
“Destroy her.”
Candice looks at Nikki, who’s staring back at her with something in her eyes…A look of needing something… wanting Candice to kill the Empress. LeRae nods, and she heads out to the ring, more confident than ever…And she truly gives it her all. LeRae’s strategy is simple: prevent Asuka from using her signature kicks. And for most of the match, she executes on her plan, moving herself back whenever she senses a roundhouse coming and catching Asuka off-balance. However, this was never going to last, and once Asuka lands a kick to the gut, she’s able to gather steam. And while this doesn’t finish LeRae, the “Poison Pixie” even managing to hit a springboard moonsault AND lock in a Garga-No Escape at various points, Asuka eventually locks in an Armbar on the previously-injured limb that Candice can’t overcome.
Asuka def. Candice LeRae via submission to retain the Raw Women’s Championship
After the match, the rest of the Way comes out, helping Candice to her feet. As they do so, Asuka stares at them, and then begins…counting them? The Way and the commentary team are confused, but as Asuka only counts four people…a maniacal expression overtakes her. She starts walking quickly to the back, and a few moments later, it becomes clear what her intentions were…
As the Way walks backstage, they’re horrified to discover a brutalized Nikki Cross! They rush over to her, asking who did this…and to no one’s surprise, she says it was Asuka. However, it soon becomes clear to Gargano…Ciampa might be next! While Indi and Candice stay with Nikki, Johnny (and Dexter to a lesser extent) start rushing through the halls, trying to get to the right locker room…but it’s too late, as SAnitY and Asuka are seen moving away from it! While Lumis stands guard, Gargano rushes inside, and finds Ciampa not just taken out…but also sprayed by Asuka’s mist! Johnny rushes over, giving Tommaso a towel, but as Tommaso wipes the mist off his face…there appears to be a dark look in his eyes, something not seen in him since when he destroyed DIY…
Remaining Build To SummerSlam:
While Ciampa, Gargano, and Lumis keep their attention towards SAnitY for a bit, Asuka shifts away from LeRae, Hartwell, and Cross, having beaten all three after all. With an open mic, she begins giving one of her standard energetic promos, seemingly wanting to know who her next challenger is gonna be…even though no one is ready for Asuka. It’s not long before someone interrupts though…and it’s someone who Asuka has grown familiar with in 2023…It’s Bianca Belair! The EST remained off television for several weeks following Night of Champions, but now, she’s back and angrier than ever. Bianca grabs the mic straight out of Asuka’s hand, and cuts a quick promo:
“Asuka… you say no one’s ready for you. But you’re wrong… because I’ve ALWAYS been ready for you. I proved that at WrestleMania 39, when I beat you clean in the center of this ring. And what did you do? You had to use that mist, that cursed, blinding mist. And you know what? Congratulations, it got you the title, but not for long. Because I say we have ONE MORE MATCH. But I think it’s time to have a match where no excuses can be made, and there are no rules to be broken. Asuka… At SummerSlam…I challenge you to HELL… IN A CELL!”
The crowd are clearly in favor of this stipulation…And it appears Asuka is too! She starts nodding repeatedly, and Bianca just stares on with a prepared look, perhaps fazed in the past by Asuka’s personality traits but now just ready to finally vanquish her and get the Raw Women’s Title back in her possession. In the remaining weeks, Bianca competes multiple times, getting the ring rust off with multiple victories, while Asuka is content with sitting at ringside for both contests…studying her competition…
SummerSlam (8/5/23): Bianca Belair vs. Asuka (c) - Hell in a Cell Match for the Raw Women’s Championship
We’ve finally made it to the Biggest Party of the Summer, and what better of a place to host it than in Detroit at Ford Field (definitely no bias as a Lions fan)! Once both Asuka and Belair are locked in the cage, the match starts at a feverish place, Bianca hitting a strong shoulder tackle only for Asuka to respond with a spinning backfist a few moments later! As the dust settles on the first fifteen seconds, the competitors look at each other, giving a momentary smirk and scoff apiece before continuing with the action. Bianca showcases her power, getting the Empress lifted in the Gorilla Press position and just hurling her at the cell wall! The several-foot fall to the floor certainly adds to the blow, and Bianca continues the assault outside the ring, slamming Asuka’s head repeatedly into the cage! However, she decides to look under the ring for a weapon, a table quickly catching her eye. She pushes it into the ring, but makes the mistake of turning her back to Asuka while doing so, the former Kana grabbing her from behind and hitting a Tiger Suplex onto the floor!
With Asuka now the lone woman standing, she follows up Bianca’s decision to look under the ring, pulling out a kendo stick. She feels it around in her grasp, getting a good feel for the damage she’s about to inflict. Once Bianca groggily gets to her feet, Asuka just decimates her back, hitting the stick ten times in immediate succession! However, Bianca’s able to dodge an eleventh shot targeted towards the throat, pulling the kendo stick to her and snapping it in half! Asuka looks briefly stunned, but not before she gives a condescending set of claps. In response, Belair grabs her, picking her up for a powerbomb and sending Asuka’s back to connect with the ring apron! Bianca then drags Asuka into the ring, proceeding to set up a table and initially primed to hit a K.O.D. through it. However, Asuka grabs Bianca’s hair, weakening her grip momentarily and presenting an opportunity to escape. Upon doing so, Asuka roundhouse kicks Belair, before getting her positioned on the table, climbing to the top rope…AND HITS A SPLASH ON BIANCA RIGHT THROUGH IT! 1-2-KICKOUT!
Despite the table spot being unable to put away Bianca, Asuka appears unfazed. She exits the ring, bringing a pair of steel steps back into the squared circle. Asuka picks Belair up, seemingly trying to hit a brainbuster on it…But Belair dodges, landing backwards on the steps before turning around and hitting a mini-elevated Spear! This leaves both women down for a few moments, but Bianca rises to her feet first. She gets in some of her signature offense, including a spinebuster on the steel steps! However, her attempt at a K.O.D. on the steps doesn’t work in her favor, with Asuka once again avoiding it. And unfortunately for Belair, Asuka is able to hit her with a suplex on the steps, this being the key factor for the rest of the match-up. With Bianca’s power lessened a bit AND Asuka’s submission hold targeting the back, she faces a tall task, and is ultimately unable to overcome it, the Asuka Lock resulting in a pass-out.
Asuka def. Bianca Belair via submission pass-out to retain the Raw Women’s Championship
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After an impressive victory at SummerSlam, Asuka has definitely proven that she’s going to be difficult to beat. But soon enough, she finds herself confronted by a potentially harmful numbers game…
Monday Night Raw (8/7/23): Damage CTRL Promo
Despite recent events not going so well for Damage CTRL, with Dakota Kai tearing her ACL and neither Iyo Sky nor Bayley able to capture the Money in the Bank briefcase, they’re still determined to get momentum back on their side. Bayley makes the bold decision to call out Asuka, saying that if she were actually a fighting champion, she’d consider accepting a match for the title. Asuka comes out, grinning at Bayley trying to goad her into a title opportunity. Asuka looks at Bayley as just another poor soul to be destroyed, but Iyo…Iyo has potential. Asuka even tells Sky…”Bayley isn’t your friend…but I am…”
This seems to get in Iyo’s head, as she begins looking questioningly at Bayley, who attempts to diffuse the situation by just pointing out Asuka being a freak who gets in people’s heads. In response, Asuka kicks Bayley square in the gut, and when Iyo instinctively goes to fight, Asuka shakes her head…I don’t want to fight you… You don’t need to be part of this…
Remaining Build To Extreme Rules:
Over the coming weeks, Bayley becomes a little more sympathetic, her intentions appearing less out of pure arrogance and more about striving to win championship gold back and improve her honor. She goes on a winning streak, but when confronting Adam Pearce about getting a confirmed title shot, he says there’s one more person she has to beat…Iyo Sky.
At this same time, Iyo looks perturbed whenever she’s on television, still at Bayley’s side but signs pointing to her being less convinced than when Damage CTRL began. And after Bayley does defeat Iyo to earn the #1 Contendership, Sky is just left sitting in the ring, staring down at the mat whilst utterly disappointed. Bayley offers her a handshake, but Asuka stands at ringside, motioning her to come roll out of the ring and stand tall with her. In response, Iyo moves in neither woman’s direction, rolling out to the entrance ramp and walking away alone, uncertain of what her future holds.
But with Extreme Rules approaching, there must also be a stipulation, and after a set of assaults from Asuka leave Bayley staring at the lights, Bayley decides it’s in both of their best interest to settle on…A Last Woman Standing Match! Asuka can try to keep putting her down, but she’s gotten back up each time, and come the PPV…The reign of the Empress will be history.
Extreme Rules: Bayley vs. Asuka (c) - Last Woman Standing Match for the Raw Women’s Championship
In a rematch of their TakeOver: Dallas encounter, the feel of the match is similar to what it was several years ago. Bayley, despite having been around in WWE longer, is the underdog, looking to prove herself against a terrorizing monster who we’re unsure can truly be beaten. The action quickly spills out of the ring, with Bayley even managing to hit a quick Bayley-To-Belly Suplex. Unfortunately, Asuka gets up before even a count of 5, disturbing Bayley. The action spills into the crowd for a while, with Asuka suplexing Bayley on the staircase and the former “Hugger” sent tumbling down for a solid five seconds. But eventually, Bayley recaptures the momentum, finding a trash can with weapons and using a kendo stick to start wailing on Asuka. And as the action approaches a set-up table, Bayley is able to not just prop her up on it, but successfully hit an Elbow Drop from a ledge through it as well! Bayley gets up at a count of three, and while Asuka is left stunned by the move, she recovers at a count of 8, continuing the match-up.
From there, the match spills back closer to the ring, with Bayley putting Asuka in the ring before grabbing a table. She sets it up, but Asuka manages to recover in time to avoid a Bayley-To-Belly through it, instead tossing Bayley to the side momentarily before going at her with a running hip attack. Asuka keeps control for a bit, but as she looks to put Bayley through the table…Here comes Iyo Sky! She slowly walks to the ring, not attacking Asuka initially, but giving Bayley enough time to send Asuka off the top rope and to the floor. However, with the action back on the outside, Asuka looks to be a bit desperate, using her signature Mist to blind Bayley! After this happens, Iyo rushes over to Bayley to try and help…But Bayley shoves her down hard to the floor, thinking it was Asuka! Meanwhile, the real Asuka appears behind Bayley, dragging her back into the ring. Asuka decides to lock on the crossface chickenwing, attempting to pass out Bayley, but this seems to only increase the fire in her spirit, Bayley able to back her into a corner to break the hold. Bayley rubs her eyes, improving her vision, and she drags Asuka to the table, seemingly able to hit the Bayley-To-Belly through the table this time…
…BUT IYO HITS BAYLEY IN THE BACK WITH A STEEL CHAIR FROM OUT OF NOWHERE! Bayley falls to her knees, slowly turning around with a look of heartbreak and pain on her face. Iyo returns the look with an icy cold stare, before Asuka pops-up behind Bayley, applying the Asuka Lock to pass the former “Role Model” out. But given this requires a ten count for Bayley to be down, and Asuka wanting to see what Iyo can do…she motions to the table. Iyo nods, getting Bayley set-up, climbing to the top rope, and hitting a Moonsault, crushing Bayley’s ribs, her friendship, and her hopes of winning the match in one fell swoop.
Asuka def. Bayley via KO to retain the Raw Women’s Championship
After the match, Sky raises Asuka’s hand, signifying the start of an absolutely lethal new duo in WWE…
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With Iyo Sky now having made her allegiance clear, Asuka would appear set-up to remain dominating moving forward. However, the enemies she’s made over the past several months aren’t so quick to forget what transpired, which could potentially create problems…
Build To Survivor Series:
Despite having already made an impact to this point, Asuka and Iyo Sky aren’t just going to put away challengers…it’s time to take out everyone. After a singles win on Raw, Becky Lynch would be blindsided by Iyo, being laid out with several shots of the Steel Chair before a Moonsault to cap things off. The following week, Bayley expresses her dismay at being left alone, to which Asuka and Iyo interrupt, immediately kickstarting a brawl that would seem to favor them once again…Until out comes Becky Lynch! Despite having been bitter rivals earlier in the year, Becky makes the save for Bayley, the pair nodding at each other afterwards to signify a slight respect…We don’t have to like each other… but there’s a bigger threat to be stopped…
But soon enough, this action spills past just being a two-on-two situation. Zoey Stark, the former tag team partner of Iyo Sky in NXT, decides that Becky didn’t suffer enough during their rivalry after helping Trish at Night of Champions, and that it’s worth it for these veterans like her and Bayley to be ousted. Along with that, Asuka’s power and general craziness draws the interest of the Unholy Union known as Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn, the pair pledging loyalty to The Empress and perfectly willing to destroy Becky and Bayley. However, there are several other competitors backstage sick of seeing Asuka gaining an army, with Bianca Belair and the Way coming to the save to help even the odds. And of course, after a brawl featuring all of these competitors, William Regal comes out briefly to make his patented announcement:
“WAR GAMES!”
To determine which team gets the advantage leading into Survivor Series, we get ourselves a strong match in Iyo Sky vs. Becky Lynch, really the catalyst of what’s led into a two-on-one situation into an upcoming 5v5 match inside a destructive steel structure. Becky more than holds their own, but Iyo Sky shines even brighter, a cheap shot by Stark eventually allowing Iyo to hit the Moonsault and give the “heels” the advantage.
Survivor Series: Bianca Belair, Bayley, Becky Lynch, Nikki Cross, and Candice LeRae vs. Asuka, Iyo Sky, Zoey Stark, Alba Fyre, and Isla Dawn - War Games Match
Kicking off the match is Zoey Stark and Becky Lynch, with Becky initially successful in getting Zoey downed, but Isla Dawn coming in presents a problem. She’s initially able to hold her off, but a chop block by Zoey Stark and a subsequent attack of the leg leaves Becky in a rough spot. She’s able to get some assistance, with Nikki Cross coming in with a trash can lid and just whacking Zoey and Isla around with ease. However, Alba Fyre is next to come out, and upon seeing Cross staring her down from inside the cage, she grabs a kendo stick, ready to defend herself. While Nikki initially gets the advantage, Stark and Dawn are able to pull Nikki back, sending her into the steel cage repeatedly. Bianca coming in next is a game changer however, the EST taking control of the match-up and getting a slight breather while awaiting the fourth competitor…which is Asuka!
But as the rest of the field comes in, with Asuka being the last entrant for her team and Bayley for the opposite side, the action starts to get more and more intense. With all of the competitors brawling in one ring, Iyo sees the chance to hit a Moonsault from the top of the cage, wiping out everybody (including herself)! However, a table being brought into the mix benefits the bayfaces, Bayley hitting Fyre with a Bayley-To-Belly through it (she finally got to hit it… just not on Asuka). However, the ending sequence comes down to Asuka and Iyo on their feet against Bayley and Becky, back where it essentially first started…AND IT ENDS WITH IO HITTING A MOONSAULT ON BAYLEY! 1-2-3!
Team Asuka def. Team Becky via pinfall
Just like that, Iyo Sky has once again proved her worth, defeating her former stablemate to win the match for her team and cementing herself as a force to be moving forward. And though a fairly small shot, we can see Asuka glance over at Iyo, a slight frown on her face for a moment before moving back to stand with the rest of her team. What could that mean…
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Build To Royal Rumble:
Despite the result of the War Games Match, Becky Lynch isn’t through with either Asuka nor Iyo by a long shot. She fights off both of them over the coming weeks, along with picking up several singles victory, establishing herself as the next #1 Contender. And as Lynch points out, she and Asuka have history at Royal Rumble. Asuka beat her in singles action in 2019…before Lynch went on to win the Royal Rumble and headline Mania. But this isn’t about the Rumble match now…it’s time to put away the Empress.
As for Iyo, she also has a run of singles success, carrying a lot of momentum heading into the Royal Rumble Match. And soon, we learn that she requested training from one of the most respected female competitors in the locker room, a former NXT UK Champion…Meiko Satomura! While Satomura doesn’t intend to compete right away, she’s more than willing to help Iyo, with vignettes being shown of them together and Satomura even being at ringside for her matches. However, as this keeps happening, Asuka’s looks towards Iyo become more and more strained. Sky is abandoning me… after all I did for her… something’s going to change soon enough…
Royal Rumble: Becky Lynch vs. Asuka (c) - Raw Women’s Championship
Earlier in the night, Iyo Sky does indeed win the Royal Rumble match, punching her ticket to WrestleMania. This doesn’t seem to affect Asuka’s thoughts however, the Empress looking as ruthless and as calculated as ever en route to using an Armbar to submit Becky after a pretty back-and-forth encounter. And while Asuka proved herself the master of the Armbar between the pairing, Iyo Sky coming out with Meiko Satomura to acknowledge the title win seems to aggravate something in Asuka. Her grin has become a definite frown, and she stares an icy dagger through the pairing. Something isn’t right here…
Asuka def. Becky Lynch via submission to retain the Raw Women’s Title
Build To WrestleMania:
In a conversation between Meiko Satomura and Iyo Sky on an episode of Raw, Satomura asks if Sky would be willing to use her Rumble Victory position to challenge Asuka. Sky doesn’t look too convinced about doing that, which Satomura says is fine, but it’s advisable to weigh all her options. However, in the background, Asuka can be seen, carefully listening to the conversation.
A week later, Satomura addresses the WWE Universe. She’s made the announcement that she wants to have one last run before she retires, and wants to face some of the best names this women’s division has to offer…which is why she’s challenging Asuka for Elimination Chamber! Asuka comes out, her face paint being more red than usual…but while it looks like she’s having to contain herself, she shakes Satomura’s hand, seemingly paying respect to a legend.
Elimination Chamber: Meiko Satomura vs. Asuka (c) - Raw Women’s Championship
Unfortunately for Satomura, this retirement run of sorts looked to hit the ground before it could even get going. While she catches the Empress off guard at the beginning of the encounter, as time moves on, Asuka appears to be getting more and more angry. This comes to a boiling point when after one Tiger Suplex, Asuka hits another…then another…then another…then another! The ref pleads for Asuka to quit the assault, which she does…only to pull a Bryan Danielson and just start repeatedly kicking Satomura in the face! This goes on for disturbingly long, and when it’s become clear that Satomura is passed out, the ref calls for the bell, him having made the discretion for the match to end.
Asuka def. Meiko Satomura via ref stoppage
After the match, Iyo Sky rushes to the ring, checking on the woman who’s helped her out tremendously over the past couple of months. Asuka looks down at Iyo, a look of disgust on her face, before demanding to know who Sky is facing at WrestleMania. And it better be a specific answer…
Iyo Sky: “I… CHALLENGE… YOU!”
The crowd roar in approval, Asuka somehow shocked initially…until a smile comes across her face. I’m not surprised you made that choice…but unfortunately, it’s the wrong one...it’s a shame this has to happen Iyo…so much potential…
WrestleMania 40: Iyo Sky vs. Asuka (c) - Raw Women’s Championship
Despite that inner monologue running through Asuka’s head at Elimination Chamber, Sky proves why she’s not to be taken lightly. On the Grandest Stage of them All, Iyo just looks…better. Having been around Asuka for several months, she knows the mechanics of her offense, doing a good job at avoiding those signature kicks while also having the speed advantage. And at the end of the match, Sky proves herself superior over The Empress of Tomorrow, hitting the second Moonsault of the match to pin Asuka, and end a spectacular title run while opening a new chapter for another one.
Iyo Sky def. Asuka via pinfall to win the Raw Women’s Championship

I've managed to get myself tangled up in what I think is a scam? It looks and smells like a scam, quacks like a scam, so it's probably a scam? I'm hoping an internet bro can help me think of a way out of this. This will be a bit long, but I want to provide enough detail to help weed out the BS or real factor.
Lots of mistakes made I think, but I was cold texted to a wrong number. (I know. /facepalm) Started chatting with "Jennifer" (could be catfished here, not clear) and it came up that they had a crypto business. Naturally, being interested in crypto I asked about the kind of business and she said she does short-term buying/selling contracts (like 30 second real time market up / down trades). I mentioned I had some Eth that I had bought awhile back as a long term investment to sit on and it's done nothing but lose value. She insisted short term trading is the only way to go and I will just continue to lose value sitting on ETH while the bottom falls out. I wasn't really interested, as I'm not skilled enough to day trade, but more time went on chatting over many days / weeks-- not just crytpo, just general life stuff and she keeps coming back to this. Sends me screenshots of her trades and profit, etc. If she's scamming me, she's playing a long game.
Finally Jennifer convinces me to try out the short term trades even for a very small amount of seed money to see that this is real. I ask more about it and it's on a platform called GMO (https://app.gmovip.com) so I decide to try it out for a small buyin and check it out. I transfer a very small deposit from Coinbase over to GMO. The site seems sketchy AF, google turns up nothing on GMO, not on app store, it doesn't seem reputable, etc. so I'm VERY VERY skeptical going into this. A couple times a week she would tell me exactly when to trade and when to stop, and adhere to a strict 10% of principle trade. (E.g. have $100 principle only trade for $10 per trade). It seem(ed) legit with a scientific system built around limiting risk. So we proceed to trade and I estimate it's about a 95-98% success ratio with a 40% return. (Trade for $100, profit $40). We typically would do 4-ish trades per "trade node" then stop (her wording for the couple times a week market if favorable). I do a test withdrawl back to Coinbase of $5.00 just to confirm that I can in fact withdraw from GMO to Coinbase (and cash out from there). It worked, the $5.00 showed up to my Coinbase account.
We both do nothing but win time and time again week after week, always 4 trades in a very brief window. One single trade loss out of maybe 30 individual trades. At this point I have become a believer and decide to go ahead and move my ETH (about $18k worth) so I can start making larger trades and up my profits. Gravy train keeps rolling and I start making some decent returns, making more in 20 minutes than I'm making in a week at work.
So Jennifer keeps encouraging me to add more principle balance so I can continue to make more profits. (Potential red flag, but she's right that more principle is more profit and I need to put idle resources to work) So now I'm thinking I need to get more money into this so I can increase my trades. I had $18k sitting in a bank account doing nothing, but it was all the extra cash I had. I decide to go ahead and add this to my GMO account by way of Coinbase (bank account already tied to CB, so just ACH'd the funds to there, then transferred to GMO wallet after clearing). Funds show up on GMO and we keep trading.
With the funds I have put in, + the profits I have made compounding, I'm now making more money in 20 minutes than I'm making in a MONTH of day job. (what could possibly go wrong?) Jennifer continues to keep pressing me to add more funds even though I was comfortable with the amount I was making. She suggests taking out 401k money, getting an online loan, borrowing from friends, etc. anything it takes to increase principle. This starts to throw a red flag for me and I decide I want to cash out my $36k I have invested and then I don't care what happens after that because I'm on "house money". And of course, NOW THE PROBLEMS START.
I try to transfer $15k back to Coinbase and the transaction never shows up on Coinbase wallet but the money is gone from my GMO account. I keep waiting and waiting thinking it just takes a few days, Jennifer assures me to just be patient it can take a few days and it's nothing to worry about. Finally I decide something is wrong and I contact GMO support from their app. They immediately ask to chat with them on Telegram (which seems weird and maybe another red flag?) so I do. Jennifer tells me this is normal and that she had to do the same thing on a previous account and that if I just do what customer service is asking they will unfreeze my assets. She is encouraging me to go find the $20k somehow (like it's just under the couch money or something) and send it to open up my funds.
They inform me that my account has been flagged as high-risk for illegal activity by the "Wind Control System" and that my $15k withdrawal transaction is on hold pending account verification. The verification consists of a self photo holding ID (this seems real, have had to do this on other platforms), 3 months bank account statements (red flag?) AND A $20,000 FUND VERIFICATION?! (SAY WHAT?!) I tell them I've already transferred $36k from another wallet to GMO, so that should cover that $20k requirement, but they say that "the funds you transferred are only used for your transactions and have nothing to do with verifying your account" (direct quote). I sent them the photo ID and bank statements, and they acknowledge 2 of 3 steps are complete, but that I must send $20k more to fully verify the account and then they will unlock my funds. So to recap, I put all my extra money $36k into this, made successful trades that put me at nearly $100k (I don't' even care about the profit, if I could just get the money I put in back out) and they are saying that I must put another $20k into GMO for them to verify my identity/account and allow me access to my funds. I literally have NO MONEY left to give, it's all there, and they won't let me cash it out. They are even holding the money I moved over from Coinbase, not just the profits I made trading on the platform. $20k might as well be $1million, it's a distant sum of money I have no way to get.
I now believe I'm being scammed and I'm probably just F'd. Even if I had $20k, which I don't, it seems foolish to give GMO even more of my money. Of course throughout this I'm giving Jennifer the "WTF?!" and she just keeps telling me to do what they say and I'll get the money (maybe she's in on it, I don't know). Finally I ask Jennifer if she is willing to help me with the $20k and I will immediately send her the money back as soon as it's unlocked WITH INTEREST (It's $20k to unlock $100k afterall). Jennifer says she doesn't have that much liquidity, but that she could manage to give me $5k to help if I could come up with the other $15k (I still can't, no money left as stated above). The fact that Jennifer offered to give me $5k of her money gives me a tiny bit of hope that maybe this isn't a scam afterall, but for all I know Jennifer could be a GMO clown punking me.
So there it is, hopefully someone made it through that story and has some thoughts or experience to help me determine if this is a scam or not. I honestly don't have $20k anyway, but could slowly work towards getting it if it really meant being able to get my money back out. Jennifer tells me I could immediately cash everything out the moment my account was verified. They GMO seem interested in knowing how long it will take me to get the $20k and pressing urgency on it, which also seems scammy.
Does anyone out there have any ideas of what I can do here?
Should I just accept that I have been scammed of all my savings? Classic case of "that only happens to other people". Oof.

Peacock is a psychological thriller from 2010 with Cillian Murphy, Elliot Page and Susan Sarandon.
Murphy plays both John Skillpa and his “wife” Emma Skillpa, who is actually a split personality from his. Emma arises after the death of his extremely abusive mother and Emma cooks for John and takes care of the house and no one in town has ever seen or heard of her.
There are several scenes in the film that show how John/Emma live. Where Emma does the cooking and leaves notes for John and John goes to his bank job and the grocery store, etc.
I swear there was a scene that showed what John did on Saturdays/weekends and specifically there was a shot of John sitting on the floor of his living room in red plaid pajamas and reading the newspaper comics like a kid.
But I watched the film again in the Roku app and that scene was missing. I dug out my dvd of the movie and it’s not there either. It’s not in the “making of” or a part of the deleted scenes.
I feel like I’m going crazy. Does anyone remember this scene?

~Escape The Night~ PvE w/PvP ZonesWIPED3PPHelisAI-BossesRaidingBBP100kNoobsKeycardsAirdropBunkersParty-SystemTraderBlackmarketBankingDrugsBedRespawnSpawnSelectVehicles+Guns+Loot+
IP: 51.81.221.168:7915
Join Our Discord https://discord.gg/2EQPEZ8
Server Restart Intervals Are At 5:40AM PST - 11:40AM PST - 5:40PM PST 11:40PM PST
BASE BUILDING: AT THE MOMENT TRADERS DO NOT SELL NAILS/FOOD/ARMOR, for a more survival feel we made base building a little more grindy than other servers for a better experience (MOD: BASE BUILDING PLUS), THERE IS NO BUIDLING NEAR PVP ZONES, HIDEOUTS, OR TRADERS (500m from Hideouts/Traders, 300m from PVP zones). Get your grind on and have fun with more of an immersive pvp building system. We have BasicTerritories/PVEZE Flag Zones. You need a flagpole to make a base & you need a flag fully raised on your pole to enable PvP. Since we use PVEZ the flags help in case you need to defend against a raid. The flag also helps keep all your items secure from poofing away. Sadly bases can be raided even with your flag pole lowered. So it’s recommended that you keep your flag pole raised.
ALL BASES HAVE A LIMITED AMOUNT OF VEHICLES THEY CAN POSSESS! Each base can have a max of 3 Land Vehicles & 2 Helicopters (This Is To Help Prevent Lag)
PVP ZONES/PVE: All PVP Zones contain either a military spot on the map, or Custom Keycard areas, Custom Key Cards spawn randomly around the map or in airdrops/military bases/bunkers.THERE IS ABSOULETLY NO KILLING OUTSIDE PVP ZONES, what ever damage you afflict on another Survior, that damage will come back to you, this a noob/pve setting of a server so show some respect.
KEYCARDS: There many different keycards you can get but they all are different. Some have different loot, some have mixed loot. Rare keycard rooms give 10x better loot than normal military/bm loot. There Is 2 Red/Black/Violet/Green Rooms. 1 Yellow/Blue/Med Lab/White Rooms.
Right Now The Keycards Ranging From Best To Worst Are Red, Black, Yellow, White, Violet, Green, Blue, Med Laboratory. There will probably be more in the future. Red Keycard Loaded but is suuuper rare.
(NOTE: Right now please don't fly into keycard areas. We recently added helis again and some areas are possible to fly into (AI will probably shoot them down but still we want keycards to be used to access keycard areas. ALSO When you open a keycard room it will stay open until server restart because the loot crates wont reset until after restart)
THE BUNKER: Right now there is currently 1 bunker on the server. You need a White Keycard to enter it & when you enter it turns to total darkness. You'll need a light or nvgs too see anything after entering. This place is worth checking out but be careful of possible chances of Zombies/AI. The bunker is really nice for finding blackmarket items and chances decent/guns/armoammo.
TRAVEL TRADER: We recently added a trader that can change locations and also change what they Buy/Sell! The Travel Trader Can Spawn At Any Keycard Locations (Based On When I Move Them) & Trades Rare Items Other Traders Might Not Sell Or Might Buy/Sell At A Discount!
TRADERS: Traders are all around the map and they only sell certain items there. Very high powered weapons cannot be bought a civ traders, they will most likely be purchasable at Blackmarket or not purchasable at all, you will need to scavenge your way around the map if you want to be the best, there are no handouts. Normal Civ Traders will have the essentials there to survive.
AI/BOSSES: AI spawn at all keycards/hideouts except Blue/Green Keycards. They have a chance to spawn anywhere else. There are 3 Bosses on the server. Killa, Zryachiy, the Goons. Killa spawns at Red/Black/Yellow Keycards. Zryachiy spawns at Prison Island. The Goons can spawn at Red/Black/White/Med Lab. The Goons are the rarest Bosses to run into right now while Killa and Zryachiy are about the same. Killa and Zryachiy can have guards.

Part 24: https://www.reddit.com/Viidith22/comments/13taoss/my_roommate_is_slenderman_part_24_revised/
(Terry)
It had been a day or so and I hadn’t gotten a response from Megami. There are spurts where we don’t talk, she tends to be pretty accident-prone with electronics. Sometimes the frequency she’s singing goes haywire and fries it. But it had been a good five months or so since we last spoke. Taking a shot in the dark, I called Rachel.
“What is it, Terry?” She grunted, “I’m a little busy.”
“I need to talk to Megami, but she’s been MIA since the whole ‘Maerod’ situation.” My mind shot back to what Jones had told me, to watch out for “her,” momentarily questioning whether or not Dexter’s team had been dumb enough to keep her alive.
There was a pause, the line was silent. Then, a sigh, “Actually, I’ve had the same problem. I figured she just broke another phone, or was pissed at me for… Well, I’ll keep an ear out and let you know if I hear anything. What do you need her for?” She grunted again.
“Small mission.”
“Joseph?”
“Yeah.”
The line went silent again, then an exasperated sigh, “Good luck, be sure to bring The Doctor with you. You know how you can get.”
A flush of anger pulsed through me, but I took a deep breath, “Sure.”
She shrieked, “Oh shit!” The call ended.
I thought over the list of everyone, wondering what I was gonna do. I had actually intended to have Doc and Megami be the last two after Smudge, no one else would really work. Chad wasn’t right for the type of incognito mission we were doing, Abraham wasn’t available, Rachel and Sepratine just didn’t quite mesh with what we were doing, Megami was supposed to be the last one to fill out the party. I mulled it over, but I still owed David, the huuldefolk, a favor from the Maerod raid. I would’ve called Jacob, but he was in another country doing who knows what.
My phone rang as I stood, leaning against the couch, “Jones, something wrong?”
He chuckled, “Not in the least. You got your group together?”
“We’re one short.”
“No problem, bring everyone by tonight, we need to prepare on our end, and Dexter sent us a bit of backup.” He hung up.
I called up Doc and Smudge, telling them to be at my place and ready by the time dusk rolled around. Heading to the bathroom I downed my meds, trying to shake off a weird feeling that slowly crept up on me. As if something was going to happen when we got there. It was more than just a bad feeling, but a conviction, I knew something would happen, and it made me uncomfortable. One of the pills I took was supposed to ease it, but when it got that bad, it meant my brain had already determined some kind of outcome. It’s not a superpower or anything, more like enhanced intuition. It only happens when my brain has the information to go off of. But there’s a disconnect between my conscious and subconscious, so whenever something like that happens, I just have to wait for it to come to fruition.
-----------------------------------------
Stepping into the office, I looked around, “Where’s the new guy?”
Xavier looked up, baffled at the sight. Then Jones stood, walking over to greet us, the bags under his eyes less defined, “He’s in the back getting himself something to eat. Smudge, nice to see you again, you haven’t aged a day.” Smudge chuckled at that, “You must be The famous Doctor, I want to thank you for coming. I’m sure you’re a busy man.” He outstretched his hand, but Doc just gestured between Jones and me.
“You see, that’s how you should greet me. You really ought to get a notepad out, you might learn a thing or two about how to respect your elders.”
“If I remember correctly, I’m about 2,000 years your senior. When did you start your… questionable medical practices again? 16th, 17th century?”
Doc ignored me, angrily shaking Jones’s hand, “Nice to meet you, lad! Glad to hear somebody thinks highly of me, even if it is a meager thinskin.”
“Me and my dislocated fingers thank you for that.” As he brought his hand back, Jones uncomfortably pushed his fingers back into their sockets one by one. “So, who were you planning on bringing? You said there was going to be another?”
“Right, had my sights set on a Siren, she’s pretty skilled and can be silent when the occasion arises. But I couldn’t get ahold of her.” I paused, “Actually, you’ve got your ear to the ground, you heard anything about someone named Megami? It’s been a few months since we talked, I’m kinda worried.”
Jones was a mannequin, despite trying to seem calm, his eyes flicked to Xavier before shooting back to us. He leaned against his desk, reaching for his coffee mug several times, not looking away from us, before finally grabbing it, and raising it to his mouth.
I stared hard at Xavier, a few moments later, he cracked, “Look it was a life or death sit–”
My legs tightened, I could feel the meds pushing to the side as I grew, stepping over to him in two long strides. He threw out his hearing aid, grasping his one intact ear as he held himself up with his free hand on the desk, “You killed Megami! Tell me why I shouldn’t give you the same treatment!” Something grasped my waist, then each of my legs. They were trying to push me back. When I released a tentacle to shoot Xavier through the head, I felt a prick stab into it. I fell limp, shrinking back down instantaneously.
Much calmer, I looked at my surroundings, Doc stood over me, making sure I was fine, Smudge looked between Xavier and me, wondering how he should react. Then I saw Xavier, Jones standing beside him, and on the other side of the desk, just across from us, stood the blonde buzzcut, and scarred musculature, of a Texan soldier. “Fucking Tucker.” I chuckled with disdain, “Of course.”
“Wish I had my H.O.P.S. but unfortunately it was destroyed along with the U.S.P.M. You’re one terrifying son of a bitch when I’m not in a full suit of armor, I’ll tell you what.” Looking close, I noticed he was wearing one of the older exosuits they used to wear. It was clean, but there were scuffs in the black paint job here and there.
“The U.S.P.M is just a bad fucking omen at this point.”
“Hey, we didn’t kill Jeff, and we didn’t kill Megami. So why don’tcha chill the fuck out.” Tucker crossed his arms, staring at me.
Smudge let out a jittery sigh, “You know, Jane’s death wasn’t necessarily the fault of Jeff.”
I looked at him, “Are you really going to side with the thinskins on this one?”
“Terry, behave yourself. We’re only here for Joseph’s sake. After we’re done you can go wipe out the US government. But we’re here for a reason. Doctor back me up here.”
“I’m neutral in this, I don’t care much for anyone.”
“And yet you’re here to help save Joseph.”
He sighed, “Joseph is okay I suppose. But I’m here because Terry gave me a deal on a pixie a month or so back.”
Smudge and Doc continued their back and forth as I stared at Xavier, he stood upright again, fixing the aid back into his ear, “I don’t blame you, Terry, I’d kill me too. I even did. But at least wait till this is over, yeah? I wanna slip in one last good deed if I can.” He blinked tears back as he put on a ski mask.
“When we’re done, I’ll thank you, but you better hope we never cross paths again.”
“I could say the same to you… I could.”
The air was still for a minute or so, even Doc and Smudge had stopped their bickering. “Well then.” Tucker smacked his hands together, making a metal clink, “Y’all ready to kick some shit in?”
“How long is the drive? I’ll need at least an hour to recover.”
Jones answered, “Hour and a half to two, you’ll be fine. We’ve got guns in the van, all suppressed. I had a mutual acquaintance of ours send us a care package yesterday. Regardless, I say we should all keep our blood inside our bodies.”
Tucker joined in, “Speaking of, I managed to scrounge the materials to make up some of those SIOM rounds. I left them in the van, along with the last resort.” He winked at me.
Jones nodded, “We should be good to go then, you guys oughtta join us in the van, less conspicuous.”
I nodded, “Yeah, that’d make the most sense. I’ll be taking the lead when we get there though. Which reminds me, you never sent me the schematics.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll send them over. Are you gonna have enough time to put a plan together?”
“Yeah, I already know how we’ll follow into the building. I was thinking Tucker at first, but without his suit, he’s basically just a liability.”
He rolled his eyes, “Yeah, we’ll see about that one.”
-----------------------------
As the van slowed, Tucker pulled on his combat gloves. He was decked out in full gear that I hadn’t really noticed till we got in the van. A flexible vest that was essentially a skin-tight long-sleeve shirt, meeting his wrists. His pants were tight and were made of the same fabric as his shirt.
We came to a complete stop as he slung his rifle around, clicking off the safety on his Bizon. Doc clapped his book shut, and Smudge stood.
“Alright, everyone up, we need to get to the gun cases.” Jones had come back through a door-sized hole connecting the back of the van to the front. He’d already pulled his mask over his face, the only color that came from him was his remaining eye and parts of his lips, only revealed by small, cut strips in the fabric.
We stood, sidestepping so he could get to the guns behind the seats. One by one we filed out the back.
Xavier hopped out the back, followed by Jones who stared at Tucker for a moment, “Did you uh… Did you put a new scope on this?” He raised his PS90 which held an ACOG and a suppressor.
“Oh yeah, it’s kinda like a thermal scope. But instead of heat it picks up… well I don’t actually know. But you should be able to see anything invisible or not.” Xavier inspected his own gun, “Sorry guy, I only had enough for Jones and me. You should be fine, but just cause you don’t got a fancy scope don’t mean you can go missing your shots. Them rounds’re expensive as hell.”
“Well, let’s get going, I’ve got the map down, I know how to get there. Second floor of their basement has the data. Unfortunately, we have no idea what security looks like, so we have to be cautious if we intend to stay hidden.”
Tucker spoke, “Just to be clear, you’re upfront, Jones is behind you, then the Doctor, then Xavier with me covering our asses.”
“Smudge is behind Doc, and while I’d like to have Xavier in the back–”
Xavier rolled his eyes, “Well I’d like to have you in back.”
Tucker sighed, “Anyhow, guess it works. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll have a huuldefolk I can put some rounds through. Release some of this tension.” He shot his gaze between Xavier and me.
“Well let’s head out. Smudge, you’ll be able to keep the cameras down right?”
“Based on what you said about their layout I should be able to, but I won’t be able to keep us hidden from the perception of the guards once we’re inside. There are far too many electronics I need to keep down so if we run into anyone inside the building, we need to kill them and hide their bodies to avoid being caught. I can’t keep the entire building down, so I can’t stop them from setting off an alarm if we miss anyone.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” Tucker lifted his gun.
“Let’s hope those sights are as powerful as you say.”
Before long, we were on our way. We’d parked some distance out so as to not draw any attention. Taking the lead, the only noise I could hear was the occasional snapping of twigs as we walked through a forested area. Despite having come in contact with the exoskeleton previously, it still surprised me how stealthy Tucker could be wearing it.
Breaching the treeline, I held up my hand. Surrounded by a gravel driveway stood a three-story tall modern office-style building. Men patrolled around the lot, all wearing tactical gear. Focusing on the shadows, I could tell there were hidden guards as well, those ones were wearing light, flexible clothing and minimal if any weapons.
“Smudge,” I whispered, waving him up with two fingers.
“Yes.” As he looked out, he seemed to understand, “This will be a tough one if they aren’t all humans. Seems like there are about 30 guards that may see us. If even one of them is around a five, I won’t be able to blind all of them from our presence. If Rachel were here we’d be able to determine such a thing, unfortunately, we don’t have her spiritual sense.”
“I might be able to help with that,” Tucker whispered from behind us.
“What kind of bullshit caused you to break formation without my asking.”
“As I said, these scopes can sense alternative forms of energy. I have a few frames of reference, I know what civies look like through this thing. Smudge, if you can point out all the hidden ones, I’ll be able to tell you what we’re dealing with.”
Smudge looked at me, then shrugged, “Alright, if you’re certain.”
---------------------------
“We’re good to go then? That was the last one?”
“So it would seem, that scope of yours ought to be reliable.”
“If we don’t get by, you have my full permission to do whatever you want to Xavier.”
Jones butted in, “I believe that’s up for me to decide. I still need him around.”
Smudge whispered at a frequency that’d set dogs off, “Enough bickering, you’re worse than when I have to babysit Chad and Rachel. Everyone get in formation, it’s easiest on me if we go in single file.” Getting back into position, he spoke up, “Sorry Terry, I know you’re leading, but, well you get it.”
I nodded back to him, “Everyone ready? No piss breaks past this point. If you have cold feet, just head back to the van.” I looked back to Xavier, to which he flipped me off, signaling me to start.
I wasn’t worried about the situation until we got about ten feet from the door. One of the two guards standing beside it looked over at us. I signaled everyone to stop, and the guy continued to stare. A few moments later, he shrugged, facing forward again, and we continued on through the door.
There was no one in the immediate vicinity, though there were several cameras pointed toward us, blinking.
Smudge said one word as he took a deep breath, “Break.”
Nodding, I signaled for the three of us up front to take the right wall, and the other three to take the left.
------------------------------
Once Smudge caught his breath, he stood back up, and we all got back into formation, right as a guard turned the corner. I shot a tentacle out, grabbing him by the throat and snapping his neck, all while bringing him closer so we could hide the body.
That was when an alarm went off, “FUCK! Keep the humans hidden, Doc and I can handle ourselves.” My brain froze time, trying to figure out what happened. Eventually, it clicked, heart monitors, a precaution not even Maerod took.
“Leave me out of it Smudge, I can handle myself too. You need all the focus you can get.” Tucker stepped up, aiming down sights.
The door bashed open before I could get my tentacles out. Turning, Tucker already faced the door, dropping people in one to two rounds a piece.
Turning back toward the dead body, I headed on, alarms blaring overhead. Bodies came and went. Despite how badly we’d apparently messed up the plan, I knew where the database was, and I refused to let anyone stand between me and it.
Each step I took was further than the last, “KEEP YOURSELVES SAFE, I’M GOING FURTHER IN!”
“Not without me you’re not!” Metal clattering rang out, “IMBECILE!” Doc caught up to me as I flung several bodies out of the way.
“Watch where you’re throwin’ em!” Tucker yelled out, “We shouldn’t split up!”
I was already at the staircase making my way down when something smacked across my face. Turning to my right, I saw a lanky man with his hands in his pockets. He was slouched as if bored.
“FINE, GO DOWN, I’LL MEET YOU THERE!” Swinging a tentacle at him, he made a popping motion with his mouth, the limb slammed into a wall. Shooting them all at him, he blew air out in a circle, then at me directly, lunging at me as he threw me off balance. He kicked me in the chin, then down on my head, knocking me to a knee. A second later I was thrown into the air, then to the ground.
“Damn man, you look like you could use a hand.” The strange man stood over me, offering me his right.
I took it, spinning him around, snapping his arm, and flinging him against the wall, where lay motionless. I stabbed him in the head, then the heart just to be safe. Scoffing at his arrogance, I headed down the stairway.
When I got down to the second basement floor, there were already several dead bodies strewn about. Everyone was hiding behind metal tables. Tucker injected Doc with something, sitting beside them was a heaving Smudge.
I put my tentacles away, and a sudden burst of gunfire came from the back of the wide-open office room. A few bullets hit me, but I was already too tall, they crumpled on impact.
“THEY GET AHOLD OF YOUR FORMULA!?”
“Fuck that’s loud, yeah, there was a leak a few months back! Doc ain’t doin’ so hot!”
“That’s, The Doctor, to, you.” He spoke each word with individual breaths.
Walking toward the guards, they panicked. With a thud hitting my chest, one of the men screamed, “We need you up here!” Looking down I found a pinless grenade, which I kicked, knocking one of the men unconscious. Bodies tumbled over one another as it exploded, sending shrapnel everywhere. A few pieces stuck in my face, but I headed straight for the room.
“YOU’LL WANT TO GET BACK! SOMEONE IS COMING FROM DOW–” The ground gave out from under me, falling a few floors, I was kicked into a wall in a dark room, aside from the hole. Landing on my feet, I looked around, rubbing my side. I felt something wet, where I’d been hit. Then I saw who it was. A scaly humanoid, each scale tipped with a tinted blue, serrated prong. His shadow fluctuated, then its eyes sprung open, and a black mist shot me. I blocked with my tentacles, but they were cheese to a grater.
“Kenet himself breaking in here? Must think you’re hot shit!”
I grunted, springing off the wall, using a shredded tentacle to slam the scaly man with a table. Sure enough, the mist formed into a shadow-walker, same as Jacob. I slammed my fist into his face before he could react.
“I NEED SOME LIGHT DOWN HERE!”
But the scaled man already rebounded, swinging his pronged fist at my face. I managed to block with my arm, but it was getting stiff.
“DOC, I NEED YOU!”
I heard Tucker to my left, “He’s still recovering, close your eyes!”
Before I could tell him I couldn’t close my face, a clinking sounded, and I saw a small metal canister roll into view. A blinding light took over, banging nine times, each followed by a flash. Then several gunshots.
Accepting the pain to come, I grabbed the scaled man, flinging him into the ceiling, dazing him. The shadow-walker was already dead on the ground, three bullet holes planted in his skull.
“NICELY DONE!”
“Got any weaknesses on the other one? Never seen anything like him.”
“SKIN TRANSFORMATION, WE MUST WEAR HIM DOWN!”
“Lovely.”
The prongs tipping his scales had already shrunk considerably. Stumbling to his feet, he glanced down at the motionless skinwalker, “Goddamn.” His scales evaporated, leaving behind a hollow man, standing still, “Ju–”
Tucker put a bullet right between his eyes, “Didn’t have to ask buddy.”
As we turned to head back up the stairs, a thud reverberated from behind us. Turning back, Smudge lay, face first, and uncovered. He wore a full-body outfit ensuring no skin was revealed, but my concern was on whatever had dropped him down. Aside from the alarms, it was eerily silent. They landed on Smudge, hopping off, and kicking him into the wall.
The black suit was almost a fabric, but it was certainly mechanical. Parts at joints stuck out slightly, giving him mobility along with full body protection. At his neck, the material fluctuated, phase shifting at the slightest movement. The entire front of his helmet was a velvet red visor, the changed to a light blue when the light reflected just right. He had several weapons littering his body, including two hook swords, an unknown kind of pistol, a pump action shotgun, and a few others; all of which were as black as his armor.
I had to lean my head and chest down to avoid hitting the ceiling. I couldn’t move anymore, and Tucker looked a little nervous, “DOC! YOU ALIVE!?”
A German accent replied with a chuckle, “He was already dead.”
“Yeah, right.” Tucker said, “What’re you waitin’ for big guy?”
Shooting out my back, I held the odd man at tentacle point, Tucker readied his carbine, and the man retrieved his hook blades.
“Come, let me get this over with.”
Tucker stammered, “B-be careful.” He swapped magazines, “This guy is radiating like a human.” He fired a round, I felt it slide between two tentacles, and as it hit the man in the visor, an explosion errupted. I engaged, picking the man up by the leg, but before I could fling him, pain shot through it, the tip was sliced off. Tucker fired two more rounds, both exploding as they met their target, filling the room with a cloudy haze. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to move, but I felt like a turtle.
Suddenly, my leg ripped up, I held in place, stabilizing with a few tentacles, then smashed where a crack had formed on his visor, but he swung his other blade down, cutting it in half. A rapid succession of explosions slowly knocked the man back, and for the first time, he looked at Tucker, throwing one of the hookblades at him, it was angled for his face, but he snatched it mid air, then lunged at the man. He slammed the blade down on his shoulder, spinning it around and hooking the back of his arm, yanking him in, Tucker punched full force. In an instant, Tucker was against the wall, falling face first into the tile floor, leaving ceramic to crack the area around him.
The man chopped the last of my tentacles down as he approached me. When they were practically useless, he put the remaining blade away, pulling out the pump action shotgun. He shot me in the face six times before throwing the gun to his side. A small stream of black ooze dripped down my chin, and I had a hard time seeing anything in front of me.
“Damn, you’re one tough fucker, I’ll give that much.”
Pulling out his pistol, he proceeded to unload every round into my forehead, despite being ordinary metal, something about them kicked like a mule. When that gun was out, he dropped it, looking to his right, seeing where Tucker had dropped his gun.
“I wonder, how will you hold against explosive rounds? Not well?”
As he picked it up, I felt something prick my back, a familiar sensation made its way toward my heart, like organic WD-4D.
“You’re awfully quiet over there. Lost will to fight?”
“You’re an asshole!”
“Please, stop, I’ll shit myself.” He let out an antagonizing laugh, “You’re strong, but you’ve too much a stiffy going on there.” He let off a round into my face, nearly knocking me down, but I staggered just enough to stay in place.
“Wow, this has some nice kick to it, perhaps I’ll join the military after this.” He shot three more into my face, with each explosion, my skin peeled away just that much more, my brain rattled, but my limbs loosened.
By the fourth round, I regained some mobility, walking toward him. He stepped back, switching the gun to burst fire. I maneuvered around three bursts, only getting hit three times, each one in my torso. Those explosions seemed to boost the Doc’s serum, and I was able to grab the man by the head, crushing his visor with the palm of my hand. “You rely too much on your gadgets and luck. Neither will get you out of this.”
The helmet cracked, and blades shot out, slicing my fingers off. He pulled his remaining hook blade and slid under me. A sharp pain hit the back of my skull, then a cracking reverberated through my head. A metal clattering followed, and when I turned, the man stood there, shocked. He lunged back, throwing several kunai at my face, but I ducked them. With my full range of motion returned, I slung one of the tables at him, flinging him into a wall front-first.
Walking over to where he’d dropped Tucker’s rifle, I snagged it, and walked over to the man. He staggered back to his feet, a broken nose and a shard of ceramic sticking out of his eye. I held the gun to his forehead and fired, his head bursting like a pipe bomb.
I stumbled over to Tucker, dropping his gun beside him, and dropping to one knee. I smacked him in the face a few times, “You still alive?”
He rolled onto his side, “Kinda wish I wasn’t.” His face was covered in small cuts from the ceramic tiles, “Wish I’d had my Odyr suit, couldda kicked his ass. Fuckin hell what a dick.”
I sat beside him, “Hopefully he was their last line of defense, I think your gun gave me a concussion or something.” The room spun, my stomach on a Ferris wheel.
“Wow, the Doctor was right.”
I turned to the stairway, Xavier held Jones’s arm around his neck, helping him stand, “What happened, is Doc really dead?”
Tucker staggered his way to a standing position, “Nah, that stuff I gave him slows heart rate. He was too stupid to check for a full minute. He should still be alive, don’t worry.”
“And you two?”
Jones cleared his throat, “Smudge hid us, but he was worn down.”
Hearing that, I turned back to see Smudge, still laying flat. I stood, stumbling over to him, checking his pulse. It took a bit, but eventually, I felt a weak heartbeat. “DOC, YOU ALIVE UP THERE!?”
“I suppose!” He groaned.
“WE NEED YOU DOWN HERE! SMUDGE IS IN BAD SHAPE!”
A faint hint of a sigh made its way down the hole. I picked Smudge up, and moments later, Doc landed on the ground, a leg giving out from under him.
------------------------------------------
Some time passed, and we patched ourselves up as best we could before heading back up to the proper floor. Jones was able to walk on his own, but his right leg was in bad shape. I carried Smudge on my back, and despite Tucker’s several broken bones, he was walking just fine, occasionally stumbling from a torn tendon. As far as Doc went, the only sign he showed he was injured was his panting. Fortunately, we never ran into anyone else aside from the odd straggler, and we managed to grab the data we needed.
With the stressors passed, we laughed and joked, trying to bring ourselves back down from the adrenaline high. Exiting the building, I spoke up, “Xavier, I’m not going to forgive you, but I will thank you.”
He looked over at me, “To be fair, it was the Doctor’s idea.”
“That’s why I’m not forgiving you, anyone could’ve done it.”
“Oh, fair enough. Guess you could’ve done it too aye Doc?”
“That’s Doctor.” He let out an exhausted sigh, “In theory, but by the time I got around to it, who knows if Terry would still be alive. For a thin-skin, you did well.”
That’s when a limo pulled up through the gravel headed right for us, stopping just in time to not hit us, “Doc, wake Smudge, have him get you guys out of here. NOW!” I set him on the ground behind me.
“Well, I certainly hope he’s feeling up to it.”
“If not, you guys need to run.”
The back door opened, and a man in a suit stepped out. Pulling off his glasses, he tossed them in the back seat before closing the door and signaling the driver to leave. They couldn’t get away fast enough.
“Terry, son of Charles, I was under the impression you wouldn’t get involved with us. But after the Maerod incident, we decided we should implement additional security measures. Seems we should’ve invested more heavily into that. What was your intent here? If you had just called on Charles and told him about us, I’m certain he could’ve turned the entire building to mist.”
“If you know that, why’d you come to see for yourself, you can’t kill him. Or are you really that arrogant?”
The man laughed, “Because the alarm is still going off. If he had come, there would be no signal sending the alarm. You’re strong sure, but even three assassins managed to do this to you. Hence the difference between you mortals and us gods.”
“Didn’t realize living for 3000 years classified me as mortal.”
“You know, it’s interesting. Even after thousands of years, some still feel the need to attach themselves to this world. It’s as if they’re unaware of the insignificance of this world, this solar system, galaxy, supercluster, hell this universe! If you will live to see it all end, then what’s this part of it matter? They get animals to give themselves more meaning, call them pets. They feed the animal, water them, domesticate them, protect them. But they also prevent them from living in their natural habitat. Pulling the animal from where it belongs to give themselves a sense of purpose, it’s selfish wouldn’t you say?”
“Sure, I guess in a nihilistic sense.”
“So why are you here? To retrieve your pet? As I’ve said, there’s a transmitter in there, I saw what you pulled. Data on where your pet is. Why not just let him live in his terrarium?”
“He’s one of us now.”
“Due to your interference.”
“What are you really doing here!?”
“That’s the question of the day is it not? Quite frankly, I think Maerod was right to kill her. You’re far too attached to this world, though I suppose you are still a mere child. You could be so much more wise, and yet you refuse to allow it, you latch onto what’s been lost when you could focus on what you could have.”
“Sounds to me like you’re not quite past your own insignificance.”
He sneered, “Are you certain that’s your final answer?”
“I guess so.”
“Gods, the apple really does fall right to the roots.” The grass around him shriveled to dust when he charged me. Time stopped as the gleam in his eyes froze me, each fist pummeling me to the dirt, creating a deeper crater with each fist.
Then I was back in place, so was he. I’d never felt it so strong before, but I couldn’t deny the reality, he would kill me. Unlike Maerod, that man had absolute control over his soul, a feat all my attempts couldn’t achieve. All I could do was hold him off until I had an opportunity to slip out of his perception.
The grass around him slowly disintegrated, ready for his lunge, I leaped into the air, grabbing him mid-air with my tentacles and throwing him full force into the building. I sprung myself to the forest, latching onto a branch and engrossing myself in the tree, doing what I could to suck as much energy out. It wasn’t long before I was forced out. The tree crumbled to dust and I lept from it, charging the man with what little extra energy I had. He stood still, tanking four punches to his face. He kicked me back, nothing but a streak of blood running down his nose.
I lunged back searching for another tree. I found one a ways back, flinging myself at it, I fell into it and absorbed the tree’s power. I forced myself and found I could suck it out of other nearby trees. Until I was once again forced out, the trees crumbling in decayed mass, “You’ve gotten a bit stronger, Charles must be so proud.”
“What are you trying to achieve? Is losing your HQ really that important?”
He stepped toward me casually, “The same thing Maerod was trying to achieve, and really all the other gods in this disoriented country. However, no, killing you isn’t punishment for the damages, it’s for the audacity it took for you to do it. Entering my domain and destroying my primary facility? That takes balls, unfortunately, the rest was only a few inches.”
I tried to leap back again to gain a foothold, but all nearby trees crumpled to dust. Seeing no other way, I charged him again, but just as I came face to face, I spun and sidestepped, launching a single tentacle for the back of his heart, but on impact, it turned to dust.
“Unfortunately, the rest of you won’t be so easy to get rid of.” He turned, jumping, and once again, I met his bloodthirsty gaze. My skull cracked on impact, and when my head hit the dirt, a crater was left behind. He stood over me, “I’m gonna be on his shitlist for this one, but really, it’ll be worth it.” He pointed a finger gun at my head, and as the darkness closed in, three gunshots followed by a familiar light filled my senses, and when I could see again, his head was missing, the body still standing up-right, three bullet holes oozing blood at different angles...
I staggered to my feet, adrenaline keeping me awake. I looked around, seeing everyone but Smudge scattered around, “RUN! HE’S GONNA BLOW JUST FUCKING RUN!” I used my tentacles to move, sticking them in the ground and launching myself, then staggering to my feet. I headed in the direction the van was in, and a few seconds later, an intense blue light erupted from behind me, the shockwave hitting immediately after.
Part 26: Coming Soon!